BLESSED PETER CHANEL

New Zealand Tablet, 10 December 1914, Page 39

BLESSED PETER CHANEL

(By T. S. Cornish.) Dramatis Personae.

A PLAY.

Father Chanel Priest Mary France 5......... ..Sister of Father Chanel. Monsieur Perrier....... Merchant. Violet His Little-Daughter. Mataloupi Catechumen. Mautau, Logbasi, Keletaoni ....Converts. Musumusu, Teletiki, Ukloa 1.'...... .Native Chiefs! Act I.—SceneFather Chanel’s room at Crozet. Statue of Blessed Virgin R., table and chair C., chair L. Father C.: At last, after my many prayers, before the shrine of Mary, my highest earthly hope is realised, the Holy Father has granted my request, and I am free to dedicate my life and stick, poor powers I have, to the bearing tidings of my faith to lands where people sit in darkness and bow down to wood and stone.' The light of God, which is to Tighten all the world, shines not for them, and it is to these unworthy hands the honor has been given to bear the lamp of truth, which, lit by Christ Himself, shall shine with increasing radiance, until, in a blaze of ineffable glory, Christ Himself shall , come_ again and make the whole world light. And these poor faltering tones of mine shall tell the story of the Christ Child born in the stable of the inn, cradled in ' the manger, while the dumb beasts round paid gentle homage to their Lord and King shall speak to them of Christ the Boy confuting the learned" men, who strove to stand against Him ; shall tell them how, when His Mother Mary, who had sought Him sorrowing, found Him in the temple, He reminded her of His divine mission with these words: Know you not that I must be’about My Father’s business ; and Christ the Man, alas! the Man of Sorrows, gathering the little children round Him with those words so full of love, * Suffer little children to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’ ; Christ healing the sick, raising the dead Christ crucified, dead, and buried, Christ raised from death to life, glorified, triumphant, victorious over sin and death, His mission on earth perfected, finished. Tell how He sits at God’s right hand, gazing down with infinite tenderness and love on us. His servants, saved by His undying sacrifice, and shown the way to heaven. But my people here at Crozet will miss me perhaps a little and how much I shall miss them. (Goes L. and looks nut.) Ah, the little church that holds the Body of my Lord how often will my thoughts turn back to thee, —the 16,000 miles of distance which will lie between us, will be often bridged with lightning speed by thought, and in spirit I shall be here again. (Enter Mary Frances R.) M.F. : My brother. Monsieur Perrier would wish to speak to you; he has his child with him, that madcap Violet ; I hope you will scold her soundly. ’ Father C. : Let them come in. (Exit M.F.—R.) I love the child, and I fancy she will not stand* much in awe of the scolding she will get from me. (Enter Violet and Monsieur Perrier.) - Perrier: Father, I have brought my child to you, I have corrected her till I am tired; she seems to listen, but my reproofs, go in at one ear and out at the other. The child has a good school to go to, and each'morning she takes her books and starts :i away, but sometimes does not get there, but instead goes off on some pleasure of her own. ~ ,v ‘ . • , , \ .... , , v , ( • Father C.: Ah, little one, come here. This is sad news. How is that little brain to learn to unfold itself,

those little feet to tread in the right paths of life, and those busy' hands to do the work our Father in Heaven wants them to? M. &/$ %. '

Violet: Dear Father, when you speak to- me I know how naughty I have been, but I do not like to go to school. ’ ■' Father C.; Not like your school! Why not, my child ? v .; -,;v ■

Violet: I have to sit so still. I may not laugh, or talk, or play. . Father C. : Well, - no, my child; school is not the - place for that. ’ ■ ' Violet: But, Father, the sunshine is. I mean to go to school; I start away each morning, and really I often get there, but sometimes the sunshine calls —-I see the fairy motes all dancing in its beams, as they , float through the overhanging trees, the shadows weaving patterns at my feet, and they dance too with every breeze that moves the tender , leaves. They whisper come and dance with us, and oh! —the music of the larks’ sweet song. Oh, Father, have you heard it? That, too, calls me, and: I dance away down shady lanes. When tired, I' throw myself on their sweet grassy banks, where the dear speedwells grow, their dainty blue so pretty amongst the ; primroses and violets white; you do not know what it is to listen and not to go when they are calling me. v ; k > Perrier: There, sir, isn’t it enough to drive” one mad? Why, isn’t she known all through the town as ‘ Madcap Violet pretty scandal, and ; for me a merchant here, my only child to. behave like some vagrant gipsy lass. : / Father C. : Monsieur Perrier, I feel* for you, but this trouble is over. Your, little Violet will never again give her father so much pain ; she knows now how much it has hurt your father heart. See, the tears gather in her gentle eyes, and she and I will talk awhile together, while you must go and have a cup of my sister’s coffee. Perrier: I thank you. Father,; and if what you say comes true I shall bless the day I came to see you. (Exit R.)„ . ■ . . Father G. : Come here my child. Violet: Oh, Father, you have promised for me, but, oh! they call so loud. ' , Father C.: But someone louder still. Violet: Who? I never hear another voice than theirs. * ' > Father C. : You do not listen, child are you not an ‘ enfant de Marie ’that gentle Mother calls you back to school. She wants you trained to help her in her work to bring this old . world nearer heaven. Violet : Me, Father ? Father C: Yes, little one, even you. Our Blessed Mother’ calls us all; and once when I was quite a c boy, I, like yon, got tired of school. I felt I could not work. My tasks all seemed so hard, I felt I must get right away. I don’t know what I had in my head— devil himself must have got into it. Very little more and I should have been entirely lost. ' Violet: And what saved you, Father? Father C. : The Blessed Virgin. The village school/mistress met me as I was leaving the school, my old life, and going out into the world. I told her I was going away, and she asked me if I had consulted the Blessed Virgin ; and as she spoke the words, I heard our Blessed Mother call. I went into the little church, and at her feet I knelt and laid my trouble down, and calm and courage came and I was saved. And, my child, you too must listen to her call, through the sunshine, through the music of the larks’ gay song, louder than the whisper of the swaying trees you will hear Her Voice. My little one,, you must listen’, you must obey. Violet: Dear Father, I -will* try; you are so good and kind. When we are near you we feel we are nearer God and Heaven. ' j ' , Father C. : Hush, hush, ‘my child, (Enter Perrier R, exit Violet L.) Ah, * Monsieur Perrier, I have talked with Violet. She is ■ a child so close to nature, she must at times come near to t^at - great mother heart and learn the lessons only she can teach; but I know you need not fear that she will in future be not all you wish. - vj .• • • J ■ Perrier: ; Father, you have my hearty thanks if or this; and I have now* even,a bigger thing to ask. In this your parish of Crozet you have spent yourself jin unceasing toil for .all,-.and perhaps your school has taken up the greatest part of , your . work here. i : Father C;: Yes; T’ love my boys, the‘men and fathers of the future. I like to ioin them in their

games or to gather them in the deepening twilight and tell them stories of our Blessed Lady and the saints. Perrier: Well, Father, it is about them I want to speak. It has occurred to me we might take, next, summer-time, some boys, the most advanced, on an excursion through some part of our beloved France, and the favor that I have to ask is that you will be in charge of them, to tell them legends of the never-dying past, show them the battlefields on which our heroes died, and show them, by the force of your example, how. they may in time to come be also a credit and . an honor to our land. Father C.: Ah, mon ami, a poor example;' but lam going away from France. You see (shows letter), to-day has com© the granting of my heart’s desire, permission to carry to those poor pagan men still plunged in the darkness of infidelity • the knowledge of their God. They seem to be holding forth their arms to me, and with cries that rend my heart I hear 'them saying: ‘.Come, come to us and teach us of God and His holy Church.’ Perrier: Father Chanel, you must put this thought from you. You could not lead that life, you do not know, its dangers. Those people you would save are savages; they are without . the common instincts of humanityyou would go to them but to die. Listen, Father:-I had a brother, a seaman, but of a gentle nature. It happened that his ship was wrecked on a reef in that uncharted sea. He and two others reachedthe shore. My brother and the one were butchered by the savages; the other broke away, braving the dangers of the treacherous sea rather than, meet the death that, waited there. Two days afterwards, afloat on a piece of the wrecked ship, he was seen and saved, and though still young his hair was white, and in his eyes a terror that was with him till he died a few months later, his nerves shattered and his spirit gone. But once he spoke and told us what he saw, I was there, and to this day I see the savage onslaught of those dusky forms; I hear their blood-curdling battle cries mingling with the sad meanings of their victims, and when death came at last to end their awful sufferings their mangled corpses lay untended on that shore which ought to have been their succor and their home.

Father C. : Your words unnerve me; yet even thus I feel I ought to go. (Enter,Violet and Mary Frances.) Violet: Go—Oh, Father, dear, you would not leave us ? Why I and all the little town of Crozet could not spar© you; we need you here. Who else would comfort us and show us how to live save you—who els© would call us round him and teach us all the love of God and of His Blessed Mother Mary ?

Father C.: His Blessed Mother Mary. Mary F.: Brother, by your love for me you must not go; your work is here. Our mother, who, alas! is ageing fast, cannot spare her son. Oh, stay with us. Are there not souls to save all round us? I know how of ten you have prayed to go to those far pagan lands, but I have prayed the chance might never come. Oh, brother, do not go. Think what we have been to each other since childhood’s earliest years. You cannot leave our mother without her son. in her declining years ; you cannot tear yourself away from me— I hold you in my arms. Oh, promise me that, you will stay with her and me.

