Pakhom

Pakhom was a saint and great abba, who created the Christian tradition of koinobitic monastic life, which is now followed by monastic orders all over the world. He is honoured on May 9 throughout Egypt.

Abba Pakhom was born in 292 in Luxor. His parents were Egyptian pagans, though even as a youth he mocked the idolatry and placating of statues that they engaged in, which he found worthy of contempt. When he was 20 years old, he was conscripted by the Roman occupiers, and held captive away from his home town with many others. It was here that local Christians, charitable and fearing of the God, would daily bring food and comforts to the inmates. The righteousness and piety of their actions grabbed his soul, and Pakhom vowed to learn more about the faith when he was free. The God heard his solemn vow, As fate would have it, and Pakhom get was freed from serving the Roman occupiers without ever having to fight, and was baptised into the true faith in the year 314, and learned of the aesthetic custom, learning of the great saint Palaemon and came to be his follower in 317.

Pakhom initially lived and served the God in the eremitic tradition, but the God had another calling for him, and commanded that he organise the holy men of the Larves, who could not stand the rigours or the eremite, and created with them the koinobitic monastery of Tabenna in 323. The Holy men of the Larves saw the shepherd of the God in Pakhom, and recognised him as Abba.

By the will of the God his mission was successful, and established seven more koinobitic monasteries by his own hand, in the Valley or desert regions of Upper Egypt, and by the time of his flight to Heaven, more than 3000 monasteries shone out across Egypt.

Pakhom was always aware of the God, and never vain, and thus never sought to become a priest, though he did tender to the faith of local farmers and shepherds, till his flight to Heaven the 9th May 348.