Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi, The by Eloi Leclerc

Author:Eloi Leclerc
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Hope Publishing House
Published: 2009-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

8

If We Know How to Adore

Easter was celebrated with joy at the hermitage. Brother Rufino had once more found the way back to the community and they saw him wreathed in smiles as never before. He was constantly searching for some way to render service. In the morning it was now he who was the first down at the spring to draw the water supply for the day. He would help in the kitchen and at sundry other tasks. He even offered himself for the round of collections and that was truly unusual for him. He seemed to be a person transformed and because of it, the atmosphere of the small community was overflowing with happiness.

On Easter Wednesday, Brother Rufino drew Francis aside and began to pour out his heart to him. “I have come to see you, Father, as I promised. I am just getting over a very bad period, but even now things are so much better. I realize now that I almost lost the meaning of my vocation.”

“Tell me, then, what has happened,” Francis urged.

Rufino was silent for an instant. He sighed like someone who has too many things to say and does not know where to begin. The two brothers were walking quietly under the pines not far from the hermitage. They moved without a sound on a thick carpet of dry needles. It was a mild day and the odor of balsam floated on the air.

“Let us sit here,” said Francis. “It will be easier to talk.”

They sat down on the ground and then Rufino began to tell his story. “When I came to ask you to admit me to your group of friars about twelve years ago, I was prompted by a desire to live according to the Holy Gospel in the way I saw you practice it. I was then very sincere and I wished truly to follow the Gospel. My first years in the brotherhood passed without too much difficulty. I applied myself with zeal to all that this new life seemed to require of me.

“But in the depths of my being, without knowing it, I was motivated by a spirit that was far from evangelical. You know the environment in which I grew up. I was of a noble family. By my sensitivity, by my education and by all the vibrant fibers of my being, I belonged to this noble society. I felt and judged according to its standards and the values ordinarily honored there. In coming to you and adopting your mode of life, so extremely humble and poor, I thought I had renounced those values for all time. I really thought I had lost myself to the Lord.

“It was true, but only on the surface. I had indeed changed my way of life and my occupation and for me it was a great change. But deep within myself, without realizing it, I was reserving a large part of my soul─the more important part. I retained my former state of mind, the product of my former environment.

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