A holy hermit was once troubled with a temptation of pride. He had spent so many years praying and doing penance that he began to imagine he was the holiest person in the world.

While he was thinking of this, God made known to him that he was mistaken. This hermit was not nearly so holy as a certain poor waiting-maid in an hotel in the city.

The astonished hermit said to himself,

"How can it be possible that a simple maid in an hotel can be equal to me in virtue, since I have done nothing else for many years but fast and pray continually? I must go and visit her, and ask her what she does that makes her more pleasing in the eyes of God than I am."

So he went to the city, and easily found the person he was looking for. He told her what God had revealed to him in the vision. Then he asked her to tell him what great practices of piety she performed that made God love her so much, and made her more perfect in God’s eyes than he was.

"My Father," she replied, "I do not know what God can see in me that can please Him so much. I am only a poor simple waiting-maid, and I have no learning. All that I can say to you is that I try to do everything with the greatest care, in order to please God and do His blessed will. When I am carrying wood for the kitchen fire, I think of the love of Jesus in carrying His cross for me, and I tell Him that I love Him because He is so good. And in the same way, in all my other works, I always try to think of Him in some way or other."

This was an important lesson to the hermit, one that he thanked God for as he returned to his cell. Looking at the familiar walls of his little hermitage, the holy man was filled with a deep gratitude to God. What a generous and loving Father! To place within everyone’s reach the ability to love and please Him so perfectly! What a beautiful lesson to know that in all the wide variety of personalities, talents and responsibilities, all that really matters to God is that, in whatever we are called to - learned or simple, hermits or servants - we do it as best we can and because it His will and we love Him. That is what pleases God and gives His Loving Heart great delight.