Some years ago I was in a bookstore in Rome looking for books in English. This was before my Italian was perfected (which it still isn’t) and I wanted to make sure I had something to read which would not force me to use hours of concentration and a dictionary. But it seemed the more I searched the farther I got from finding anything at all. There were books in Italian, French, Spanish, and –for some reason known only to the Powers that Be — Hindi (or something that might as well be Hindi). No English. All this time the owner of the store, a smiling German lady, looked over at me from the cash register and beamed helpfully.
There is something in me that hates to ask for anything. Maybe it’s culture, maybe it’s shyness — in this case more probably my dislike of stuttering out a question in bad Italian. All the time I was looking for English books, I could sense that the owner of the shop was watching me, giving me time to ask for help, letting me browse to my heart’s content until I wanted to turn to her for assistance. Finally I bit the bullet and did it. “English?” she replied in beaming Italian. “We have a whole shelf of English up there,” and she pointed to the top shelf which I had not been able to see. Then she went and got a ladder and placed it against the shelves. “Let me get them down for you!” she said. Before I knew it, the owner had carried down all the books in English and laid them on the floor for me to look over at my leisure. Not only had she answered my question, but she had gone above and beyond to help me find what I was seeking.
Isn’t God like that German lady? “Ask and you shall receive — give and it shall be given you, packed down and overflowing — what Father among you would give his son a stone if he asked for bread, or a snake if he asked for fish?” We look, we seek feverishly, while God beams over at us from the cash register. Once we humble ourselves and learn to ask of him, he lays himself out for us to receive him. As C.S Lewis said: “Prayer doesn’t change God — it changes me.”
As advent draws to its climax — the candles gradually being lit around the wreath at church, the snow flurries that remind us we are getting deeper into December — there comes to mind the words of the New England poet, Emily Dickenson:
“Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches on the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all . . .”
If there is one word that characterizes the advent season, it is hope. The more we wait, the more hope build up inside us like the gentle tune of the little bird in Dickenson’s poem. Many things might try to drown that voice out. Our own doubts and fears, our uncertainties and problems, even our comforts and our successes can tempt us to forget or ignore the small voice of hope which God places in our hearts. Yet, still, three weeks into Advent, it sings on:
“And sweetest in the gale is heard,
And sore must be the storm
That could upset this little bird
That kept so many warm.”
Hope, like the flame on an Advent candle, warms us from the secret chambers where God dwells. A tiny spark that spreads into every corner of our lives — that is hope. A gift from the Most High which can be given to all we meet — that is hope. A challenge to live every day to its fullest — a promise of grace in our most trying moments — a source of strength to the most weary, the most discouraged, the most abandoned — this is hope. And it IS a gift, like Faith and Love. It is given and never demands anything but acceptance from us:
“I’ve heard it on the farthest shore
And on the strangest sea —
But never — in extremity —
It asked a crumb — from me.”
This gift of quiet inner strength and of the warmth of God’s grace is Jesus’ gift to us this Christmas. It will not ask a crumb from us. Only gratitude. And we who live on the farthest shores and on the strangest seas . . . will we hear the tune? Will hope sing for us? For it is the secret joy hidden in every Christmas carol. Be ready — awake — the Lord is near!
