Who among us does not desire a quiet and peaceful life? We certainly pray for that many times during the divine services, and although our lives may be quite harried and quite crazy sometimes with the pace of everything that goes on around us, all of us, I think, would wish basically for a peaceful life, for one full of quietness and calm. This is certainly what the venerable virgin maiden Piamoun, whom we commemorate on March 3, desired greatly in her own life.

She lived during the fourth century in Egypt, and she was a young maid who, from the earliest years, was very quiet and devout: said her prayers continuously, always loving God, and rarely thinking of anything else. She actually lived alone with her mother, and because they were poor, Piamoun also had to help to support the family. She did this by working at different types of weaving and with fabrics and this sort of thing along with her mother.

Piamoun was always desirous of this life; she really wanted nothing else. But, as things happen, particularly at this particular time in Egypt, Piamoun’s village came under assault by a stronger village. The reason was because these two villages were arguing over water rights to the Nile. Certainly this sort of thing has happened many times before in history, hasn’t it? Because water is so important for life. But the stronger village, which was not Piamoun’s village, had been sending men in ambush for a long, long time, and there were a lot of murders taking place, even among Christians in these two villages.

Piamoun was really upset about this. Piamoun is someone who did not like violence at all. Yet word came to her that the stronger of the villages was going to assault her village, and they had murderous intent. The messenger about this was no less a figure than an angel. Seeing the prayers of Piamoun and seeing how devout she was, he sought to warn her and said, “You must prepare, because they are coming after you.” Piamoun was quite distressed about this, so she called a number of priests to her home and said to them, “Look, we can’t fight them off. They’re coming with very grave intent upon our people here in the village, so if you would, would you please go out and meet them and try to persuade them not to invade the village? Because I think they will listen to you.”

Well, the priests were—how can I say it?—chicken. They knew the murderous intent of these villagers, and they felt like there was nothing that they could do, so they refused. They would not go and even try to do their priestly duties, to be peacemakers, and assuage the fears of all those in their village and calm the passions of the invading village. They would have nothing to do with it. Well, they suggested something else: that Piamoun herself would go and persuade this neighboring village to stay away.

Piamoun understood, though, that because she was but a maiden and because she was someone who was very quiet that she would probably have no effect on this at all. So what she did instead was to send a message, send a message rounding up as many people as she could to go out and try and stop these invading villagers. Well, that didn’t seem to work, either. So what she did is pray. She stayed up in vigil all night long, never even sitting down, never lying down, but standing in constant prayer, asking the Lord that he would protect them from the onslaught that was coming upon them.

And a marvelous thing happened. These villagers from the stronger village, at about the first hour of the night, assembled together and were ready to storm the smaller village; they were right at the outskirts—and they were frozen in their steps. They could not move, and they waited and waited, and still they could not move from where they were, until finally it came to them through a message that it was by the prayers of the holy virgin Piamoun that they were fixed to their spot.

Upon seeing this, they eventually repented of what they had done. They were quite fearful that this young girl would have such power over all of them, and so they repented and stepped back and decided not to invade, and in fact sent a message to the smaller village saying that all of you should thank God, because it is through the prayers of the holy virgin Piamoun that we did not invade. Eventually the two sides negotiated, made peace, and the problem was solved.

One doesn’t often think that such a quiet life could have that sort of great effect on all of the horrible occurrences going around us, but the holy virgin Piamoun shows us that by prayer and fasting and faith in God and a firm intent to follow his will, that miracles can indeed happen.