Then everyone prepared to start.

The alpine hut was not far from Gschaid and in summer one could see it plainly from the village with its little bell-tower on the green of the upland pasture; but just below was a precipitous drop of many fathoms; it could be descended in summer but only with spiked shoes, and in winter not at all. One had to take a roundabout way to the col and thence down to Gschaid from the memorial post. By that way, one crossed the alpine meadow which is still nearer Gschaid and could, from there, almost imagine one saw the windows of the village.

Because of the commotion in Gschaid that morning, the priest had postponed High Mass, supposing the children would soon be found. But still no word came, so the rites must be observed, and when those crossing the Sider meadow heard the little bell that signified the Elevation of the Host, all sank on their knees in the snow and prayed. Then, when the sound of the bell died away, they rose and went on.

The shoemaker carried little Sanna most of the way, she telling him everything.

When they had almost reached the col-forest they came upon footprints and the shoemaker said, “No work of mine made those marks.”

It was soon explained. Attracted, no doubt, by the echoing of the many voices, another searching party was coming to join the one descending. It was headed by the dyer, chalk-white with fear, who had come down the mountain with his workmen, apprentices, and others from Millsdorf.

“They’ve been over the glacier and the crevasses without knowing it,” the shoemaker called out to his father-in-law.

Well here they are—here they God,” answered the dyer. “I knew they must be up there when your messenger came in the night and we set out with lanterns and searched the whole woodland without finding anything; then as the gray of dawn broke, I noticed on the way from the memorial post, the child said: “Mother, last night when we were up there on the mountain, I saw the Holy Christ-child. “

“O my brave long-suffering, my precious, my beloved child,” answered her mother, “He has also sent you some presents and you are to have them now.”

The cardboard boxes had been unpacked and the candles lit, the door into the big room was opened, and from their beds the children saw the belated, brightly shining, welcoming Christmas tree. Despite their fatigue they wanted to put on some clothes so that they could go into the other room; and there they received their presents, admired them, and then fell asleep over them.

Gschaid Inn that evening was livelier than usual. All who had not been in church were there; the others also. Each related what he had seen and heard, what he had done, what advised, what he had experienced and all the risks he had run. And especially was it emphasized how everything could have been done differently and better.

A Christmas epoch-making in the history of Gschaid, the subject of conversation for a long time, it will be talked of for years to come, especially on clear days when the mountain is unusually distinct or when someone is describing its characteristics to strangers.

Only from that day on were the children really felt to belong to the village, and not to be outsiders. Thenceforth they were regarded as natives whom the people had brought back to themselves from the mountain.

Their mother Sanna was now a native of Gschaid too.

The children, however, can never forget the mountain, and earnestly fix their gaze upon it when in the garden, when as in times past the sun is out bright and warm, the linden diffuses its fragrance, the bees are humming, and the mountain looks down upon them as serene and blue as the sky above.  –Adalbert Stifter ‘Rock Crystal’

Painting by Adalbert Stifter

Time passed. Then, late one evening as he was sitting in the confessional, Don Camillo recognized through the grille the face of Peppone, the leader of the extreme left.

That Peppone should come to confession at all was a sensational event, and Don Camillo was duly gratified.

“God be with you, brother; with you who, more than others, needs his Holy blessing. When did you make your last confession?”

“In 1918,” replied Peppone.

“In all those years you must have committed a lot of sins with your head so crammed with crazy ideas …”

“Quite a few, I’m afraid,” sighed Peppone.

“For example?”

“For example, two months ago I gave you a beating.”

“That is very serious,” replied Don Camillo, “since, by assaulting one of God’s priests, you have offended God Himself.”

“Oh, but I have repented,” Peppone exclaimed. “And anyway it was not as God’s priest that I beat you up but as my political adversary. Anyhow I did it in a moment of weakness.”

“Besides this and your activities in that devilish party,
have you any other sins to confess?”

Peppone spilled them out, but all in all Don Camillo found nothing very serious and let him off with twenty Our Fathers and twenty Hail Marys. While Peppone was at the altar rail saying his penance, Don Camillo went and knelt before the crucifix.

“Lord,” he said, “forgive me but I’m going to beat him up for You.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” replied Christ. “I have forgiven him and you must do the same. After all, he’s not such a bad soul.”

“Lord, you can’t trust a red! They live by lies. Just look at that face-Barabbas incarnate!”

