There was an Abba Pambo of whom it is said that for three whole years he prayed to God, saying, “Do not glorify me on earth.” But God glorified him so greatly that no one could look steadily at his face because of the glory that shone from it.
Once two brothers came to Abba Pambo. One asked him, “Abba, I fast for two days at a time and eat two loaves. Am I saving my soul, or am I deceived?” The other said, “Abba, from my handiwork I earn two small coins each day. I keep a little for food and give the rest in charity. Am I being saved, or will I perish?” Though they begged him earnestly, he gave no answer. After four days, when they were about to leave, the clerics encouraged them, saying, “Do not be distressed, brothers. God will give you your reward. This is the elder’s custom: he does not speak quickly unless God gives him assurance.” They went in to the elder and said, “Abba, pray for us.” He said, “Do you want to leave?” They answered, “Yes.” Taking their practices upon himself, he wrote on the ground and said, “Pambo fasts two days at a time and eats two loaves. Does this make him a monk? No. And Pambo works for two small coins a day and gives them in charity. Does this make him a monk? Not yet.” Then he said to them, “These practices are good. But if you guard your conscience toward your neighbor, in this way you will be saved.” Satisfied by this, they went away with joy.
Once four men from Scetis came to the great Abba Pambo, wearing their sheepskins, and each told him the virtue of his companion. One fasted a great deal; the second possessed nothing; the third had acquired great love; and of the fourth they said that he had lived twenty-two years in obedience to an elder. Abba Pambo answered, “I tell you, the virtue of this last one is greater. Each of you acquired the virtue he has by his own will; but this man cut off his own will and does the will of another. Men like this are confessors if they keep this until the end.”
Athanasius of blessed memory, Archbishop of Alexandria, asked Abba Pambo to come down from the desert to Alexandria. When he came down and saw an actress there, he began to weep. Those with him asked why he was weeping. He said, “Two things moved me: first, her destruction; second, that I do not have as much zeal to please God as she has to please shameful people.”
Abba Pambo said, “By God, since I renounced the world, I have not regretted a word that I spoke.”
Again he said, “A monk ought to wear such a garment that if he throws it outside his cell for three days, no one will take it.”
Once Abba Pambo was traveling with brothers in the parts of Egypt. Seeing some laymen sitting there, he said to them, “Get up and greet the monks so that you may be blessed, for they continually speak with God, and their mouths are holy.”
They related that when Abba Pambo was dying, at the very hour of his death he said to the holy men standing around him, “From the time I came to this place in the desert, built my cell, and lived in it, I do not remember eating bread that did not come from the work of my hands, nor have I regretted a word I spoke, up to this very hour. Yet I am going to God as one who has not even begun to serve God.”
He had this quality above many others: if he was asked for a word from Scripture or a spiritual saying, he did not answer at once but said that he did not know. And if he was pressed further, he still gave no answer.
Abba Pambo said, “If you have a heart, you can be saved.”
The priest of Nitria asked, “How should the brothers live?” They said, “With great ascetic practice, and guarding their conscience toward their neighbor.”
They said of Abba Pambo that just as Moses received the image of the glory that shone in Adam when his face was glorified, so Abba Pambo’s face shone like lightning, and he was like a king sitting on his throne. Abba Silvanus and Abba Sisoes were of the same kind of spiritual work.
They said of Abba Pambo that his face never showed a smile. One day the demons, wanting to make him laugh, tied a wing to a piece of wood and carried it along with a great commotion, crying, “Ho! Ho!” Seeing them, Abba Pambo laughed. The demons began to dance and shouted, “Ha! Ha! Pambo laughed!” But he answered them, “I did not laugh; I mocked your weakness, because so many of you are carrying one wing.”
Abba Theodore of Pherme asked Abba Pambo, “Give me a word.” With difficulty he said to him, “Theodore, go and show mercy to everyone, for mercy finds confidence before God.”