Save the oil

 

A woman went to an elder. The elder, gray-haired and weak, sits and is silent.

She asks him:

- Father, everyone says soon the end times will come. There will be hunger. And I thought: "should I get food? I have a big cellar, I would put everything there, to have in hard times." What do you think? What should I prepare?

"Oil," the elder replied with difficulty.

"Oil?" the woman was surprised.

"Oil" the elder said again.

The woman goes to her house and thinks: oil is oil. So I have to fill a cellar full of oil?

But why only oil?

She could not understand, she was so just surprised. And after she calmed down, she did housework and somehow forgot about everything.

Three years have passed since then. But the woman began to worry again and wondered: "But if the end times have really come? Let me run to the elder again! "

"Father, tell me what to do, what to save?"

"Oil, - the elder answers quietly.

"Oil again! How much of this oil is needed?"

And then suddenly the woman's heart opened, and she understood what oil the elder was talking about. She goes home and now thinks in a completely different way:

"What did Saint Seraphim of Sarov tell us to do?

Collect spiritual oil so that you do not empty it, like those foolish virgins whose lamps went out.

And the spiritual oil is prayer, compassion, forgiveness and love.

The elder told me this, but I did not understand at first. "

Since then, as a good Christian, I began to pray fervently, repent and forgive others, collecting precious drops of spiritual oil in my own "cellar".