The life of St Païsius the Great of Egypt
At twenty he went out to the wilderness of Scetis and became a monk under the elder Pambo, one of the fathers who shaped a whole generation of Egyptian monasticism.
After Pambo's death Paisius withdrew further, eventually settling in the Nitrian desert, where he lived in a cave he had hollowed out with his own hands. For a time, tradition says, he kept his eyes cast down in humility rather than look about him. He became known among the monks for an asceticism that went beyond ordinary strength, and for a quiet wisdom: he is remembered to have taught that the highest virtue is whatever a person does in secret, unseen by anyone but God. Disciples gathered around him, and he reposed there in deep old age, his relics kept afterward at a monastery that took his name.
