Once all the brethren were invited to a feast in a neighboring monastery. The abbot was detained by some business, and he promised to come later. The monks departed without him.

On the road they came across a traveler bitten by beasts. The poor old man could no longer move from severe loss of blood and lay near the forest path. The brethren approached him, talked, questioned, sympathized, and... they went on, leaving him lying in the forest.

It was a long way to the monastery where they were going, and they wanted to get there for the service, and especially for dinner. To be a guest, to a festive dinner - this pleasure so rarely fell to their lot. They had to hurry, and linger on the road to bandage the wounded man and carry him somewhere to a quiet shelter, they did not have time. An hour later, the abbot walked the same way. The bitten old man still lay motionless by the road, and it seemed that life had almost left him. Only occasionally did he moan softly. The hegumen approached him, and his heart contracted with compassion. He leaned over to the unfortunate man, bandaged his wounds as best he could, and lifted him from the ground, trying to bring him to his feet. It was impossible to leave the dying man in the forest.

"Can you go somehow?" he asked.

The old man only groaned muffled.

"Leaning on me," the abbot continued, "we will move together, slowly..." I know a house not far from here...

He embraced the old man with his decrepit arm and tried to make him go. It was all in vain: he could not stand on his feet and hung on his arm like a sack of dust. Then the abbot knelt, laid the wounded wanderer on his old shoulders, rose slowly and dragged his burden, groaning, stumbling, and barely stepping over with his weak legs; For his advanced years, the weight was beyond his strength.

He had little hope of informing me. But his heart was bursting with pity, and he could not leave the poor man without help either. And the strange thing was that as he moved on, the weight on his shoulders became lighter and lighter, and finally the sensation of it ceased completely.

The abbot looked around and was stunned. There was no one on my shoulders! The old man disappeared!!

And only from afar came a small voice: "It is impossible to fulfill your prayer, for the deeds of your brethren are different from yours... Compel them to follow in your footsteps: otherwise they will not enter the Kingdom of God.."

Thus, hardness of heart and indifference to one's neighbor are a decisive obstacle to union with Christ. Christianity, first of all, in its practical implementation, is service to one's neighbor.

The Lord came to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mk. X, 45). And since He requires His disciples to follow Him, that is, to imitate the example of His life, it is clear that the duty of service rests with all Christians and should be the main goal of their activity. "Whosoever will come after Me," He says, "let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Mk. VIII, 34). Whoever does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me (Matt. X, 38). In other words, whoever does not imitate the Lord in serving his neighbors to the point of being ready to lay down his life for them, as the Savior did, is not worthy of Him.

But egoism, or selfishness, repels a person from serving others, and this lack of service, callousness and indifference to one's neighbor is the usual external manifestation of egoism.

In consciousness, this vice manifests itself as an openly impudent or hypocritically disguised rule of life: "Only I would feel good, and I don't care about the rest.."