Father C. : Your pleading tears my heart; I know not what to do. Perhaps I am not fit to go; I might bo wiser if I stayed on here. Violet; Ah, Father dear, I know you will not go; you will not leave us when we want you so. Father C. : Then I will stay. Ah !—what was that that voice _ Do you not hear it? It calls me louder yet.? (Turns and goes slowly towards the statue of the Blessed —music of' ‘ Ave Maria ’ very softly.) (Blessed Virgin, I come—l answer. Oh, Comforter of the Afflicted, Virgin most Powerful, Refuge of Sinners. (Kneels at foot of statue ; sings with others ‘ Ave Maria.’ —Curtain). ,fr *

fActHl.—Scene—Father Chanel’S hut at Poi —the "axe—log of wood—altar box. (Enter Mataloupi). Mata: The blessed Father of my faith not here?

It is tun© he came for his midday meal. I dread the dawning of each day, because it may see. the death of him who brought the love ,of God to this poor heart of Father ChaneT/ M ° ll ' er • Mary> ftWW “*>• /(Enter Father C. : Ah, Mataloupi, you here? Why, child, you are like the ravens who brought food to Elias in the wilderness. ' ■ V

Mata: Poor food to-day. Father. Matigi is away working, on his land at Tikavi. There is nothing but some pieces "here that others have left; and -it is not fit -for you to have to touch that which men have set their teeth upon. . SFather C.:. .Beggars; my child, must not be choosers. Put it aside; I shall be glad of it. later. Meitala met me and shared with me his humble food. Ah, Mataloupi I think the grace of God- is in his heart ; i think he will embrace our holy: Faith. Mata : Father, the saints in heaven that you ■speak about could not-allow it; his soul would be boiight at too great a price. Already Niuliki the king turns his face away from you, and if his son should listen to' your words, then you would die. , ■" /. Father C. : And would that-be too great a price? hor me the martyrs crown ;- and the I island of Futuna would become our Lady’s dower. Do you not remember when I landed here, I nailed her medal to the tree and consecrated this fair land to her. Mata: It hangs there still; it is said that even those old gods we worshipped once would nofhave power to move it. ' ' 1 • 1

Father C.: Ah, foolish one, there were no gods. How often must I tell you there is no god but One. Mata: True, Father, but the beliefs of other days cling round me still; although I know they erred, yet nearly all the people Her© think you are wrong. •- , They are slow" to see the light, yet it shall shine in God’s own time.

Mata: But, Father, ere that time shall come you may be taken from us. Niuliki, our king, may become even more opposed to our faith than he is now; and even now has he not - removed his court to Tam aha, which bodes ill for us and you. And if you' die, who would instruct us in the faith ? Father C. : We are mortal; we shall die and go to heaven to receive our reward, but our, mission will not perish; others will come to take our place and to pray upon our graves. (Enter Mautau and Logoasi.) Father C. : You are welcome. Mail: You have our thanksTagatia ala malie. Mata: Well have you said Tagatia ala malie ; he is the man with the good heart indeed. Logoa; Tier words are true. Father, Niuliki consults his oracles; he has sent them a present of ten roasted pigs. He desires rain and victory over his enemies, the Fikavi.

Mata: Father, there is proof of what I say. The king withdraws his protection from you. Father C. : .God is in His Heaven.

i _ Logo: Father, there is sickness in the villages—bring health and peace. . Father C.: Ah, child, they are , blessings from our God; but I am His instrument, and all that I can do I will. j. Mata : Is it not always so ? Have I not seen you walk on bleeding feet to carry help to those who need ?* Father C. : Ah, name it not. The utmost I caii do is naught beside the greatness of cur. Father’s love yand such light sufferings as this frail body .has to hear, what are they beside the anguish of-'our- Redeemer /on His Cross. . -V ' - f ■■

Mata Are many ill? Logo 1 : Musumusu’s child, and others. Father C.: What is the matter? : '

Mau i We know mot. They burn, and people say it is the ‘anger of this- gods because we 'have deserted them. • . * '• v . ' -

Father C. : I will, come with you; it"may be : some simple fever that will yield to proper care and nursing. Logo: . Musumxisxr has aid an offering in the (temple of his god. , . ' / .

