From Monte Casale to San Giovanni Rotondo
I was dying to read the next typescript, but I simply had to get some work done if I was going to get through Peter’s things before I was due to leave. I wrote a sort of general letter, which Father Callum picked up the following morning to have it copied by the sisters at the convent, and I put off reading the last typescript until I’d earned the right to read it – by addressing all the envelopes to Peter’s correspondents and by sorting out all his personal affairs. I still resorted to the well-proven, if rather infantile practice of promising myself little rewards that could not be enjoyed until all the work had been successfully completed. As you have no doubt already guessed, I’m afraid I’m still just an overgrown schoolboy who’s never really grown up, even though my thirtieth birthday has been dead and buried long since.
On the evening of the third day Father Callum brought back two hundred duplicated copies of the letter I had composed and he brought with him exciting news. Peter’s boat had been found, drifting almost two hundred miles north of the Shetlands. Interestingly enough, it had been spotted by the minesweeper HMS Wasperon, and after examination left at Mallaig so that it could be returned to its rightful owner, or at least his next of kin.
Father Callum explained to me that one of the fishing boats from Eriskay had towed it across the sea the night before. Three interesting things had emerged from an on-the-spot examination of the boat by naval experts. One was that an immersion test applied to the boat’s timbers enabled them to prove that the boat had been at sea continually since the morning of Peter’s departure from Castlebay en route for Calvay.
The second was that the boat’s rigging had been neatly tied up before the boat had been abandoned; and third, the tow rope had been cut cleanly with some sharp instrument, probably a knife, leaving twenty feet of rope dangling in the water.
‘What does all this add up to?’ I asked Father Callum.
‘I just don’t know,’ he said, ‘but one thing is for certain: Peter’s boat was definitely towed by another boat of some description at some time or other. And another thing: the rigging on Peter’s boat was folded neatly away by a hand other than Peter’s. The skipper of the Thistle who towed the boat to Eriskay can vouch for this, for he knows Peter well and knows how he ties up his rigging.’
‘Does all this mean that Peter is alive?’ I asked, quite unable to suppress my excitement.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ replied Father Callum. ‘But’ – he paused, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows – ‘it does just mean there is hope where there was no hope before.
‘Let’s have a dram on it!’ he suddenly said, changing key and delivering one of his infectious smiles, as he pulled a flask of Scotch out of his inside pocket.
After he left I got into bed and opened the last of Peter’s typescripts. I had almost finished addressing the envelopes and I couldn’t wait any longer to find out how Peter had fared at Monte Casale. What I found fascinating was that I could see where Peter had learned the spirituality that he had handed on to me. But what I wanted to know more than anything else was whether or not he had any further contact with the young woman with whom he had obviously fallen in love:
FROM MONTE CASALE TO SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO
Imagine if you can an ancient and archetypal Franciscan hermitage, designed by Walt Disney, bent and buckled with age and reeking with atmosphere – then place it high up on a hillock, surrounded by thickly wooded slopes with magnificent views of the valley below, and there you have it: Monte Casale. A place of solitude and prayer since it was first given to St Francis, hardly half a dozen years after he was first called to contemplation.
The day after I arrived Madame de Gaye left for Paris, and Padre Angelo, the Guardian, called me into his cell to welcome me personally to the sacred sanctuary and invite me to full participation in the lifestyle lived by himself and his little community. He was a small, fat, jolly man, built for comfort not for speed – but he was always quick enough when anyone was in need of the care and compassion for which he was renowned. It was quite easy to see why he was the most popular superior in the province.
‘Please don’t be deceived by appearances,’ he said. ‘A Franciscan friary is a place where sinners come together to support each other in a life of repentance. There is only one community of saints and that’s on the other side of the grave. I am called the “Guardian”, not the “Superior”, because St Francis saw that Brother Jesus came not to lord it over anybody, but as a servant to serve the needs of others humbly – and so he insisted that in a Franciscan Brotherhood there should be no authority figure, but only a brother raised up for a time to be at the service of the others. No one should ever be called an “abbot” or a “prior” or given any other title that would speak of superiority, but only of humble service. The titles “warden”, “guardian” or “minister” are the only ones ever given to a brother, and they are only given to remind him of the role for which he has been raised up for a time. The greatest service that anyone can perform for others is to lead them to the fullness of love, which is the deepest desire of every human being.’
Padre Angelo suggested Padre Fabiano as my spiritual director, to whom I would go for confession and instruction every Friday. He was a good solid religious, but a little too busy to spare too much time with a beginner like myself, especially as he had a deadline for the book he was working on. Once he had heard my confession, he would say a few well-chosen words lasting no more than three minutes, then give me absolution and turn back to his desk, so that I never had the opportunity to ask him for help or advice, even if I had wanted to do. He was working on ancient monastic texts recently discovered in Ethiopia, a land that has a monastic tradition as old, if not older, than the Egyptian monasticism about which I had often read. I had to report to another priest each morning, Padre Bernadino, who arranged the manual work that was part of my daily routine.
He was a young man in his late twenties who looked exactly like the proverbial tall, dark and handsome stranger – someone who’d just walked out of a women’s magazine. He had all the Latin looks and the Mediterranean manners, and these had already got him into more than enough trouble, as I found out later. The main ongoing job to which I returned, whenever more pressing work allowed, was the pruning of the vines in the small vineyard attached to the hermitage. Padre Bernadino seemed to be the only member of the community who resented my presence, or so I thought to begin with. He always seemed to be in a mood, a bad mood mostly, that would make him surly, sulky and generally difficult to relate to. I got the distinct impression that he was not living the eremitical life by choice, and that his presence at Monte Casale was not the result of his own personal decision. When he did deign to talk to me, it was usually about Rome, where apparently he had been in his element, working with youth and dedicating his spare time to supporting the needy; apparently Roma, who were at the bottom of the football league, fell into this category, until with his selfless devotion and tireless support they were able to return to their rightful place at the top.
I also began to support Roma, and even prayed for their weekly success so that at least the onset of the ensuing week would be a little more bearable than when they lost. I gathered that Dino, as he wanted to be called, had come to Monte Casale only three months before I arrived, and he came under some sort of unspecified cloud. Rumor had it that his youth club became all too successful when his brother, an agent in the world of showbiz, arranged for international artistes to patronize it, mainly jazz artistes, so that his club became a mecca for ‘trad’ jazz, not just in Rome but in the whole of Italy.
Padre Dino was well known all over Rome as a clerical whizkid, a bon viveur, and his name would always appear at the top of the list for all the trendy society parties. Whether they were true or not, nobody seemed to know, but suspicious rumors began to circulate about his relationships with attractive young actresses and other famous female personalities from the world of showbiz. It was his superiors, not Padre Dino, who thought that the seclusion of Monte Casale would be just the place for him to pause for a time, to try to see the way his life was going, to see things in a clearer perspective.
No doubt his superiors acted with the best of intentions, but Dino didn’t see it that way, nor did he see Padre Angelo as anything other than a jailor, and Monte Casale as a prison, from which he would escape the moment the jailor was out of the house. He used to change into a grotesque Teddy-boy outfit halfway down the hill, and bundle his habit into an old suitcase that he would retrieve on his way back. On one occasion he was in such good spirits when he returned from one of his outings in Perugia that he didn’t bother to change before arriving back at the friary, where he danced a ‘boogie woogie’ to the amusement of the farm animals and half the community, who witnessed the squalid little scene from a safe distance. However, Padre Dino did me no harm and, in fact, he came to like me. As time went by, he began to lecture me on schools of theological thought that seemed best disposed to the lifestyle that he aspired to, and which he thought were far more human and therefore far closer to the Gospels than the medieval make-believe world that his fellow friars had chosen to live in.
