Venerable Pafnutii, Abbot of Borovsk

Saint Pafnutii of Borovsk

Today is International Labour Day, the first of May, the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago. There is going to be a strike for hazard pay and safer working conditions in several major cities across the United States, staged by essential food service, retail and tech industry workers who are compelled to continue working during the pandemic. To those seeking recognition and a better work environment: I stand in solidarity with you and support your struggle!

It is also the commemoration in the Orthodox Church of Prophet Jeremiah who preached of just wages for the workman and comfort for the orphan and widow; of 79 monastic martyrs at Sînâ’ and at-Tûr in Ægypt; of the holy queens Berhte of Kent and Tamara the Great of Georgia. It is also the feast-day of a great monastic saint of Russia, the venerable Saint Pafnutii of Borovsk. Saint Pafnutii was the spiritual father and tutor of the future abbot, monastic teacher and social-justice advocate Saint Iosif of Volokolamsk.

Saint Pafnutii [or Paphnutius], in the world Parfenii [or Parthenius], was born in Kudinovo in the year 1395. Pafnutii’s grandfather was a Tatar, a basqaq (or ‘tax collector’) of the Golden Horde under Batu khaghan. When the Russians rose up in a revolt against the Horde, they took Ivan’s father hostage, and instead of killing him they offered him the choice of taking on the Orthodox faith. Pafnutii’s grandfather took this option and was baptised in a bathhouse, taking the Christian name of Martin.

Ivan, the son of the baptised Tatar Martin, had a homestead in Kudinovo which he inherited from his father, and there married a Russian woman named Photini. The two of them were poor, but they honoured God. And even with what little they had, they were still renowned for giving with an open hand to those who had less, much like the widow at the Temple with her two small coins. Photini became pregnant and bore a son, whom they called Parfenii. Even as a small child Parfenii was of a mild and sweet temper, and had a character which inclined toward the Church. He wanted to study the Holy Scriptures, and his father allowed him to do so at the nearby monastic school in Borovsk. As he studied the Scriptures, he not only learned to read and gained this worldly knowledge, but he also grew in character: his hagiography tells us that in this study he became meek, humble and chaste, not entering into idle chatter or evil gossip, but instead speaking only when he had something meaningful to say.

When young Parfenii was twelve years of age, he begged his parents’ leave from home to go and study full-time at Borovsk. Though Ivan and Photini were unhappy to part from their beloved son, they saw how earnest he was and let him go. He went to the Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God on the outskirts of Borovsk. There the abbot placed the young lad under the discipline of an elderly, blind priestmonk named Nikita, who had himself been under obedience to the great Saint Sergii the Wonderworker of Radonezh. Father Nikita had himself been an abbot in Serpukhov, but had given the office to another and retired to Borovsk on account of his great old age and failing eyesight. As a novice under Father Nikita, Parfenii spent seven years in obedience. He served the old man faithfully and in a spirit of love, also acquiring the monastic virtues. At the end of that seventh year, the Abbot Markell of the Protection Monastery tonsured Parfenii and bestowed upon him the monastic name of Pafnutii.

As a monk he spent twenty years further, glorifying Christ by working with his hands, struggling against the passions, and obeying whatever his brother-monks desired him to do. When Abbot Markell reposed in the Lord in the year 1434, the brothers of Protection Monastery began to desire that Pafnutii be appointed as his successor. Pafnutii was unwilling, but he was prevailed upon by the prince of Borovsk, Simeon Vladimirovich, as well as the Metropolitan of all Rus’, Saint Photius, to accept the abbacy. Indeed, it was Saint Photius himself who ordained Pafnutii a priest and bestowed the office of rector upon him.

Abbot Pafnutii was blessed with keen insight, and he laboured hard not only in the offices of the church and in private prayers at night, but also to care for his flock of monks. It happened early in his abbacy that he had occasion to send one of the young monks to the village for supplies. In the village this young monk met a pretty girl and they fell into fornication. That night, Abbot Pafnutii dreamed about a delightful orchard full of fruit-trees, but as he was delighting in them, he noticed that one of the fruit-trees had cracked, split in two, and fell to the ground in front of him. Distressed, the abbot heaved up the fallen trunk, bound it together and began to fill in the earth around it. But the tree fell over again. Pafnutii did not give up, but each time took the fallen splinters of the tree and placed them in the orchard earth, no matter how many times it fell over.

