A traveler came upon a group of three hard-at-work stonemasons, and asked each in turn what he was doing.

The first said, “I am sanding down this block of marble.”

The second said, “I am preparing a foundation.”

The third said, “I am building a cathedral.”

In my nearly 25 years as a speechwriter, I have encountered that story in numerous incarnations. The details vary widely, as does the identity of the author, whenever this particular story is credited with an author. But the moral is always the same: the third mason is the one endowed with vision.

Finally, in church last Sunday, I stumbled on the story again. This time the source was convincingly documented. It is to be found in the Rule of St. Benedict (available in a modern translation by Joan Chittister).

St. Benedict was the inspiration for the monastic movement of the Middle Ages. He founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy, where he wrote his rule about 530 A.D. The rule became the model for monastic living for Catholic and, later, Anglican religious orders.

So the story, which may well have been old when Benedict recorded it, has been around for some 1500 years or more. It is not nearly as old as the parables of Jesus, or the fables of Aesop (who lived six centuries before the Christian era), but it is old enough to demonstrate the durability of a good story. The best stories are the oldest. They are not the best because they are the oldest, they are the oldest because they are the best. They survive because they continue to appeal to successive generations of listeners.