Listen now, son Basil, to my bidding.

You have abstained from the Table of the Lord, and it is well.

Today, and every day until I again summon you, you will read aloud in privacy the Seven Penitential Psalms, slowly and with meditation; and may they grave themselves in your heart, to remain there, a purification and a hope, whilst you live.' Basil bowed his head, and whispered obedience.
'Moreover, so far as your strength will suffer it, you shall go daily into the garden or the field, and there work with the brethren.

Alike for soul and for body it is good to labour under God's sky, and above all to till God's earth and make it fruitful.

For though upon Adam, in whom we all died, was laid as a punishment that he should eat only that which he had planted in the sweat of his brow, yet mark, O Basil, that the Creator inflicts no earthly punishment which does not in the end bear fruit of healing and of gladness.