When at last he awoke, Abbot Pafnutii began to understand what his dream meant. The orchard was his monastery, and the fruit-trees were his monks. The fallen tree was a brother who had sinned. It was not long after that the brother who had fell into fornication with the girl in the village returned from his errand. Appearing before the abbot, his face was darkened with shame and grief at his sin. The abbot asked him what was wrong, but the young brother could not speak, neither could he look into Saint Pafnutii’s eyes. But Pafnutii – neither angry nor condemning – took pity on the boy, drew him out from the presence of the other monks, and began to take patient counsel with him. After Pafnutii’s gentle but stern admonitions, the boy confessed to what he had done.

Abbot Pafnutii gave the boy a long regimen of penitence to perform. However, he continued to keep a close watch on him, because the tree in his dream had fallen and needed replanting more than once. Fornication was one thing; it was far harder for Pafnutii to cure in the young monk the sin of despair. But through Abbot Pafnutii’s patient and gentle guidance, which forbade the young monk from either shirking his penance or from heaping upon himself further damnation in self-reproach, he was able to steer the youngster back onto the correct path. In this way, Pafnutii was able to be a wise doctor for the spiritual needs of each of his monks, and a good shepherd who kept his lambs out of the jaws of the ravening wolf.

Saint Pafnutii had been abbot thirteen years at Protection Monastery, when he fell into a grave bodily illness from which it seemed he would not recover. He took the great-schema upon himself, not hoping for any worldly relief. The affliction which he suffered was not of natural origins, and it left him as quickly as it had come. On the very day that he renounced his abbacy – the twenty-third of April, the feast of Saint George the Greatmartyr in 1444 – he was cured of his disease. He left the monastery, taking with him one disciple, and settled in a densely-wooded spot two miles distant from the Protection Monastery, where the rivers Protva and Ister’ma meet. The new schemamonk and his disciple had thought to live there in a silent hermitage as hesychasts, but neither was this the will of God.

The brethren of Protection Monastery, having discovered where their beloved former abbot had gone, gathered around him and fashioned cells for themselves in the place where he had established himself, and sought again to be under obedience to him. They asked his permission to build an oratory and a chapel, which they dedicated to the Nativity of the Holy Theotokos. And since he could not forbid them from doing so, instead Pafnutii blessed the work and consecrated the temple himself, assisted by the saintly Metropolitan Iona of Moscow himself.

Prior to this, however, Saint Pafnutii was given a test of his faith. The abbot and the metropolitan had, to put it mildly, not gotten off on the right foot. The Metropolitan had been consecrated by the synod of bishops of Moscow in 1448 – without the approval of Constantinople. To be sure, there were some fairly strong extenuating circumstances, but Abbot Pafnutii was a stickler for the canonical order and thus refused either to offer congratulations to the new Metropolitan Iona, or to call him by his new title. As a result, Pafnutii was called to Moscow to answer for himself, and when he arrived there he was clapped in irons and thrown into gaol. The new Metropolitan went in person to visit the Abbot in gaol, and there followed between them – as Saint Iosif recounts – a tense and at times heated discussion. In the end, though, the two of them were reconciled. Saint Pafnutii came to understand the hard position of the Russian bishops, and acknowledged Iona as Metropolitan. For his part, Metropolitan Iona knelt at the feet of Abbot Pafnutii, asked his forgiveness (and was given it) for the rough treatment he had meted upon him, personally unshackled him, gave him gifts, kissed him and sent him back to his monastery in peace.

The new Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery was beset with some problems: most of them related to engineering. The church, being built along the banks of two rivers, was exposed to attack from one side. The monks built a fence there, but it was nowhere close to sufficient. They began to think of diverting the river, and so they constructed an artificial causeway to wall off a portion of the Ister’ma. After they had done this, however, the river water was no longer fit for drinking, and monks had to be sent far away to fetch drinking water. They complained of this to Abbot Pafnutii, who went off by himself, walked over the causeway and rested under a certain tree, praying to God to help him find a solution to their water problems. At once, beneath that tree, a holy well of pure, clean, drinkable water erupted, which supplied the needs of the monastery.

