Cypress
The cypress was small and one of the brothers did it with just one hand. Then the elder pointed to another cypress tree, bigger than the previous one, and said, “Pull up this one, too! The brother began to sway it in both directions and finally rooted it out.
Afterwards the elder showed his pupils an even bigger tree and told the brother to do the same thing. It took far more efforts and time for the pupil to pull up the tree. Then they came across an incredibly big cypress and the elder had the same request for his pupil. Though the brother was breaking his neck to pull it up, he failed to do it. On seeing that the elder told another brother to help him. Eventually they managed to pull up the tree together.
Then the elder said the following, “Here is how our passions work: we can easily eradicate them while they are small. However, if we neglect our fight with them, they get stronger. The bigger and stronger they get, the more effort is required to pull them up. Then there is a moment when it is impossible to root them up alone, and we remain helpless until we begin to seek help from the saint people who offer their assistance to humans upon God’s grace.
Read also
Anathema in the name of a dead man
In 1054, the Christian world split because of a document with no legal force. This is the story of how ambition and a chance scandal proved more powerful than unity.
55 million believers, or how the 1937 census left the USSR at a dead end
At the height of the Great Terror, more than fifty million people openly declared themselves believers. The figures so frightened the authorities that they were immediately classified for half a century.
The disease of our century in Andersen's fairy tale
The version of the fairy tale we remember from childhood is abridged. In the original, Gerda defeats evil with the Lord’s Prayer, and angels appear from her breath in the frost.
The draughtsman who invented the Grail
Secret dossiers in the National Library of France, descendants of Christ, Leonardo’s codes – the mythology was born in an apartment in the French provinces and ended with a sworn confession.
Mount Athos just minutes away from a traffic jam on Stolychne Highway
In Holosiiv, there is a ravine where sirens fall silent, mobile reception disappears, and forest closes overhead. And it's only twenty minutes from the center of Kyiv.
The heresy of one will – a peace that betrayed the truth
In the seventh century, Byzantium stood on the brink of collapse. Part of the hierarchy was ready to accept a convenient formula to save the empire. One elder refused – and paid for it with his tongue and his hand.