Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Three questions
May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to our call.
From Plough Magazine, a story by Leo Tolstoy.
A certain king asked three questions.
- What is the right time to begin something?
- Who are the right people to listen to?
- What is the most important thing to do?
First the king asked his advisors and friends, then scholars and magicians from across his kingdom. Everyone had ideas, but their ideas ranged across hundreds of possibilities so did not satisfy the king.
Frustrated with so many choices the king decided to visit a wise hermit (I am remembering the stories of St. Anthony of the desert!) The king dressed down to look more like a peasant as he walked into the nearby forest where the hermit lived.
Like all famous hermits, this one rarely spoke. He worked with his hands and kept his mouth quiet. The king asked his questions, but the hermit said nothing. The king noticed the hermit’s frail frame and how hard he was working. Being a kind king he offered to help. “Thanks!” The hermit finally spoke, then rested and watched the king dig.
After awhile the hermit spoke again. “Now you rest and let me work.” But the king kept digging for an hour, and then two, until the sun began to set.
“I came to you for answers to my questions,” the king said. “If you have none, I will return home and trouble you no more.”
The hermit spoke again. “Look, there is someone stumbling out of the woods!” They saw that a man was bleeding from a wound in his stomach. The king pressed cloth after cloth into the wound to soak up the warm blood. When it finally stopped, the man asked for something to drink, and the king brought him a cup of cool water.
The sun set. Resting in the hermit’s hut the wounded man fell asleep. The king too, tired from his long day, crouched down and fell asleep. In the morning when the king awoke, he saw the wounded man staring straight at him with shining eyes. “Forgive me!” the man said.
The king did not understand. “I don’t even know you. I have nothing to forgive you for.”
“Yes, but I know you!” The man’s eyes shone in his earnest desire to explain. “I swore to revenge myself on you after you executed my brother and seized his property. I became your sworn enemy. I heard you were coming to visit the hermit, and I followed you here to kill you. When you did not return to the castle I began searching for you, but your bodyguards recognized  me and wounded me.”
The king’s eyes were open wide, and the hermit’s too, as they listened to this story.
“Had you not dressed my wound I would have bled to death. I want now to be your most faithful servant. Will you forgive me?” The king forgave his enemy and insisted on bringing the royal physicians to care for him.
Outside again, ready to head for home, the king once again said to the hermit, who was sowing seeds in the dirt broken the day before. “You are a wise man. For the last time, please answer my three questions.”
“Please think about what has happened,” the frail hermit said, standing up from his work.
“You pitied me in my weakness and dug the garden for me. Had you gone your way instead, that man would have attacked you. So the most important time was when you were digging the beds. I was the most important man, and helping me was your most important business.”
The king looked thoughtfully at his friend.
“Then afterward when that man ran to us the most important time was when you nursed his wound, because otherwise he would have died without having made peace with you. Then he was the most important man, and what you did for him was your most important business.
“Remember then,” the hermit concluded. “There is only one time that is important – NOW! Now is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.
“And the most necessary man is the man you are with. No one can know if he will have any more moments with others.So the most important thing to do is always to do him good.
“Because for that purpose alone, man is sent into this life.”
Do not become sluggish. God does not overlook your work and the love you have demonstrated for his name by having served and continuing to serve the holy ones.
(Hebrews 6, Psalm 111, Ephesians 1, Mark 2)
For the next three days I’ll be traveling from Austin to Urbana, Illinois (weather and God permitting). So on Wed, Thu and Fri, Jan 22-24, I will post devotions from the same days in 2022. Hope you enjoy them!
 (posted at www.davesandel.net)
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