St. Poemen the Great

Poemen was a fourth-century desert father of Egypt, one of the most quoted of all the Egyptian abbas in the Apophthegmata Patrum — the sayings of the Desert Fathers. With his six brothers he had come as a young man from his native village to the wilderness of Sketis, and there the brothers had lived together in adjacent cells for many decades, forming one of the most loved monastic communities of the Egyptian wilderness.

Of all the brothers, Poemen — whose name means "Shepherd" — was the most discerning, and through his long life he became the preferred counselor of monks throughout Egypt and the foreign visitors who came to consult the desert. His sayings are particularly characterized by gentleness, an extreme reluctance to judge any human heart, and a profound conviction that the work of the cell is the work of inner watchfulness rather than visible feats. "Teach your mouth," he said, "to say what is in your heart." And: "A man teaches his neighbor by example, not by speech."

He lived past the age of 110, surviving the sack of Sketis by barbarian raiders in 408 and ending his days at a small cell in the Thebaid. His feast is kept on August 27.