The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 7 November 1918, Page 3

The Storyteller

(By Cardinal Wiseman.) i. . .i ■ .

FAB 10 X A; °*i : :'"v THE CHURCH OF THE CATACOMBS.

Part Second—Conflict CHAPTER XXXII.— SACRIFICE ACCEPTED. Throughout the whole of that day the patient seemed occupied with deep, but most pleasing, thoughts. Fabiola, who never left her except for moments to give necessary directions, watched her countenance with a mixture of awe and delight. It appeared as if her servant's mind were removed from surrounding objects, and conversing in a totally different sphere. Now a smile passed like a sunbeam across her features, now a tear trembled in her eye, or flowed down her cheeks; sometimes her pupils were raised and kept fixed on heaven for a considerable time, while a blissful look of perfect and calm enjoyment sat unvarying upon her; and then she would turn round with an expression of infinite tenderness towards her mistress, and hold out her hand to be clasped in hers. And Fabiola could sit thus for hours in silence, which was as yet prescribed; feeling it an honor, and thinking it did her good, to be in contact with such a rare type of virtue. At length, in the course of the day, after giving her patient some nourishment, she said to her, smiling: "I think you are much better, Miriam, already. Your physician must have given you some wonderful medicine." "Indeed he has, my dearest mistress." Fabiola was evidently pained; and leaning over her, said softly: "Oh, do not, I entreat you, call me by such a title. If it has to be used, it should be by me towards you. But, in fact, it is no longer true; for what I long intended has now been done; and the instrument of your liberation ha 3 been ordered to be made out, not as a freedwoman, but as an ingenua, for such I know you are." Miriam looked her thanks, for fear of further hurting Fabiola's feelings; and they continued to be happy together in silence. Towards evening Dionysius returned, and found so great an improvement that, ordering more nourishing food, he permitted a little quiet conversation. "I must now," said Fabiola, so soon as they were alone, "fulfil the first duty which my heart has been burning to discharge, that of thanking you—l wish I knew a stronger word,—not for the life which you have saved me, but for the magnanimous sacrifice which you made for —and, let me add, the unequalled example of heroic virtue, which alone inspired it." "After all, what have I done, but simple duty? You had a right to my life, for a much less cause than to save yours," answered Miriam. "No doubt," responded Fabiola, "it appears so to you, who have been trained to the doctrine which overpowered me, that the most heroic acts ought to be considered by men as performances of ordinary duties." "And thereby," rejoined Miriam, "they cease to be what you have called them." "No, no," exclaimed Fabiola with enthusiasm. "do not try to make me mean and vile to tviit own heart, by teaching me to undervalue what I cannot but prize as an unrivalled act of virtue. I have been reflecting on it night and day since I witnessed it and my heart has been yearning to speak to you of it, and even yet I dare not, or I should oppress your weakness with my overcharged feelings. It 'was noble, it was grand, it was beyond all reach of praise; though I know you do not' want it. I'cannot see any way in which the sublimeness of the act could have been enhanced, or human virtue rise one step higher."

Miriam, who was now-raised to a reclining position, took Fabiola's hand between both hers; and turning round' towards her, in a soft and mild but most earnest tone thus addressed her—- " Good and gentle lady, for one moment listen to me. Not to depreciate what you are good enough to value, since it pains you to hear it, but to teach you how far we still are from what might have been done, let me trace for you a parallel scene, but where all shall be reversed. Let it be a —pardon me, dear Fabiola, for another pangl see it in your face, but it shall be the lastyes, a slave, brutish, ungrateful, rebellious to the most benign and generous of masters. And let the stroke, not of an assassin, but of the minister of justice, impend over his head. What would you call the act, how would you characterise the virtue, of that master, if out of pure love, and that he might reclaim that wretched man, he should rush beneath the axe's blow, ay, and its preceding ignominious stripes, and leave written in his will that he made that slave heir to his titles and his wealth and desired him to be considered as his brother?" "O Miriam, Miriam, you have drawn a picture too sublime to be believed of man. You have not eclipsed your own deed, for I spoke of human- virtue. To act as you have now described would require, if possible, that of a God!" Miriam pressed the folded hand to her bosom, fixed on Fabiola's wondering eyes a look of heavenly inspiration as she sweetly and solemnly replied: "And Jesus Christ, avho did all this for man was truly God." Fabiola covered her face with both her hands, and for a long time was silent. Miriam prayed earnestly in her own tranquil heart. "Miriam, I thank you from my soul," at length Fabiola said; "you have fulfilled your promise of guiding me. For some time I have only been fearing that you might not be a Christian ; but it could not be. "Now tell me, are those awful, but sweet words which you just now uttered, which have sunk into my heart as deeply, as silently, and as irrevocably as a piece of gold dropt upon the surface of the still ocean goes down into its depthsare those words a mere part of the Christian system, or are they its essential principle?" "From a simple allegory, dear lady, your powerful mind has in one bound reached and grasped the master-key of our whole teaching: the alembic of your refined understanding has extracted and condensed into one thought the most vital and prominent doctrines of Christianity. You have distilled them into their very essence. "That man, God's creature and bondsman, rebelled against his Lord ; that justice irresistible had doomed and pursued him ; that this very Lord 'took the form of a servant, and in habit was found like a man ' ; that in this form He suffered stripes, buffets, mockery, and shameful death, became the •Crucified One,' as men here call Him, and thereby rescued man from his fate, and gave him part in His own riches and kingdom : all this is comprised in the words that I have spoken. "And you had reached the right conclusion. Only God could have performed so godlike an action, or have offered so sublime an expiation." Fabiola was again wrapped up in silent thought, till she timidly asked—- " And was it to this that you referred in Campania, when you spoke of God alone being a victim worthy of'God?" "Yes; but I further alluded to the continuation of that sacrifice, even in our own davg bv a marvellous dispensation of an all-powerful love. However, on this I must not yet speak." Fabiola resumed: "I every moment see how all that you have ever spoken to me coheres and fits together like the parts of one plant; all springing one from another. I thought it bore only the lovely flowers of an elegant theory ; you have shown me in your conduct how these can ripen into sweet and solid fruit. In the doctrine which you have just explained I seem