My mom had this little saying on the keychain of her van keys. I don’t know how many times we kids read it, as we rode in the front seat on our way to school or the dentist or to church. It was a quiet, simple message. Maybe we didn’t give it much thought then, but the sincerity and the simplicity of it strikes me now. Do we believe in miracles? And, more importantly, do we depend on them? Miracles, after all, seem to show up everywhere in the Catholic world. I remember coming across this enormous book titled Miracles in the Lives of the Saints, which was something like fifty-seven chapters about all kinds of saints experiencing all kinds of strange and wonderful occurrences. Visions, healings, and levitation were just a few. A few odd ones, like talking to animals (St. Francis, naturally) and bilocation (being in two places at once – something parents have perfected) have made me think that being a Catholic saint must be pretty exciting. I mean, don’t we have St. Anthony working overtime finding lost objects? Saints and miracles appear to go hand in hand. But are miracles really such a central part of being Christian, of following Jesus? Sometimes I think we can fall into two camps: either we don’t believe in miracles at all, or we try to look for them everywhere and make them the whole point of our faith. We can be incredulous or over-credulous. Jesus steers clear of either extreme in the Gospels. On the one hand, he not only believes in miracles, but he performs many – healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, and ultimately rising from the dead. On the other hand, he cautions his disciples about seeking after signs, and avoids the crowds who want to make him king simply because he multiplied the loaves and fishes. Jesus teaches us to seek God. Sometimes God does reveal himself in the miraculous, it’s true. So much more often, though, he comes to us in the quiet, in the ordinary, in the messy muddiness of our daily routine, and maybe those are the truly miraculous occasions. Can we depend on God to be there, too?
It’s good for the sun to be out. Aside from the banal reason that things tend to freeze over and die without the sun, it’s just good to have that boundless ball of energy alive in the sky. Life pours from the sun like water from a hydrant. It is the original source of blessing — the bright and blazing sign that earth receives all good things as a gift. Every society has honored the sun, given it a name, recognized the divine blessing it signifies.
The Egyptians worshiped the sun god Ra, bearer of life; the Greeks honored Apollo, driver of the sun’s golden chariot and giver of wisdom and culture; St. Francis praised Sir Brother Sun who was the image of the Most High. I’m not ancient Egyptian, but I am definitely Franciscan. To me, a bright sun in a clear sky witnesses the benevolence of God: “He who lets his sun shine on the good and the wicked . . .”
The sun was out for my Solemn Profession of vows. When I left the parking lot of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Derry, the sky was an ominous grey, but as my car neared Boston the yellow rays pushed persistently through. By the time we gathered in Waltham for the ceremony the good old orb was blazing away, doing its thing, cradling us and everything else in its life-giving fingers from ninety-three thousand miles away. A sign of blessings on a day of blessings. It’s easy to imagine Francis of Assisi basking in the warmth of such a sun and praising the Lord for all His good gifts, all His blessings — especially the blessing of the gift of faith.
That image of Francis strikes me strongly as I think on my Profession day. It was, again, a day of blessings: beautiful sun, music (three choirs! gosh.), surrounded by family and friends and friars. There were nieces and nephews two-by-two, and a Noah’s ark of brown-robed Franciscans. And as we all celebrated this special moment, I thought back to the words of a friar from the day before: “Remember this is not just your day — it is our day. We all participate in this.” How true that is! We all participate in whatever good which comes from each other’s life. God’s sun pours out its gifts to all. And what greater gift than faith to believe in the One who loves so indiscriminately, so vastly, so generously?
A Solemn Profession is more than a profession of vows. It is a profession of faith — and not by one person only, but by the whole community. We believe in
the Good God who gives us all that we have: life, family, friends, and all the rest of it. We believe that this God continues to bless us. We believe that He calls each of us forth, to belong to one another, and to bind ourselves to one another and to Him.
“Praise be You, My Lord, for all Your creatures, especially my Lord Sir Brother Sun, Who is the day through whom you give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor. Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.”
August? What about May? June? July? What about Summer?
That’s a lot of time to account for — four months of the year, one third of the circling of the earth around the sun. Surely the world goes round as it always does; the spinning laws which somehow hold us suspended in space, moving thousands of miles an hour, continue in their solemn rhythm. But we? We pinpricks of blood and flesh, scurrying to and fro on our errands of daily living — what are four months to us? Do we move with as much regularity as the globe on which we walk?
Of course not. The world turns — we run amok.
