Our first gift from God is our hearts.  He gives it to us free.  It is a piece of earth with stones.  You must dig each day and plow each day taking away the stones to make the earth of your heart ready to yield a crop 1000-fold.  It takes hard work every day to work the earth of your heart to give a crop of sweet grapes.  Geronta (Geronta is the Greek for Elder) and Gerontissa are the machines to break up the big boulders in your heart but to remove stones can only be done by you.  It takes a lot of hard work and labor to produce sweet grapes in the end from the rocky soil of your heart.

the blessed Gerontissa Makrina