The leader turned to him and mocked him, “The monastery will not forgive you one iota, ignoramus, whether you be rich or poor! Do not invoke holy things with me, for we know more than you about their enigmas and mysteries. If you wish to lead your calves out of this pen, then redeem them by paying three dinars in return for our crops that they devoured.”

Yuhanna said, nearly choking, “I do not have a single cent, father. Show me compassion, and have mercy on my poverty.”

The head monk ran his fingers through his thick beard. “Go and sell some of your land and come back with three dinars. It is better for you to enter heaven without land than to earn the wrath of Elisha by your protests before his altar and, in the next life, be cast down into Gehenna’s everlasting fire.”

Yuhanna fell silent for a moment, then his eyes flashed, his face gladdened, and signs of power and will replaced his expression of supplication. His voice blended the melody of knowledge with the determination of youth: “Should a poor man sell his fields, the source of his bread and mainstay of his life, in order to add its price to the treasury of a monastery already overflowing with silver and gold? Is it just that the poor should become poorer and the destitute should die of hunger, lest the mighty Elisha not forgive the sins of hungry beasts?”

The abbot shook his head haughtily, “Thus saith Jesus the Christ: ‘To every one who has, more will be given, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away from him.’”[RSV]

Yuhanna heard these words, which disturbed his heart in his breast, and his soul grew, and his stature increased, as though the earth had risen beneath his feet.

He extricated the Gospel from his pocket, as a soldier unsheathes his sword to defend himself, and cried out, “Thus do you play with the teachings of this book, hypocrites! Thus do you employ the holiest thing in life to increase the evils of life. Woe unto you when the Son of Man comes again and destroys your monasteries and throws down their walls in this valley, burning with fire your altars and rituals and statues! Woe unto you for the innocent blood of Jesus and the pure tears of his Mother when a flood comes upon you and sweeps you into the deepest pit! Woe, a thousand times woe unto you, adorers of the idols of your banquets, you who conceal by your black cloaks the blackness of your hatreds, you who move your lips in prayer while your hearts are hard as stone, you who kneel humbly before the altar while your souls are rebelling against God. You have charged me with defiling this place that is filled with your sins, and have seized me like a criminal for the sake of a tiny part of your crop, which the sun causes to grow for me and for you alike. And when I beseeched you in the name of Jesus and invoked the days of his sorrows and passion, you mocked me as though I spoke nothing but foolishness and ignorance. Take this book and search in it and show me when Jesus refused to show mercy. Read this heavenly tragedy and inform me of where he spoke with other than compassion and graciousness. Is it in his sermon on the mount, or in his teachings in the temple before the persecutors of the poor adulteress, or on Golgotha when he stretched out his arms on the cross to embrace the human race?