My personal troubles really began when I started to pray in earnest once more, especially in the evening after Compline, when I had set aside a full three hours for the contemplative prayer that I felt sure would soon raise me to the heights of mystical union. At first I didn’t realize what was going on. I just began to muse on the sister I had found, and on the mutual support that we would be able to give one another in the years that lay ahead. Then in the days ahead, the endless delight I took in contemplating not God, but the sister I supposed he’d given me, began to arouse deep and vital feelings within that I felt sure no sister had aroused before, though I’d never had one to judge. Perhaps things wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had more to occupy my mind, but the very solitude I had chosen made it quite impossible for me to avoid the desires and the longings that began to ravage every moment of the time I had set aside for God. I started to relive the first moment when Françoise and I had met, the conversation we had shared. Then it was the way she walked – the very movement of her body began to move me with feelings I’d never felt before. And then there was her voice; that irresistible French accent that I had found so attractive at the time began to send me into paroxysms of desire.
I could hear that voice so clearly in my mind, as she had left me at the end of our evening talks: ‘Bonsoir, Pierre, et dormez bien!’ The way she pronounced those ‘R’s with that engaging Parisian accent was too much for me, and several times I found myself in tears in the contemplation of something – no, someone – who was so dear to me and yet so unobtainable. I knew she would always be my sister and I would always be her brother, but I wanted so much more, and I knew she would recoil from me if she knew the half of it. She was so innocent, so pure, so utterly beyond me in every way that I began to wonder if she’d ever have looked at me twice had I not arrived with her mother. But then I was jolted back into a little more reality when I recalled her past. No, perhaps she wasn’t the spotless virgin I wanted to make of her, but it wasn’t she who was at fault. How could she be? It was that lousy layabout who had seduced her that was to blame. At one moment I began to vent my anger against him in my mind; at another moment I was consumed with jealousy, because he had had, for some of the time, the woman I wanted for all time.
My passions made a mockery of my prayer. I had no sooner stopped drooling over the past than I started planning for the future, writing and rewriting the letters in my mind that I began to send to her every other day; planning how I could see her again before I returned to Paris and then working out what I would say to her when we finally met. The morning Mass and the meditation that preceded breakfast seemed to last for ever, as I counted the minutes to the moment when the mail was due; willing a letter, I tried to anticipate it in my mind, wondering how she would answer the many innuendoes that I had used to try and induce her to reveal if there was even a flicker in her to match the flame that was in me.
Then there would be that terrible anti-climax if no letter arrived, or if its contents failed to assuage the desire in me that weighed every word she used, to interpret it to my own advantage. No depression, however dark, that had descended upon poor Dino was darker than the depression that descended upon me when the postman’s patronage passed me by. Life wasn’t worth living, not for me, or for anyone who came into contact with me. On mornings like that, which were not infrequent, I would leave the vines to prune themselves, and vent my rage with the heavy-headed axe in the woodshed. The prayer that I thought would have been my daily heaven became my daily hell. If the postman had not passed me by that day, and if the letter was to my liking, at least I could revel in pleasant thoughts, although I was always haunted by the realization that the fantasies I conjured in my mind would never be realized in my life. But when the postman had passed me by, or if the letter he brought was not to my liking, I would suffer terrible depressions, punctuated by fits of anger – anger against myself, anger against everybody around me, anger against the so-called ‘God of love’, who had given me a love for someone he had chosen for himself – if that’s fair, if that’s God’s justice, then I wanted none of it, and none of him for that matter, if that’s the way he treats a person who wants what is right and gives his life for it.
All feelings for God finally evaporated, so I began to ask myself ‘Where has he gone?’, for he seemed to have disappeared from my life and from the prayer that had once meant so much to me. Then I began to say, ‘Is there a God? Or is he just a creature created by my own mind to cater for the deep desires and needs of my own impoverished personality?’ All these temptations began to affect me outside as well as inside of prayer, so that I became a burden, not just to myself, but to the community who had so generously welcomed me into their midst.
When Padre Angelo went to Clitunno just before Christmas, he took me with him, and I spent a whole ecstatic hour with Françoise that kept me going for weeks, though I at no time gave any impression that I was more than a good friend or that she was more than a sister to me – or so I thought. All my troubles were compounded when Padre Dino began to outline his latest theory of the animus and the anima, which he had adapted from the Jungian psychology that he was always talking about. He argued that it was not man but humankind that was created in the image and likeness of God – and that means man and woman, who reflected here on earth something of the inner nature of God. In God, the male and the female, the animus and the anima, are perfectly balanced in the One who is perfection itself. No man, therefore, he argued, can come to know God experientially except through a deep personal relationship with a woman, and vice versa. Only together can God’s own image be reflected with any degree of perfection here on earth.
It was an interesting theory, and he claimed it was backed up not just by Jung, but by many of the great Fathers of the Church.
‘But what about Jesus himself?’ I argued. ‘And the clear call to the celibate life that you find in the Gospels?’
‘That does not destroy my thesis,’ he said. ‘It reinforces it. Jesus’ attitude to women was revolutionary – even the most conservative scholar would accept that – and the relationship he had with women was deep and personal, and part and parcel of his own personal growth into human maturity. Look at the love he had for Martha and Mary, or Mary Magdalene, and the Samaritan woman, and other women too, who followed him to the end. It was a celibate love but love nonetheless, a love for the opposite sex that complemented his maleness.
‘Read the lives of the saints – some of our own Franciscan saints, for instance – and you will find that many of them had relationships with women who loved, helped and complemented them. Francis and Clare are the obvious example. There have been many Franciscan tertiaries who lived together as brother and sister in a celibate love that transcended the sexual, and enabled them to mirror the life of God on earth far more perfectly than any single-sexed Order has ever done.’
Well, you can imagine what all this did to me. I spent hours in the library going through the Fathers of the Church, reading Jungian psychology and some scriptural exegesis of Genesis to make more thoroughly my own the ideas that I had all too readily and uncritically accepted from Dino. I hardly need to say why, or detail the way in which my mind was working. If Dino was right, and I couldn’t see how he was wrong, I could continue my vocation, not in a lesser but in an even fuller way by bearing witness to the fullness of God by continuing my journey with another whose femininity would complement my masculinity, and vice versa. This would not necessarily be in a sexual way, but through a celibate love that would be an even more perfect sign of the fullness of love in heaven, when there would be ‘no more marriage or giving in marriage’.
I was furious that Padre Angelo’s next visit to Clitunno was immediately followed by a meeting in Rome, which prevented me from going with him to present my case to my very dear Françoise. By the end of February I could wait no longer. I simply had to see Françoise and talk to her about the future. I told Padre Angelo that I would be going to Montefalco for a few days to see the Padre Guardiano at San Fortunatus about my future plans. I explained that he was Madame de Gaye’s spiritual director, and I had promised to visit him anyway before I left Italy.
I won’t bore you with the details of the travel arrangements that I had to make to get from Montefalco to Clitunno, because it is quite a saga in itself. The distance wasn’t far as the crow flies, but it was a very long way by bus, taxi and Shank’s Pony. But it was worth it. Anything would have been worth it to see dear Françoise again, even for a single moment. On my first two visits I was so overcome by her, and the love that I felt for her, that I didn’t talk about anything of any consequence, but on my third and final visit things came to a head when I began to open my heart to her. I told her that although the community at Monte Casale was kindness itself, I had been going through a daily hell in the place that I thought would have been my heaven. I told her that my prayer had not only completely disappeared, but that I had been plagued with terrible temptations that had been torturing me for weeks on end. I couldn’t help feeling that Françoise became a little more distant, the more personal I became in expressing my deepest feelings, as if she guessed where it was all leading; and so by some sixth sense I stopped short of the real temptation that I wanted to talk to her about. Instead I emphasized that the inner tensions that I was experiencing were even affecting my sleep. Some nights I hadn’t slept at all. On other nights I was lucky if I slept for more than two hours.
‘Peter,’ she said, looking both concerned and clinical at one and the same time, ‘you must do two things. First, get more exercise, outside in the fresh air. Second, talk over the inner tensions and temptations that have been rising up within you with Father Angelo, or with one of the other priests.’