“One face is the same as another. It’s your heart, Don Camillo, that is venomous!”

“Lord, if I have been a worthy servant to You, grant me one small favor. Let me at least hit him with this candle. After all, Lord, what is a candle?”

“No,” replied Christ. “Your hands were made for blessing.”

Don Camillo sighed wearily. He genuflected and left the altar. As he turned to make a final sign of the cross, he found himself exactly behind Peppone, who still knelt at the altar rail and appeared absorbed in prayer.

“Lord,” groaned Don Camillo, clasping his hands and looking up at the crucifix, “my hands were made for blessing, but not my feet.”

“There’s something in that,” replied Christ, “but, I warn you, just one.”

The kick landed like a thunderbolt. Peppone didn’t bat an eye. After a minute he got up and sighed.

“I’ve been expecting that for the past ten minutes,” he remarked casually. “I feelbetter now.”

“So do I,” exclaimed Don Camillo whose heart was now as light and serene as a May morning.

Christ said nothing at all, but it was easy enough to see that He too was pleased.

‘The Little World of Don Camillo’ by Giovanni Guareschi

The monastery on the mount of Casinum had suffered no damage during the war. After the conquest of Neapolis all major fighting had taken place farther north. Once a large forage party of Goths came to Casinum, where they found very little. The commander thought of sending some of his men up to the monastery, but he made some inquiries first and, when he heard that the monks only had one meal a day, he decided they must be near starvation and that it was not worthwhile climbing a mountain to take away the last of their food.

Fugitives came, especially during the siege of Rome, peasants whose farms had been burned, men and women searching for missing relatives and friends. Tertullus came to bid farewell to his son Placidus, who, with several other monks, was to build a small monastery in Sicily. He was deeply impressed to find his boy transformed into a strong and vibrant personality. “It’s an amazing thing,” he told Benedictus, “despite all the severe discipline here, he gives the impression of being a freer man than I am.”

“And so he is,” Tertullus, “not despite but because of that discipline.”

Tertullus sighed. “We Romans have lost the ability for it; yet it’s one of the old Roman virtues.”

“There was much that was good in the Roman World,” Benedictus said, “and we are trying to recreate its substance.”

“In that case, these monks of yours may well be the first new Romans. According to your rule you elect your abbots. That makes you a republic…a republic of saints, or rather a number of such republics, since each monastery is an independent unit. Those in Sublacum are flourishing, Placidus has told me, and so is the new one in Terracina. When I arrived, I saw a building at the foot of the mountains; it wasn’t there when I came the last time…”

“It is a Convent. The nuns there live in a way similar to ours.”

“And you founded it?”

“No. My twin sister, Scholastica.”

“How many nuns are living there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you ask? I know of a relative of mine who may wish to join them. Rusticiana, widow of Boethius.”

“She should enquire herself or send another lady to do so for her. No man may enter the convent.”

“But surely you must meet your own sister from time to time?”

“Yes. We meet once a year on a nearby farm, run by good and devout people.”

“To talk of old times, of memories of your childhood?”

“To talk of God.”

Tertullus nodded. Here was the answer to a question he had often asked himself. A saint was a lover; he was in love with God. A true lover was happiest when talking to the beloved, and next to that, when he could talk about the beloved. Whatever he did, said, or thought would always encompass the beloved or be encompassed by the beloved. Lesser men were like the moon, reflecting the divine fire as light, but the lover, the saint, was like the sun, lit up by the divine fire, burning and yet not consumed. It was the light of that fire that made the monastery what it was, a radiant place full of happy expectation. Only the best could live here all the time. He could not. I wish I could die here though, he thought.

“You will,” Benedictus said and walked away. Only when he had gone did Tertullus realize that the Abbot had read his heart.

“Citadel of God: A Novel about Saint Benedict” Louis de Wohl. Ignatius Press.

“Where am I to go?” He prayed. “Where can I go so that I may serve you as you wish to be served? I am not a saintly sage like Abbott Fulgentius, so full of heaven that, of your grace and of his charity, he could see it everywhere, even in Rome; a man who can look back on his life and see it as an offshoot of heaven itself. I am young and have only just seen something of the power of the enemy; I have seen the dance of the living dead, and it has led me to the Hill of Shards. I know now that the city itself is no more than this hill, a place of broken ambitions and of futile successes, and that only three things in it are holy: the blood of its martyrs, the tomb of the apostles, and the presence of the Church. Give me a sign, Lord, in what way you want me to serve you and, whatever it is, I will do it.” –‘Citadel of God’ A novel about St Benedict by Louis de Wohl

Mother, behold your sons who fought so long.
Weigh them not as one weighs a spirit,
But judge them as you would judge an outcast
Who steals his way home along forgotten paths.

