From Trocadero to Clitunno
I could hear the banging on the door. I could hear the constables trying to shoulder their way into the cottage. There was the sound of children screaming – my children; and a woman, my wife, shouting at me from the bedside.
‘It’s Beatson and his men! Quick, wake up, for God’s sake!’
In a flash I’d summed up the situation. I turned over and pretended not to hear. I knew who I was supposed to be, and how I was expected to act. In the strange world of dreamland you can be two people at one and the same time without any apparent contradiction. Although I knew I was supposed to be the brave Angus MacNeil, the champion wrestler, who was expected to leap out of bed and take on the posse of policemen singlehanded, I knew that underneath it all, it was still me, the cowardly James Robertson, who just didn’t want to know. Even if I did, my body couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with fear and sweating like a pig waiting for the slaughterhouse to open. I was still pretending to be fast asleep as I heard the door give way and the men rush into the room to drag me and my family off to the transporter. To my shame, I flung myself out of bed onto my knees, screaming at the intruders, ‘Mercy, mercy – please don’t hit me! I’ll come quietly, but please don’t hit me, for God’s sake!’
There I was, in a state of semi-hysteria, kneeling on the floor in front of a group of half a dozen men, shaking half with fear at the thought of what they might do to me, and half with shame that my wife should see her man reduced to a cringing, blubbering coward. I must have been hysterical, for I suddenly felt two mighty smacks across my face that brought me to my senses, and I woke up panting with exhaustion to see that thankfully there was no wife to witness my humiliation, no children to see their father groveling on the floor and begging for mercy before the men he should have been hurling from his hearth and home.
But the men were there, sure enough, and this time I wasn’t dreaming.
‘Get up and sit down,’ said a tough but cultured voice from somewhere behind a battery of powerful flashlights that were shining into my eyes.
Before I knew what had happened, two men who stood out in front of the group were interrogating me. They wanted to know who I was, and what I was doing, but it was evident that they had been almost as surprised to see me as I was to see them.
From the questions that followed, it became clear they were more interested in Peter than they were in me. I had to tell them the whole story of his tragic death at sea, and then, before they were satisfied, I had to prove he had existed in the first place by showing them his birth certificate and medical card. Everything I said was taken down in detail.
By the time they were ready to go, I had sufficiently recovered my composure to ask them who they were and what right they had to burst into someone else’s house in the middle of the night.
One of the men who had been doing most of the talking said that they were searching for a gang of drug smugglers who they believed were operating in the Isles, dropping their cargo at night from a light aircraft onto one of the uninhabited islands.
It was about four o’clock in the morning when I saw the small launch that had brought them reach what looked like a Royal Navy minesweeper about a mile away from Calvay. It took me a couple of hours to regain my composure, to get over the shock of the nightmare that had come true, and it took me another hour to assess what had happened. It didn’t add up. They were not looking for drug smugglers. That was evidently a trumped-up story to hide the real reason for their visit. If they were really looking for drug smugglers, why hadn’t they questioned me more thoroughly? When I said I was a friend of Peter’s and had come to sort out his affairs, they hadn’t questioned me further. No, it wasn’t me that interested them, nor was it any mythical drug smugglers; it was Peter – that was quite apparent to me – but why?
When Father Callum came over to visit me about the middle of the morning, I explained to him what had happened, but he had no more idea than I who my visitors had been.
‘The whole thing is very mysterious,’ he said, ‘but you’re right – it just doesn’t add up. Did you get the name of the ship, by the way?’
‘Yes, I did. It was quite light and I used Peter’s binoculars. It was HMS Wasperon.’
‘Well, that’s genuine enough,’ said Father Callum. ‘That was the ship used by the Navy to supply us with food last time we had a seamen’s strike, but I have simply no idea what it is all about.’
It took me until lunchtime to get over my humiliating little adventure. What on earth did those men think of me? Of the shabby, cowardly performance that I had put on when they entered the room? I spent the rest of the day trying to forget that squalid little scene that had been enacted in the small hours of that June morning, by mechanically addressing dozens of letters to Peter’s correspondents so that they could be informed about his death.
I had sufficiently recovered from my early morning ordeal by the evening to relax in front of a peat fire that I had made, more to cheer me up than to keep me warm. I settled down to read Peter’s next typescript. It was entitled:
FROM TROCADERO TO CLITUNNO
Despite my immediate acceptance of Madame de Gaye’s kind invitation, I nevertheless felt rather apprehensive when I arrived at Cinq Rue de Magdebourg, because I had been a little overawed on my last visit by the comparative splendor of their large third-floor apartment. The dinner that I had shared with the family had been to welcome my brother David on his first visit to Paris. Since then he’d stayed with them several times and Bernard de Gaye had spent several holidays at my own home in Manchester, without giving the slightest hint that he’d noticed the social chasm that separated the two families. It was from David, who was still staying at the apartment when I arrived, that Madame de Gaye had heard about my plight. I was simply stunned when she explained that she was not just a member of the Secular Franciscans, but that she was the president of the Third Order in Paris. Since my last visit her husband had died and the three eldest children had left home, leaving only Bernard, herself, and three servants residing in the more than ample accommodation.
Madame de Gaye was a small bird-like woman whose long curved eyebrows, hooked nose and slightly receding chin gave her a distinctly hawkish appearance, though she behaved at all times with the manners of a dove, at least with her equals or those she chose to treat as such. Nevertheless, I had the uneasy feeling that the servants saw more of the hawk than the dove, especially those who’d served her in her prime. She’d taken to wearing dowdy dark suits since her husband died, with a preference for black, despite the protestations of her family. She already knew the general direction that my life was beginning to take, partly from David and partly from the feminine intuition that, when harnessed with a genuine human compassion, never ceases to amaze the more prosaic members of the human species. She had already guessed that the poor man of Assisi was beginning to beckon me to embrace a new lifestyle that would sustain me into a future that was as yet quite unknown to me.
Madame de Gaye never asked me anything. She just took me up the narrow staircase that led to the servants’ quarters and showed me into two rooms. One would serve as a bedroom and the other as a study.
‘This is the place for a Franciscan,’ she said in a low whisper and with a knowing look that seemed to say, I know your little secret, young man, and it’s safe with me until it’s safe for the world.
‘Since Christmas I’ve had to ask two of the servants to leave, for we only have a small family now. Robert is old and he has nowhere to go. As he has great difficulty with the stairs I have asked him to move into my eldest son’s room. Patrick is married now and living in Toulon. This means that you will be entirely alone. You can have the whole of the servants’ quarters to yourself, except this room, which we will share.’
