Religion is the secret of how to leave life without dying.
No, I have not expressed myself well. Perhaps it will be clearer to say that it is the secret of remaining in life, but on a higher plane, in a realm that is not [deleted] reached and therefore is not disturbed by the [vexations?], the struggles, the bitter and violent passions of the world. That is why many say, making use of images ancient beyond measure, that religion is a refuge, a fortress. What they mean is this: whoever possesses faith also possesses wings and can fly [deleted] from the anguish and adversity that surround him.
There is a bird which, when the storm draws near, sets off like a [?] the black cloud, spreads its wings, climbs toward the sky, emerges on the other side [deleted] and hovers above the hurricane in a place of calm and light. That is why I call it the Bird of [deleted]
Paradise. It is the same thing. Religion is a flight above the human storm, above the black cloud of the world.
The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and the shadows were beginning to rise from the graves of the earth.
His voice was as gentle as faith.
[deleted]
The sweetness of being able to find again something that had been lost. To know that it is still ours, still belongs to us.
And twelve beggars slept in peace upon their beds of stone, while the kings and emperors of the earth found no rest in their feather beds.
All my works bear the mark of haste and impatience, and therefore I shall hardly succeed in producing a true work of art, which is always the child of patience, perseverance, and calm. My haste comes from my surroundings, my impatience from my character.
The whole book was written in a single rush, impatiently, with a fever that left me exhausted like
Then I shut it in a [little book?] and kept it hidden, as in Italy all things were kept hidden
A maiden as beautiful as a red rose in a field of lilies.
—
But he was restless and unhappy because he knew the vice of dreaming, which of all vices is the most costly and the most fatal.
—
[Deleted: He died in his immaculate poverty,
They buried him naked in the naked Earth.
But beneath the rough and wretched grave a golden ray of sunlight remained entangled.
It is tomorrow’s sun.]
—
[Deleted: White as altar linen.]
—
But the snow had remained along the road to Voltri, as though some unfortunate miller had lost all his sacks of flour.
Toward dawn, when the white and gentle flocks came out of the warm sheepfolds.
—
The wind passed through the branches of the trees with the rustle of skirts.
—
The wind passed through the treetops with the murmur of a brook.
One of those poor peasants who never tilled the Earth except on feast days, because on all the other days they had to spit into their hands to get a better grip on the hoe.
—
He was troubled and lost, and sorrow followed him as a shadow follows the walking foot.
[Deleted: Autumn had come, and the countryside had
covered itself with a snowfall of leaves that fell scorched and twisted as though by fire.
—
From the shadows of nests hidden in the cracks of the old houses, the owls and legions watched the slow rising of the moon, and then began their
soft and delightful flight to meet the night.]
—
After Golgotha, La Verna was the second Calvary on Earth.
—
[deleted: The [?] shepherds who walk, solitary and melancholy, behind the white wave of the flocks.]
—
Meanwhile other men were arriving at the hermitage of the “penitents of Assisi,” and each dragged behind him a memory, a defeat, a disappointment, a sorrow.
No one can close his hand around the mist, just as no one can hold joy upon your lips. For everything in the world fades and flees.
—
The rising from the impassioned branches that seek the earth’s embrace.
—
Your soul wrapped in a veil of extinguished memories.
—
A mystical light spread all around: the air seemed holy, and the sky a velvet cloth strewn with tremulous, swaying lilies of gold.
—
Silence filled the hut as the flight of a bee fills the chalice of a flower.
The happy friars. The blessed [beggars?]
—
Thomas of Celano, who loves to play with words, says of her: “Admirabilis femina clara vocabulo et virtute”
—
He thought again of the little church of San Damiano when he first arrived there, of the leper, of the trial with his father, of the Sultan of Egypt, of La Verna, where he found his ecstasy and his martyrdom.
He began to commune with Nature; he entered into the life and the world of every creature. He spoke with the ants,
—
This book was written in Italy, in the summer of 1939, on a deserted beach near Rome.
In the Fascist calendar it was Year XVII; [deleted] in the hierarchy of
Caesar’s Madhouse, the director-general was mad.
For two years my life had been unhappy.
Having returned to Italy to rest and see my [deleted] again, I found myself locked up as though in a prison.
The secret police
opened my mail.