That did it. I jumped to my feet in a fury.
‘Oh, thank you! Thank you so much, Doctor, for the consultation. So sorry to have taken up so much of your time!’
And with that, I went out, slamming the parlor door behind me as loudly as I could. But I had gone no more than a few paces down the passageway outside when I turned round and went back into the room.
‘Oh, Françoise, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ I said. ‘But don’t you see that I love you? It’s my love for you that has possessed me in prayer and out of prayer, and every moment of my day. I can’t help myself. Is it all wrong? Isn’t love God’s greatest gift? Isn’t it he who has given me this gift, and has given me that gift for you? I’m sure of that now. I’ve discussed these matters with one of the priests at Monte Casale, and he believes that the love of man for woman can be the most potent and powerful witness on earth to the community of life in God in heaven.’
I went on talking rapidly, explaining Dino’s theory and supplementing it with what I had read for myself, and exemplifying my case with Franciscan tertiaries who had lived together as brother and sister, and helped each other to the heights of sanctity. Françoise’s attitude to me had changed when I came back into the room in tears to declare my love for her – she had softened – but the more I outlined my theory, the more distant she became.
Finally she said, ‘Peter, the priest you’ve been speaking to is Padre Bernadino, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘How do you know him?’
‘How do I know him?’ she exclaimed. ‘I think almost the whole of Italy knows him, and the scandals that surrounded him and the trendy set that he mixed with in Rome – it was all over the newspapers at the time. He has already had two canonical warnings; one more and he will be out, and if I had spoken up he would be out by now.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He came here to give us a talk when Padre Angelo was ill last September. I didn’t know about him at the time, and so he took me in. His talk was full of all the things that you have been saying to me and I was quite impressed because theoretically his ideas have some merit. Later he managed to get me alone in the parlor and began to talk to me about celibate love, and how man can reach out and touch the feminine in God, through his image made flesh in woman. Then he began to reach out to touch the feminine in me in a way that enabled me to see him for what he was – if Mother Superior had not walked in by pure accident, I hate to think what he would have done. It was she who told me all about him later, and I am telling you about him now so you won’t be deceived by him; otherwise he will lead you astray, for he has a good mind and knows just how to mix good sound theology with dross, to intellectualize his own disreputable lifestyle and legitimize the illegitimate desires that will lead him to ruin.
‘It is only the generosity of his superiors that has given him what is now his last chance.’
I was so flabbergasted by all this, so completely deflated by what I’d heard, that I was unable to outline the plans I had made in my mind to set before Françoise, for a future that I hoped we would be able to share together as Franciscan tertiaries.
We parted on good terms, but not on the terms that I had hoped when I had made my way along that long mule track for my last interview with the woman I loved. I received a letter from Françoise, four days after I returned to Monte Casale, that shattered me. It was kindly, no doubt about it. It was sisterly, too, no doubt about that either; but it was final. She told me plainly that she had taken a private vow of chastity, and she had taken it for life. Only Rome could dispense her from it, and she had no intention of petitioning for such a dispensation. She said she loved me as a sister and always would, but my feelings for her made it quite clear that we could no longer meet in the way we had met in the past.
She said she would no longer write to me, and my letters would be returned unopened. She apologized if the tone of her letter sounded harsh, because she still had, and would always have, a sisterly affection for me that would keep me in her prayer for always. She wished me well for my profession and said she would get news of me from her mother, and if nothing gave her reason to believe it was the wrong thing to do, she would write to me on the tenth anniversary of my profession, when time might well have tempered the mutual feelings that made it imperative for us both to pursue our different vocations without any further personal relationship.
I felt numb and broken when I had finished the letter. I got the day off, and found a lonely spot high up in the forest behind the hermitage, where I burst into uncontrollable tears of grief. I sat with my head in my hands for hours with nothing and no one to console the desperation that I felt within me. I had never thought I could be so deeply hurt, so utterly broken, as I was that day.
I nearly jumped straight out of my skin when I felt a gentle hand placed on my shoulder. I turned round to see the kindly face of a friar whom I’d seen only rarely in the hermitage. Sometimes I had seen him at Mass; sometimes I had seen him at the back of the chapel, late in the evening, lost in prayer, but I had never seen him in the refectory or in the recreation room. I had been so preoccupied with myself these last months that I had never got round to asking anyone who he was. He was of more than average height, but he had stooped gracefully into middle age and so looked somewhat smaller than the man he was. He had clean-cut classical features that looked as if they’d originally been set in bronze and then made molten again, to be reset in a softness and sympathy that had been forged in suffering.
‘Forgive me, Padre,’ I said, ‘but I feel so terrible. I feel as if my heart is going to break and I just don’t know what to do.’
‘It’s not Padre,’ he replied kindly. ‘Just call me Antonio. I’m not a member of the community, though Padre Angelo is very kind to me and allows me to make full use of the hermitage whenever I like. I live on my own, a little further up the hillside.’
‘You mean you’re a hermit?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I suppose you could call me a hermit,’ he said. ‘I belong to the Third Order of St Francis and I’ve been living there for over ten years now. But that’s enough of me. What’s the matter? Please feel free to talk to me. But first, come back to my little home; it’s too cold out here to talk for long.’
He lived in an oversized hut made of stone, which he’d furnished for himself and made very cozy in an austere sort of way.
When I’d sat down he said, this time in impeccable English, ‘Now tell me everything in your own language. I know you’re a linguist, but Italian isn’t your strongest language, is it?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘But your accent tells me that English is yours.’
‘Well, I have spent some time in England,’ he said. ‘But that’s a long story – my story. What’s important now is your story. Please tell me everything. I won’t betray your confidence to anybody.’
I told him everything, and what a relief it was to get it all off my chest, even if he could not understand the pain of love found, and love lost, that was tearing me apart.
‘My dear friend, I do understand,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I do understand. Listen to me now and to my story, for it may help you. It’s a story that only Padre Angelo has heard, and that ten years ago. I haven’t always been a hermit. I was once a young student like you, studying physics at Milan. God had given me everything: a good home, good and loving parents, a good brain, too, that promised a brilliant academic career. When I graduated, I went to Rome and did my PhD and then I was offered the chair of physics, much to the consternation of the other applicants, most of whom were twice my age.
‘In the second year of my appointment, I fell in love with one of my students, a woman of extraordinary beauty. She was an aristocrat from Florence, a direct descendant of the Medicis and proud with it, until she fell in love with me and trampled on her pride to favor the son of a Milanese baker. Her family wouldn’t hear of the marriage, so we eloped and boarded a ship bound for England. We were married aboard that ship by the captain, but we were married again in church the moment we arrived in London. Oh, we were deliriously happy, and I managed to get a lectureship at Oxford where we lived for three years; then my happiness was complete when my dear, darling wife became pregnant. Then eight months later she died in childbirth. Oh, I cannot tell you what I went through, what I suffered. I was a broken man in a foreign country, and an unwelcome foreigner too, because war had broken out and Mussolini had allied himself with Hitler. I only managed to get out of England by the skin of my teeth; otherwise I could have been interned for the duration of the war.
‘When I got back to Rome, I had something of a breakdown and became a dosser, sleeping rough and begging for pennies to keep my body and soul together, although I often wondered why I bothered. I gave up God and his religion. How could there be a God? A loving God wouldn’t do to the meanest dog what he had done to me! I went from bad to worse. I’d always had a good hand for art, so I bought myself some chalk and began drawing pictures on the pavement. At least it was better than begging. Most of what I made went on the drink that had already made an alcoholic of me.
‘Times were hard and the price of drink got higher and higher. It was then that I heard of Padre Pio and of San Giovanni Rotondo, so I gathered what few belongings I had and made for the south.’
‘What was it that led to this conversion?’ I asked.
‘This wasn’t a conversion,’ he replied. ‘I went to San Giovanni Rotondo not for conversion but for money. Where the pilgrims are, there the pennies will flow, or so I thought. I began to draw saints, and I did quite well until someone suggested drawing the good Padre whom everyone had come to see. So I did, but nobody was satisfied with my work. After all, I was only copying the pictures I had seen in the shops, so I decided to go and see the man himself.
‘It was the first time I had been to Mass since my wife died, and it had a dramatic effect upon me – not the Mass itself, I have to admit, but the man at the altar, the man I came to make my model. Oh yes, he was to become my model, but in an entirely different way than I had expected when I entered that church. It was when he turned round to give his final blessing that his eyes met mine and I knew it was no accident – something happened then, deep down within me. I’ll never be able to explain. It took me four days to screw up the courage, but finally I went to confession.
‘When I went in he just turned to me and said, “Antonio, my son, God has forgiven you, has forgiven you everything.” Tears were streaming down my cheeks; then he simply said, “Go, and change your life.” I’ve never been the same since. Later he arranged with Padre Angelo for me to come to Monte Casale and to stay with the community for a time. After nine months I left them and came up here, but I keep in touch with Padre Pio; he has accepted me as one of his spiritual sons and I return to see him every second year.’
At the beginning of that day I wouldn’t have believed I would ever smile again, but the transparent goodness of Antonio, and the story he told me, left me in no doubt of his compassion and understanding, which touched something deep down within me.
‘It’s providential that I met you, Antonio, because you’re the only one who can help me,’ I said.
‘I’ll do all I can,’ he replied.
‘I had thought that one day I would become a hermit like you,’ I said, ‘but now I think I’ll have to think again. I don’t think I’m cut out for the solitary life.’
‘Why not?’ asked Antonio.
‘Well, who’s ever heard of a hermit who can’t pray? I once thought I could but now I know I can’t.’
‘Oh no, that’s not true,’ said Antonio. ‘Your problem is not that you can’t pray; it’s that you don’t know what prayer is. You may think that these last months, when you’ve been battling against terrible distractions, have been a waste of time, because they kept you from what you thought prayer was all about, but they have not been a waste of time at all. Prayer does not grow because temptations gradually disappear; it grows because they get stronger and stronger, and the ensuing battle is the place where true Christian prayer reaches its height if people only knew it.
‘Beginners always think it’s about having nice feelings and emotional highs. Romantics think it’s all about having feelings of inner peace; and the latest gurus who are beginning to come back from the East seem to think it’s all about having high states of transcendental awareness and mastering the techniques that lead to Nirvana. As you must know, when Francis came back from his first serious attempts at prayer, he came back so exhausted from his conflict with the temptations that rose from the “Old Man” within that even his friends didn’t recognize him. The struggles of the inner man had marked the outer man with a depression that could even be seen in his physical appearance.
‘Remember Jesus in his prayer, in his conflict with the power of evil in the desert and later in Gethsemane, and you won’t forget that authentic Christian prayer beyond the first beginnings is the place where hell is kicked out of you by the power of the love that you endeavor to allow into your heart. To begin with, God often gives you an experience of his presence that leaves you in no doubt who is at work. Initially this is usually of short duration and is but a glimpse of what will be of longer duration, when the purification about to begin is brought to completion.
‘This is what happened to you in Notre Dame. It was strength for the conflict that you have already begun, but believe me, Peter, the spiritual conflict is a fifteen-rounder and you’re hardly halfway through the first. When the asceticism of the heart opens your heart to wait upon God, it doesn’t mean that your heart has been changed; the change hasn’t yet begun. It just means that it’s ready and available to God for the change that only he can bring about. Man has to make his heart available for God to act, but only God can change it. The pain that all must experience who want to travel on beyond first beginnings is the pain caused by the irresistible force of God’s love, as it strikes the immovable object which is man’s obstinate heart. Forgive me if I revert to my own subject to make my point. Do you remember the question that was asked in physics class when you were at school: “What happens when an irresistible force strikes an immovable object?”’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do. Heat is generated.’
‘Precisely. The same principle in the physical order applies to the spiritual order. When the irresistible power of God’s love strikes the immovable object of a proud, intractable human heart, then heat is generated. It is the heat that comes from the fire of the Holy Spirit, and it begins here on earth. It is the purgatorial purification that all must go through before union with God, on the simple principle that unlike things cannot be united. Somewhere between now and union with God a likeness has to be created within us. The Holy Spirit has been sent to create that likeness by purifying us of all and everything that prevents us from being united with God. The saint is a person who has already passed through their purification here on earth, and so can become a most perfect instrument that God is able to use, to communicate to others in need the love they have received. Don’t believe the pseudo-mystics from the East or the West, who try to deceive far too many people today into believing that true mysticism is primarily about high states of consciousness, or esoteric experiences with accompanying phenomena of dubious authenticity. They attract the spiritual butterflies which are always looking for new seductions on which to settle, at least for a while.
‘If you are ever in doubt, turn to the Gospels and see Jesus at prayer; see him at war with the power of evil throughout his life in Palestine until his death in Jerusalem. True Christian prayer always involves a fight, a battle, a conflict, that is fiercest in the desert, where no escapisms can lure the believer from the repentance that exercises the muscles of the heart like nothing else on earth.
‘When I was lecturing in Oxford, the students where I resided were invited to enter a tug-o’-war team in a local competition as part of the celebrations for the Coronation. When they saw the other teams from the local villages in action, they were ready to throw in the towel before they had even started. Then one of the dons, who once played rugby for Wales, said they’d beat all comers if they were prepared to train. For five months they trained on the football field every afternoon without fail, until their muscles had grown and hardened to the task ahead of them. To cut a long story short, they won the competition outright and pulled their opponents into the river over which the final competition took place. They were the toast of the town for beating some of the heftiest farmers I have ever seen. They did it by persistent and consistent practice, which enabled the muscles of their bodies to generate the power and strength that made them unbeatable even by the strongest opposition.
‘The self-same process takes place in prayer. If you are prepared to give consistent daily time in prayer for practicing the asceticism of the heart, then gradually the most important muscles that a person possesses are developed. They are the spiritual muscles of the heart, which open that heart ever more fully to God. As this happens they allow an otherworldly power and strength in that makes the weakest person into the strongest, for whom even the impossible becomes possible. The reason why so few people journey on beyond first fervor in prayer is that the exercise becomes so hard and taxing, and the temptations become so hard to bear, that they prefer to seek the solace of a job well done, or a pleasure enjoyed, to the tortuous and testing struggle of prayer beyond first beginnings. The prayer that exercises the muscles of the heart through an endless spiritual tug-o’-war against distractions and temptations is exhausting in the extreme, precisely because a person is exercising the muscles of the highest faculty that they possess. The young men who won the tug-o’-war tournament weren’t surprised when their exertions left them exhausted, nor is the footballer, the tennis player or the swimmer at the end of their exertions. Only half an hour in the pool is enough for most of us, but we’re surprised when we’re tired at the end of half an hour of spiritual tug-o’-war in prayer, when we have been exercising the most important and the most underused muscles we possess.
‘Let me exemplify my point by referring you to the First Principle of Thermodynamics. “Thermo” comes from a Greek word meaning “heat”, and “dynamics” also comes from a Greek word, meaning “work”. The First Principle of Thermodynamics is this: Work is heat, and heat is work. And the work that is generated in the prayer I am trying to explain produces the highest form of energy, which is love, when the believer turns from temptation at its highest to love at its fullest. This is why the certain sign of a would-be saint, which baffles those who stand on the sidelines, is the exhaustion from the inner conflict. During the last few months, you have been exercising the muscles of your heart more regularly and with greater energy than ever before. You’ve been traveling fast, though you may not think you’ve been traveling at all. As you have been trying to turn back to God, sometimes in pitch beyond pitch of grief, then you’ve been more open to God than at any other time in your life, and so the love of God has been working within you in a way that will gradually transform you into the Man you have freely chosen to follow.
‘Now, let us see how this process of transformation is brought about. Please do excuse me for once more resorting to the only branch of knowledge that I really know anything about. It was your own Sir Isaac Newton who discovered a truth that will enable me to describe how God’s love first penetrates a human being before being channeled into human acting so that a disciple becomes an apostle, propelled from within by the power of God who possesses him. Newton discovered that although light is colorless, it contains within itself all the colors of the spectrum. They remain unseen until they strike a prism that reflects and refracts them in such a way that all the colors of the rainbow are clearly visible for all to see. Now, it’s exactly the same with the love of God. When that love is allowed to shaft down into the human heart, it first purifies it, and then it refines it into a prism that refracts and reflects God’s love into every part of the human personality, until it becomes visible to onlookers by the way it manifests itself in human behavior.
‘The Christ-like care and compassion, the superhuman quality of selflessness and sacrifice, and the heroic virtues that are generated by the spirit-filled apostle are but the outward expression of the divine life already possessing them from within. The exercise of the human heart in prayer then allows the divine life in, so that it is transposed through human being into human acting. Not only does this love further strengthen the muscles of the heart, but it opens that heart out from the inside to receive even more of the love that it has already received. In this way, true Christians are fashioned so they are able to return the love received in kind to the One from whom it came in the first place. This profound interchange of love now bears fruit in all that they say and do for the world that God is now able to reach through them. St Francis was in theory a mystic because he saw so clearly, and stated so emphatically, that all true virtue and all genuine goodness is in God and in God alone, and can only enter into human beings through a mystical death to the “Old Man” who prevents the “New Man” from being formed. However, he was also a practical mystic because he continually sought out the solitude in which to enable the Holy Spirit to bring about this mystical death within him with a shaft of light and life that contained all the virtues and all the gifts that have their spiritual origin in God, and their physical manifestation in man – the Christ-like man.
‘The sure sign, for Francis, that what appears to be true virtue is not actually its counterfeit is that true virtue is never alone; for if it is born of the love of God from within, it is born into a whole family of virtues that appear simultaneously, if gradually, in the behavior of the true believer. In other words, if you meet a tolerant person who is a glutton, or a generous person who is a tyrant, or a patient person who is a swindler, then the virtue that might seem to redeem them is only of human origin, and born of the genes they inherited, or the upbringing that others gave them, or the expediency that social acceptance demands of them, as your own Jane Austen saw so incisively.
‘It is only as weak human love is suffused and surcharged by the divine that a believer is now able to love God with their whole heart and with their whole mind and with their whole strength, and to love their neighbor as themselves, and so keep all the commandments, that a promise can be kept. The promise was made by Christ himself at the Last Supper, when he promised that whosoever keeps these commandments would be loved in such a way that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit would make a home within them so that the community of God’s own life can dwell on earth in the person who is redeemed by love.
‘As this whole process of transformation, or divinization, is taking place, the mystic begins to experience the love that they are receiving, sometimes to shattering degrees of intensity, and with a regularity that finally becomes permanent, as the Trinity of love which is God is finally homed within them for good. This is true contemplation, a pure gift of God that cannot be generated by any man-made methods or techniques from the East or from the West. Those who suggest otherwise are simply deceiving you, as they have been deceived themselves.
‘It is a tangible experiential knowledge from which strength is drawn that enables the mystic to sever themselves from all and everything that prevents them living to the full the Christ-life, that enables them to live fully for others. In the authentic mystic you will always find a fully balanced and complete person who is not so lost in a self-indulgent evangelical piety that they forget the physical needs of others, nor so engrossed in socio-political involvement that they forget the spiritual needs of themselves.
‘Two priorities are always embodied simultaneously in the true mystic: love of God and love of man. See how the theological and the sociological are completely harmonized in the life of Jesus Christ, the greatest mystic ever to walk on the face of this earth. He was totally open and available to all men and women because he was first totally available to God. If he hadn’t received in the desert or on the mountainside, in lonely places, in the inner room or in the garden of Gethsemane, then he would have had nothing to give by the lakeside, at the crossroads, in the marketplace, the synagogue, the temple precincts, or the place of execution where he gave his all. Jesus knew this and stated it so clearly that the true disciples who have followed him throughout the ages heard him, and they followed the example that he gave. Francis may well have been a mystic of the highest order, and spent years of his life in solitary prayer, but what other man in the whole of the Middle Ages did more for his fellow men than he? For the poor with whom he worked; for the lepers he served with his own hands; and for the peace he brought to the strifestricken world in which he lived. Look at my own spiritual director, Padre Pio – a mystic who has scaled the heights, a healer, a miracle worker of almost unprecedented stature – and yet for sixteen hours a day, sometimes more, he gives himself in humble service to his fellow man. See for yourself the hospital he is building to give work to the unemployed in Southern Italy and the medical help that has been denied them for so long by a government more interested in votes than in the misery of their voters.
‘But I’ve said enough for one day, Peter. Let me just finish by giving you the Second Law of Thermodynamics which is this: A cold body cannot communicate heat to a hotter body. Once again Francis and other faithful followers of Christ knew this principle long before science formulated it – for this is why Francis went to the cave, so that his body could be set alight with a fire that would kindle others. This is why I am here, Peter, and this is why you too must seek out solitude as a true Franciscan to be first purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit, so that in his Name you can be set afire with a love that you must in your way, but in God’s time, communicate to others. I am here, waiting upon God as best I can. I will wait here till death if that is what is required of me, or I will leave tomorrow morning if something else is required of me, to help build up the Brotherhood of Man on earth, which is the deepest desire of any true follower of Francis of Assisi.’
At last I had found someone to whom I could really talk at Monte Casale, literally a man after my own heart, for the life he was living was exactly the life that I had been aspiring to myself before other considerations had blurred my vision. I returned to speak with Antonio every day in the few remaining weeks that were left to me before I was due to leave for Paris and my profession. I learnt so many practical things from him that would help me later when I finally settled on Calvay, and so many other truths about the spiritual journey that have sustained me to this day. I was fascinated to hear from him that Monte Casale had been a Third Order hermitage for several centuries after the death of St Francis, and before the coming of the Capuchins in the middle of the sixteenth century.
Antonio also told me not just that Francis had written a rule for hermits, but that he had written it while living the life of a hermit himself, here at Monte Casale, and he promised to give me a copy of the text to take away with me. However, it would be untrue to pretend that my newfound friendship with Antonio, and the help he had given me, healed the gaping wounds that had been opened in my heart – they were deep, very deep, and they bled profusely, especially at those times when, with Antonio’s encouragement, I sought out the solitary prayer that I had been avoiding.
One phrase in the letter Françoise had written to me began to haunt me in and out of prayer, because it held out to me some hope, not of what I’d hoped for before, but of the possibility of a new start, with the security that comes from knowing that you are loved, even though needs must distance that love from where I’d wish it to be. She had said, referring to a time when we might once more write to one another: ‘…when time may well have tempered the mutual feelings that make it imperative for us both to pursue our different vocations, without any further personal relationship …’. It was the phrase ‘mutual feelings’ that kept my mind turning over and over, and my memory desperately tried to recall any word or action that could lead me to believe, or even hope, that there could be in her even the slightest flicker of love to match the flame that was in me. I could not write to her, for my letters would be returned unopened. I couldn’t visit her either, for she would not see me, so at least the desire to know the answer to the question that endlessly rose up to haunt me led me back to prayer. I prayed with a fervor I’d not known for months for some sign that would quiet my mind and enable me to go forward upon the way, secure in the knowledge that I was loved, with the love of the only one whose love mattered to me.
I had just got up from my siesta on the Sunday before I was due to return to Paris, when Antonio burst excitedly into my room, apologizing for the intrusion.
‘I’ve got some fantastic news!’ he said.
‘Oh,’ I replied rather coolly, knowing that there was only one piece of fantastic news that would interest me, and I knew it was not that. ‘What is it?’
‘Padre Bernadino is going to his sister’s wedding tomorrow morning, and the wedding is to be held in his hometown, San Marco in Lamis, this Wednesday.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘But I don’t see why you’re so excited about it, nor what it has got to do with me.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘San Marco is a little village in Southern Italy, only a few miles away from San Giovanni Rotondo, and Padre Bernadino said you could go with him if you’d like to meet Padre Pio.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said, frankly unmoved. To be honest, I didn’t care a fig about seeing Padre Pio, saint or no saint. I had other things on my mind of far greater moment to me on the eve of my departure from Monte Casale.
I still had hopes, like my good friend Micawber, that something would turn up before I had to leave on the following Thursday. I still counted the seconds during my morning meditation to the time when the postman would leave his daily parcel of post. I still hoped that Padre Angelo would suddenly decide it was time to visit Clitunno again and take me with him. To commit myself to some sort of wild goose chase, just to see some supposed saint when something might yet turn up, didn’t appeal to me at all.
Antonio hadn’t noticed my reluctance, because he was so excited about the great opportunity that had suddenly presented itself.
‘It’s an answer to a prayer,’ he said, ‘because I, myself, am desperate for Padre Pio’s advice; Padre Angelo wants me to become the spiritual director to the Third Order here in Borgo San Sepolcro, and I wouldn’t think of taking such a step without the advice of my spiritual director – will you please give him this letter and tell him it’s urgent?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said as Antonio thrust the letter into my hand, realizing that the very words I uttered, without time for serious thought, had committed me to a journey that I frankly didn’t want to make.
‘Padre Bernadino has been given the car until next Friday so he’ll be able to drop you at the airport before he returns here later that day. Now, he said he’s leaving at the crack of dawn, because he has things to do in Rome before driving south on the Tuesday morning. He said he’d make all the arrangements, so you’ll have somewhere to stay. He knows everyone there is to know at San Giovanni Rotondo.’
It was with a very sad and sore heart that I set off with Padre Dino at first light, speeding down the narrow mountain road on our way to Borgo San Sepolcro, where we’d meet the main highway. Just before we reached the bottom, I saw the postman on his way up, and motioned desperately to Dino to pull in. There were two letters for me and one for Dino. One of my letters was from home; the other was from Madame de Gaye to inform me that Père Claude was coming down from Lyon to preside at my profession and that she had been given permission to have the ceremony in her private chapel as I had requested.
Dino whooped with delight at the contents of his letter. It was confirmation that there would be a ticket awaiting his arrival in Rome for the European Cup match between Roma and Real Madrid – it was apparently the semi-final. There was no stopping him after that. He drove like a madman toward the eternal city – and the eternal football stadium that was for him the nearest thing to heaven this side of the grave.
My heart started pounding as we passed Trevi and drew closer and closer to Clitunno. I was desperate to stop, if only for a few minutes, just to be near the place where the person I loved more than anyone else in the world lived and breathed – just to breathe the same air for a few moments was all that I asked.
‘Could you stop for a few minutes at Fonti del Clitunno, Dino?’ I said. ‘I’ve passed the place several times but never seen it.’
‘Sure,’ replied Dino. ‘It’ll give me the opportunity to have a smoke and stretch my legs.’
He was quite chatty when we got out of the car, and began explaining why the source of the Clitumnus meant so much to his forebears, the Roman soldiers who conquered the ancient world.
‘You see, they believed that the Clitumnus would do for them what the mythical River Styx could do for the Greeks. Once they bathed in these waters, they thought they would be made invulnerable in battle.’
‘It’s certainly got atmosphere,’ I said. And it had. The waters were so still and so clear, and the surrounding banks so lush and laden with willows, bent low to see their own reflection in the waters; and the poplars stood tall and erect like the soldiers, dead long since, who had bathed in the sacred waters.
‘There seems to be no movement at all,’ I said, ‘and yet the water must be moving to supply the great river that flows out of it.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘The water collects from the limestone mountains up there, behind us, and then it seeps up through the silt from under the Flaminian Way, which we’ve just been traveling on.’
As he directed my gaze to the mountains above, I was delighted to look upwards, not to the heights but to the little telltale tower of rough brickwork which was the highest point of the little Eremo where I would far rather have been. Oh, for the wings of a dove, I thought.
Dino was still rabbiting on about the poets who had visited the spot and been inspired by the clarity, the stillness and the purity of the sacred waters. I vaguely heard him mention the name of Virgil among a list of other poets whom I had never heard of before – my mind was elsewhere.
‘Your own Byron came here too, and it even moved him to song,’ said Dino, taking me by the arm and leading me back to the car.
‘I was just looking at the Eremo,’ I said. ‘You can see it just sticking out above the trees.’
‘Oh, that confounded place!’ he exclaimed. ‘What on earth did they decide to build a convent in that outlandish spot for? It’s a damn nuisance. I’ve got to trek all the way up there on my way back, just to pick up Angelo’s sermon book that he left there after his last visit.’
‘Really,’ I said, trying to keep at least an outward calm as my mind sprang into action to try and exploit this possibility, which I never thought would have presented itself – it was only an outside chance, but even an outside chance is better than none at all.
‘Why not pop up now,’ I said as casually as I could, ‘and get it over with? We’ve got time on our hands and I wouldn’t mind going up with you. It would give me the opportunity to make my farewells to the sisters. They’ve been very good to me.’
‘No,’ replied Dino. ‘I want to get the hell out of this backwater and get to civilization as soon as possible.’
‘OK,’ I said, as we both got back into the car. ‘I just thought’ – he turned on the ignition – ‘that it would have given you a few extra hours in Perugia on your way back.’ It was my trump card, but was it high enough? I quickly looked away, so that he could make the necessary calculations in his mind without him feeling I was in any way aware of the lure that I had laid before him.
‘Well,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘time is on our side, so if you’d really like to make your farewells it would kill two birds with one stone.’
I felt ashamed at what I’d done, but the truth of the matter was, I would have done anything to make this visit that I thought I might never make again.
The Superior was decidedly cool towards both of us. She gave Dino Father Angelo’s sermon book, but was quite adamant that Sister Françoise was busy in the garden when I asked to see her.
‘It’s just for a few minutes,’ I said.
‘Sorry,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps if it was after supper at the permitted time it might just be possible, but not at this time of the day.’ Dino had already told her that we were in a hurry to get to Rome, so she was on safe ground.
‘Look, Sister, it’s important, very important,’ I said, pleading. I took a letter out of my pocket. ‘I received this letter only two hours ago from her mother, with a message in it for her. It’s important.’
Reluctantly she turned and disappeared along the corridor. She was back in a few minutes. ‘Sister Françoise said she can’t possibly come, but she said if it’s an important message you can leave it with me.’
I was shattered, but I still had to act as normally as I could, even though the message I had to leave hardly merited the urgency with which I had announced it.
‘Oh, it’s to say that my profession will be on Easter Tuesday at twelve o’clock,’ I said lamely, though I did try to inject into my words the importance that the news did merit, at least for me.
‘I see,’ said the Superior. She smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes. ‘I’m sure we will all remember you in our prayers.’
As if all that wasn’t embarrassing enough, Dino started to bait me on the way down.
‘Well, well, Peter,’ he said. ‘You’re a dark horse. So it was our Aphrodite that you wanted to see after all.’
I was furious, not because he compared Françoise to the beautiful goddess of love, but because he had the impertinence to refer to her as ‘our’ Aphrodite, as if he had some sort of claim on her.
‘Take my advice,’ he said. ‘You’ll get nowhere with Miss High-and-mighty. She’s got too big an idea of herself, just because she’s supposed to have blue blood in her veins. She thinks she’s a cut above the rest. I’ll bring her down to size one of these fine days.’
I was blazing, and it showed.