The monastery faced other problems – political ones. It so happened that the heir of Prince Simeon of Borovsk was a proud and overbearing knyaz named Vasilii Yaroslavich. This boasting, strutting man would come into the abbey and give orders to the monks, and the Abbot would patiently remonstrate with him, saying: ‘God is God and Cæsar is Cæsar’. Vasilii Yaroslavich was not at all pleased with the construction of the Nativity Monastery so close to the Protection Monastery of which his family had been patrons, and still less that many of the monks of the Protection Monastery were leaving to be under their former Abbot. He began to concoct in his mind a scheme to rid himself of the troublous Abbot Pafnutii. Vasilii gave orders to violent ruffians under his employ to set fire to the new monastery and drive the monks out. But these ruffians, whenever they drew near the monastery, saw the brothers gladly labouring and building in the forests for the sake of their beloved Abbot, and singing sweetly to themselves in praise of Christ, and they could not bring themselves to do violence upon them. For these men, violent and greedy though they were, feared God, and their hearts were moved.

Then Vasilii Yaroslavich sent Ermolai. Ermolai was a Tatar who had taken on baptism but had not renounced his violent ways. He went to the monastery in stealth, with a brand in one hand and a sword in the other, ready to set the monastery ablaze and slay any, monk or novice, who tried to flee. But God struck him blind, and instead of stealthily attacking the monastery he fumbled in an unseeing rage over the grounds, until at last he was found and brought before Saint Pafnutii. Pafnutii shared Ermolai’s Tatar heritage and knew the Tatar tongue, and so he spoke to Ermolai joyfully in Tatar speech, and called him by his name. Ermolai, whose heart was touched by hearing his mother tongue spoken, knelt before the saint and touched his head to the earth, confessing to him everything: what he had planned to do in the monastery, and who had sent him. Saint Pafnutii forgave him, and prayed to Christ for him, and no sooner was this done than the Lord restored Ermolai’s sight. Ermolai left the monastery in peace and did nothing to harm any of the monks.

At this time, the Russian lands were attacked by the Tatar lord Mäxmüt Khan [also Makhmutek or Mamotyak in Russian sources], the son of Oluğ Möxämmät. The Russian princes, who were ever at odds and quarrelling amongst themselves, could not muster a force sufficient to repel this attack: the few who met Mäxmüt Khan in battle were led by the Grand Duke Vasilii Vasil’evich of Suzdal, and among them was none other than Vasilii Yaroslavich of Borovsk! Mäxmüt took the Grand Duke and all his men captive in battle, and demanded that the people of Russia pay yasaq in compensation for his release.

Being kept in bonds in the tents of the Tatars, Vasilii Yaroslavich remembered his sins against Abbot Pafnutii, and began to feel remorse for what he had done. He prayed to God and promised that he would reconcile with Pafnutii, if ever he received his life and his freedom. God heard his prayer, and Abbot Pafnutii went among his monks, among the rich and even among ordinary people trying to raise the yasaq necessary to pay off Mäxmüt Khan and release Vasilii Vasil’evich and all his nobles. Even if he was able to raise a kopek from a poor peasant, he was thankful for this and added that peasant to his prayers; and for this reason it was called the ‘kopek ransom’. The Tatar Khan was good to his word, and when he had received the yasaq he released the Russian princes back to their lands. When the Prince of Borovsk returned home, the first thing he did was to go to Abbot Pafnutii and beg his forgiveness for the many sins he had committed. This the abbot gave gladly.

At one time the fast of Great Lent was nearing an end, and the monastery had no fish with which to celebrate the Lord’s Pascha. Both the brothers and the lay workers at the monastery were grieved by this. But Abbot Pafnutii told them: ‘Do not grieve for this, my brothers, and do not tempt God. The All-Merciful Lord who made us and brought light into the whole world by His Pascha, will comfort us, His workers, in our griefs. And He will give unto those who fear him an overabundance of good things!’

As it turned out, these words would not go long unfulfilled by the All-Good and All-Wise Treasure of Blessings! On Holy Saturday, the sexton of the oratory went out to the holy well by the Ister’ma to draw water for the Pascha Liturgy, and he happened to cross the river as he was going over the causeway. There he saw leaping and playing in the river, more freshwater whitefish than he had ever seen gather in one place! This was because the river had swollen with the spring rains, and the fish had taken refuge in the still waters near where the monks had dug. The sexton hurried back to tell Saint Pafnutii about this, and the Abbot, giving thanks to God, told the lay brothers to go with nets and go to catch whitefish for the Paschal feast. The fishermen brought back so many of the slender silver swimmers that both monasteries – Nativity and Protection – had enough fish for all the monks to eat fish at every meal during Bright Week! What they did not eat themselves, they distributed amongst the poor in Borovsk.