Maybe it’s not fair to compare the eternal motion of the planets to the smaller goings-on of beings who occupy just one corner of the universe. Some say the cosmos is a great dance. Well, the cosmos has had 14 billion years to learn the steps. Earth itself has been around for 4 and a half billion years. But human beings only appeared as homo sapiens in Africa around 200,000 years ago — a mere half note in the great symphony of creation. No wonder we sometimes stumble trying to keep in pace with the Maker’s melody. And no wonder our lives our rife with change and transition.
I realized this when I spent an hour and a half with my two nieces coming back from the beach. It was a van ride filled with deep uncertainty. Only a four-year old and a two year old can keep you guessing from moment to moment just what might be coming round the next bend. They are both golden-haired, innocent-looking angels, but as unpredictably wild as a Sahara sandstorm.
“Uncle Joe, look at me!”
“I’ve got my toe in my ear!”
“Get the coloring book!”
“Get the granola bars!”
“Tell me a story!”
“Make funny faces!”
“Now sing a song — another one!”
It was like sitting between a lottery ticket and Schrodinger’s cat. You never knew what was going to come up. It filled me with the whole crazy changing spirit of summer.
No season has more changing faces than summer, after all. Not only do we take a break from our work, our school, our usual yearly tasks in order to focus at least for a few weeks on travel, recreation or just plan relaxation; but also the day of summer themselves prove to be shifty characters. Some days are blazing sun. Others, wind and rain. Still more carry new allergies and new breeds of insects to plague us.
As our friend Shakespeare said about Summer’s shiftiness:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d
And we can only say, True dat.
My own experience of the transience of these past months, of the changes that take place, remind me that Jesus spoke about the unpredictable quality of reality. “Not even the Son knows the day nor the hour, but only the Father in heaven knows,” he said one time about the final fulfillment of God’s plan. Yet Jesus goes on to assure us: “Why worry about tomorrow? Tomorrow will take care of itself. Your Heavenly Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.”
In a universe that glides between stability and chaos, random happenstance and miraculous providence, the words of Christ give more than assurance to us. They give us the grace to live the unpredictable Now of existence, in the courage of the sons and daughters of God.
Summer or not, here we come. In Christ’s name. Amen.
Lent and Easter have left their share of impressive imagery, as they always do. Bare churches and mournful hymns now give way to lilies and gold-white vestments and thundering Alleluias. The wet March weather, with its cold mornings and overcast skies, has gone lamb-like away to make room for sunny April. The Easter vacation load of tourists and pilgrimage groups throng the streets and buses. Under the creak and strain of new life, Rome stretches itself luxuriously towards summer.
That is the first impression one gets this time of year — bright skies, a quickening pulse, new hope and optimism. Winter and the whole troublesome past seem merely a waiting period, not very pleasant but necessary, which has now been replaced by better things. It’s the natural Easter high. Or as Shakespeare (I think) said: “Spring-time, the only pretty ring-time, birds sing, ey ding, a ding a ding, sweet lovers love the Spring!” Unless that was Willy Wonka.
Looking deeper, though, there are monster shadows lurking under this apparent calm. In Italy we have the government crisis filling the daily papers, deadlocked politicians unable or unwilling to come to a consensus. People worry about the economy, unemployment, and the sticky issues getting only stickier each day. Elsewhere, Syrian civilians continue to suffer and die in the cross-fire of revolution. Tensions in Asia skyrocket beneath the threats of North Korea. The Arab Spring struggles to overcome the replacement of one dictatorship with another. Throughout the world, the Good News of Easter lies buried under more and more distressing, shocking, and just plain bad news.
As Christians, believing in the Risen Christ sometimes seems only a part of that Easter high when Lent’s finally over and the sun’s shining overhead. But once we’re caught yet again in the turmoil and distress of our daily lives, and of the larger global life on Planet Earth, any Resurrection News can risk sounding like an animated fairy-tale movie: a nice escape, but not helpful to the larger scheme of things. That’s the challenge we take on when we decide to believe, and continue to believe, in Jesus Christ — how do we live the Resurrection in the here and now? How does the Crucified and Risen Christ appear to us, as He did to Thomas, so we might put our fingers in His wounds, hear His voice, and say, “My Lord and God!”?
