Parable: Paisios the Athonite on how to share plums correctly
Father Paisios said:
- There is human justice and there is Divine justice.
- And what is Divine justice?, they asked him.
Then the elder gave such an example:
- Imagine that a person came to visit a friend and they had ten plums. One of them ate eight plums and the other got two. Is it fair?
- No, all answered in unison, this is unfair!
Father Paisios continued:
- Ok. Now fancy the two friends had ten plums. They divided them equally, five by five, and ate them. Is that fair?
- Yes, that’s fair!, everybody said.
“But this is human justice,” said Father Paisios. Yet, there is Divine justice! Imagine that one of the friends who had ten plums, having guessed that the other loves them very much, said, “Do me a favor and eat these plums, I don’t really like them. And besides, they cause me a stomachache! I can just do with one.”
Give someone else what he wants, not a half but everything; give him the good, and leave yourself the bad. This will be Divine justice, concluded the elder.
Read also
The immortal hospital on the Kyiv hills
For nearly a thousand years, Kyiv was home to the first free hospital of its kind in Rus’. Surviving documents show how monastic medicine combined prayer with the art of healing.
The battle for power under the banner of heaven
In the fall of 312, the Roman Empire was engulfed in a brutal civil war. Historical analysis challenges the familiar image of a righteous ruler confronting a tyrant for the earthly triumph of the faith.
A 16th-century Lviv detective
Lviv craftsmen pooled their money to ransom a printing press, went to war with their own bishop, and created the finest school in Eastern Europe.
The mystery of forgotten catacomb symbols
In the first centuries of Christianity, the cross was not perceived as an attribute of earthly power. It represented the paradoxical victory over death through voluntary humility and suffering.
In Istanbul, coffee could get you executed – in Rome, it was blessed
In 1654, a patriarch gave the Ukrainian hetman an object that had already sparked half a century of controversy – costing people their lives in Turkey while eventually becoming an aid to prayer on Mount Athos.
"The Starry Night": A prayer from a hospital ward
The masterpiece from Saint-Rémy underscores the resilience of the human spirit. Amid a raging ocean, there is something that sustains our connection with the Creator.