Mother, behold your sons and their numberless ranks.
Judge them not by their misery alone.
May God place beside them a handful of earth
So lost to them, and that they loved so much.

Mother, behold your sons so lost to themselves.
Judge them not on a base intrique
But welcome them back like the Prodigal Son.
Let them return to outstretched arms.

French poet Charles Peguy quoted by Michel Houellebecq in his novel ‘Submission’

If you know the secret of happiness, Reverend, for God’s sake cough it up, for we all need it enough.”

“It is being in love,” said the priest.

Solly stared at Father O’Grady with round, incredulous eyes. He had always supposed that churchmen frowned on love.

“Yes, being in love. Whatever your circumstances are, that is what is needed to turn them to joy. Unless you are in love, both riches and poverty become burdens. But when a rich man falls in love, his treasure is no longer a cause of worry and anxiety, because it is no longer something to be hoarded and hugged to himself. Instead, it is something to give away, to give to the beloved. And who would not choose a lifetime of hardship if that were, as it often is, the condition for being with the beloved?”

“There is one point though, Reverence, which you have left out. I’ll grant that being in love is the secret of happiness, but only when it is reciprocated; and, even then, provided that the other party stays faithful.”

He felt tempted to tell Father O’Grady about Ella. But Father O’Grady went on: “Precisely. That was the point I was coming to. The secret of perfect happiness is being in love with God, for God always reciprocates. Indeed, it is He who is always the suppliant. Heaven, Mr. Lee (Levin), is being in love with God. It is not something around the corner, as you put it, but something which starts here and now, and makes everything in this life joyful, even its suffering.”

“Well, Reverend, I suppose I’m a bad man, but I tell you straight, God doesn’t seem real enough to me to be in love with. And as to the other side of the penny, His loving me well that just seems quite impossible to me, and anyhow I don’t see what any of this has got to do with Father Malone’s pictures.”

“If you will be patient with me for a few minutes longer, I will tell you, Mr. Lee. You want to make people happy, so do I, and so does the Church. And she knows that the true happiness that lasts, and is not even broken temporarily by death, can only be achieved through loving God. But many people like yourself cannot grasp that as a reality. If they believe in God at all, it is only as infinitely remote Spirit whom they cannot approach, or as a hard judge whom they dare not upset. It was just to make men understand how wrong it is to think of God like that, that Christ was born of a woman and became man.

Caryll Hoselander ‘Dry Wood’

A gathered group of monks received the words of two returning from worldly excursions, a day of visiting with the elderly at a nursing home. Their words centered upon a young one, a child of eight years, the daughter of a nurse all were familiar with. The nurse shared with the monks her little girl was diagnosed with brain cancer.

A younger monk, hearing the news, exclaimed “Now Sophia can offer her suffering to the Lord.”

“No! No!” Another younger monk, Bruno, one known for his silence, loudly rebuked the words.

All eyes were upon him, yet his eyes were downcast, his head shaking a stern no.

Father Prior inquired “Brother do you have something to say?”

Bruno looked up to speak, yet before words a flood of tears erupted. “This little girl will most likely lose her life. Her dreams, wishes, hopes, and fancies will be left unexplored. Her friends will grow, yet she will not. It is horrible and it breaks my heart. Her parents must be devastated.” He allowed tears and breath to provide clarity before continuing. “We are supposed to be men of God. Do we receive the news of a little girl facing cancer joyfully, announcing an opportunity for her? Her suffering, her family’s suffering, will be immense. I wonder how the little one will even be able to manage her sanity. Only through profound grieving, sharing in the pain inflicted, can we be of assistance. This is not a religious game with individuals seeking glory, pronouncing dogma and clever spiritual advice. It is ugly. It hurts. We must be breathe this in, feel it deeply in our innards, and then exhale it as prayer.”

Father Prior responded, recognizing the tremendous amount of words from one who rarely spoke. “Well said Bruno. No more idle chit chat brothers, back to work.”