Carmen Ariza Part 51

The Christ prayed that there might be one fold and one shepherd.

It is for us this month to pray for the great day when they will be accomplished. But we must be united over the interests of the Sacred Heart. Therefore, liberal plenary indulgences will be granted to those of the faithful who contribute to this glorious cause, so dear to the heart of the blessed Saviour. We enclose leaflets indicating the three degrees, consisting of the Morning Offering, Our Father and ten Hail Marys daily, for the Pope and his interests, and the degree of reparation, by which a plenary indulgence may be gained.

"Stimulate your parishioners to compete joyfully for the statue of the Blessed Virgin, which we mentioned to you in our former communication. Teach them, especially, their entire dependence on Mary, on her prayers to G.o.d for their deliverance and welfare.

Reveal to them her singularly powerful influence in the shaping of all great historical events of the world; how never has she refused our prayers to exert her mighty influence with her all-potent Son, when she has been appealed to in sincerity, for it rejoices the Sacred Heart of Jesus to yield to the requests of His Blessed Mother. Mary is omnipotent, for she can ask no favor of her Son that He will not grant. Compet.i.tion for possession of this sacred image, which carries the potent blessing of His Holiness, should be regarded a privilege, and you will so impress it upon the minds of your parishioners.

"Finally, His Grace requests that you will immediately procure whatever information you may regarding the mineral resources of the district of Guamoco, and indicate upon a sketch the location of its various mines, old or new, as known to its inhabitants.

Diligent and careful inquiry made by yourself among the people of the district will reveal many hidden facts regarding its resources, which should be made known to His Grace at the earliest possible moment, in view of the active preparations now in progress to forestall the precipitation of another political uprising with its consequent strain upon our Holy Church."

"Money! money! money!" cried Jose. "One would think the Christ had established his Church solely for gold!"

He folded the letter and looked out through the rear door to where Carmen sat, teaching Cuc.u.mbra a new trick. He realized then that never before had he been so far from the Holy Catholic faith as at that moment. And Carmen--

"Good G.o.d!" he muttered, as his eyes rested upon the child. "If the Church should get possession of Carmen, what would it do with her?

Would it not set its forces to work to teach her that evil is a reality--that it is as powerful as good--that G.o.d formed man and the universe out of dust--that Jesus came down from a starry heaven that he might die to appease the wrath of a man-like Father--that Mary pleads with the Lord and Jesus, and by her powerful logic induces them to spare mankind and grant their foolish desires--all the dribble and rubbish of outlandish theology that has acc.u.mulated around the nucleus of pure Christianity like a gathering s...o...b..ll throughout the ages! To make the great States up north dominantly Catholic, Rome must--simply _must_--have the children to educate, that she may saturate their absorbent minds with these puerile, undemonstrable, pagan beliefs before the child has developed its own independent thought. How wise is she--G.o.d, how worldly wise and cunning! And I still her priest--"

Carmen came bounding in, followed pellmell by Cuc.u.mbra. Cantar-las-horas stalked dignifiedly after her, and stopped at the threshold, where he stood with c.o.c.ked head and blinking eyes, wondering what move his animated young mistress would make next.

"Padre!" she exclaimed, "the sun is down, and it is time for our walk!"

She seized his hand and drew him out into the road. The play of her expression as she looked up and laughed into his face was like the dance of sunbeams on moving water. They turned down the narrow street which led to the lake. As was her wont, in every object about her, in every trifling event, the child discovered rich treasures of happiness. The pebbles which she tossed with her bare toes were mines of delight. The pigs, which turned up their snouts expectantly as she stooped to scratch their dusty backs--the matronly hens that followed clucking after her--the black babies that toddled out to greet the _Cura_--all yielded a wealth of delight and interest. She seemed to Jose to uncover joy by a means not unlike the divining rod, which points to hidden gold where to the eye there is naught but barren ground.

Near the margin of the lake they stopped at the door of a cottage, where they were awaited by the matron who displayed a finger wrapped in a bit of cloth. She greeted the priest courteously.

"_Senor Padre_," she said, "this morning I had the misfortune to cut my finger while peeling yuccas, and I am not sure whether a piece of the skin went into the pot or not. _Bueno_, the yuccas are all cooked; and now my man says he will not eat them, for this is Friday, and there may be meat with the yuccas. What shall I do? Was it wicked to cook the yuccas, not knowing if a bit of the skin from my finger had fallen into the pot?"

Jose stood dumfounded before such ignorant credulity. Then he shook his head and replied sadly, "No, senora, it was not wicked. Tell your man he may eat the yuccas."

The woman's face brightened, and she hastened into the house to apprise her spouse of the _Cura's_ decision.