By wonders such as this the name of Abbot Pafnutii became known throughout the Russian lands, and many eager young people were drawn to him to benefit from his wisdom and kindness. These included sæcular and married young men and women as well as those who would become monks. His most famous disciple, Ivan Sanin, came to him when he was twenty years old – the same age Pafnutii had been when he was tonsured by Abbot Markell. Saint Pafnutii placed the young Ivan under a discipline before giving him the tonsure, and the monastic name of Iosif.

Part of the young Ivan Sanin’s discipline was – much like Pafnutii’s own novitiate had been – caring for an elderly monk. In Ivan’s case, this monk was named Konstantin. Konstantin was nearing the end of his earthly life, and Abbot Pafnutii sent Ivan to care for him. The young novice went to the elderly monk’s cell to pray with him after the morning devotions, and then left him to attend to other duties. As he was passing by the abbot’s cell, Pafnutii came out and told him: ‘Someone was praying and I heard a voice that told me that the old man Konstantin had gone to the Lord. I came out to see who it was and I saw you.’

Ivan, taken aback by his abbot’s address, replied: ‘I’ve just come from Konstantin. He is still alive.’

The abbot then sent him back to Konstantin to make sure. When Ivan returned there, he found that Konstantin had already reposed peacefully in the Lord.

There was another elder who had lived a long time in the monastery by the name of Evfemii. Evfemii had spent much of his life imitating the life of his abbots, and particularly Father Pafnutii, and Christ had given him the gift of tears. He also had a certain gift of foresight. At the time there were two brother-monks in the choir who were given to an impure attraction to each other; and for this reason Saint Pafnutii had cause to rebuke them several times.

At one time during the Liturgy, Evfemii saw the two of them singing in the choir; and during that time he beheld in a vision, a horrendous devil assault these two monks with hooks and weapons of iron, hoping to drag them off out of the choir. Time and again the devil assaulted them, and time and again his weapons were deflected, harmlessly, off the bodies of the two young monks, who kept their place in the choir. Evfemii noticed this, and understood that whenever the brothers inclined to their forbidden attraction, the devil was able to hook them with his weapons. Whenever the brothers resisted the thought, the devil’s weapons fell away useless. Evfemii stood up and began to read from the Holy Gospel, and the devil could not bear to listen and disappeared. Again the devil came and attacked them, but he was defeated by the Cherubic Hymn. Again the devil came and attacked them, but he was defeated and banished at the Hymn to the Theotokos and the presentation of the Gifts.

At the end of the Liturgy, Evfemii took Saint Pafnutii aside and told him what he had seen concerning the two monks. Saint Pafnutii called the two monks to him and had Evfemii repeat the story; and the two monks were both admonished and heartened by what they heard. Gently the saintly abbot told the monks not to entertain the thought, but instead to take counsel in confession and so uproot them from the heart.

The monastery continued to grow, and Saint Pafnutii began to understand that the little wooden oratory would not be sufficient to house that many monks. He and his monks laboured for several years on the building of a stone church at the centre of the monastery. The edifice being finished, and the workmanship being admired all over Russia, the prince of Borovsk invited several excellent iconographers to design frescoes for the interior of the Church, including a layman named Dionisii, who was attached to the monastery. Dionisii was an excellent writer of icons, but his feet were lame, and he could not work for long on the tall, broad interiors of the stone church. But Saint Pafnutii prayed for Dionisii, that Christ and the Theotokos might grant strength to his feet, and his lameness was healed as he began his work.

The lay brethren, including Dionisii, were under injunction from the saint not to bring flesh meats within the monastery enclosure. For the most part they kept to this rule, but Dionisii broke it on one occasion by bringing a thigh of lamb stuffed with eggs into the monastery for his dinner. As he sat down to his dinner, he opened the eggs only to find that they were filled with maggots. His whole body began to itch and within an hour he was almost completely covered with sores. At once he sent for the saint and confessed his sin, begging for forgiveness. Saint Pafnutii sternly warned him not to do it again, but readily forgave him, took him into the Church and sprinkled holy water over him. Dionisii went to sleep that night, and after he awoke the next morning his skin was healed of its sores.