She opened the door at the end of the corridor; it opened into a beautiful little chapel, complete with the Blessed Sacrament, a privilege granted to her forebears by the infamous Cardinal Richelieu, for unspecified services rendered to King Louis XIII.
I couldn’t believe my luck, nor could David, who was himself already beginning to experience a certain pull that would eventually lead him into religious life. I had done quite a lot of thinking during the holidays, and one question kept bugging me – why was it that all that I had been learning about prayer was so little understood? I had met many good men and women who’d left religious life because they couldn’t find the prayer life that they were so desperately looking for. I discovered that my experience in the novitiate was not unique, but commonplace. It wasn’t that prayer was denied; it just seemed to be misunderstood, so that it was very difficult to get any sympathy or understanding when you were led into prayer beyond first beginnings. Why is prayer so misunderstood? It was a question that I put to Père Le Beck at our first meeting after the holidays.
‘I’m afraid the answer to that is rather long and complex,’ he began. ‘You see, before the modern world came to birth at the Renaissance, the prevailing experience of medieval man was one of awe and profound reverence before the All-Holy and Transcendent God. Spend an hour tomorrow morning in Notre Dame. Gaze at the vastness of the nave; let your heart rise with the tall Gothic pillars, to be lost in the fine traceries as they merge in the vaulting. Breathe in the whole atmosphere of that hallowed place, and you will experience something of the spirit that pervaded the religious consciousness of pre-Renaissance man. These great cathedrals perfectly embody to this day the two great religious truths that dominated man in the Middle Ages: the utter transcendent majesty of God and, in comparison, the smallness, the humility of man, totally aware of his absolute dependence on his Maker.
‘I am not holding any brief for the spirituality of medieval Europe. I don’t believe in golden ages, but I do believe that with all its faults the particular emphasis on man’s weakness and dependence upon God created, as it always will, the perfect inner dispositions of heart necessary for an authentic mystical prayer life to develop. When you leave Notre Dame spend a couple of hours in the Louvre. Gaze at the building itself, at its fine neoclassical architecture, and at the great works of the masters of the European Renaissance. You will still experience awe, but this time your awe will not be directed so much to God but to man, to his greatness, to his achievements. The master works of Renaissance architecture cry out, “Look at man! Look at what he can do!”
‘Man’s unquestioning belief in himself and in what he can achieve was the central dogma of Renaissance man and it began to seep deep down to saturate Christian spirituality. Its progress was suddenly speeded on its way and strengthened, as the Church was forced into a reaction against the reformers, who proclaimed that good works were a waste of time. The new religious Orders that sprang up everywhere, from the seventeenth century onwards, embodied in their activity-centered spiritualities the Church’s answer to the reformers’ insistence on the futility of good works. The new lands that were being discovered almost daily would be conquered for Christ. Ignorant and ailing Christendom would be re-educated and nurtured back to physical as well as spiritual health, and heresy-ridden Europe would be won back to the one true faith. All this would be achieved by man’s intensive apostolic endeavor, albeit with God’s help, but the scales had been tilted in favor of man, and the balance has not yet been redressed.
‘Another heresy, which came this time from within the Church, led to a further overemphasis on man’s power. It’s called Quietism and involved a complete misunderstanding of the classical mystical authors by various groups of religious enthusiasts that led to all sorts of gross immorality. One of its principal protagonists was a priest called Molino who preached that one should be so passive that one shouldn’t even resist temptations. He was convicted of over eighty cases of gross sexual indecency! The inevitable condemnation of Quietism led to anti-mystical “witch-hunts” throughout Christendom, led by people quite incapable of distinguishing authentic mystical prayer from the counterfeit. Perhaps the greatest mystics the world has ever known, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, came under a cloud and were openly condemned with anyone else who wrote about docility, passivity or recollection in prayer. Work, work and more work was the best antidote to Quietism. The effects of these “witch-hunts” have remained with us to the present day. It’s interesting to notice that although the four centuries before the Council of Trent produced the greatest crop of frontline mystical writers that Christendom has ever known, the four centuries after Trent have produced hardly any. Who is there between St John of the Cross and the present time who could be classed as an original mystical writer of the first order? Yet between St Bernard and St John of the Cross they are almost two a penny.
‘I don’t want to give the impression that genuine spirituality stopped with the Council of Trent, or draw any ridiculous black and white conclusions about the last four centuries. These centuries have given the Church saints, martyrs, and men and women of extraordinary spiritual caliber, but only because, in spite of the prevailing attitude to the contrary, they became poor in spirit.’
Père Le Beck’s explanation made a lot of sense, and it sent me back to my books to read for myself more about the history of the Counter-Reformation.
At the end of January Bernard, David and I went out for a meal followed by a film to celebrate David’s birthday and his imminent departure for the more mundane ambience of the ‘Lancashire Riviera’. If it hadn’t been for the lightning reactions of Bernard, the outing would have ended up in total tragedy instead of the total embarrassment that no one’s presence of mind could have avoided.
The manager of the famous Ritz Hotel was a friend of Madame de Gaye, and he insisted on forcing half a dozen cocktails on us before we sat down to lunch. Bernard insisted that the vin ordinaire was no more intoxicating than lemonade, and we both believed him. We drew the line, however, when a large bottle of claret arrived at the table with the manager’s compliments – that is, until Bernard explained that to refuse it would be insulting in the extreme and would lead to social repercussions out of all proportion to a slight drowsiness, at the most, that could easily be slept off at the cinema if needs must. We took Bernard at his word, quite unaware that his word was only as good as an Englishman’s capacity to sustain French wine, especially when welcomed by the half-a-dozen American cocktails that were already lurking in the lining of our stomachs. Even then, the sumptuous cinema seating could have saved us had the film been anything other than a new release entitled On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando. It was a tense dockland drama that had the French audience entranced as the plot began to unfold.
I was just about to fall asleep when David got the giggles. The more I nudged him, the more he laughed. He thought I was sharing the joke with him instead of trying to shut him up. People were starting to look around and I was just beginning to get angry when I saw for myself what David was laughing at. It was the sedate little subtitles used to translate the picturesque dockland slang that were simply too much for us. I say, for us, for my anger gave way to mirth the moment I saw what David had seen. We both convulsed into laughter, as American English at its most colorful was rendered into French at its most conservative.
‘OK. Canary. Git the hell outa here before I make yer sing through your ass,’ said the mobster.
