Saturday, August 10, 2019

CONVERSATIONS OF PÈRE LAMY (based on the memoir by Paul Biver)



CONVERSATIONS OF PÈRE LAMY
(based on the memoir by Paul Biver)

Curé of ragpickers, often taken in
by women who came begging for layettes
to sell for wine – “I did not know it though,
they changed their kerchiefs, spoke a different way.
How could I know they had been here last week?”
“He let himself be taken in,” jeered Satan.
“He wanted to do good.  How could he tell?
I should have done the same myself,” said Mary.
She smiled with eyes as blue as periwinkle,
but nonetheless – “Please be a little careful
next time.”  He knew she was not blaming him.


One day they talked about his country childhood,
she said: “You would have killed yourself, you know,
cutting your capers in the trees.  I saved you
hundreds of times.  And then that frightful statue!
You thought to honour me by painting it –
the yellow sash!  You made me very ugly!”
She laughed with all her heart.  “But still I liked it.”
(Satan with his fox face was there and listening.
She turned to him.)  “This child sang hymns to me.
He had a fresh young voice.  I liked to hear it.
You tried to kill him in a fire once.
I wished that he should be a priest.  You see?
He is a priest.”   Her great triumphant eyes
sparkled with love; her motherly, small hands
moved exquisitely toward the bent old man.


“When he was twenty-three and in the army,
he said my Little Hours every day,
He fell asleep and, when he woke, his fingers
were at the end.  He thought he had said all
and slept again.  And that is what I wanted!
I turned the leaves and moved your fingers for you.”
“I was a simpleton.”  They smiled together.


“Now let’s consider how your days are spent,
my child – you haven’t heard that ever, have you?
And that’s all right.  What interests me more
is that for seventeen years, more or less
you haven’t gone to bed before midnight
seventeen times.  And you are on your feet
by five each morning.  We love abnegation
my Son and I, when it forgets itself.
You say Mass well – but still you do not ask
nearly enough.  Ask for much more.”  Her eyes
looked straight at him, looked through him and beyond
to lands where no cross stood.  Her gaze returned


and rested on his surplice – “Now that lace ...”
She touched it.  “Imitation, as I thought.”
That did not bother him; somehow he felt
comforted.  He knew she was not fussy,
she liked things well done, that was all.  The chancel
should have been washed a month ago at least
and he would do it if Germaine did not.


“Listen,” her hands were lifted, “I give always,
my Son and I, we are not hard to please.
Leave all to me.  The people must do penance
or war will come again.  There must be order.
Marriage must be inviolate.”  She wept.
Yet soon she said: “My child, if God in anger
should smash the world to pieces, I would gather
the fragments up and take them back to Him.
Do you know that?”  Her eyes blazed love and pity
                                                           
                                                                   *  *  *
Later a sculptress made a statue of her;
the head was bowed “to be more mystical.”
“My dear,” said Père Lamy, “you have it wrong.
She is not mystical at all.  She looks you
straight in the eye ... 


The old curé is dead now.
Those who receive help through his intercession[1]
are earnestly entreated to inform
Monsieur le Curé de Saint Lucien.

Sister M Jeremy OP
America.   19 October 1946




[1] Sister Jeremy here suggests that Père Lamy, having lived a saintly, exemplary life, may be raised to sainthood, provided proof can be given that through his intercession spiritual and material blessings have been obtained from God.

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