Sometimes you think you’re finally alone. That it’s time to rest. So you sit down to rest, but you find that a new temptation is added to the existing ones. A relentless daily barrage, a secret war within an unrelenting struggle, coming to complete the story of life, which must probably be repeated, lest we forget. Lest we forget that we are nothing without the power and grace of God. I am at the home of a very good friend of mine. A bus driver, Catholic until yesterday, now a convert, very faithful. The nicest indoctrinated man I’ve ever seen here. We sit together and discuss the progress of the new parish in the town of Sakaraha. As my good brother wishes. When one goes on the missionary road, one meets many foreign people before him. But an invisible link always illuminates each encounter and, from where you know no one, a relationship begins to grow in your heart within that transcends the human brotherhood, a spiritual bond that leads you as if through a one-way street to sacrifice, to the total giving of one’s being for the perfection of the supreme purpose. Not because you desire it, or because you deserve to be the bearer of the miracle called salvation, but simply because God willed it so.
The conversation has already moved on and the night finds me once again close to the people I love, listening to their complaint. The complaint that sounds like a monologue, like a monotonous lament that echoes daily on this earth from the mouth of the smallest to the oldest. “Here we have bad news, Father. Showing great astonishment, I continue the dialogue, although I already suspect where the conversation is going. -What?
-my wife. She fell asleep in August. I was looking for you, Father, but your phone was off. I was in Greece. Yes, I know. But I wanted some help for the woman. I had run out of money… She finally fell asleep. But the problem is the child. She hasn’t breastfed since the third month. She’s now eight months old.
I knew it was very difficult to leave a child unattended for many months. The next day the father brings it to me and shows it to me with joy. The sight I saw before me was tragic: an 8-month-old baby with skin as old as 70 years old. Soft and wrinkled. I asked the father what the child was eating and he replied mostly rice. A Catholic nun sparingly gives him milk. I told them that the child definitely needs milk. In the afternoon I went to a pharmacy and bought him special milk for infants. I left for home the same day. In the evening at 8 o’clock I called him and he thanked me for the milk. The child eagerly drank his milk and ate. At 9 that evening he calls me and tells me that the child had a sudden relapse. I told him to bring him to Tuliar and he announces with immense sadness that it is no longer possible, because the doctor has already established his death The father, a wonderful man, whom I confess I have never met in my life, is now my best friend. He is very faithful, much more faithful than I, with a heart as simple as a child’s. He was immensely sorry for his child and his wife. But he didn’t give up. He continued on his way. He stayed close to me and, instead of me comforting him, he comforted me in my sorrows and in my struggle.
He was a bus driver. That’s how I met him. So when his bus was waiting in the capital to fill up with passengers – which could take days and days – he would shut himself in, usually in unbearable heat, and pray. He prayed all the time. Only the day before yesterday he confessed to me that he didn’t mind being alone, because now he locks himself in the room and prays without distraction… And the tears, he tells me, flow freely… So I’m sitting at my desk and I’m thinking. I think about my mistakes. And our mistakes. And people’s pain. And their courage. And the images flash before me. One by one. The other day I was told of the death of three children in a village of our faithful. Probably an epidemic. The father, in a daze, told me the last moments of his little son. When the stunned child was beating his hand and begging him for help. And I, of course, comforted him. But what human words can heal human pain in such moments? And yet these people do not resent. Above all, they don’t take it out on God. They never think about that. They accept God’s plan. With complaint and pain, perhaps. But never with resentment and despair. So I’m thinking too, hunched over the paper. Who, after all, writes human history? Who is the one who changes the world? What does God want from us? Who builds and who tears down? Do we, instead of building, end up tearing down? Who are the heroes in this world after all? The bearers of the name or the possessors of the name? Christian, Believer, Missionary, Father, Brother, Spiritual… Names are many. But where is the essence, after all? History is not written on paper. History is written with much effort in the dirt, in the mud, in the slums, in the huts, in the sickness, in the sorrows, in the struggle, in blood many times.
Let us not be fooled. The name is not enough. Because God simply does not look at the name that is engraved on the paper, but the name that is hidden in the heart. And sooner or later He reveals it according to His own will and presents it before us. Like a mirror that shows us ourselves in the state we should be in, but often not what we are. So that we may at least spare ourselves and set out for new life. And to finally learn to build. To build souls. That’s how history is made. Not on paper. But on the heart. Our little birds really do go away singing. Our little children here. And their singing is indelible in our memory. A singing that like a mortgage forces you to stay and struggle in this troubled world. Despite the difficulties. Despite the cruelty you face around you. Despite the sadness that grips your heart. This singing is sometimes our great comfort and sometimes the great mortgage of our lives. And one truly wishes to leave this world like these little birds of ours. Singing and happy in the midst of the whirlwind of this world’s bitterness.
Monk Polycarp