‘M’sieur, allez, s’il vous plait,’ said the French subtitle, and ‘Oh, no,’ said David as he convulsed yet again into a laughter that was bordering on the hysterical, but I could do no more to control him, for I could no longer control myself, as we both dissolved into an uncontrollable drunken duet that shamed poor Bernard, who was completely nonplussed. But nonplussed or not, he too was evicted with his fellow musketeers, as the manager instructed two heavies to dump us unceremoniously on the pavement.
Even the mobster would have been hard put to it to equal the language of the manager, as he began to scream at us as we rolled over on the ground, quite helpless, shrieking with laughter. Fortunately for us, Bernard was stone sober and still gazing in horror at the sight of his friends groveling around on the pavement, when the gendarme came over to book us.
Like a flash, Bernard opened his wallet and handed a card to the officer. ‘I am the Marquis de Magdebourg,’ he said haughtily, ‘and I withdraw my charges. I thought they were insulting my honor, and our country, but I see now they are just drunken animals from England.’
He bundled us both into a taxi and said to the driver, ‘Place Pigalle, Montmartre …
‘Les cochons, the pigs!’ he said to the gendarme as we drove away from the kerb. ‘They have had their entrées in the bars – let them have their main course in the brothels!’
Embarrassing it may all have been, but if it hadn’t been for Bernard we’d have spent at least one night in the cells, and many more nights trying to explain how two ‘Holy Joes’ ended up in a drunken heap on the Champs-Élysées at three o’clock in the afternoon.
I continued to go to Père Le Beck to direct my prayer life, but with his blessing and encouragement I began to go to Père Claude du Bois, a Capuchin and the spiritual director of the Third Order of St Francis, to direct me in the Franciscan vocation I had now definitely decided to embrace. Père du Bois’ parents were both academics, so it was no surprise at all when they bred another in their only son Claude, who was rapidly becoming a hybrid lecturing at Louvain. He was so fond of books that he started breeding them with almost indecent regularity, until someone introduced him to people shortly before his fortieth birthday. It was then that he suddenly discovered he had a heart, which enabled him to read them with even greater understanding than his precious books. The cold and distant Polar Bear, as his students had called him, gradually changed and became a warm and cozy Teddy Bear, to whom everybody began to turn with their spiritual needs. He was a personal friend of Père Le Beck, and I had without realizing it been introduced to him the previous year, at the day of recollection for priests given by Archbishop Arnou. I was embarrassed that he seemed to remember me when I had no recollection of meeting him.
My decision to become a lay Franciscan was accompanied by all the usual hallmarks that invariably characterize conversion, including an insatiable desire to make a dramatic new start to my life. I was impatient to attain the sanctity that I had read about with such enthusiasm in the lives of the saints. I wanted to make all-night vigils, fast, and take upon myself all sorts of rigorous forms of asceticism that I had read about in the lives of people whose lives I wished to emulate, but Père Claude would have none of it.
‘Peter, you have much to learn, and the quickest way to learn is to be obedient to me in the lifestyle that you must adopt. This is the safest way to avoid the pride that will ruin you and all your best intentions. The best antidote to pride is moderation, as all the saints, including St Francis, taught to their followers.’
‘But don’t you think there is a place for penance and mortification in the spiritual life?’ I asked, rather aggrieved that my plans had been thwarted.
‘Indeed I do,’ said Père Claude. ‘It’s just that there are different forms of mortification. Some more appropriate for those still enjoying the “fleshpots of Egypt”, some more appropriate for those traveling in the desert, and some more appropriate for those camped by the oasis, or for those finally settled in the Promised Land. When a beginner is passing through his first fervor, everything seems easy. Prayer is full of sweetness and light, and so it is often helpful to impose some physical mortification with moderation, such as fasting, so that their empty stomachs can remind their arrogant minds of the human weakness that their early success in prayer can easily make them forget. When a person is languishing in a spiritual desert, as you will soon find out for yourself, there’s more than enough dying to be done without insisting on further self-imposed mortifications that can easily break the camel’s back long before the next oasis comes into view.
‘When the spiritual traveler finally comes to settle in the Promised Land, he has such an abundance of everything that he desires that he must needs express his gratitude in the language of true love, which is sacrifice. Beginners always make the mistake of trying to copy the great ascetical practices of the saints – their heroic virtue, their self-denial, their almost superhuman love towards others – without realizing that all this is but the outward expression of a love that fires them from within. When I first read about the Desert Fathers in my novitiate, I started wearing a hair shirt that I made for myself. Every other night I kept vigil in the chapel, and fasted three times a week, only to end up in the sickbay, a near nervous wreck. With love all things are possible; without it, nothing is possible. I thought it was love that moved me, and it was, but unfortunately it was only selflove, which made me think I could do for myself what only God can do. I was trying to copy the outward behavior of the saints, when I should have been exposing my heart to receive the same love that made such heroic behavior possible.’
‘I see what you mean, but what form of mortification should I practice? I feel I must do something,’ I said.
‘All right, Peter, I’ll impose a strict asceticism upon you; to begin with, you will think it’s too easy, but to end with, you’ll think it’s far too hard.
‘Here is the principle: Don’t give up anything you like or enjoy, except insofar as it prevents you from having consistent quality time each day for prayer; for it is there that you will learn how to open your heart to the love that will eventually enable you to do all, and everything, that is quite impossible without it. Don’t let your youthful enthusiasm kid you into believing that it is all too easy. When love begins to purify the dross that is within you, you’ll suddenly find that it is all too difficult.
‘Now, before I go any further, do you see the point of the principle, Peter?’
‘Yes, indeed I do, because I have seen it at work in a member of my own family only a few years ago. A cousin of mine had been given up as beyond redemption, because he was an alcoholic, a drug addict and an inveterate gambler all rolled into one. All human reason, all appeals to his better nature, had failed to change him, until a chance meeting with his future wife enabled a love to shaft into his heart that gave him the inner strength to give up everything – which would have been quite impossible without it. There’s no doubt about it; he was redeemed from what we thought was certain death by pure love, and if what St John said is true, it wasn’t purely human love either.’
‘How right you are,’ said Père Claude. ‘Your story perfectly makes the point. I couldn’t have made it better. From now on, you must give consistent daily time for prayer of the heart, so that the heart of God can communicate to your heart the stuff that the saints are made of. Anything and everything that prevents you from doing this must go out of your life – but no heroics please, because you are not capable of them. Just keep practicing the asceticism of the heart by setting aside, each day, consistent time for prayer, come what may, whether you feel like it or whether you don’t.
