The Dry Twig That Grew Green

“In the same monastery, the event I am about to tell was said to have happened within recent memory. A man had come to the same abbot in the same way as the one before, to be admitted. When the first law, obedience, was set before him, he promised unfailing patience to endure anything, however extreme. It happened that the abbot was holding in his hand a twig of storax that had already withered. The abbot stuck it in the ground and laid this task on the newcomer: he was to keep watering the twig until, against the whole course of nature, that dry piece of wood should grow green in the sandy soil. So the newcomer, placed under an unbending law, carried water every day on his own shoulders, water that had to be brought from the river Nile almost two miles away. And when a year had run its course, the worker’s labor had not yet stopped, though there could be no hope of its succeeding. Still, the grace of obedience went on showing itself in his labor. The next year too mocked the useless labor of the brother, who was by now worn down. At last, as the third year was slipping by, while the worker did not stop his watering night or day, the twig began to show signs of life. [a]

“I have seen for myself a small tree grown from that little rod. It stands today with green branches in the courtyard of the monastery, as if to bear witness to what has been told, and shows what a reward obedience received and what power faith can exert. But the day would run out before I could fully list the many different miracles that I have come to know of in connection with the virtues of the saints.