Leaving Everything at the Knock

So they sit in their cells, giving their energies equally to work and to meditation. When they hear the sound of someone knocking at the door and striking on each one’s cell, calling them to prayer or to some work, every one of them dashes eagerly out of his cell. A monk practicing the scribe’s craft, though he may have just begun to form a letter, does not dare to finish it. At the very moment the sound of the knocking reaches his ears he runs out with all speed, without even waiting to finish the letter he has begun, and leaves its strokes incomplete. He does not aim at shortening and saving his labor. Instead he hurries with the greatest earnestness and zeal to reach the virtue of obedience, which they put not only before manual work and reading and silence and quiet in the cell, but even before all the virtues. They hold that everything should give way to it, and they are content to put up with any amount of inconvenience, so long as it may be seen that they have in no way neglected this virtue.