Only the things we understand persuade us; and only the things that persuade us please us—that is, become part of our lives.
The Pope may go on speaking Latin if it suits him and if it is indispensable to strict ecclesiastical protocol, but [deleted: the fact] the fact remains unalterable and incontrovertible that, had Hitler spoken Latin too, it would have confined him to the only place he deserved [deleted: where he would have found a fitting companion in misfortune]: the madhouse.
I have said that ours is [deleted] a pagan age, and this proves the deep pessimism that has stricken humanity. Even the Greeks [deleted] though they were proud creators of beauty—were sad because their Olympus, that is, the [?] of their spirit, was closed and circumscribed. And the Romans were sad, too, who
sought to drown their boredom and melancholy in orgies.
Religion alone is a source of optimism and joy for the human soul, because it gives comfort, courage, and hope. Whoever truly possesses it does not doubt, and whoever does not doubt is not sad, because he is strong and sure of himself. [deleted: and whoever is not sad does not grow bored; and whoever does not grow bored does not run after whims, amusements, vanities, and illusions. In short, he harms neither himself nor others.]
Peoples Catholic by tradition, culture, and feeling should return—as Saint Francis did—to the Gospel, to the fresh [deleted] and eternal fountain of the
spirit. To the Gospel, which contains a message forever new and forever beautiful as the sky.
But the Gospel, too, would have to be taken up and explained to the [deleted: scientific, unreadable] minds of the masses, who are no longer simple and docile but scientific and rational, just as modern science has wished them to be.
It must be taken up and freed from the contradictions that strike doubters and increase their doubts; its profound wisdom must be demonstrated—as phenomena are demonstrated; the points that seem obscure must be clarified, and the incandescent, dazzling substance of the parables must be freed from its original garb.
For it would be enough if the
Gospel were understood as one understands a good reading book, and there would be a new humanity beneath the sun.
As matters stand today, very few continue to read the Bible, and so the prophecies of Jacob are passed over for the prophecies of Walter Winchell, while instead of the songs of David—which contain more poetry than all the libraries in the world—the crowd prefers [deleted] Frank Sinatra’s little songs.
***
Artists should
undertake this work of exquisite craftsmanship, as they once did during the [Renaissance?]—in collaboration with the Church—offering marble and canvas, [?] and works—which still [?] the eyes of the peoples.
The Church should take artists under its protection and not allow their fervent gifts to be squandered in feeding the artificial paradises of Hollywood [deleted].
[deleted: Life in the Spirit]
In short, the Church should abandon its cold and
closed orthodox language and acquire a new voice.
Glenn Clark tells a profound parable: the spoiled fruit.
Let us see: what has man severed himself from, to sink into the chaos he suffers and knows today? From the life of the Spirit. And by life of the spirit I mean religion, philosophy, moral principles!
Tradition. The father entrusted to the son, etc., etc.
Religion gave him philosophy and principles
None of this exists anymore: he gave it away. He exchanged it for machines and vitamins
Something grave and terrible has happened to the spirit of man. The spirit of man is ill; it no longer believes in ideals, no longer wishes to cherish the calm, [?], modest, intimate, and romantic life of the past.
The radio, the airplane, electricity, and the cinema have turned his mind upside down. He believes he has discovered every secret; he laughs at his naïve ancestor, who was afraid of lightning, and, [?] vitamins in [?], he feels himself master of the world.
Which makes me think of my daughter, when, one day,
[?], in any event, the fact is that this paganism, which [deleted: rises to the surface] overflows [deleted] every bank, must be confronted—and at once—with the weapon of twenty centuries ago: faith, Christianity.
Therefore, what is needed [deleted] is no longer a Church [deleted] that is neutral and merely observant, but one that is active and combative [deleted].
To accomplish this, we need great Catholic writers and great Catholic orators.
Writers have convulsed the earth with a single weapon: the word. They had nothing to offer; their works were kneaded from blood and
mud, but they possessed the weapon of the word, and by this means they conquered power and kept the masses in subjection.
Political propaganda today is the forge and creator of public opinion.
It must be fought with propaganda [deleted]
of the Spirit, in the warm and passionate language of feeling.
