The Life
Pachomius was born to pagan parents in Upper Egypt around 292. At the age of about twenty he was conscripted into the Roman army. The recruits were locked in a prison-house overnight on the Nile. They expected to be mistreated; instead, the local Christians of the city came down with food and water and quietly cared for them. Pachomius was struck. He learned that these strangers loved them simply because their God had told them to love their neighbor. He vowed that if he survived the army he would seek out their God. After his release he was baptized in the village of Sheneset. He became the disciple of an old hermit named Palamon, lived ten years of severe asceticism, then heard the Lord call him to a place called Tabennisi. There an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the form of a Great-Schema monk, holding a bronze tablet on which was inscribed a Rule for monks living in common. Pachomius gathered brothers under this Rule. By the time of his death in 348 there were nine monasteries with seven thousand monks under his Rule, and the pattern of cenobitic monastic life he had received was beginning to spread across the Christian world.
When Pachomius was about twenty, the Roman army came through his region and conscripted him along with many other young men. They were marched down to the Nile and put on a ship. After a day’s journey they docked at Thebes (or Latopolis) and were locked in a prison-house overnight. The recruits expected the worst. Instead, in the evening, a group of local people came quietly to the prison gate carrying baskets of food and jugs of water. They distributed everything to the recruits, gentle and kind, asking nothing in return. Pachomius asked the men beside him: who are these people? “These are Christians,” someone answered. “Their God has commanded them to love their neighbor. They feed strangers.” Pachomius was struck dumb with wonder. He had never seen anything like it in his pagan upbringing.
After Pachomius’s release from the army and his baptism in the village of Sheneset, he sought out a holy man of the desert named Palamon and asked to become his disciple. Palamon was old and famously strict. He warned Pachomius that the desert life was very hard. “Many have come and gone again, my son. Are you sure?” Pachomius said yes. Palamon received him reluctantly. The two men kept the strictest fast — only bread and salt, no oil, no cooked food. They drank only water. They prayed through the night. They slept sitting up, never lying down. They wove palm baskets to support themselves. For ten years Pachomius lived this life, learning the slow patient art of guarding his heart and discerning his thoughts.
After ten years with Palamon, Pachomius walked one day into the desert. He came to an abandoned settlement called Tabennisi on the eastern bank of the Nile, where ruined houses and fields stood empty. As he prayed in the silence of the place, he heard a voice from heaven: “Pachomius, struggle in this place, and build here a monastery; many will come to you to be saved.” He did not move at once. He returned to Palamon and told him what he had heard. The old man was silent for a long time and then said: “It is the voice of God, my son. Let us go there together.” They walked back to Tabennisi and built a small cell. Soon afterward Palamon reposed in the Lord. Pachomius was alone for some time, until his older brother John joined him. The two of them lived there together, weaving baskets and praying, while the whole future stood before them unseen.
One day, while Pachomius was praying in his cell at Tabennisi, an angel of the Lord appeared to him. The angel was clothed in the great schema, the most solemn habit of an Eastern Christian monk, and he carried a bronze tablet in his hand. On the tablet was inscribed a Rule for monks who would live together in common. The angel gave the tablet to Pachomius and said: “Many shall come to live in this place by my command. They are to live together in one community, with one Rule, one obedience, one food, one clothing. The work of the brethren shall be ordered by the senior monks; all shall obey the abbot. This shall be the model for the monasteries of the world.” Up until that moment, Christian monks had lived almost entirely as solitary hermits. Pachomius had been given, by direct angelic revelation, a new pattern: monks living together as a single body in Christ, sharing everything, obeying one Rule, ordered by the love that holds them together. This is the foundational vision of cenobitic (common-life) monasticism, the form of Christian monastic life that has shaped the entire Eastern and Western tradition for sixteen hundred years.
Brothers began to come. Pachomius received them, gave them the Rule, organized them into houses of thirty or forty monks each. Each house had a senior monk; over the whole community was the abbot. The monks rose together for the night office, sang the psalms in choir, ate together at the common table in silence, worked together at the trades the monastery practiced — weaving baskets, copying books, making sandals, baking bread, working the gardens. Pachomius considered an obedience fulfilled with zeal greater than fasting or prayer. The monastery grew. He founded a second house at Pbow, then more. By the end of his life there were nine monasteries with seven thousand monks under his Rule. His sister Maria led a great women’s monastery on the opposite bank of the Nile. He visited every house in turn, teaching, correcting, encouraging. He was strict beyond endurance with himself and tender beyond measure with his monks.
Near the end of his life, Pachomius was granted a final vision. The Lord showed him the future of monasticism in the centuries to come. He saw that future generations of monks would not have the same zeal as the first generation. He saw that abbots would be less worthy. He saw that the simple obedience of the early Pachomian houses would be much weakened. The saint prostrated himself on the ground and wept bitterly, calling out to the Lord for mercy on those future monks. He heard a voice answer: “Pachomius, be mindful of the mercy of God. The monks of the future shall receive a reward, since they too shall have occasion to suffer the life burdensome for the monk.” Pachomius rose comforted. The Lord had not abandoned the monks who would come after him. Their reward would be different from his own, but their salvation was secure.
The early Christians of Jerusalem held all things in common. They were of one heart and one soul. Pachomius’s monastic Rule is, at its deepest level, an attempt to live this Acts 4:32 life in community. The monks share food, clothing, work, prayer, possessions — nothing belongs to any one of them. They are of one heart in their common obedience to the Rule, of one soul in their shared love of Christ. This is what the angel had given Pachomius on the bronze tablet: not a system of rules but a way of being a small Acts 4 community on the Nile.
In the year 348 a great plague swept through Egypt. It reached the Pachomian monasteries and many monks died. Pachomius caught the disease himself. He knew his end had come. He gathered the brethren around his bed, exhorted them to keep the Rule and to obey their abbot, and refused to name his own successor. The choice, he said, was theirs to make. He prayed once more for them, gave the kiss of peace to those nearest him, and reposed in the Lord on the ninth of May, 348. He was about fifty-six years old. The federation he left behind was nine monasteries strong with seven thousand monks. His successor, Petronius, was elected by the brethren. The Pachomian Rule continued.
Pachomius gives the Christian Church a great gift: the practical proof that the apostolic ideal of common life can actually be lived. The monks at Tabennisi held all things in common, ate at the same table, wore the same clothes, obeyed the same Rule, prayed the same psalms together, gave their whole will to the love of Christ that held them together. They were a small visible icon of what the entire Christian Church is called to be. Pachomius shows us that we do not have to be great solitaries to find God; we can find him in obedience, in the small daily acts of common life, in the giving up of our own will for the sake of our brothers. He even said that an obedience faithfully fulfilled was greater than fasting or prayer. He meant it. We can live this in our own families, our parishes, our workplaces, our friendships. The Acts 4 community is not just for monks; it is the pattern of the whole Christian life.