The newly-elected Pope Francis has offered his own reflections on following the Lord of the Paschal Mystery. In his homily for the Chrism Mass, the Bishop of Rome exhorted his fellow priests to “live in the odor of the sheep” — to be close to the flock entrusted to their care, and of which they too are members under the One Good Shepherd. For the Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Francis celebrated at a local penitentiary, emphasizing the need for Christians to “move out to the peripheries” of society, as Jesus of Nazareth did. And in his Angelus addresses the pope speaks with the simplicity of ordinary people who believe, of ordinary virtues always possible and always applicable, and of the power of grace to transform our lives at any instant and in any circumstance.
Living the Easter high can help us refreshen our views on life, oil our squeaky wheels, pump new air into our deflated souls. Without the presence of the Risen One in the challenging moments, however, we will not be able to keep it up for very long. Jesus Christ is more than a nice animated movie plot — He is the very promise of grace waiting to meet us at every turn, even a turn for the worst. Pope Francis reminds us of the eternal relevance of the Gospel message: Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again! Let this message give us courage. It will not always be Spring-time (the only pretty ring-time), but it will always be Resurrection Sunday.
The night Pope Francis was elected, I was standing in St. Peter’s square, holding an umbrella against the rain and gazing at the little chimney on the Vatican roof. It was a chimney you would expect to find on a diner or a woodsman’s shack — a simple metal tube hardly visible in the shadow of the dome — and yet it was the most interesting object in the square that night.
We had come at around 6:45 in the evening. My two maltese co-friars were carrying an enormous Maltese flag each. To carry a flag and an umbrella into a square jammed full of flags and umbrellas was no easy thing; but somehow I found myself not too far from the front of the Basilica, shoulder-to-shoulder with Italians on my left and a Canadian family on my right. Everyone was chatting, speculating if there would be a new pope that night, taking pictures of the chimney, trying to stay dry.
Now it was 7:05 or so. And suddenly, a delighted roar went up from the crowd: plumes of white smoke billowing from the diner chimney, which seemed smug that it could provoke such a scene. Umbrellas went down; phones and cameras went up. The people surged forward, eager to catch a glimpse of the new Bishop of Rome.
We caught no glimpses for a good hour. Instead of the chimney, all eyes were on the balcony, those huge glass doors draped in red curtains, destined to release not white smoke but the man in white. It was a long wait. Fortunately the rain had stopped, allowing more phones and cameras to glitter and flash in the dark.
After a while the distant melody of a march rose above the general murmuring. The drums and cymbals grew louder, horns blared, and the Swiss guard marched out from somewhere — bright-orange striped uniforms and shiny helmets rose into view as they climbed the steps to the facade and stood to one side beneath the balcony. We all cheered till we were tired. Then we waited some more.
Another endless interval . . . and another marching band was heard, this time the Roman police, who came up the Basilica steps banging out the Italian national anthem while the Italians in the crowd sang along, and the red and blue uniforms paraded around and finally stood at attention on the other side of the facade under the balcony and we all cheered till we were tired. By now it was almost 8:00.
“He has to come out some time,” I said to the Canadian on my right.
“I hope so,” he said as his camera flashed in the dark. “We all got in this morning and have been waiting all day, and we don’t even know where we’re going to sleep tonight. But this is too good a chance to miss.”
After he said that, waiting for an hour didn’t seem like such a bad thing, after all. And it was pretty thrilling to feel the expectation of that mass of people
from every corner of the globe, all participating in this colorful pageant which is a papal election, all of us spectators of a historical moment. It was just a little nerve-wracking to watch those balcony doors, knowing they could open at any moment, and the doors staring back at you, immobile as any Swiss guard.
