Sermon 2 on the Eighth Sunday after the Holy Spirit was delivered by Dmitry of Rostov in the Holy Dormition Monastery of Alexandrova Sloboda at the beginning of the 18th century. It has been preserved in a number of handwritten copies and printed publications. Its attribution to the Rostov mitropotan is beyond doubt. The sermon is traditionally delivered on the interpretation of the Gospel text of the movable liturgical cycle, which speaks of Jesus Christ feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread (Matth. 14:14-21). In this sermon, baroque in structure, Dimitry of Rostov also gives an interpretation of one verse from the Gospel of John: There is here a boy who has five loaves of bread (John 6: 9), likening the boy to a monk, and comparing the monk or monasticism to dry stakes supporting a vineyard, which in turn personifies the entire Christian world. At the same time, Saint Dimitry makes it clear that the removal of the stakes will lead to the drying up of the vineyard, just as the cessation of monastic prayers for it will lead to the death of the entire Christian world. The reason for such a harsh statement on the part of Dimitry of Rostov was possibly his reaction to the beginning of the church reform at the turn of the 17th—18th centuries, conceived by Peter I even before the adoption of the Spiritual Regulations. Such a vivid image created by the Rostov Metropolitan found an unexpected embodiment in the spiritual poetry of Hegumen Anthony (Bochkov), in his poem We, It Seems, Live Under Rome, and in the publicistic works of K. N. Leontiev, with each author transforming it in their own way, supplementing it, or shifting the emphasis. From the content of Leontiev’s article and from the history of the creation of Hegumen Anthony’s (Bochkov’s) poem, it follows that the image of “monks as dry stakes” was borrowed by them not directly from the saint’s sermon, but probably from the spiritual practice of the Optina elders, for whom it became a profound understanding of faith and life.