The importance of originality

In an ancient monastery belonging to a very traditional and venerable order, the monks concentrated on copying ancient holy texts by hand. In their archives, they had thousands of originals, which they copied and distributed to whomever needed them. Of course, to prevent unnecessary wear and tear on the originals, they didn’t copy the them directly, but made a copy and then copied that. Whenever the copy being copied was worn out, the Prior of the monastery would go to the archives and copy the original himself, and then give his copy to the others for copying.

One day, the Rules of the Order needed to be copied, so the Prior went to the archives to copy the original. He took a very long time doing this, however, and the other monks started wondering, then worrying. Finally, they went to the archives to look for him. They found him weeping uncontrollably. When they, at long last, managed to calm him down enough to be able to speak, he sobbed: ”It says celebrate, not celibate!”