The light switched on. Someone moved in the room beyond the balcony. We all cheered until we were tired.
Ten minutes went by.
The balcony doors opened!
Furious uproar from the crowd.
A few men came out, set up a microphone, threw down a tapestry, loosened the drapes like curtains in front of the doors, and went back inside.
Ten minutes went by.
“I hope this isn’t just stalling for time while they try to find out where the new pope went,” I said to the Canadian, who laughed at my lack of faith.
And then —
The red curtains trembled. Two surplices came out, followed by a cardinal, and then the pope was standing at the balcony.
Furious uproar, phones and cameras glittered in the night, we all cheered until we were tired. Then we were silent, and waited.
Pope Francis leaned into the microphone.
“Buona sera,” he said. And indeed it was.
They say that houses take on the personality of their inhabitants. A clean, trim person might have a clean, trim little two-storey with a manicured lawn, while those wild artistic types will be the ones with the mosaic brick chimney and the abstract sculpture of Nirvana by the mailbox. I suppose this idea is true, for two reasons: people always make minor changes to what they own which reflect their personal tastes; but maybe the real reason in that the more we know a person, the more we associate that person with his surroundings, until everything he owns seems somehow perfectly suited to him. Names, for example. My siblings’ names seem to match their personalities exactly, and I can’t imagine changing Mike’s name to Jim any more than changing a zebra’s stripes for spots.
This all turned in my mind as I walked past St. Peter’s Basilica the other day. I don’t know if the people in Rome look on the central church of the catholic world and feel the force of those who live inside it and around it. When Pope John XXIII lived there, did the Romans see the People’s Pope in the big, stocky dome and the two arms of the collonades reaching to embrace the world? Did they imagine Pope Paul VI’s searching intelligence and humanism in the perfect geometry of the facade? And did the people of Rome look at the gigantic power of that mass of marble and see Pope John Paul II striding across the world, boundless in energy and enthusiasm for the Gospel?
As I stood back to look at the Basilica, the presence of Pope Benedict XVI suddenly came to life, suggested by the curve and sweep of architecture. I could see the brilliant theologian in the domed head reaching towards the heavens. I sensed the patient teacher in the statues of the saints atop of the collonades, each one explaining in their very selves the mystery of God’s love. And I could feel the humble servant of the Lord’s vineyard in the wide and welcoming piazza, the cobblestones ready to support the tons of pilgrims who make their way here each year.
These days, as Pope Benedict prepares to relinquish the Petrine Ministry, the Basilica seems quiet, thoughtful, pensive. I do not need to reflect on the support and gratitude which has been offered to the Pope during these past weeks. I can only offer my own, and look out the window at St. Peter’s which, even though sunk in thought, still has hope written in the uplifted dome, looking up to the stars from whence shall come our help.
Alessia left her apartment at eight-thirty Monday morning as her street woke slowly to the sunrise. It was December: a cold and dry December. Up and down the sidewalk a few straggling school children hurried towards some distant bus stop, and mothers and fathers kissed each other goodbye and left in their separate cars. All over Rome the sun pushed out from its heavy comforter of clouds and splashed awakening onto the buildings. A good morning to go away forever, thought Alessia.
She went down the stairs, across the street where the bakeries and telephone service shops had just pulled up their iron curtains, and stood at the stop under the old train bridge; the young woman pulled her furry coat more tightly around her and lit a cigarette. Next to her, two high school girls in puffy coats and jeans peeked enviously at Alessia. She wished they wouldn’t – she was tall and beautiful, yes, and also ruined. What good was glamour in the face of ruin?
The bus came and the two high-schoolers and the glamorously ruined woman got on. Alessia slid into a seat in the rear, while the girls stood in the center by the window, chatting happily. She should be the one filled with envy, Alessia thought, and looked out the window at the traffic and the dull colors of the buildings which here and there caught the sun’s brightness.
