Today March 7

Today is the feast of St. Paul the Simple, (died c. 339), Desert Father. He himself passed down the story of his conversion and his monastic life to the Desert Fathers, who, in the dry environment, preserved all their histories from that year to this. Paul was an ordinary layman whose wife had been stepping out on him. One day he arrived home and caught her in bed with another man. He could have responded with violence but did not. He immediately left and presented himself to Abba Anthony in the desert. As Paul was already 60, Anthony rebuffed him and told him to go home, but Paul was not to be moved. Four days he waited outside Anthony's cell. Finally, worried that Paul would die on the spot, Anthony received him as a monk. Paul, for his part, fulfilled his duties so humbly and completely that he was known as -- and called himself -- "simple." That didn't mean he was a doormat or stupid or silent or ungifted. In fact, he was given many graces.

One day he went to the monastery to make himself useful. He observed the brothers going into church. It was given to him to see the spiritual disposition of each monk as he passed. Most had bright, shining faces and happy angels, but one's soul was dark and dominated by a demon. Paul said as much (without naming names), and wept and beat his breast all the while they were in at Mass. And when they came out, he saw the previously tormented brother now whole and shining; his angel triumphant, his demon far behind. "O the ineffable loving-kindness of God!" he cried. Then the man whose heart had been converted came forward and identified himself, and testified to the truth of Paul's vision. "I am a sinful man; I have lived in fornication for a long time, right up until the present moment; when I went into the holy church of God, I heard the holy prophet Isaiah being read, 'Even though your sins are as scarlet, I will make them white like snow.' And I, the fornicator, am filled with compunction in my heart and from now on, I give my word, I affirm and promise in my heart that I will not sin any more." And the brothers rejoiced.

St. Paul the Simple, pray for us.