“Nothing is left to chance in religion; every exercise which seems at first useless has a reason for its being,” he said to himself, as he went out into the court. “And the fact is, that the rosary, which seems to be only a humming-top of sounds, fulfils an end. It reposes the soul wearied with the supplications which it has recited, applying itself to them, thinking of them; it hinders it from babbling and reciting to God always the same petitions, the same complaints; it allows it to take breath, to take rest, in prayers in which it can dispense with reflection, and, in fact, the rosary occupies in prayer, those hours of fatigue in which one would not pray…. Ah! here is the Father abbot.” –J.K. Huysmans ‘En Route’

St Gertrude’s Golden Salutation of the Blessed Virgin

The Blessed Virgin revealed to St. Gertrude that she rejoiced to show to those who thus saluted her the inestimable treasures of her loving compassion. And at the hour of his departure, she added, I will appear to him clothed with radiant beauty, and will pour into his soul heavenly sweetness and consolation.

HAIL, fair Lily of the effulgent and ever-peaceful Trinity.
Hail, thou radiant Rose of heavenly fragrance,
of whom the King of Heaven did will to be born,
and with thy milk to be fed:
feed our souls with Divine infusions.
Amen.

“Will you not come some day to see me in Paris?” he (Durtal) said.

“No. I (M. Bruno the Oblate) have quitted life without any mind to return to it. I am dead to the world. I do not wish to see Paris again. I have no wish to live again.

“But if God lend me still a few years of existence I hope to see you here again, for it is not in vain that one has crossed the threshold of mystic asceticism, to verify by one’s own experience the reality of the requirements which our Lord brings about. Now, as God does not proceed by chance, He will certainly finish His work by sifting you as wheat. I venture to recommend you to try not to give way, and attempt to die in some measure to yourself, in order not to run counter to His plans. “

“I know well,” said Durtal, “that all is displaced in me, that I am no longer the same, but what frightens me is that I am now sure that the works of the Teresan school are exact …then, then … if one must pass-through the cylinders of the rolling mill which Saint John of the Cross describes….”

The door opened and Father Etienne declared, “You have not a minute to lose, if you do not wish to miss the train. “

……….

Ah, those paths at the monastery wandered in at daybreak, those paths where one day after communion, God had dilated his soul in such a fashion that it seemed no longer his own, so much had Christ plunged him in the sea of His divine infinity, swallowed him in the heavenly firmament of His person.

How renew that state of grace without communion and outside a cloister? “No; it is all over,” he concluded.

And he was seized with such an access of sadness, such an outburst of despair, that he thought of getting out at the first station, and returning to the monastery; and he had to shrug his shoulders, for his character was not patient enough nor his will firm enough, nor his body strong enough to support the terrible trials of a noviciate. Moreover, the prospect of having no cell to himself, of sleeping dressed higgledy-piggledy in a dormitory, alarmed him.

But what then? And sadly he took stock of himself.

“Ah!” he thought, “I have lived twenty years in ten days in that convent, and I leave it, my brain relaxed, my heart in rags; I am done for, for ever. Paris and Notre Dame de l’Atre have rejected me each in their turn like a waif, and here I am condemned to live apart, for I am still too much a man of letters to become a monk, and yet I am already too much a monk to remain among men of letters. “

He leapt up and was silent, dazzled by jets of electric light which flooded him as the train stopped.

He had returned to Paris.

“If they,” he said, thinking of those writers whom it would no doubt be difficult not to see again, “if they knew how inferior they are to the lowest of the lay brothers! if they could imagine how the divine intoxication of a Trappist interests me more than all their conversations and all their books! Ah! Lord, that I might live, live in the shadow of the prayers of humble Brother Simeon!”

THE END

……….

“Here is the piggery,” continued M. Bruno, showing a tumble-down old place in front of the left wing of the cloister…

“I warn you, the old man grunts like a pig, but he will not answer your questions except by signs. “

“But he can speak to his animals?”

“Yes, to them only.”

The oblate opened a small door, and the lay brother, all bent, lifted his head with difficulty.

“Good-day, brother,” said M. Bruno; “here is a gentleman who would like to see your pupils. “

There was a grunt of joy on the lips of the old monk. He smiled and invited them by a sign to follow him.

He introduced them into a shed, and Durtal recoiled, deafened by horrible cries, suffocated by the pestilential heat of the liquid manure. All the pigs jumped up behind their barrier, and howled with joy at the sight of the brother.

“Peace, peace,” said the old man, in a gentle voice; and lifting an arm over the paling, he caressed the snouts which, on smelling him, were almost suffocated by grunting.

He drew Durtal aside by the arm, and making him lean over the trellis work, showed him an enormous sow with a snub nose, of English breed, a monstrous animal surrounded by a company of sucking pigs which rushed, as if mad, at her teats.

“Yes, my beauty; go, my beauty,” murmured the old monk, stroking her bristles with his hand.

And the sow looked at him with little languishing eyes, and licked his fingers; she ended by screaming abominably when he went away.

And Brother Simeon showed off other pupils, pigs with ears like the mouth of a trumpet and corkscrew tails, sows whose stomachs trailed and whose feet seemed hardly outside their bodies, new-born pigs which sucked ravenously at the teats, larger ones, who delighted in chasing each other about and rolled in the mud, snorting.

Durtal complimented him on the beasts, and the old monk was jubilant, wiping his face with his great hand…..

“Brother Simeon is an angelic being, ” replied the oblate. “He lives the Unitive life, his soul plunged, drowned in the divine essence. Under a rough exterior an absolutely white soul, a soul without sin, lives in this poor body; it is right that God should spoil him! As I have told you, He has given him all power over the Demon; and in certain cases He allows him also the power of healing by the imposition of hands. He has renewed here the wonderful cures of the ancient saints. “

They ceased speaking, and, warned by the bells which were ringing for Vespers, they moved towards the church. –J.K. Huysmans ‘En Route’