The world was a slow ember being breathed to life. Caught in the middle of dawn and day, the river reflected silvery phantoms of the trees as they passed over it, until all reflections were obscured in the insistent glow. Cold – shining cold, the frost-death of distant planets, bathed in a light that could reveal but not warm the world.
Alessia shivered. She pulled out her phone and checked for messages. Eight-ten, from her company – it had arrived when she had been in the shower. She listened.
‘’Signora Ferale, buon giorno, this is Signor Ellenucci from the corporation – we’ve had a very bad gas leak early this morning and I am calling all employees to tell you not to come to work today, we will be trying to fix things up here and we hope to have everything cleared by tomorrow. Grazie.’’
Not even listening to the lovely recorded woman asking if she wished to save or delete the message, Alessia let her hands fall limply onto her lap, almost letting the phone slip away. The bus heaved a sigh and stopped; the doors opened and the two happy high-schoolers got off, leaving a silence in their place. And with a grunt the bus heaved once again ahead.
‘’I am calling all employees to tell you not to come to work today . . .”
So, Alessia thought, and smiled suddenly. So that was it – that was fate giving her one last day to herself.
She got off at the next stop and watched the bus wheeze away to a future that no longer concerned her. The city stretched away on all sides: this wide main street flanked with shops; the narrow alleyways running into hidden neighborhoods of ivy and arches; the churches with their domed reverence; the ruins and the proud palaces and the cypress trees growing among the excavations.
What should she do? She would have breakfast, slow and leisurely, at a small table in a small cafѐ, a warm place free of the December frost. Among all of the bistros and bars on that wide main street, she would choose one to be the beginning of her last day to herself. The cafѐ she chose was across the street and almost at the end – Il Moniuro, a gleaming black bar and tables underneath the friendly lamps.
Breakfast? An espresso, and a sweet bun. Ecco, signora – grazie.
The little table in the corner gave a sweeping view to the street. Alessia sipped the bitter draught and munched on the bun as she watched her former world outside. She already felt separated from it, as if she had stepped into a different universe and was observing the movements of flesh and metal through some rift between dimensions. A woman went by on a bicycle. Alessia watched her until the edge of the window cut off the view; then she took another bite of bun and another hot spurt of espresso. It was comfortable and warm and safe in Il Moniuro. She took out a novel from her purse and began to read.
Time tiptoed by.
Twice the door of the cafѐ jingled open, twice coffees were ordered, drunk and paid for. Twice the cash register burbled its gratitude and twice the unseen customer clicked the door shut. Alessia sat absorbed in her book.
It wasn’t a bad story – she had gotten a lot of comfort out of it especially these past few difficult days, and she hoped to finish the novel today, the last of the days to herself. It was about an African electrician fleeing from the horrors of Darfur who comes to Italy and tries every way possible to construct a radio contact with his family in Sudan; he avoids pesky Italian immigration officers and ends up meeting a brilliant young engineering student and together they seek to build the difficult radio transmission which will help the electrician save his family from the janjaweed. Radioing Darfur, it was called.
Some of the plot was improbable, Alessia couldn’t help but feel, but then again what plot isn’t?
The espresso was a dark smudge at the bottom of the cup, the bun a collection of crumbs.
Turning to the last chapter, Alessia read for another twenty minutes, and when the African electrician had finally contacted his family with the elaborate radio designed by the brilliant Italian engineering student, and all was well and the story was over, she pushed away from the table with a contented sigh and went out.
Where to, next?
The street took her past one of the narrow alleyways. She turned into it, a mere crack in the city’s marble, and wandered among the shadows – shadows crisscrossing the low doorways, covering the shuttered windows and falling headfirst onto the cobblestones in sprawled shapes.
Through a high archway Alessia came to a piazza nestled far away from the ordinary traffic. Light brown walls, some thick with ivy, surrounded her. On her right a church peeped from its venerable repose and went back to sleep. Pigeons picked at the ground. Everything seemed tied up in its own little package of a world.