‘Now, before you go, I would like to qualify this first principle with a second principle, which is this: You must not only practice the asceticism that demands consistent time for prayer each day, but you must also practice the asceticism that demands quality time for prayer each day – otherwise, no matter how faithful you may be to begin with, you will not be able to remain consistent for long. To make my point, let us imagine that you endeavor to have thirty minutes set aside for prayer each day. Now, to make that time quality time, you will need time set aside for preparation for prayer. You can’t love someone unless you know them, so you need time for spiritual reading too, most especially the Gospels, which Francis knew almost by heart. Furthermore, you need to seek out an environment in which you can have some silence and solitude, or that time for prayer will not be quality time.
‘Look at the life of Jesus, which Francis tried to copy in his own life, and you will see he not only sought out physical time for prayer but quality time, too. That’s why he repeatedly went off alone into the desert, into lonely places where he could have the solitude that he needed. It was humility that led him there, the humility that made him realize that without the love that only his Father could give him, he would have nothing to give those he had come to serve. Jesus not only left the madding crowd for solitary places but for rest and relaxation, and he often took his disciples with him too.
‘You see, wet lettuces don’t pray very well, so if you end up like a wet lettuce at the end of your day, you won’t have quality time for prayer either. We are human beings, not automatons, and human beings need to have time for rest and relaxation. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity, without which no prayer life will get off the ground. Don’t think that because I criticize the workmadness that dominates religious people today that I am against work – far from it. St Paul said, “If a person does not work, neither should they eat”, and St Francis said “Amen” to that. He was not ashamed to work with his own bare hands; he was proud of it, and he told his brothers to work, too, for their daily. It was only when there wasn’t any work that he told them to beg.
‘If a person thinks that they can drift around all day doing nothing but what their feelings fancy, then they won’t have quality time for prayer at the end of the day, for if they have dissipated their work time, they will dissipate their prayer time also. So you see, Peter, having quality time for prayer means having time for spiritual reading, and time for rest and relaxation too, in an atmosphere of silence and solitude. At the moment, your main work is the study that will enable you to serve others in the future, as it must help you to serve God now. If you don’t take it seriously, then you won’t be able to take your prayer seriously either, and before you know where you are, you’ll be everywhere but where you should be when it’s time for prayer.
‘The whole of the spiritual life consists in trying to balance time for prayer and time for work with time for rest and relaxation. It is such a delicate balance but everything depends on it. Get one out of proportion and you get everything out of proportion, and so you get nowhere in a hurry.
‘When I was a schoolboy I was trying to break the school record at what was then called “the hop, step and jump”. I think it’s called the “triple jump” today. I simply got nowhere till I swallowed my pride and asked the school coach to come and tell me where I was going wrong. I was so eager to succeed that my hop was so long that I was totally off balance when it came to the step and the jump, and so I got nowhere. It was only when I learnt to space out equally the hop, the step, and the jump that I was finally able to break the record that I had set my heart on.
‘A young nursing brother came to see me recently, who had been so convinced of the importance of prayer that he prayed for more than six hours a day – with disastrous consequences. There was no time for rest and relaxation so he got more and more tense until his work began to suffer, and so did the people he was supposed to be serving. It took three months in a nursing home before he finally came to his senses, and saw he’d been ruled more by pride than by the prudence that should have guided him. But believe me, this is a very rare case, for the main problem today is not that people give too much time for prayer, but too little. The activity-centered spiritualities that have predominated for too long hardly allow enough time for rest and relaxation, never mind for prayer. The key word then is “balance”, or what Archbishop Arnou called “Benedictine moderation”. Bearing in mind what he said last year, perhaps we could now define the essence of the spiritual life as gently trying to find the balance between prayer, rest and relaxation, and work. If the balance ever comes, it will come as a gift from God, given to us as we try to find it.’
‘But what about the lives of the saints?’ I said suddenly. ‘It seems to me that you often find a total lack of balance in their lives, even though they do preach moderation to others.’
‘You are right,’ replied Père Claude. ‘That’s because when the gift of moderation enables them to balance the different sections of their spiritual life in harmony, then they are totally open to the love of God at all times. When this happens, these separate sections gradually begin to merge into one another in a new balance in which, through love, everything is harmonized as one, at one and the same time, as it is in God, whose life they begin to reflect.
‘A saint may spend sixteen hours a day serving others and seem to have precious little time for prayer or relaxation, but that’s only because through balance and moderation they allowed into their lives the sustaining and energizing love that makes every moment a moment which is totally open to God. I am now talking of the saint at the height of the spiritual life, not of the arrogant beginner who talks of “contemplation in action” as if they have scaled the heights when they’re hardly in the foothills.
‘Well, Peter, that’s all for now. You asked for asceticism and there you have it – the asceticism of the heart. Get that right, and everything else will fall into place. Remember the words of the Gospel: “First seek God and his Kingdom, and then everything else will be given to you.” If I had told you to give up drinking and smoking, to give up television and the cinema, and the opera that you so delight in, you would probably be quite happy, and happier still if I’d handed you a hair shirt and imposed fasting and vigils upon you, but it wouldn’t last long. Like me, you would have ended up in the sickbay, tired, exhausted and disillusioned. Remember the principle? Once again: Don’t give up anything you like or you enjoy unless it keeps you from consistent quality time for God each day in prayer. Then as his love begins to get inside you, and you begin to experience something of that love, something of the peace and joy that Jesus promised, then the paltry pleasures and pastimes that meant so much to you before will simply pale into insignificance as Someone else gradually becomes the center of your whole life.’
It was a great disappointment to me when Père Claude was transferred to another friary in Lyon shortly before Easter. Although I still went to Père Le Beck, who helped me enormously with my prayer life, I could find no substitute for Père Claude to teach me the principles of Franciscan spirituality. Madame de Gaye did her best to make up for this, but she had to admit that she had neither the background nor the teaching ability to do more than encourage me to fend for myself as best I could, with the invaluable help of her library. I have never seen a better collection of books on Franciscan spirituality than at Cinq Rue de Magdebourg and I made full use of it when my studies allowed.
Madame de Gaye may not have been a good teacher, but she was a good organizer, and she made full use of her gifts to plan the forthcoming year with a view to my profession into the Third Order of St Francis the following Easter. It was decided that we should both set off for Franciscan Italy the moment I received my examination results at the end of September. We would visit Assisi and other places associated with St Francis, and then go to Clitunno to visit Madame’s eldest daughter, Françoise, who had entered a Franciscan convent halfway between Spello and Spoleto. After that, she had arranged for me to stay for four months at a Franciscan hermitage at Monte Casale, high up in the foothills of the Apennines, above Borgo San Sepolcro. She would then make her own way back to Paris where I would join her in the spring to make my final preparations for profession.