Saint Pafnutii was very fond of wild animals, especially birds. He firmly besought anyone who came onto the monastery grounds that they were not to harm the ravens who nested in the woods around the monastery. One proud boyar unleashed his falcon upon the ravens, but no sooner had his falcon gotten his talons into a raven but it plummeted from the sky – dead. At another time, the son of a local burgomaster was riding by the monastery with some friends, and chanced to see a murder of ravens take wing in front of him. Without thinking, he drew his bow and shot, felling one of the poor birds. He turned his head behind him to boast to his friends at having made such a shot, but found that his neck was frozen in place as he did so. He could not turn back the right way. His friends, alarmed, took him before Saint Pafnutii. And of course he knew what had happened and how the young man had behaved. Saint Pafnutii hit the bell and summoned the brothers, who demanded to know why he had called them at an irregular hour. And Pafnutii told them: ‘God has avenged the blood of a raven.’ He then prayed over the young man in the name of the Holy Cross, and told the young man to turn his head around the right way. In this way his neck was healed.

Like Saint Isaac of Spoleto, Saint Pafnutii used his keen insight to gently admonish and enlighten thieves. A group of thieves who stole three oxen from the monastery were stricken blind and blundered around the woods through most of the night before the monastic brothers found them the next morning; Saint Pafnutii healed their eyes and they did not steal again. At another time, a servant who had withheld for himself some alms from his master meant for the monastery, was greeted in a friendly way by the saint. But when he sat down to bread, his whole body became paralysed and he could not move. Saint Pafnutii took him into the church, prayed over him so that he was healed, and admonished him in secret about what he had done before sending him back home. The whole monastery knew of this story, but he would not tell the brethren of the reason for it until much later.

Elder Pafnutii was often given his divine insights in visions; at one time two brothers wished to leave the monastery, and Elder Pafnutii was warned of this in a dream. He saw a devil take burning brands from his hearth and use them to set alight the cell which the two brothers shared. He told this vision to the two brothers the following day. They showed him that they had packed their few belongings and had prepared to leave, and then confessed and repented their sin. At another time, a brother of the monastery who had a shrewd and sarcastic tongue received a dream in which he was cast out of the church and given over to be beaten by devils after having made one biting remark too many. He confessed to Elder Pafnutii and mastered his tongue.

Saint Pafnutii told his disciples that one could tell the state of a man’s soul by looking into his eyes. In several cases he proved this. One young monk who had come across a group of women in the village came back to the monastery filled with disturbing thoughts. Elder Pafnutii looked him in the eyes once and sighed, ‘This man is not the same as he was before!’ Distraught, the young man sought the counsel of the monk Iosif Sanin, who sent him to confess his sins. Thus Saint Pafnutii was able to correct him. On another occasion someone from Saint Iosif’s village came to visit Saint Pafnutii, desiring to become a monk. Pafnutii sent him away, and Iosif asked him why. Pafnutii told him that his countryman had once murdered a monk by stabbing him in the stomach with a knife, and had never confessed this sin. He knew this by looking him in the eye. He was even able likewise to discover one of the monks who had poisoned his master many years before, and had never confessed that sin either. Elder Pafnutii was clear that no amount of ascetic striving can take the place of confession and repentance.

Elder Pafnutii once cured a demoniac who came riding into the monastery enclosure demanding to see him. He came up to Saint Pafnutii not knowing his face, and demanded to see the saint. But the elder looked the demoniac in the eye and said: ‘You’re not out of your wits, but a crafty devil has got its hold on you.’ The demoniac flew into a rage and tried to assault Pafnutii, but failing to harm him got back on his horse and made his way to a nearby lake, where he tried to drown himself. The monastic brothers lay hold on him and brought him back to Saint Pafnutii, who was able to release him from the demon and give him back soundness of mind.

There was another miracle of Saint Pafnutii involving fish. He asked the prince leave for three days to send lay brothers to fish at a certain spot. Then he gave one of the brothers money to buy several new barrels. This lay brother, however, was stingy, and complained to Pafnutii that he didn’t need to buy new barrels, he’d just take an old one. But the saint glared ferociously at him, and ordered him to take the money and buy the barrels. The reluctant fisherman went and did as the saint told him. At the end of those three days, he had caught 730 large fish for the monastery – more than the prince had caught fishing that same place all summer! It was enough to fill up not just the old barrel but every one of the new barrels he’d bought with the saint’s money. And he was well-furnished because the saint had foreseen the results of his fishing.

