Roosters and hens

40.5 «Listen, Child. You said: ‘Remember to sanctify feast days. Not only for yourself, but also for your son and your daughter, your servant and your maidservant, even for your horse it is said that they must not work on Sabbaths’. Now tell me: if a hen lays an egg on a Sabbath or a sheep lambs on a Sabbath, will it be legal to use the fruit of its womb, or will it be considered as an opprobrium?»

«I know that many rabbis, Shammai is the last of them and is still alive, say that an egg laid on a Sabbath is against the precept. But I think that there is a difference between man and animals or whoever fulfils a natural act, such as giving birth. If I compel a horse to work I am responsible for its sin, because I force it to work with a whip. But if a hen lays an egg which has matured in its ovary or a sheep lambs a little one on a Sabbath, because it is ready to be born, no, such a deed is not a sin, neither is the egg laid or the lamb born on a Sabbath a sin in the eyes of God.»

«But why, if every kind of work is a sin on Sabbaths?»

«Because to conceive and give birth correspond to the will of the Creator and comply with the laws which He gave to every creature. Now, the hen does nothing but obey the law according to which after so many hours of growth an egg is complete and ready to be laid, and the sheep also obeys the laws laid by Him Who created everything, according to which laws twice a year when springtime is on the meadows in bloom, and when the trees in the forest lose their leaves and men muffle themselves up because of the intense cold, sheep should mate so that later they may give milk, meat and nourishing cheese in the opposite seasons of the year, that is in the months when the toil for the crops is harder or the bleakness is more painful because of frostbite. If therefore a sheep, when its time is up, gives birth to a little lamb, oh! the little lamb can certainly be sacred also on an altar, because it is the fruit of the obedience to the Creator.»

• Animals
• Conception - Childbirth - Begetting
• Decalogue
• Roosters and hens
• Sabbath
• Schiammaï - Chammaï (great doctor of Israel)
• Sunday rest
• You will sanctify the feasts

«We will now ask where the place of the necromancer was» says Jesus. And He stops a woman who is coming back from the fountain with pitchers.

She looks at Him curiously, then replies impolitely: «I don’t know. I have much more important things to worry about than such nonsense!» and she goes away.

Jesus turns to an old man who is carving a bit of wood.

«The necromancer?… Saul?… Who bothers about them now? But, wait… There is one here who has studied and perhaps he knows… Come with me.»

And the old man climbs laboriously up a stony lane to a very poor and shabby looking house. «He lives here. I will go in and call him.»

Peter, pointing at some poultry scratching about in a dirty yard, says: «This fellow is not an Israelite.» But he says no more because the old man comes back followed by a man blind in one eye, who is as dirty and untidy as everything around his house.

• Animals
• Habits and customs at EMV
• Roosters and hens

They reach the house. The man is there, on the threshold, wearing a clean dark tunic and a mantle to match, a pair of new sandals and carrying a large haversack over his shoulder. He closes the door and then, what is strange in a man who might be considered hard-hearted, he takes a white hen, perhaps his pet, which squats tamely in his hands, he kisses it weeping and lays it down.

«Let us go… and forgive me. But my chicken always loved me… I used to speak to them and… they understood me…»

«I understand you, too… and I love you. So much. I will give you all the love that the world denied you in thirty-five years…»

«Oh! I know! I can feel it! That is why I am coming. But be indulgent to a man who… loves an animal which has been more faithful to him than men…»

«Yes… Forget your past. You will have so much to do! And, experienced as you are, you will do it very well.»

• Animals
• Roosters and hens