Fortunately no repeats were necessary when my examination results came out, so I could journey to Italy at peace, knowing that one particular chapter of my life had been completed, so enabling me to give my full attention to the next, although I had no idea as yet precisely how it was going to unfold.
Madame de Gaye insisted on spending a full week in Florence so that she could take me to see the many great artistic masterpieces for which the city is so famous. She accepted that an unfortunate imbalance had come into Christian spirituality at the Renaissance, but she went out of her way to show me how humanity had nevertheless benefited from the great movement in both the arts and the sciences. She admitted that she was no scientist but she could appreciate beauty, as could St Francis, who would surely have been captivated by the genius of God working through man in the great artistic masters of the Renaissance.
I have to admit that I was bowled over by the artistic splendor of Florence, but after three days I had had enough. I was standing in the church of La Santa Croce before Cimabue’s breathtaking Crucifixion, when I began to feel the pull to be alone; to go into solitude, not just because I ceased to savor what I saw, but because I wanted time to digest and assimilate the goodness and beauty that reached out to me through the great master works.
It is so good to have the sort of relationship with a person that enables you to express exactly how you feel and then to be understood.
‘I totally understand,’ said Madame de Gaye. ‘Now perhaps you will understand a little better why Francis kept feeling the urgent need to go into the darkness of the cave, to experience the source whose semblance he had seen in the light; then when he came out again, he could see ever more clearly, in all things around him, the One who is the All-in-all.’
Madame de Gaye made her point by taking me up to Fiesole and confining me to solitary prayer each day in the little Franciscan church high up on the hill, and then she exposed me at intervals to the fantastic vistas of the old town at carefully chosen moments of the day when the sun highlighted its beauty to best advantage. My heart literally leapt within me, not just because the physical and spiritual darkness of my solitary prayer contrasted so dramatically with what I saw in the light, but because I, too, was able to glimpse in some small way what Francis had seen in his darkness, so that I could see more clearly in the light what I had never seen before. It was a lesson that was learnt well because the lesson was repeated again and again.
As for the rest of our stay in Florence, and for the whole of our tour of Franciscan Italy, we never spent more than half the day outside the solitude to which we both continually returned. If we spent the mornings visiting towns, churches and hermitages associated with St Francis, while drinking in the beauty of the Italian countryside, then we would spend the afternoons or evenings savoring what we had seen, in solitary prayer. In this way we were able to follow in the footsteps of St Francis, not just because we followed the paths that he had followed, but also because we were able to follow the footprints that he had seen in the creation all about him, to the One who had made them in the first place.
The only night that we stayed up late talking was on the night before we were to visit the convent where Madame de Gaye’s eldest daughter, Françoise, was a Franciscan sister. We were staying close by the convent at Campello sul Clitunno. It was the first time that Madame de Gaye had ever spoken at length about her family and about her daughter Françoise. It seems that the de Gayes were, at least in their own eyes, impoverished French aristocrats, although in my eyes they seemed to be extremely wealthy. Bernard had only been exaggerating slightly when he claimed to be the Marquis de Magdebourg, for his grandfather was indeed a marquis and was a well-known and respected member of Parisian high society, yet by their standards they had come down in the world. Until I was made so welcome and made to feel at home by the whole family, I had certainly felt socially quite out of my depth.
But it wasn’t the story of Madame’s illustrious forebears that kept us up until nearly midnight; it was the remarkable story of Françoise, the eldest of Madame de Gaye’s three daughters. By all accounts, she had been something of a mischief-maker as a child; a tomboy, always getting herself into trouble, or an enfant terrible as Madame de Gaye called her. There was some big family blowup when she was studying medicine at the university in Paris, and she had walked out of the house and taken up with some strange Bohemian artist in the Latin Quarter. He sponged off her for several years to subsidize his weird and wonderful lifestyle, and a group of anarchists who looked up to him as their guru, at least when he was sober. Then she had a rather dramatic experience that completely changed her life. There was a terrible accident at the Gare du Nord; several people were killed, and many others fatally injured. Françoise was called out to help, and she assisted one of the surgeons, who had to amputate both the legs of an eighty-year-old woman who had been trapped underneath one of the carriages. It was Françoise’s responsibility to look after her when she was moved into hospital, and it was this woman who changed her life.
While attending her, Françoise noticed that she was wearing a miniature Franciscan cord beneath her clothes and, when asked, the old lady explained that she belonged to the Third Order of St Francis; but what impressed Françoise was the tremendous fortitude of the elderly woman, and the way in which she bore such terrible pain with such courage. There was something about her that Françoise had never met in anyone else, that made her feel drawn to her, not just to attend her as a doctor, but just to be with her. Then the poor old woman began to fail, and it was Françoise’s job to tell her that there was nothing that could be done for her, and that she was dying. The moment she heard the words, she opened her arms and said, ‘Welcome, Sister Death’, and from then on she refused any painkillers of any sort and even refused to eat unless she could be assured that the food had not been ‘doctored’.
Françoise said the pain must have been horrific and yet the woman never said a single word about the terrible suffering that she must have endured. Quite apart from anything else she was a medical phenomenon, and doctors and nurses from all over the hospital came to see how a patient could possibly bear such acute pain without seeming to feel anything at all. They all came to see a patient, but they left convinced that they had seen a saint. It wasn’t just that she bore the pain with such fortitude, but it seemed to give her joy, and the profound peace that seemed to envelop her was communicated to all who came anywhere near her. There was something else a little more esoteric that would have seemed rather far-fetched had someone like Françoise, who was a confirmed atheist at the time, not experienced it so regularly. There was a sweet, pungent scent that seemed to envelop her, completely dispelling the stench of the gangrene that had set into her stumps. The strange thing was that some smelt it and others didn’t, although everybody without exception experienced the peace and joy that radiated from her until the end.
Françoise was there when the end came, when she died literally in the ‘odor of sanctity’. Just before she drew her last breath she pulled her hand out of the bed and pressed something into Françoise’s hand, and then died. When she opened her hand she found she was holding the Franciscan cord that the saintly woman had worn to the end. The message was clear, at least to Françoise. Within a week, she had taken leave of her lover and his fellow anarchists, and had become reconciled to the Church that she had been brought up in; then she had sought out Père Claude, who promised to give her spiritual direction and finally to receive her into the Third Order of St Francis. Before he introduced her to the other secular Franciscans in Paris, he told her that she would have to spend a year as a novice, and this would mean submitting herself in obedience to the Novice Mistress. She readily agreed, quite unaware of the fact that the Novice Mistress was her own mother, whom she had not even seen for over three years. It was a happy reunion and she obeyed her from the start, not only as a novice but also as a dutiful daughter, and she moved back into the old home at Cinq Rue de Magdebourg.