‘Oh, Peter,’ he said, ‘I see you’re blushing. Now I know why you’ve been haunting the post box for the last four months.’
I wasn’t blushing with embarrassment. It was anger that crimsoned my face; an anger that would have made me hit him in the eye there and then had some unseen hand not restrained me.
I was glad when I was alone again in my room at the friary while he went off to his precious match, even though I had nothing to do. I sat there for hours on end like a masochist, whiling away the time, picking and prodding the new wounds that had once again opened up a heart already scarred enough from the ravages of love lost and never to be regained.
Five miles out of Rome Dino stopped the car. He took off his habit to reveal the Teddy-boy outfit that he usually reserved for clandestine visits to Perugia.
‘That’s better,’ he said as he settled back into the driving seat, lighting up a cigarette to settle his nerves for the nerve-racking journey ahead.
Thank God Roma won 3–2 in extra time! I thought. That was a small mercy that made the very long journey south at least a little less unbearable.
Dino raised the town from its usual torpor when he hooted his way around the streets that had raised him, and waved at almost everyone, who seemed genuinely pleased to see the prodigal’s return. He didn’t stop, however, but drove straight to San Giovanni Rotondo, where true to form he hadn’t made any arrangements for me to stay at the friary, or anywhere else for that matter, and only managed to find me a bed for the night because his third cousin once removed didn’t dare deny the demands of her illustrious relative from Rome. He only waited long enough to say he’d pick me up again at 7.30 sharp on the Thursday morning for the long journey back to Rome, leaving me a full day to while away the time in a more-dead-than-alive little Italian backwater.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I will not be getting up at five o’clock to go to the Padre’s Mass. I’ll be having a long lie-in.’ I thought I deserved it, and I had no intention of getting up in the middle of the night to go to the Padre’s Mass. After all, it was the same Mass whoever said it.
As it happened I went to the ten o’clock Mass. I stayed on to pray in the church afterwards, and I prayed once again with a fervor that leapt upwards from my heart to a God with whom I pleaded for a sign, some sign, any sign that, despite the events of that previous morning, Françoise harbored at least some love in her heart for the man who felt his life was meaningless without it.
I was continually disturbed by several dozen men who kept moving up, a place at a time, as one of their number went into the sacristy, presumably for confession, presumably to Padre Whatever-his-name-was, whom Antonio wanted me to see. Frankly, I’d no desire to see him because, quite apart from anything else, I’d no desire to pour out the story of my life all over again, and anyway I would not – definitely not – talk to another living soul about my relationship with my very dear Françoise. It was my business and mine alone.
I was almost in tears, lost in self-pity, when I was tapped on the shoulder by a heavily built man with dark glasses who looked as if he was the resident godfather’s right-hand man. ‘Padre will see you now,’ he said.
‘Padre who?’ I said.
‘Padre Pio, of course,’ he said. ‘Come quickly.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, pulling my arm away from his. ‘There’s some mistake. I’ve made no appointment to see him.’
‘Well, he wants to see you,’ came the reply. ‘Come.’
Once again I pulled my arm away. ‘How do you know it’s me he wants to see?’
‘He said, “Go and tell the young Englishman with the stick and the built-up boot that I would like to see him”.’
I quickly glanced round, not really expecting to find many more men in the church who answered that description. Before I could make any more queries, I was on my feet thanks to the messenger of light, who looked as if he’d just come from outer darkness. He closed the door behind me as I was ushered into the sacristy, where apparently it was the Padre’s custom to hear the men’s confessions.
It took me months afterwards to try and transpose into words the immediate impact of that first meeting with a man I now know to be a living saint. The preoccupation with my own affairs had made me quite unprepared for that brief meeting which was to have such a deep effect upon my life.
When I first met Françoise I immediately felt at home because I knew instinctively that we shared the same ideas and ideals, the same hopes and aspirations. I had a similar feeling the moment my eyes fell upon the man who turned to greet me as I walked into the sacristy, only this time the ideas and ideals, the hopes and aspirations that Françoise and I had in common were in him completely fulfilled. His face was a friendly fusion of all the rare gifts and qualities that reflect the human spirit at its most endearing. Years of suffering had fathered a profound sense of peace and joy that determined the very texture of his demeanor. It was most evident in his eyes, where it had been softened into compassion. There was a most innocent and guileless goodness that expressed itself in a humble, child-like humor that played around the lips and gave to the eyes a wonderful brightness; this completed the compassion with a hope that must have spoken to so many, who were sowing in tears, of the day when they would reap in joy.
He welcomed me like an elder brother, not as a Padre. He took both my hands in his, and helped me into the seat opposite his own. I knew instinctively that I did not need to tell him my story for he already knew it, with a knowledge that comes from a love that could see at a glance what others could never see in a lifetime. My belief in reincarnation dates from that meeting – not the reincarnation of every man, but of the perfect Man, who makes himself flesh again in as many different ways as there are those who would receive him.
‘Your prayer has been answered,’ he said simply, ‘and the sign you seek will be given to support you on the journey that you are preparing to undertake. God has called you to become a prophet, Peter. It is a great gift, a great privilege, but it carries with it a great and grave responsibility. A prophet must speak to a world that would rather not hear the message that he brings. All prophets have first to be purified themselves before they can help purify others. Like the One you wish to follow, you must spend many hidden years where all the prophets are prepared before they return to the world. One day in God’s good time, not yours, when he thinks you’re ready, not when you do, there is a work for you to perform. God will do his part if you do yours, and your part is to pray, trust and not worry.’
He said many other things to me that are too personal to tell, although I must have been with him no more than twenty minutes. I begged him to pray for me and he promised he always would, as he always did for those he adopted as his spiritual sons.
Just before I turned to go he said, ‘Haven’t you got something for me?’
‘Antonio’s letter,’ he said with a broad grin.
‘Oh yes, of course!’ I replied. I put my hand into the inside pocket of my jacket and gave him the letter that he couldn’t possibly have known that I had brought.
I have heard the expression ‘walking on air’ but I had never experienced it until that day. It was as if I was several inches off the ground, as I made my way back to my place in the church. Apart from certain things he said to me about my future, which are personal and private, he said nothing that I hadn’t heard before, or wouldn’t hear in the future. In fact, I’d heard and would hear more profound truths about the spiritual life explained at length, but never again would I receive what I received from him. He was a true mystic, and so when he spoke, he spoke with a power that came from within, that not only gave the words that he spoke a depth of meaning far deeper than the mind alone can grasp, but a power too, that strengthened you to do the word that was spoken to you.
The moment I knelt in prayer I was totally absorbed in God, in such a way that I had no distractions at all, and then all of a sudden the same prayer that had raised me up in Notre Dame raised me up again. It was as if I spiraled upwards once more in the higher part of my head to the same degree of intensity that I experienced then, only now it lasted longer than before, and I remained riveted to the spot, quite oblivious of what was going on around me for longer than I will ever know. Time no longer seemed to have any meaning. When there are no longer any distractions or temptations, or any thoughts of any kind, when there are no ‘befores’ or ‘afters’, there is no means of calculating time.
The high mystical peaks that I was raised to experience subsided at times to plateaus where the absorption was not so completely all-engrossing. Then, without warning, I would spiral upwards again to peaks that had been scaled before, as the power of God tangibly worked within me without any effort on my part, for I was totally in God’s hands, and happy to be so. All the trials and the sufferings I had been through over the last few months seemed as nothing, and I would willingly have undergone them all ten times over for the love that I received in that sublime prayer.
As before, the experience made me feel humble, not proud, aware of my own nothingness and of the greatness of God, which made me realize that once possessed by his power nothing would be impossible to me – or rather to the new me: part human, part divine. When I stood up to leave the church, I felt unsteady on my feet, as if slightly inebriated with what I had received. I felt taller, too, as I looked down to the ground, but my feet were firmly grounded, and the experience soon faded with the feeling of unsteadiness as I went outside; the feeling of inebriation, however, remained with me for several days.
