The Barber Who Chased Bigger Pay

You hope that you can save others as well, and you are eager to go back to your own country in the hope of greater gain. So on this subject, too, hear a story of Abbot Macarius. He made it up very neatly and charmingly, and he told it to a man caught in a turmoil of desires like yours, to cure him with a story that fitted his case exactly. “There was once in a certain city,” he said, “a very skillful barber, who shaved everyone for three pennies. Out of this poor, wretched sum that he earned by his work he bought what he needed for his daily food, and after he had taken every care of his body, he still put a hundred pennies in his pocket every day. But while he was carefully piling up this gain, he heard that in a city a long way off every man paid the barber a shilling for his work. When he learned this, he said, ‘How long am I going to be content with this beggary, earning three pennies for my labor, when by going there I could pile up riches from a great gain of shillings?’ “So at once he took the tools of his trade with him, spent on the journey everything he had gathered and saved over a long time, and with great difficulty made his way to that most profitable city. There, on the day he arrived, he received from everyone the pay for his work, just as he had heard. At evening, seeing that he had earned a great many shillings, he went off delighted to the butcher’s to buy the food he wanted for his supper. But when he began to buy it, it cost a great many shillings. He spent all the shillings he had earned on a tiny bit of meat, and did not take home even a single penny left over. “When he saw that his earnings were used up like this every day, so that he not only failed to save anything but could barely get what he needed for his daily food, he thought the matter over and said to himself: ‘I will go back to my own city and once more look for those very modest profits. Out of them, once all my bodily needs were met, a surplus every day built up a growing sum to support my old age. It seemed small and trifling, but because it was always being added to, it was coming to no small amount. In fact, that gain of coppers did me more good than this gain of shillings, which are shillings in name only. Nothing is left over from them to put by, and even the needs of my daily food are barely met.’” [a]

And so it is better for us to aim steadily and without a break at this very slender profit in the desert. No cares of the world, no worldly distractions, no pride of empty glory and vanity can take anything from it, and the pressure of no daily needs can make it smaller, for “a little that the righteous man has is better than the great riches of the ungodly.” That is better than chasing those larger profits which, even if they come from the most valuable work of converting many people, are still swallowed up by the claims of worldly life and the daily leakage of distractions. For, as Solomon says, “Better is a single handful with rest than both hands full with labor and vexation of mind.” All who are at all weak are sure to be entangled in these illusions and troubles. Even while they are still unsure of their own salvation, and themselves need the teaching and instruction of others, the devil’s tricks stir them up to convert and guide others. And even if they succeed in gaining something from the conversion of some, they waste whatever they have gained through their impatience and rough manners. For what happens to them is what the prophet Haggai describes: “And he who gathers riches puts them into a bag with holes.” A man really does put his gains into a bag with holes if, through lack of self-control and the daily distractions of his mind, he loses whatever he seems to gain by converting others. So it turns out that while they imagine they can make larger profits by instructing others, they are in fact robbed of their own progress. For “there are those who make themselves out to be rich though they have nothing, and there are those who humble themselves amid great riches.” And: “Better is a man who serves himself in a humble station than one who wins honor for himself and lacks bread.”