After she had been received into the Third Order, she went to Africa, first to Sudan, then to Uganda to work with other Franciscan sisters and doctors in a large missionary hospital in the suburbs of Kampala. After about three years working in equatorial Africa, she felt a pull towards a solitude that was denied her by the intensive work that she was engaged in as a missionary doctor. By chance she met a Franciscan sister at a hospital at Shisong in Cameroon, who told her of a unique community of sisters who lived high up in the Umbrian Hills above the Fonti del Clitunno, the source of the sacred River Clitumnus, where Roman soldiers bathed before battle a thousand years before Francis was born.
When I asked Madame de Gaye about the sisters, and to what Order they belonged, I was surprised to learn that they didn’t belong to any Order at all; technically they were not religious, at least in the legal or juridical sense. Their foundress, whom they preferred to call La Madre, had been a Franciscan sister working in a busy hospital in Rome at the end of the First World War. When she became dissatisfied with her lot, because she could find little if any time for the prayer that meant so much to her, she took the matter to her superiors, who weren’t favorably disposed. By a rather clever piece of footwork, she managed to dodge the usual officials and bureaucrats who surrounded the Holy Father, and presented her case to him personally. He was so impressed with her that he gave her permission to leave her Order while retaining her vow of chastity, to seek an environment for prayer for herself and for others of a like mind.
After considerable heart-searching and journeying all over Italy, she met up with an Anglican in Florence, who had enough money to finance the venture at Campello sul Clitunno. Eventually others joined them and they moved to a more remote and commodious hermitage a little further along the side of the hill, built around an ancient grotto or cave used by St Francis and other famous Franciscans as a place of prayer. They never felt the need or necessity to get ecclesiastical approval as a religious foundation, preferring a freedom and independence that has sustained them to this day. Their lifestyle is primarily eremitical and their inspiration is Franciscan. All the community belonged to the Third Order of St Francis, though this is never imposed on anyone seeking to join them.
* * *
You could almost see the hermitage from Campello sul Clitunno, but you had to take a long circuitous route by way of the main road to get to the convent, and even then it was not easy. We had to leave the car at the end of a rough dirt track halfway up the hillside, and then walk for over a mile along a mule track to the hermitage, which was perched high above the source of the sacred waters of the Clitumnus. Madame de Gaye explained that one of the sisters would pick up the cases later with the convent mule, for we intended staying at the Eremo for at least three weeks.
It’s strange how you form a picture of someone you have heard a lot about, only to have it smashed the moment you meet. I’m not quite sure what picture I had formed – maybe the pieces had not yet come together in my imagination – but at all events they were immediately banished into oblivion the very moment Françoise walked into the room. She was simply beautiful, not just with the made-to-measure beauty of the model that demands perfect symmetry of shape and form; she had all that, but she had much more. She was no mere mannequin, but a woman in full bloom, a bloom that was suffused as if by some inner light that radiated the warmth, the wit, and the well-being of a mature and vital personality. Every feature of her face spoke, whether it was the way she tilted her head, arched her eyebrows, parted or pursed her lips, and they all spoke of a highly intelligent and articulate woman in her prime.
So this is how solitude sensitizes the soul, I thought, to assimilate what it receives, and reflect outwards a new and unique embodiment of the One who is the All-in-all.
Whatever Françoise was supposed to have been before, she certainly was no more; that was for sure. The first thing I did when she came into the room was to blush as I had never blushed before, because I was so stunned by what I saw. The second thing was to thank God that the little stone parlor was so dark that neither Madame de Gaye nor Françoise could see my confusion. My second reaction to Françoise was as unexpected as my first, for all that I had heard about her had not led me to believe that I would take such an immediate liking to her as a person. Rightly or wrongly I always tend to judge people by how they make me feel at home, how they enable me to be myself without feeling that I have to put on an act or make myself acceptable. Françoise made me feel completely at home. I felt I’d known her all my life. I never at any time felt obliged to do anything other than be myself, either then or at any other time in the future.
We spent the first full day at the Eremo with Françoise. She showed us around and pointed out the paths that would enable us to explore the surrounding countryside for ourselves during the rest of our stay. After that first day we only met Françoise for one hour each evening after supper. Apart from that, she continued to live the strict life of the hermit to which she had given herself with total abandon. We, for our part, tried to do likewise; we had much to reflect upon and I had much to pray about. I couldn’t have wished for a better environment for a retreat that was well overdue.
At the beginning of the second week Madame de Gaye heard that Padre Guido, her one-time spiritual director, had just moved to Montefalco across the valley and had taken up his appointment as Guardian of San Fortunatus. She apologized for leaving us for a few days, but said she simply had to see the man who had helped her so much in the past and whom she wished to consult about many matters concerning her future. I was pleased to have the opportunity of talking to Françoise on my own each evening, because I felt I could say things to her that I found difficult to speak about, even to her mother; and as I was soon to learn, she had things to say to me that left me in no doubt that she was already considerably advanced on the spiritual journey that I, too, wanted to embrace with something of the total commitment that had led her to Clitunno. I told her everything there was to know about myself, far more than I’d told anyone else. It was the first time I had spoken about such things to someone of my own generation. She showed an interest in details that I had felt by instinct would be of no interest to the priests who had been of such help to me in the past, so that I hardly knew when to stop.
Père Le Beck and the other priests who had been so helpful to me certainly listened and understood what I was saying to them, but Françoise listened with her heart. I suppose it’s partly the difference between how a man listens and how a woman listens, but it was something more than that; something that neither of us quite realized at the time!
‘Well, I’m delighted you allowed Mother to organize you,’ she said. ‘She is a very good organizer, even though she organized you a bit too much in Florence, but I do understand what she was trying to do. The Renaissance was not all bad – far from it. Where would medical science be today if it hadn’t been for the rise of the natural sciences and the new scientific approaches that owe their origin to the great enlightenment?’
‘So you’re taking your mother’s side against me, are you?’ I said, teasing.
