Already Dead

Paesius, the brother of Poemen, loved one of the monks and Poemen did not like it. So, he went and visited Ammonas, and said to him, "My brother Paesius loves someone else and I don't like it."

Ammonas said to him, "Poemen, are you still alive? Go and sit in your cell, and think to yourself that you have been in your grave a year already."

~~photo by Victoria Logue

Temper, temper

Ammonas said that for fourteen years in Scetis he had been asking God day and night to give him strength to control his temper.

~~Temper by Jere Smith, 2005