The only other person was an elderly man opening his carpentry shop on the opposite side.
For some reason Alessia wanted to go over and talk to him, tell him about the message from her work, about her breakfast at Il Muliero and the espresso and Radioing Darfur with its improbable plot, and her stroll down the alley – tell him about her last day to herself. Someone ought to know. She crossed the piazza, scattering the pigeons as she approached the carpentry shop.
He was just finishing fixing the awning over the doorway. The faded white and green striped canopy clung insecurely to the metal poles which the elderly carpenter eased into the grooves beside the door. Then he shoved his hands in his blue apron and went inside. Alessia followed. The shop was dim and dusty with old and new wood; a workbench along the back held tools, a broken picture frame, a muted radio and a few empty wine bottles. He went to the bench and began to fiddle with the frame.
‘’Scusi,’’ said Alessia.
‘’Eh?’’ He turned around. ‘’Oh, buon giorno, signora. How can I help you?’’
‘’I just wanted –‘’ Alessia hesitated, then plunged in, ‘’I just wanted to say good morning, and I think you have a very beautiful carpentry shop, and you are the last person I am going to talk to in my life. I am – this is my last day, my last day to myself, and I just wanted to say hello.’’
‘’I see,’’ the elderly man regarded her for a moment, hands deep in his blue apron pockets.
‘’Well!’’ he said, ‘’won’t you have some wine on your last day? I have a bottle of Chianti, not very old perhaps, but something to keep the chill out. Just close the door and I will give you a glass!’’
‘’Oh, no, really, I –‘’
‘’Oh please, please! Here you are! Nice when you have company, eh? Ha ha!’’ He poured out the wine into a perfectly clean glass and, giving it to Alessia, he continued to chuckle as he poured a glass for himself. Alessia wondered if he drank even if he didn’t have company.
‘’Sit, sit, please!’’ He waved her into a chair and himself leaned back on the bench. She smiled and sipped the Chianti, which was fruity and rich and tingled every crevice in her mouth. Her host watched her, his wrinkled face tinged with a faint grin, his white hair dusty with the dust of a lifetime.
‘’So, this is your last day, eh? A beautiful day, although just a little cold. What do you think? I was just thinking, you know, that it was a cold morning, and it would be nice to have someone to drink a glass of wine with – you know I don’t drink very much myself, only a glass now and then, but I like to drink with somebody, you know. And here you are! It’s a very pleasant thing to have a glass of wine with someone, especially a beautiful young woman, if you don’t mind the compliment, signora.’’
Alessia didn’t mind, but she was certain now that the old carpenter drank constantly.
‘’Well! Why don’t you tell me about yourself, signora – do you live in Rome?’’
She nodded and finished the Chianti, and he instantly poured her a fresh glass.
‘’Si,’’ she replied, ‘’in Rome, on Via Gregorio Settimo near the Vatican. I have an apartment.’’
‘’I have a son who lives on that street,’’ said the old carpenter.
‘’Oh!’’ Alessia said with polite interest.
‘’He’s an engineer, just received his first job with Italian Radio as a set designer.’’
‘’Yes, well, he’s very lucky – not everyone can get a good first job like that!’’
‘’You know, signora, you’re absolutely right. My other children – I have four, you know – they have struggled a little to find something, but my Alberto has always been a brilliant boy, and he is always ready to help others. I don’t want to brag, Signora, but my Alberto is something of a famous man. Do you know he built a radio set that connected with some little African country? I don’t remember the name, but my son he met an African here in Rome, an immigrant who was an electrician or something, and my Alberto helped the man build this radio and contact his family. It was a famous case three years ago – I heard they wrote a book about it, but my Alberto is too modest, they did not use his name. Now, don’t you find that interesting, Signora?’’
Alessia was utterly stupefied.
‘’Some more wine,’’ said the carpenter, ‘’and tell me about yourself, I talk too much.’’
