The Catalog of Good Deeds: Stories and Parables

Showing posts with label Stories and Parables. Show all posts

There was an old man who liked fine arts. He was collecting paintings his entire life, and he finally acquired a formidable collection of portraits, landscapes, and still life paintings. They were pleasing to the eye but not to the heart; that was why the old man was dreaming of a painting that would fill in that gap.

Having saved enough money, the old man ordered several artists to paint the picture. His chief request was for the painting to cause feeling of peace and tranquility and make the viewer’s heart warm and happy.

The artists set out to create the pictures. Finally, all pictures were painted, and the old connoisseur had a look on them. All the paintings were wonderful but only one of them was exceptional.

The first painting showed a magnificent and lofty northern landscape with blindingly white snow that sparkled in the sunlight, the water’s edge appearing from beneath turquoise ice, and silent seagulls high in the sky. The painting was as glorious as the Snow Queen but as cold as her.

The second painting was impressive for its resplendent colors: it showed flowers on a meadow high in the Alps, with butterflies and dragonflies on them. This bucolic landscape was shielded from all hurricanes and tempests by picturesque mountains, which propped up an incredibly blue sky.

The picture was as wonderful and as sickly-sweet as a lollipop candy.

The third artist painted mountains, too, but those mountains were rocky and gloomy. Thunderbolts were tearing up the turbulent sky, foreshadowing a thunderstorm. A mountain creek poured down a steep mountain slope, raising dust where it fell. That landscape could cause anxiety and nervousness, and the feeling of defenselessness before the forces of nature but… if you looked at it closely, you could see that there was a bush growing out of a split in the rock under a small stone ledge near the waterfall. There was a bird’s nest on that bush. It was there that the bird, undaunted by the natural forces, hatched its nestlings.

The old man spotted the little bird immediately (he was a real art lover, after all), and his heart melted from tenderness. The peaceful bird in the midst of a tempest made everyone who looked at the landscape feel protected and secure. The old man was happy because he found what he had been looking for so long. The masterpiece took up the vacant place in the center of his rich collection on that very day, and his family and guests enjoyed it for many years.

Peace doesn’t mean that everything around you is calm and quiet. Peace is in your heart.

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

There was a man who accumulated a lot of wealth. He never wanted to go to church to confess or donate. He had a ten-year-old son. It happened that the wealthy man fell seriously ill, and his family members advised him to confess and do something for the salvation of his soul. He refused, “May my son be in good health. He will do everything I need for the salvation of my soul.” The man was conquered by the devil, and nothing could make him change his opinion.

There was a pious elder in that area. He shaved his beard and put on secular clothes, and then went to the rich man’s house.

“What do you want?” they asked him when he knocked at the door.

“I’m a foreigner. When I happened to come to your village, I learned that your ruler is ill. I’ve come to see him, for I’m a doctor.”

They let him in immediately. All the rich man’s family gathered around the elder.

“How is the patient right now?” the elder asked them.

“I feel awful,” was the rich man’s own answer.

“What do local doctors say?”

“They say that I’m terminally ill.”

The elder-pretending-to-be-doctor took his hand and said:

“Yes, that’s right. You’re dying. However, if you could find a certain remedy, you wouldn’t die.”

“What’s that remedy that we have to find?”

The elder ignored that question and asked:

“Do you have kids?”

“Just one boy.”

“Don’t worry, your remedy is at hand. I promise that you won’t die.”

He requested a cup of water and some flour. He mixed the water and the flour, pretended to add some other substance into the mix, and then said:

“Now, the remedy is almost ready. One last thing: your son has to come here, and I’ll prick his little finger with a needle and add three drops of his blood into the mix. You will recover as soon as you drink the remedy.”

The rich man’s son was playing in the backyard of their house. They hurried to bring him to the doctor, saying:

“Sonny, please return to the house. There’s a doctor who can make your father well again.”

The boy wasn’t happy with that but they dragged him to his father’s bed.

When the doctor saw the boy, he said:

“My boy, I’ll prick your little finger with a needle and take three blood drops to prepare a remedy for your father to get well.”

“Am I a fool to allow you to injure my little finger?”

The doctor exclaimed:

“Sonny, it’s you who can help your father to survive this illness. Can’t you see how much wealth he has accumulated to leave to you?”

“I don’t care if he lives or dies, I’m not going to give you my blood,” the young man retorted and left.

Then the doctor said to the ruler:

“I am the spiritual counselor of this land, and I set this up trying to show you that you mustn’t expect any kind of care for your soul from your child.”

The rich man rose from his bed and said:

“I neglected my soul for the sake of my son to leave him a large estate but he didn’t want to sacrifice three droplets of his blood to rescue my life? You’re right, Father.”

He tore his will into pieces and gave all his possessions to the poor, leaving his son without any inheritance. He went to the Paradise where he’s always happy.

Now you who have children, don’t lay your hopes on them saying that they are good people and that they will take care of your souls. You’ll be left in the afterlife only with what you’ve done in this life on the earth.

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

There was a rich man who helped the poor, and everybody loved him dearly. He had a big iron piggy bank mounted on his wall and an inscription in gold letters above it, which read, “God’s Piggy Bank”. When the Lord sent the rich man a happy event, such as christening, name day, or something else, his wife used to tell him:

“God has given us so much! Please invite many guests to have fun with us.”

“How many guests should I invite?” the rich man would ask his wife.

“Forty people”, the wife would reply. The rich man would then pause to think and then respond:

“You know what, my darling? There are so many poor people around us right now. Their children are crying and won’t sleep because they’re hungry. Why not invite twenty guests instead of forty, and I’ll put the rest of what I would have spent on the other twenty guests into the God’s piggy bank.”

That’s what he usually did.

When the good man heard of any disaster (a fire or a flood), he would always say to himself, “Thank You God, You have protected me from this misfortune!” and throw a thanksgiving donation into the box.

Whenever a merchant came to the rich man, the rich man would choose some goods and go to a different room to get the money but then he would cast a glance on his piggy bank and say to himself, “Why buy so much? You can do with half of that.” He would buy half of what he had intended to, and throw the money that he could have used to pay for the other half into the God’s Piggy Bank.

Day by day, year by year, the rich man’s piggy bank grew bigger and bigger.

Before he died, he convened the elders of the village where he lived and told them, “I didn’t rob my own children or something but I still managed to collect a lot of money to donate to God’s cause. I spent and wasted less than I could. You will find what I could have wasted in this piggy bank.”

When the elders opened the piggy bank, there were tears of joy in their eyes. After the rich man reposed in the Lord, people called him their benefactor. The memory of that good man will always remain in his home village. A shelter for kids, a school, a hospital, and a new stone church will remind the later generations about him and his piggy bank.

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds