The saint and the prostitute lived opposite each other. They both died on the same day. The soul of the prostitute, however, went to heaven, and the soul of the saint was brought to hell. The messengers who came to see them off were very puzzled. They kept asking each other:
- What happened? Some kind of error? Why are we taking a saint to hell? Wasn't he a saint?
The wisest of them said:
“He really was a saint, but he was jealous of the prostitute.” He kept thinking about the parties and pleasures that took place in her house. The echoes of music that reached his home stirred him to the core. No admirer of a prostitute, sitting next to her, was as moved as he was by listening to the sounds coming from her home, the sounds of the bells that she wore on her ankles. All his attention was constantly focused on her house. Even while worshiping God, his ears were turned to the sounds coming from her house.
- And the prostitute?
“Crawling in a puddle of suffering, she always wondered what kind of unknown bliss the saint was experiencing. Every time she saw him carrying flowers for morning worship, she thought: “When will I be worthy to bring flowers of worship to the temple? I am so unclean that I cannot even muster the courage to enter the temple.”
The prostitute was often enchanted by the smell of incense, the shine of lamps, the sounds of worship and a kind of meditation that the saint could never enter. The prostitute has always craved the life of a saint, and the saint has always craved the pleasures of a prostitute.
Their interests and approaches, completely opposite to each other, completely changed their fate.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru