The Gospel Koan

"One of the monks, called Serapion, sold his book of the Gospels and gave the money to those who were hungry, saying:

'I have sold the book which told me to sell all I had and give to the poor.'"

From the Tales of the Desert Fathers, recounted by Fr. Thomas Merton OCSO in The Wisdom of the Desert.



(Photo of a page from a 4th century book of the Gospels, handwritten in Coptic on papyrus – perhaps the very book Abba Serapion sold that day – courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and Wikimedia Commons.)