One of Saint Pafnutii’s students developed an inflammation of the eye. In grave suffering he sought healing; Saint Pafnutii gave him his prayer rope and told him to say the Jesus Prayer one thousand times. The student was in such agony from his eyes he could barely move his lips, but the prayer came to him more and more smoothly, and as he got to five hundred iterations he felt the healing power come over him. He left off praying and jumped up with joy to tell the saint, but soon the inflammation seized him again as badly as before. Saint Pafnutii chided him and told him to complete the thousand prayers; only after he did so was he fully healed.

Saint Pafnutii also healed a leper who was suffering and very near to death. Pafnutii not only healed his deathly illness, but also cleansed his skin from the corruption of the disease by sprinkling holy water upon him. Another man was brought to Saint Pafnutii on the brink of death. The doctors had pronounced him doomed to die within the day, and his relatives had already made preparations to bury him. But the monk prayed over the man, and he rose from his bed and – to the amazement of his kin – walked about in fullness of health, as though he’d never been sick. At another time, a noblewoman went weeping before the saint begging his prayers for her son, who was sickly and on the point of death. Saint Pafnutii, who loved children and took pity on the woman’s state, prepared some holy water and also sent her back with some fish for the child to eat. (It was customary at that time to give recovering invalids something to eat to gauge if they were really returning to health.) The noblewoman was not much reassured, expecting to come back and find her son dead. But she went back to her son and sprinkled the holy water over his body, and at once the boy sat up in his bed and greeted her with joy, then asked her for food. His noble mother gave him the fish Saint Pafnutii had sent back with her.

Saint Pafnutii cured several demoniacs through the invocations of the Holy Cross. A certain noblewoman who was known to Aleksei Goburin was possessed by such a devil; she often sent her sons with offerings to the Nativity Monastery. She was attacked by many devils in her dreams, but always in these dreams a grey-bearded old monk would stand in front of her and drive the devils back from her, and she heard a voice in her ear repeating, ‘Pafnutii of Borovsk will drive the devils away from you.’ After she had been cleansed she went to Borovsk to see the saint, but women were not allowed to enter the monastery. She sent her sons inside and bade them bring Pafnutii within sight of her. They did as she asked, and when she saw him she recognised him at once as the man in her dreams who had held off the hordes of devils from her. From then on she became a generous patron of both monasteries. Another novice was tormented by dreams of a devil who prowled around his cell – sometimes in the form of a great dog, and at other times in the form of the bear. When he told Saint Pafnutii of this, the elder instructed the novice to read with him from the Psalter. The power of the Psalms held off and chased away the devils, who did not return to plague the young novice.

Elder Pafnutii was a close friend to the poor and humble. He did not hesitate to stand up to the powerful and proud, and was not servile before them. But with those who approached him in humility, he was warmly accessible. He made no distinction between monk and lay; he spoke gladly with common folk and invited them to his table as brothers. None of them ever left a conversation with him in a spirit of mourning. Any wayfarer who came into his monastery was welcome to his table and would not leave unfed. In one year there was a famine in Borovsk, and Saint Pafnutii threw open the larders of the monastery and gave away every last crumb of food in it to those who were starving. When the stores ran out so that nothing remained even for the monks, Saint Pafnutii prayed all the harder for the deliverance of the hungry, and with tears implored God to let the people live until the next summer. And wondrously, the monks went into the larder to find that the food had been replenished! Elder Pafnutii held generosity and justice to beggars and the needy to be the chief of virtues. He was fond of telling this story:

One act of charity can save a man, if he lives by the law. One generous man did alms throughout his life. When he died, another man was given this vision of his soul’s progress. He was brought to the river of fire, and on the other side of the river was Paradise: a wondrously bright, warm, sweet and beautiful garden. But the soul of the man found no way across this horrible river. But he begins to see the souls of the beggars who received alms from him in life. With their bodies they lay down across the river, making a bridge for him. By their grace to him, the generous man crossed the bridge into Paradise.

According to Saint Pafnutii, God who protected Russia could also turn His face away from the Russian people if they went too long astray from the correct path, and refused to repent of their sins for too long. He spoke in such terms about the calamity of plague that fell upon the Russian people in the year 1407, and rebuked the Russian people for falling further into drunkenness, licence and greed rather than returning to God and their love of their neighbours. (It seems a timely reminder now: in the time of plague Elder Pafnutii exhorted his people to be kinder to one another, and neither to turn away from the needy for fear of contagion, nor to hoard food or livestock or gold or silver.)