I don’t remember much about the rest of that day. I just remember walking around the streets of San Giovanni Rotondo as if in a daze, as if I were in a dream, still engrossed in God, but with an absorption that did not prevent me from moving, as I had been unable to move in the church.
After waiting for an hour for Dino to turn up, I went to pray in the church the following morning, leaving a message that he could pick me up there. I was still experiencing an absorption in God that made me aware of his abiding presence within me and all about me.
It was about nine o’clock when I turned round, distracted by a commotion at the back of the church, to see the arrival of Dino, who was greeting and being greeted by half a dozen villagers who obviously recognized the local lad who they thought had made good. I got up to join the happy throng. Just as I was reaching them, a young brother came out of a side door and said, ‘Oh, by the way, Bernadino, you’re wanted for a moment in the sacristy.’
‘OK, kiddo,’ said Dino, patronizing the young man, and he set off with his own inimitable gait up the side aisle, with his Teddyboy trousers hanging down beneath his habit. He made a perfunctory genuflection and waltzed into the sacristy with simply no idea what, or rather who, awaited him. The funny thing is, I knew exactly what was going to happen, though I didn’t know how long it would take. After all, I’d never witnessed a miracle before. It’s comparatively easy to cure cripples; it doesn’t take too long to give hearing back to the deaf or sight to the blind – that is, if you happen to be a Padre Pio; but even for him, prodigal sons take a bit longer, quite a bit longer if they happen to be a Bernadino of Perugia.
It was half an hour before the sacristy door opened again and Dino emerged. It was not a new man I saw; it takes many years to make a new man, but it was a different man, a very different man. The man who went in was a man full of himself, intoxicated with his own importance, thirsting with desires and urges that he couldn’t resist. But it was a sober man who came out, who would never be quite the same again, though he hardly knew it himself at the time. He hadn’t had time to adjust to what had happened, hadn’t had time to come to terms with the new direction that his life was about to take, so he tried to act as casually as he could, to play for the time he needed, for the reflection that the sudden and unexpected interview called for, and for the adjustment that had to be made. After all, it was to change the life of a man no one else had thought was changeable.
He made some remark about having to pick up a letter from Padre Pio for Antonio, but he said no more, nor did I press him, for I had no right to pry into his privacy any more than he had to pry into mine. Dino gave no verbal indication that anything unusual or extraordinary had happened in that meeting with Padre Pio, until he dropped me at the airport early the next morning. He wanted to come in to see me off, but I insisted that he should leave me because he had a long journey ahead of him.
‘It will take you at least five hours to get to Perugia,’ I said.
‘I won’t be going to Perugia,’ he answered, ‘not now, not ever.’ Then he jumped out of the car and embraced me ‘Italian style’.
‘Forgive me, Peter,’ he said. ‘I must have been a great source of scandal to you. Please forgive me and pray for me. It’s about time I grew up. I’m going back to Monte Casale, and I’ll stay there, too, because I want to start anew. I want to begin my life all over again.’
I didn’t need to think of what to say or how to react because, before I knew what was happening, he was back in the car again and he’d gone; gone to begin a new life he should have started years ago, but at least he’d started now, thanks to the man who’d done for both of us what he did for so many every day of his life. Ten years later I heard that Padre Bernadino had been made Novice Master and turned out to be one of the best they’d ever had.
I spent Holy Week at Citeaux, preparing myself for my profession on Easter Tuesday; then I returned to Rue de Magdebourg on the Monday to hear that Père Le Beck and Anton, and my brother David would be coming for my profession the following day.
Robert knocked at my door the next morning shortly after breakfast and brought in a pile of post. I shouldn’t have opened it until after the profession, but I’d never been able to resist opening letters the moment they arrived. I had no idea so many people knew about my profession day. There was a card from home, from my brother Tony, from Boris, from Padre Angelo and Antonio, and would you believe it, from Father Dimitrius. I suppose Boris must have told him.
I was still reading the long letter from Antonio when Robert knocked at the door again.
‘Oh, M’sieur Pierre, forgive me – I forgot to give you this. It arrived last Saturday.’
He handed me a small parcel. Strangely, I didn’t recognize the writing, for I should have. I turned it over and there on the back were two words: ‘Eremo Clitunno’. I ripped the parcel open like a hungry animal and tore open the letter that was inside it. ‘Please, please forgive me …’ were the first words I read:
Please, please forgive me for not seeing you last week but I simply couldn’t. Before you visited me from Montefalco my mother had written to me to tell me that you had undoubtedly fallen in love with me, and she begged me to respect the vocation that she is sure that you have. I found it hard to believe that you did love me, but I nevertheless promised her that I would do nothing to encourage you in any way to give up the special vocation that I, too, believe you have been called to. I also told her that if I thought it necessary I would even tell you about my sordid past, and the slut that I have been, and still am for that matter, so that any illusions you may have about me would be smashed. The week after I had written to you for the last time, I had a letter from my mother telling me that you already knew about my past, and had known about it before we ever met. This news shattered me, to think that in the full knowledge of what I had been, and what I am, you still not only loved me but wanted to spend your life with me. I simply couldn’t cope with it all, and I spoke to my Superior and told her everything. If it had not been for her I would have left to join my life with yours so that we could seek God together in the way I know you wanted to propose to me, had things turned out differently.
In spite of her help and understanding, I know without a shadow of a doubt that had I come to see you on your last visit I would have packed my bags and come with you no matter what the consequences. Deep down I know now that I did the right thing in refusing to see you, though it still breaks my heart every time I think about it. Please accept the small gift I’ve enclosed for you. It might not seem much but it’s very dear to me and I want you to have it, to wear it as a sign of our mutual love that will never keep us apart, except by the distance that love can always span.
God bless you always, Peter.
All my love for ever and ever,
Françoise
I put the letter down and opened the gift, which was wrapped in a small piece of tissue paper. To my surprise it was a small piece of string, or rather cord, with three knots in it. Then it suddenly struck me what it was, and why it meant so much to Françoise. It was the cord given to her by the saintly old dear who had changed her life, and now she was giving it to me. I knew how much that cord meant to her, and the love that giving it to me symbolized. I would wear it for my profession and continually, to remind me of the bond that united us together and the common way of life to which we had both committed ourselves.
Padre Pio was right. My prayer would be, had been, answered and more than answered, for the letter said much more than I had ever hoped for. Now at last I was ready for the profession that I was about to make, and for the journey that I was going to start. I felt surrounded and supported by more love than I could ever hope for, from my family, from my friends, from all those good men and women who had helped me over the past few years, and most of all from my very dear Françoise, who will always be in my heart as I will be in hers, so that together we can open our hearts to the only One for whom we both live, and to whom we have both committed our lives.
* * *
It was almost 1.30 in the morning when I finished the enthralling story of Peter’s last few months in Italy, his meeting with Padre Pio, and of the human love that had no doubt supported him to this day. Yet again, I was so interested to discover where and from whom Peter had learnt the profound spirituality that he had handed on to me. The typescript had so excited me that I simply couldn’t get to sleep, and then all of a sudden a thought struck me, and I leapt out of bed and rushed over to the filing cabinet. If Françoise had written to him when she promised then the letter, or maybe the letters, would be somewhere there. I began furiously searching everywhere, until finally at the back of the last drawer I saw a large file with a small tab sticking up on top of it with the name ‘Françoise’ written clearly upon it.
I pulled it out and rushed back to bed to find not just the letter but letters, many letters, that Peter had received from Françoise over the last ten years or more, but to my great disappointment they were, of course, all written in French. No matter how great my excitement or how desperate I was to read them, my French is not what it was, and it never was what it should have been, so I had to put the file back into the cabinet, at least until the next day when, with my little grey cells recharged and the help of a good French dictionary, I would be able to decipher the letters that I desperately wanted to read.