to myself to find the noble stem from which all the others branch fortheven to that very fruit. For who would refuse to do for another what is much less than God has done for him? But, Miriam, there is a deep and unseen root whence springs all this, possibly dark beyond contemplation, deep beyond reach, complex beyond man's power to unravel; yet perhaps simple to a confiding mind. If in my present ignorance I can venture to speak it should be vast enough to occupy all nature, rich enough to fill creation with all that is good and perfect in it, strong enough to bear the growth of your noble tree, till its summit reach above the stars, and its branches to the ends of earth. "I mean your idea of that God whom you made me fear, when you spoke to me as a philosopher of Him, and taught me to know as the ever-present Watchman and Judge; but whom I am sure you will make me love when, as a Christian, you exhibit Him to me as the root and origin of such boundless tenderness and mercy. "Without some deep mystery in His nature, as yet unknown to me, I cannot fully apprehend that wonderful doctrine of man's purchase." "Fabiola," responded Miriam, "more learned teachers than I should undertake the instruction of one so gifted and so acute. But will you believe me if I attempt to give you some explanation?" "Miriam," replied Fabiola, with strong emphasis, "one who is ready to die for another will certainly NOT DECEIVE HIM." "And now," rejoined 'the patient, smiling, "you have again seized a great principle—that of faith. I will, therefore, be only the simple narrator of what Jesus Christ, who truly died for us, has taught us. You will believe my word only as that of a faithful witness ; you will accept His as that of an unerring C od.'' Fabiola bowed her head and listened with reverential mind to her, in whom she had long honored a teacher of marvellous wisdom, which she drew from some unknown school but whom now she almost worshipped as an angel, who could open to her the floodgates of the eternal ocean whose waters are the • unfathomable Wisdom, overflowing on earth. Miriam expounded, in the simple terms of Catholic teaching, the sublime doctrine of the Trinity; then after relating the fall of man, unfolded the mystery of the Incarnation, giving, in the very words of St. John, the history of the Eternal Word, till He was made flesh, and dwelt among men. Often was she interrupted by the expressions of admiration or assent which her pupil uttered; never by cavil or doubt. Philosophy had given place to religion, captiousness to docility, incredulity to faith. But now a sadness seemed to have come' over Fabiola's heart; Miriam read it in her looks, and asked her its cause. "I hardly dare tell you," she replied. "But all that you have related to me is so beautiful, so divine, that it seems to me necessarily to end here. . "The Word (what a noble name!), that is, the expression of God's love, the externation of His wisdom, the evidence of His power, the very breath of His life-giving life, which is Himself, becometh flesh. Who shall furnish it to Him ? Shall He take up the cast-off slough of a tainted humanity, or shall a new manhood be created expressly for Him? Shall He take His place in a double genealogy, receiving thus into Himself a twofold tide of corruption; and shall there be any one on earth daring and high enough to call himself His father?" "No," softly whispered Miriam; "but there shall be one holy enough, and humble enough, to be worthy to call herself His mother! "Almost 800 years before the Son of God came into the world a prophet spoke and recorded his words, and deposited the record of them in the hands of the Jews, Christ's inveterate enemies; and his words were these: 'Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His name shall be called Emanuel,' which in the Hebrew language signifies 'God with us,' that is, with men.