"G.o.d help us!" muttered Jose under his breath. "Two thousand years of Christianity, and still the world knows not what Jesus taught!"

"But you told me he had good thoughts, Padre dear," said the little voice at his side, as he walked slowly away with bended head. "And that is enough to know."

"Why do you say that, Carmen?" asked Jose, somewhat petulantly.

"Because, Padre, if he had good thoughts, he thought about G.o.d--didn't he? And if he thought about G.o.d, he always thought of something good.

And if we always think about good--well, isn't that enough?"

Jose's eyes struggled with hers. She almost invariably framed her replies with an interrogation, and, whether he would or not, he must perforce give answers which he knew in his heart were right, and yet which the sight of his eyes all too frequently denied.

"Padre, you are not thinking about G.o.d now--are you?"

"I am, indeed, child!" he answered abruptly.

"Well--perhaps you are thinking _about_ Him; but you are not thinking _with_ Him--are you?--the way He thinks. You know, He sends us His thoughts, and we have to pick them out from all the others that aren't His, and then think them. If the senora and her man had been thinking G.o.d's thoughts, they wouldn't have been afraid to eat a piece of meat on Friday--would they?"

Cuc.u.mbra, forgetting his many months of instruction, suddenly yielded to the goad of animal instinct and started along the beach in mad pursuit of a squealing pig. Carmen dashed after him. As Jose watched her lithe, active little body bobbing over the shales behind the flying animals, she seemed to him like an animated sunbeam sporting among the shadows.

"Why should life," he murmured aloud, "beginning in radiance, proceed in ever deepening gloom, and end at last in black night? Why, but for the false education in evil which is inflicted upon us! The joys, the unbounded bliss of childhood, do indeed gush from its innocence--its innocence of the blighting belief in mixed good and evil--innocence of the false beliefs, the undemonstrable opinions, the mad worldly ambitions, the carnal l.u.s.t, bloated pride, and black ignorance of men!

It all comes from not knowing G.o.d, to know whom is life eternal! The struggle and mad strife of man--what does it all amount to, when 'in the end he shall be a fool'? Do we in this latest of the centuries, with all our boasted progress in knowledge, really know so much, after all? Alas! we know nothing--nothing!"

"Come, Padre," cried Carmen, returning to him, "we are going to just try now to have all the nice thoughts we can. Let's just look all around us and see if we can't think good thoughts about everything.

And, do you know, Padre dear, I've tried it, and when I look at things and something tries to make me see if there could possibly be anything bad about them--why, I find there can't! Try it, and see for yourself."

Jose knew it. He knew that the minds of men are so profaned by constantly looking at evil that their thoughts are tinged with it. He was striving to look up. But in doing so he was combating a habit grown mighty by years of indulgence.

"When you always think good about a thing," the girl went on, "you never can tell what it will do. But good _always_ comes from it. I know. I do it all the time. If things look bad, I just say, 'Why look, here's something trying to tell me that two and two are seven!' And then it goes away."

"Your purity and goodness resist evil involuntarily, little one," said Jose, more to himself than to the child.

"Why, Padre, what big words!"

"No, little one, it is just the meaning of the words that is big," he replied.

The girl was silent for some moments. Then:

"Padre dear, I never thought of it before--but it is true: we don't see the meaning of words with the same eyes that we see trees and stones and people, do we?"

Jose studied the question. "I don't quite understand what you mean, _chiquita_," he was finally forced to answer.

"Well," she resumed, "the meaning of a word isn't something that we can pick up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there."

"No, Carmen, the meaning is spiritual--mental; it is not physically tangible. It is not seen with the fleshly eyes."

"The meaning of a word is the inside of it, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is the inside, the soul, of the word."

"And we don't see the word, either, do we?" She shook her brown curls in vigorous negation.

"No, little one, we see only written or printed symbols; or hear only sounds that convey to us the words. But the words themselves are mental. We do not see them."

"No, we think them." She meditated a while. "But, Padre dear," she continued, "the inside, or soul, of everything is mental. We never see it. We have to think it."

"Yes, you are right. The things we think we see are only symbols. They stand for the real things."

"Padre, they don't stand for anything!" she replied abruptly.

Jose looked down at her in surprise. He waited.

"Padre, the real things are the things we don't see. And the things we think we see are not real at all!"

Jose had ere this learned not to deny her rugged statements, but to study them for their inner meaning, which the child often found too deep for her limited vocabulary to express.

"The things we think we see," he said, though he was addressing his own thought, "are called the physical. The things we do not see or cognize with the physical senses are called mental, or spiritual.

Well?" he queried, looking down again into the serious little face.

"Padre, the very greatest things are those that we don't see at all!"