‘Oh no, don’t get me wrong, Peter. I know the point you’re trying to make and I agree with you because I’ve experienced something of the worst excesses of what you call the “activitycentered” spiritualities. Don’t forget, I spent enough time on the Missions to know that the poor Africans have been evangelized by missioners whose training and background has been dominated by a European presentation of Christianity that means little to them unless you can first Europeanize them to receive it. You see, Peter, I experienced something of a second conversion when I went out to Africa. I thought I’d gone out to convert them with our particular brand of Christianity – only to find that it was they who converted me. When I was running a clinic in Sudan, I was quite overcome by the practical Christianity that was the normal lifestyle of the people – who were supposed to be “pagans”, the people I had come to convert! I couldn’t get over the way they loved one another, the way they shared everything they were given, not just with those in the same plight as themselves, but even with those who were better off. When I reflected on the so-called “sophisticated” Christian culture I had come from, I realized there was something radically wrong with our world, not theirs; something radically wrong with me, not them. Strangely enough, it was my experience of practical Christianity lived out by so-called “pagans” in Africa that has led me here to seek from God something of the goodness, the kindliness and the generosity of soul that I saw in them. Anyway, enough of my missionary experience, Peter. I can see I’m beginning to bore you.’
‘Not at all, Françoise. What you say fascinates me, for I was at one time seriously considering going to Africa myself as a missionary, but then I came to see that I’d better be converted myself before I had the cheek to start converting others. This is why I came to see how prayer was so important, but I’m afraid that with all my big talk and all the help I received I simply don’t think I know the meaning of prayer any more – or, to be more precise, I’ve come to a complete impasse.
‘The last few weeks in Franciscan Italy have been a great help to me, but the fact still remains that whenever I take the trouble to find what Père Claude calls “consistent quality time for prayer”, I simply get nowhere but more and more frustrated, until I feel I’d be far better employed performing some useful service for my fellow man.’
‘Believe me,’ said Françoise, suddenly looking very serious, ‘there’s nothing more important that you could be doing at this particular point in your spiritual journey than gently persevering in prayer.’
‘But what am I to do?’ I asked.
‘You are to learn how to wait. That’s what you must do. The highest teaching on prayer in the Gospel can be summed up in a single word, and that is “waiting”. It’s all in the waiting. Now is the time when you must learn to wait. Wisdom is finally found in waiting at the foot of the Cross, where all wisdom is to be found – the wisdom that is “a stumbling block to the Jews and a folly to the Greeks”.’
‘But all this sounds a bit too much like Quietism to me. I want to know what I can do.’
Françoise laughed. ‘Oh Peter, you do make me laugh! All your talk about the harm done by post-Renaissance spirituality, all your talk about the activity-centered spiritualities and how they’ve forgotten the true meaning of prayer, and here you are, wanting to join them! Wherever you begin in prayer, you will always come to the point when you find that you can’t pray at all; that you can’t do anything at all but wait upon God, who alone is in control. But this has to be learnt as you wait, not just for months but sometimes for years. This is where the mystical life really begins to unfold and you want to cut and run before you’ve even started. All the graces and helps you’ve received up to now have been given to support you at this moment. Now you must learn one of the hardest lessons of all. You must learn to wait upon God at the foot of the Cross. This is where all sinners are led to be made into saints, and we are all sinners. This is why the great Fathers of the Church saw Mary Magdalene as the perfect model for the Church. This is why she is depicted holding on, waiting at the foot of the Cross to show all who would follow Christ that that’s where all sinners are led to be sainted. Did you go to San Marco in Florence?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then you will have seen the paintings of Fra Angelico in room after room, depicting St Dominic at the foot of the Cross, waiting in prayer, just as Francis is painted in the same posture by other great medieval painters. They are all waiting for the Pleroma, for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. No one knows when he will come. It may be in the third hour, the sixth, or the ninth hour. Nobody knows when. All that is known is that he will come at an hour when we least expect him, like a thief in the night. Our job is to be ready and prepared with “the wise virgins”.’
‘And how do we do that?’ I asked, thinking that at last there was something I could do.
Again Françoise laughed. ‘Peter, you really are incorrigible! All right, I will tell you what you can do while you wait. You can continue to practice the repentance of the heart as best you can, and that means as gently as you can, by using the means of prayer that help you most to keep turning and opening your heart, so that it is always ready and available to receive the One who will come when you least expect him. If you are asleep when he comes, or if you run out of oil, if your heart’s desire is no longer burning, then you cannot welcome him in.
‘Then there is something further that you can do. You can do the best you can to free your heart from the distractions and the temptations that prevent you from continually turning to God in prayer. If your heart is waiting on something else or someone else, then it can’t be waiting on God, so you must try to seek out and extinguish at source anything outside of prayer that fuels and fires the distractions inside of prayer. In other words, if you think you can put down the morning’s crossword and have instant quality time for prayer, don’t be surprised if you spend half your time trying to work out the name of a South American quadruped in four letters beginning with “Z”. And don’t think you can switch off your favorite soap opera and switch straight on to God, because you’ll spend most of your time trying to solve the marital problems of a family that doesn’t exist outside of the television studio. And so it’s up to you to take a good hard look at the pleasures and pastimes that seduce you, and the pet passions that draw your heart’s desire away from God in prayer.
‘Now, Peter, don’t misunderstand me. Remember what Père Claude said. I’m not saying, “Give up television, crossword puzzles and novels” or anything of that sort, but only give them up insofar as they prevent you from having consistent quality time for God each day. All this is part of the asceticism of the heart that he spoke to you about. You must practice this as you try to wait patiently and attentively at the foot of the Cross.’
‘Yes, I do see what you mean,’ I said, and I did see what she meant quite clearly with my mind, but I was innocently unaware of the pent-up passion that was going to plague me in the months ahead.
‘But that’s still not all,’ said Françoise. ‘You’ll be delighted to know there is something further that you can do, for you must also try as best you can to continue the repentance that you have been practicing inside of prayer outside of prayer, as you try to turn and open yourself to God in the neighbor in need. At the end of the day, the quality of your loving inside of prayer will be judged by the quality of your loving outside of prayer. Nobody can see your love of God, but they can see your love of others, of those who are in need; and it will be by that love that they will judge the quality of your love of God. St John makes this quite clear.
‘Padre Angelo often comes over from Monte Casale to give us talks and hear our confessions. Last month he told us the story of two young novices who visited St Francis shortly before his death. The legend has it that the first novice asked the saint how he would know when he had arrived at true Christian prayer, and Francis answered without hesitation, “By the love you have for your neighbor”. Then the second novice asked, “And how can we tell when we have arrived at perfect Christian prayer?” Once again the answer came without hesitation, “By the love you have for your enemies”. That quality of loving cannot be generated by our own endeavor, no matter how hard we try. It is pure gift. That’s why it will always be the authentic sign of genuine sanctity.