‘’Um, no, grazie, I – I better be going,’’ said Alessia, and she set the half-full glass on the bench.
‘’Please, please! At least finish your wine! It’s too good to waste on your last day, signora.’’
‘’You are very kind, but I really have to go.’’
‘’All right, then, listen! My son, Alberto, he is a very good man, very nice man. I have his business cards with me, he always wants to promote his business, I cannot blame him, everyone does that. Please take one, it has his work address and his number. Pay him a visit! Tell him his father Salvatore sent you to say hello. He is a very good man – he will listen to your story, signora. You will, you will, promise me!’’
He pressed the card into her hand.
‘’All right, I will,’’ Alessia said, still under the spell of circumstance, and she left the shop.
‘’Have a good day!’’ he cried after her.
Alessia didn’t hear him. The old man sighed, drank the rest of his Chiati, saw Alessia’s half-full glass, shrugged, and finished off the dark wine in a single pass. He stared at the stained glass for a few seconds as if saying to it, Odd what kind of people you meet sometimes. He put the glass down and returned to his broken picture frame.
She was half-way across the little square before Alessia realized that she was clutching the business card in one hand. She read it, three or four times, and then stood and laughed at the December morning, and walked boldly into the winding alleyways of her own improbable plot.
As the holiday spirit builds to a crescendo in Rome, it seems that we have skipped the last few days of Advent and entered directly into Christmas. Enormous evergreens tower in the piazzas near the Colosseum and St. Peter’s Basilica, their glittery globes reflecting the red, white and green lights strung across neighboring buildings. People greet one another with “Buon Natale!” in the streets. The big Christmas movie is displayed on billboards all over the city, with a tough-looking Santa Clause squinting at the passersby, the words “Naughty” and “Nice” tattooed on his crossed arms. In St. Peter’s square the Nativity set is still covered up waiting to be revealed on Christmas eve; maybe the only visible sign that Advent isn’t quite over yet. That, and the gift-shopping. Hordes of people inspired by last-minute panic.
Who waits until the last minute to buy gifts anyway? Really. What kind of . . .
All right, I admit I am a last-minute gift giver. But it’s not my fault — it’s the season. Advent is supposed to teach us to wait. And I do wait, all the way until the last nanoseconds of Christmas Eve (sometimes) before dashing into the streets and dodging Fiats and Vespas in search of that perfect, and probably sold-out, present. If it weren’t for the soothing prayers urging silence and watchfulness, or the patient marking off each week with a candle, I could have the thing bought, wrapped, and tree-ed by St. Nicholas Day. Plus, Christmas is supposed to be twelve days long. So what’s wrong with giving the gift on the third day, or the eleventh day? My thoughts exactly.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you’re the one getting the present) I can’t get away with arguing like that. Not just about the gift-giving, either. Despite the hang-ups, there is something about waiting an entire month for a single day which adds a mystical flair to the whole business. No matter how we look forward to Christmas — whether as a family get-together, or a chance to get gifts, or as a spiritual reality — all of us willingly put off the special moment for twenty-four days.
And it really is only a moment. Our families gather for a morning and an evening, gifts are exchanged, Mass celebrated, and the Christ-child is laid reverently in the manger scene. The magic hour comes and passes almost before we are aware it is upon us. Suddenly we are saying our good-bye’s — putting our gifts on shelves or in drawers — and looking around at a world in which God has been made human, although it is hard to see exactly how. We had waited so expectantly, ready to seize onto the sacred reality once it appeared. Instead, the holy joy comes stealthily and leaves stealthily, and we are touched for instant, and our lives become a patient waiting once again.
Our God is elusive. But He does come. We have seen His shadow in the doorway, His gleaming eyes in the candle-flame, His breath scattering the snow in the darkened fields. If Advent teaches us to wait, it also teaches us to hope, hope with patience, because the best things in life cannot be grasped — only welcomed when they do, unexpectedly, arrive.
The Blue Wilderness 