“A young monk took his vows, and his first task at the monastery was to help the other monks hand-copy the church regulations, psalms, laws, and so on. After working for a week, the young monk noticed that all the monks were copying these materials from previous copies, not from the original. Surprised by this fact, he expressed his wonder to the Father Superior:
“Father, if someone made a mistake in the first copy, it will be repeated forever and there is no way to fix it, as there is nothing to compare it with!”
“Hmm, my son,” the Father replied, “in principle, we have been doing it this way for centuries… But there is something to your reasoning!”
And with those words, he descended into the basements where the “original sources,” which had not been opened for centuries, were kept in large chests. And he disappeared. When several days had passed since his disappearance, the worried young monk went down to the basements to look for his Father. He found him immediately—the Father was sitting before a huge open volume of calfskin, banging his head against the sharp stones of the cellar and moaning something unintelligible. His scratched face was covered in mud and blood, his hair was disheveled, and his gaze was wild.
“What is the matter, Holy Father?” the shocked youth cried out. “What has happened?!”
“Celebrate,” the Father Superior groaned, “the word was: c-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e! Not celibate!“”
*celebrate – celebrate, rejoice;
**celibate – abstain; sexual abstinence is one of the foundations of Catholicism