If sacrifice had not already been abandoned by the masses, if children and young people, men and women, had not already been [delivered?]—in almost
every European country—to the smugglers of honor, human dignity, Christian compassion, and moral discipline (disguised as writers and orators in the fields of journalism, philosophy, and literature) [deleted], the Caesars of the twentieth century could never have occupied, as
indeed they did, the
exalted seats of representatives [?] (“Mussolini is never wrong!” “Mussolini is always right!” “Mussolini, the envoy of Providence!”), nor [kept?] around their sinister figures the carnival of a fanaticism [deleted: and of blind, abject obedience]
that degraded an entire race. If they did so, if they were able [sic] to do so, it means they found the field empty, since [deleted] just as in nature it is impossible—according to an inviolable physical law—to place two objects in the same space, so it is [deleted: also] impossible to place two faiths in the same mind and
two loves in the same heart. One could not, in short, [deleted]
serve Hitler and God with purity of ideals and [deleted] conviction of faith. One of the two flames must have [deleted] already gone out; and for the other to take its place, one of the two loves must already have died. The facts
have shown that love of God was already dead, otherwise thousands of crimes, massacres, persecutions, injustices, and cruelties would never have been committed.
x x x
Now the question naturally arises: why had the field been abandoned? Why did a people
allow Don Sturzo—an apostle, an enlightened man, a priest of the purest character—to be driven from his role, while a brigand remained?
Why did the Church allow [deleted: permit] the soil to become fertile and favorable to tyrants? Why
and who failed to hurl its Savonarolas against the drunken [deleted] hordes of oppression and crime? [deleted]
The answer is simple. The Church no longer possesses
the great orators of the past because the Church no longer communicates with the masses. And it no longer communicates with the masses because its language has remained old, arid, cold, unknown:
It is like expecting to [deleted] walk at twenty in the shoes one wore [deleted] at five.
In the opening pages of this book I mentioned the social problems of the age of Saint Francis, and here they remain, after seven centuries, largely unchanged. The names are different, but the evils are still the same.
Greed, abuses, the [?], and the feudal lords.
I believe that, after seven centuries, they are not so very different from ours: the vice, corruption, and unrest that exist among the masses. As then, a profound gulf remains between the arbitrary conception of two worlds: that of the poor and that of the rich. And, as then,
the slaves of the countryside and villages have changed [?] and become the slaves of factories and cities. The greed, abuses, and tyranny of the feudal lords have been replaced [by?]
—
Saint Francis understood that no social reform is possible without the rebirth and resurrection of the soul. If obscure and complicated philosophical systems contained this [deleted] truth, so simple and so clear, many of the evils we lament today might not afflict the world.
Happiness lies within
us and not outside us, within a program applied on a vast scale.
To expect, through a plan or a new system, to bestow peace and prosperity [?] is like expecting, through the imposition of a law, to make all the sick rise from their [?].
Dictators [deleted] rally adventurers, predators, the violent, avengers—men of flesh and blood, of hunger and [=]—with the promise of rich spoils, without the prey being [?]
Saint Francis gathered around him the good and the pure, the simple, those who know how to forgive and [love?]
[deleted] because he knew that only [deleted] the chosen could form the ideal society, the republic of Christ without soldiers and without chains, free and strong, prosperous and peaceful.
Joy, freedom, peace—that is, the goals most ardently desired by men—are not states produced [?] by an ordinance or by a form of
government, but states of conscience and mind arising from the good one has done, the work one is carrying out, the duty one has never failed to fulfill.
An innocent man locked in the depths of a prison is freer than a guilty man whom no one has yet arrested.
Force, violence, abuse, murder—as a reaction—[?], violence, abuse. He who sows evil reaps evil; he who makes others weep, weeps.
Truths as old as the
world, and yet still the crude rancors of selfishness, of [?] incomplete and buried beneath
I wholly believe that the democratic form of government is the most dignified and the most beautiful.
The most beautiful women [?] in the [?], where between eleven and two in the afternoon they roam through the shops, pause before the windows, go from
[deleted: You can see them in the ? between East 51st Street and]
They are tall women, and they walk quickly.
They are creatures who do not grow up in the [?] harshness of poverty and sacrifice, but amid the [?] of comfort [?] and elegance.
They are new creatures, unlike all others in the world, almost a third sex.
They have grown up in the [?] of cinema, radio, [...] and fashion magazines.
