When the mother came, they began to ask her to accept alms, but she did not accept it either, and said:

"My Providence is God, and now you want to take Him away from me!"

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Seeing such faith, the Greeks glorified God.

4. The following incident shows how sinful and useless it is to "save money for a rainy day".

A certain gardener worked and used all his labor

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for alms, and kept for himself only what was necessary. But his mind inspired him: "Save yourself some money, so that in old age or in illness you will not suffer extreme need..." And he, while collecting, filled the pot with money. It happened that he fell ill (his leg began to rot), and he spent money on doctors, without receiving any benefit. Finally, an experienced doctor came and said: "If you do not take away your leg, your whole body will rot," and he decided to have an operation. At night, having come to himself and repenting of what he had done, he said with sighing: "Remember, O Lord, my former works, which I have done, laboring in my garden and providing the needful things of the brethren!" And where is this hope which thou hast had in them?" Then, reasoning, he said: "I have sinned, Lord, forgive me! From now on, I will not do anything like that." Then the angel touched his foot, and he was immediately healed. And getting up in the morning, he went to work in the field. The doctor, according to the condition, comes with instruments, and they tell him: "He went to work in the field in the morning." Then the doctor,

And he was astonished, and went to where he was working, and when he saw him digging the ground, he went to the place where he was working.

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glorified God, Who had granted him healing.

Such are the precepts of non-acquisitiveness, left by the ancient eldership. And those who reproach today's monks for violating their monastic vows see in vain their special dignity (imagining that they see what spiritual people do not notice). If they want to know, this was predicted 1500 years before them by the monastic father Anthony the Great.

"Once, some disciples of the divine Abba Anthony, seeing in the deserts an innumerable multitude of monks29 devoted to all virtues, asked him: 'Father! How long will this zeal and zeal for solitude, for poverty, for humility, for love, for abstinence, and for all the other virtues to which all this multitude of monks are so carefully attached almost without exception?"

"The time will come, beloved sons, in which the monks will leave the deserts and instead rush to the richest cities. There, instead of caves and huts, with which the desert is dotted, they will erect, trying to surpass some -13-