‘Tongues, prophecy, healing, miracles and wonders of every kind can be simulated, and even if they are genuine they are no sure sign of sanctity; but consistent selfless and unconditional love of others, to the point of love of enemies, always is, whether the person is a professed Christian or a professed pagan. As our spiritual life deepens through prayer, we allow God’s love to come closer and closer to us, and as it does so, it begins to highlight the imperfection and impurity of our love in comparison. This is the beginning of a mystical purification that must continue until every barrier to God’s love has been removed from our hearts. Now, in order to facilitate this inner purification we must accept the sinfulness that we see being laid bare, as the love of God comes closer and closer, and then we must express it in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so that we can be forgiven and the source of the sinfulness within us can be purified away. This is why the Desert Fathers always saw confession as so important. When a monk went into the desert, he went in search of an abbot – a spiritual father who would guide him towards God. Now, it was well known and understood that as the monk was directed towards God, and came to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in his life, then his own weakness and sinfulness would be progressively laid bare. As he saw his own sinfulness highlighted, then he would confess his sinfulness to his spiritual father. It was only later that the Church insisted that such a confession would only be considered sacramental if it was made to a priest, but this was not so in the early days when holiness was the only qualification that the monk sought in his spiritual guide.
‘I came across an old spiritual handbook, written for knights, in our library only a few days ago and it said that every knight should confess himself to a priest before a battle, and if he could not find a priest he should confess to his squire, and if he could not find his squire he should confess to his horse! I don’t think equine confession is sacramental, but it is no doubt salutary, at least from a psychological point of view, and I suppose that’s the point of the story. But sacramental confession has a more profound and deeper significance, because the humility involved in submitting one’s sinfulness to another in the Sacrament acts as a magnifying glass, as it were, that directs the purifying rays of God’s love to the source of the sinfulness within. Then it can be burnt away, in what some Fathers of the Church have called “the second baptism of fire”.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Françoise, ‘that was a bit of a mouthful! Let me explain the point I’m trying to make. When my brother Bernard was a little boy, I bought him a magnifying glass for Christmas to help him identify the different stamps in his collection, but he soon found another use for my gift, as he found that he could use the glass to direct the rays of the sun upon little pieces of paper and set them alight. A good and sincere confession is an act of humility that acts as a magnifying glass that directs the fire of God’s love to burn away all and everything in our hearts that prevents God’s love from entering in.
‘So you see, Peter, have no fear. There’s more than enough for you to do while you are waiting, without feeling that you are falling into Quietism. First, you can practice repentance inside of prayer by using the means of prayer you find best for you, to keep gently trying to turn and open your heart to God. Second, you can continue the same process outside of prayer, as you learn the prayer without ceasing, by continually turning to God in the neighbor in need. Then third, you can so organize your daily lifestyle that it becomes the perfect context for this prayer without ceasing, as you try to balance time for work, time for rest and relaxation, and time for prayer in a perfect harmony, so that moderation always keeps pride within bounds.
‘Then finally, when you’ve done your best, and God begins to do his best, confess everything that surfaces under the influence of his love so that all can be purified away by the baptism of fire, which first purifies you before setting you alight with the fire that you must communicate to others. All this is the asceticism of the heart that is at the core of any authentic spirituality, but never forget that from wherever you start you will always end up at the foot of the Cross, where you will have to learn to wait.’
‘I think that’s what I find most difficult of all,’ I said.
‘I know you do, Peter, because so do I. So do we all. Do you know why? Do you know why all of us hate waiting for anything? It might be waiting for a letter or for a phone call, or for a bus or a train, or an airplane, or whatever. We hate waiting because it means that we are not in control, and we love to be in control of our lives, and of other people’s lives for that matter, if we are given the chance – that is the pride in us that is the root of all sin.
‘What I am saying is not personal to you, Peter. It is personal to everyone. When you are left to wait you’ll learn patience, and you’ll learn it the hard way, which is, I’m afraid, the only way that we will ever learn it; and that means by being patient, practicing patience, not just for days but for weeks and months, and even years.
‘It’s here at the foot of the Cross that we finally learn in blood, sweat and tears that we are not in control, because the time comes when we can’t do anything, not even pray, not even resist the temptations that seem to overwhelm us, never mind the distractions that assail us continually. There we have to experience for long periods of time our utter helplessness, when our whole life seems to be in ruins. This is the place where humility is finally and painfully learnt, the humility that makes us realize that of ourselves we can do nothing. We thought we knew this truth at the outset of the spiritual journey – but we only knew it in our heads. Now it is learnt in every fiber of our being, and it is this realization which is the final death-blow to the pride that has ruled us up to now, and which finally opens us out more completely than ever before to Another who, when he chooses, begins to make his home within us.’
‘Thank you so much, Françoise. You’ve summed up everything so simply.’
‘Not at all; don’t thank me, Peter – thank Père Claude. He would have said all these things to you anyway had he not been moved to Lyon.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘He had already begun to talk about the asceticism of the heart shortly before he had to leave Paris. Tell me, what happens when God begins to work in a person who has learnt to wait in patience at the foot of the Cross? How does God begin to work in a person whose pride has been at least in some measure destroyed?’
‘Don’t ask me, Peter. Please don’t be deceived. I’m just a beginner, as you are. You have to ask someone holier than me.’
‘Can I write to you?’ I said suddenly.
‘Yes, of course,’ answered Françoise without hesitation. ‘We can support one another from afar through prayer. What are your plans, Peter, after your profession?’
‘Well, I’ll spend some time with my parents in Manchester. Then I’ll visit my brother at East Bergholt, and then I’m going to spend a month with a fellow student in the Outer Hebrides. He said that there’s a chance I could get a job the following year in the local school, so I intend looking around and perhaps making my home out there.’
‘Be sure that I will always be with you in spirit,’ she said, ‘and you must keep in touch, and let me know how things work out.’
I think it was Shakespeare who said, ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow’, and he was right. What sorrow it was to leave Clitunno! It was a sorrow, for I had fallen in love with the place and had been so happy there, getting to know Françoise and all the other sisters who were so good to me, and whose simple transparent goodness was itself the only imprimatur that really mattered for the lifestyle they lived. But it was a sweet sorrow, too, for I’d found something, or rather someone, who so far had been missing from my life. I’d been blessed with three good brothers, but no sister. Now Françoise would be my sister, and I’d do my best to be a brother to her.
I was so innocent, so guileless, that I jabbered all the way to Monte Casale with Madame de Gaye about her wonderful daughter, and the sister I had found in her. If I had seen and been able to interpret the looks that she was giving me, then I would at least have kept my mouth shut, but the truth is, I really didn’t realize that something had just happened to me that had never happened before – but Madame de Gaye did!