- : "This prophecy was of course fulfilled in the conception and birth of God's Son on earth:" g ';■■- "And' who was she?" , asked Fabiola with great reverence. "One whose very name is blessed by every one that truly loves her Son. Mary is the name by which you will know her; Miriam, its original in her own tongue, is the one by which I honor her. Well, you may suppose, was she prepared for such high destiny by holiness and virtue; not as cleansed, but as ever clean; not as purified, but as always pure; not freed, but exempted, from sin. The tide of which you spoke found before her the dam of an eternal decree which could not brook that the holiness of God should mingle with what it could only redeem, by keeping extraneous to itself. Bright as the blood of Adam, when the. breath of God sent it sparkling through his veins, pure as the flesh of Eve, while standing yet in the mould of the Almighty hands, as they drew it from the side of the slumbering man, were the blood and the flesh, which the spirit of God formed into the glorious humanity that Mary gave to Jesus. "And after this glorious privilege granted to our sex are you surprised that many, like your sweet Agnes, should have chosen this peerless Virgin as the pattern of their lives; should find in her, whom God so elected, the model of every virtue; and should, in preference to allowing themselves to be yoked, even by the tenderest of ties, to the chariot-wheels of this world, seek to fly upwards on wings of undivided love like hers?" After a pause and some refection Miriam proceeded briefly to detail the history of our Saviour's birth, His laborious youth, His active but suffering public life, and then His ignominious Passion. Often was the narrative interrupted by the tears and sobs of the willing listener and ready learner. At last the time for rest had come, when Fabiola humbly asked—- " Are you too fatigued to answer one question more?" "No," was the cheerful reply. "What hope," said Fabiola, "can there be for one who cannot say she was ignorant, for she pretended to know everything; nor that she neglected to learn, for she affected eagerness after every sort of knowledge; but can only confess that she scorned the true wisdom, and blasphemed its Giver; —for one who has scoffed at the very torments which proved the love, and sneered at the death which was the ransoming of Him whom she has mocked at as the 'Crucified?' " A flood of tears stepped her speech. Miriam waited till their relieving flow had subsided into that gentler dew which softens the heart, then in soothing tones addressed her as follows: "In the days of our Lord there lived a woman who bore the same name as His spotless Mother; but she had sinned publicly, degradingly, as you, Fabiola, would abhor to sin. She became acquainted, we know not how, with her Redeemer; in the secrecy of her own heart, she contemplated earnestly, till she came to love intensely, His gracious and condescending familiarity with sinners, and His singular indulgence and forgiveness to the fallen. She loved and loved still more: and, forgetting herself, she only thought how she might manifest her love, so that it might bring honor, however slight, to Him, and shame, however great, on herself. "She went into the house of a rich man, where the usual courtesies of hospitality had been withheld from its Divine guest, into the house of a haughty man who spurned, in the presumption of his heart, the public sinner; she supplied the attentions which had been neglected to Him whom she loved; and she was scorned, as she expected, for her obtrusive sorrow." "How did she do this, Miriam?" "She knelt, at His feet as He sat at table; she poured out upon them a flood of tears; she wiped them with her luxurious hair, she kissed them fervently, and she anointed them with rich perfume." "And what was the result?" "She was defended by Jesus against the carping gibes of His host; she was told that she was forgiven

on account of her love, and was dismissed with kindest comfort.",.-' \. -i "And what became of her i,. "When on Calvary He was crucified, two women were privileged to stand close to Him; Mary the sinless, and Mary the penitent: to show how unsullied and repentant love may walk hand in hand, beside Him who said that He had 'come to call not the just, but sinners to repentance.' " '-, No more was said that night. Miriam, fatigued with her exertion, sank into a placid slumber. Fabiola sat by her side, filled to her heart's brim with this tale of love. She pondered over it again and again; and she still saw more and more how every part of this wonderful system was consistent. For if Miriam had been ready to die for her, in imitation of her Saviour's love, so had she been as ready to forgive her when she had thoughtlessly injured her. Every Christian, she now felt, ought to bo a copy, a representative, of his Master; but the one that slumbered so tranquilly beside her was surely true to her model, and might well represent Him to her. . When after some time Miriam awoke she found her mistress (for her patent of freedom was not yet completed) lying at her feet, over which she had sobbed herself to sleep. She understood at once the full meaning and merit of this self-humiliation ; she did not stir, but thanked God with a full heart that her sacrifice had been accepted. Fabiola, on awaking, crept, back to her own couch, as she thought, unobserved. A secret, sharp pang it had cost her to perform this act of self-abasement; but she had thoroughly humbled the pride of her heart. She felt for the first time that her heart was Christian. (To be continued.)