The Only Flask of Oil

Trained by exercises of this sort, the young man grew daily in this virtue of obedience and shone more and more with the grace of humility. The sweet fragrance of his obedience spread through all the monasteries, and some of the brothers came to the elder for the sake of testing him, or rather of being edified by him, and marveled at the obedience they had heard of. So the old man suddenly called him and said, “Go up and take this flask of oil and throw it down out of the window.” It was the only flask in the desert, and it gave a very scanty supply of that rich liquid for their own use and for guests. When he was called, John flew upstairs, threw it out of the window, and dashed it to the ground in pieces. He gave no thought or consideration to the folly of the command, or to their daily needs and bodily weakness, or to their poverty and the hardships and difficulties of the wretched desert, where, even if they had had the money for it, oil of that quality, once lost, could not be bought or replaced. [a]