During this plague, he said, there was one nun who was rescued from the sickness on the brink of death, and who was given visions of who was there in the afterlife. She said that she had seen the generous, the merciful, those who were mindful of the poor, and those who were kind to animals, in Paradise, regardless of their faults in life. Figuring prominently of those she had seen in paradise, interestingly enough, was Ivan I Kalita of Moscow, who despite his flaws of character and temperament was apparently fairly generous to the poor.

Among those she had seen in torment were the greedy and avaricious. She saw devils tormenting the souls of the wicked by forcing them to wear white-hot chains of gold, or by throwing gold coins into their open mouths and mocking them by telling them to eat and be satisfied. One of the greedy she saw being thus tormented, it seems, was the notoriously opulent Lithuanian king Vytautas.

Pafnutii also once had a vision while he dozed on the Church steps in the few minutes before the reading of the Gospel at Divine Liturgy. He saw the gates of the monastery open and a crowd of men and women with candles come into the Church. One of them, as he passed, he recognised as one prince Yuri Vasil’evich, whom he realised had died. The prince had apparently considered himself to have been allowed to enter Heaven only by the prayers of the saint. After the vision was over and Saint Pafnutii awoke, he went into the Church praising God’s mercy.

Saint Pafnutii sent his beloved disciple Saint Iosif Sanin to the court of the knyaz Mikhail Fedorovich of Vorotyn, where he found the nobleman deeply downcast. Iosif asked him what was wrong. The nobleman, it turned out, had kept a monk close by his side: a holy man named Matvei Varnavoi. The prince of Vorotyn had loved Matvei and cherished his advice, which was always wise and timely. But his son Ivan Mikhailovich had grown jealous of the holy man and ordered him to be killed. Shortly after this Ivan Mikhailovich himself died, and his mother desired to have a commemoration Liturgy held for him. But when the priest sent for prosphora to be baked, the oven began to roar so hot that it scorched the bread which was supposed to be blessed. When Elder Pafnutii heard this from his pupil Iosif, he gave a profound sigh of grief. ‘The Lord has told me the truth: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay; (Rom. 12:19) and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Matt. 7:2)”’

Elder Pafnutii said of the monastic life:

The root of the monastic life is—not possessing anything; obedience and humility; and placing yourself below everyone else.

Abbot Pafnutii, it must be said, was a model not only of humility and forgiveness but also of just plain old hard work. He chopped and hauled firewood, dug out plots for farming, weeded, watered and raised the vegetables, and yet always managed to arrive early to prepare for the daily Divine Liturgy in the oratory. Being a schemamonk, he normally would not serve the Liturgy himself, but took the Gifts together with his brothers – only once did he serve the Liturgy, with no priest being available for his monks, and afterwards he said that for fear and awe his soul had barely remained in his body. He wore a ragged sheepskin garment and threadbare shoes not even fit for a beggar. He was lenient and patient with his brothers, but strict upon himself. He lived all the time in the original cell he had made when he took on the Great Schema. At mealtimes he always ate last, allowing his brothers to take the choice food for themselves. He fasted totally on Mondays and Fridays, and ate no oil or sauce on Wednesdays. He also was so humble that he did not dare to bodily touch anyone, man or woman, for he revered them above icons, as they were icons of God. He never spoke unless he had something needful and meaningful to say.

At the age of twenty he entered the monastic life. At the age of forty he became an abbot. He spent sixty years under monastic discipline – twenty-seven of those under the Great Schema. And at the age of eighty years, in the year 1475, having reached the end of his earthly days, he reposed in the Lord, at peace with his brothers and beloved by all.

Saint Pafnutii of Borovsk was indeed a model of justice as well as holiness, the two not being at odds but finding completion one in the other. He did not pursue meekness and humility and chastity in a closed-off and selfish way, for his own sake alone, but did everything for the sake of his monastic disciples and for the common people who lived around him. He gave of his own physical substance, his monastic reserves, and his spiritual wealth as well for the sake of those who were suffering in times of famine. As such he is a perfect saint to commemorate on May Day along with the Prophet Jeremiah. Holy abbot Pafnutii, meek and gentle servant of the poor, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Pafnutii of Borovsk, Tone 4:

Thou didst illumine thy fatherland
With thy radiant life of prayer and fasting,
And wast filled with divine gifts of the Spirit.
Thou didst strive valiantly in this temporal life and show mercy to all,
Becoming an intercessor for the poor.
And so we entreat thee, O Father Pafnutii,
Pray to Christ our God that our souls may be saved!