Father C. : May our God' grant he may see the error of his ways, and come in time to Him but if you are ready we will go. (Exit Father C., Logoasi, and Mailtau.) Mata: Ah, Talatia ala malie—if my people would ■ but listen, but alas we Futunas are hard to wean from our old ways. (Knock heard.) Enter, if you come in peace. (Enter Keletaoni R.) Kele: Ah, Mataloupi, I come in peace indeed, when I come to you, the maid who has my heart. Mata : Dear Keletaoni, you - should not be here; your life is in danger. The Father told me when your tribe was vanquished he had persuaded you t to go to Wallis. ’ Kele Did he tell you that to him I owe my life ? Mata,: Is that so? Well is he called Talatia ala malie, the man with the good heart. Kele: I could not go before I saw you once again. Mata: But you are in danger here. Tele: Love does not count its dangers. I came to ask you to leave your people and give your life and love to me. I will lie- hidden till the Father’s boat, the Queen of Peace, shall come. Oh, sail in her with me to Wallis—there the good priest shall join our hands and bless our love and marriage. Mata: Tempt me not, Keletaoni. My heart is thine, but love is not the only thing in life ; duty lias claims upon us that must not be lightly laid aside. It is not much that I can do for the good Father, but while he needs me I must stay and do it. Kele; Oh, say not so; bid me not go alone into a strange land. Mata: My heart goes with you. See, Keletaoni, see this little medal. I always wear it next my heart, lest enemies .should know I have it. When the good Father gave it me I pledged my soul to God, my life to him while he had need of it. But who comes? Oh, it is Musumusu—you are will kill you. Kele: Fear not; I will -hide ncath the broad taro leaves. I shall be safe,, fear not for me. (Exit L.) Mata: They are coming here, I fear for no good purpose. I dare not meet them ; they would beat me. I must hide, but where? Behind the curtain; they will not see me here. (Hides, Enter Musumusu, Teletika, and Ukloa). Musu : What, he is not here!,-his hut is empty—he has incurred the auger of our gods. Ukloa; Ke tamati te lotu ke puli. Tele: You say destroy the religion; let the religion disappear—but how ? , Musu; Our king, Niuliki, has spoken, list to his words: What the white man is doing tends to the destruction of the kingdom, of the nation, of the public festivals, of our marriage feasts. Ukloa; Ke tamata te lotu ke puli. Musu: He has looked with the evil eye on my child, who lies sick unto death. The death of this white man alone can appease the anger of our gods. Tele: I hear the king has said he must be put awaysuch is the king’s will. Have they not come from -a foreign country to govern this island. They must be got rid of— king wishes it. Ukloa: Ke tamati te lotu k© puli. Tele The religion shall disappear, and the island shall be at peace. Musu: Strike the priest; it is he who is spreading the religion. It is a vile thing, and insults the person of our king. Is he not a god? and the religion that this white man has would teach us he is but a man the same as we. • Tele We will go down into the village, and when we find him he shall die. All; Ke tamati te lotu ke puli. (Exit all, R.) Mata (coming out and down) ; Oh, Blessed Virgin, still my fluttering heart, and teach me what to do. They may not find him there, and when he returns I will persuade him to hide with Keletaoni and escape to Wallis. (Enter Kele.) Kele; Poor child, I heard it all. I crouched outside the hut, and heard them plot to take his life, the life of that good man, my only friend; if I could save

it, with my own, how gladly would I lay it down for, him. • ✓ -.-u ./■ •*. ' V .;' ; Mata: And so would I. ■ , r r Kele : Good wishes will not save him, nor those tears. Ah, her© he is. So-far he has escaped* (Enter Father Chanel.) i Father C.;: You here, my friend? You must bo careful. Go and hide till you can get away to Wallis, out before you go, hear my good news. The king’s son, Meitala, is a convert to our faith. At last my prayers are heard. Mata: Oh, Father, that news, great as it is, will be the warrant for your death. Kele: Father, fly with me; together we will hide till the big boat comes, the Queen of Peace together we will go to peace and safety. Mata; Father, they are coming nt>W. Musumusu has vowed to take your life. Keletaoni can save you; fly at once. Father C. ; Maliefuai, it is well; death is the greatest boon to me. (Shouts heard without; ‘Tamati te loti ke puli.’) Mata: Too late, too late. Father, your blessing on us ere you go. - Oh, would*that I could save you, or else die with you ! Father C. : Weep not for me, my children. (‘Ave Maria ’ softly.) I see the future unfold itself before me. Christ shall claim the hearts of my poor people soon, aye, far sooner than you think. For Christ, and for the love I bear the Blessed Mother of my God,' I die, strong in the faith and hope that this poor life of min© I so willingly lay down shall be the witness which shall speak to them of God, and of His Holy Church. Weep not, dear ones, for me, because for me there waits a martyr’s crown. (.Slow curtain. Shouts of -‘ Tamati te lotu, ke puli ’ by natives outside, dying away to music of ‘ Ave Maria.’) *•