Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve
I see that miss-fit white tunic so carefully stitched by my daughter-in-law’s rigid fingers of orthodoxy. It’s folded neatly by the door ready to be returned to its maker, Colleta, with my rejection.
“Wait Eve. Let us slide the white tunic over his arms. It will help support his groping stiff limbs folded over his heart forever in prayer, at least until his spirit wanders off.” And of he will need the gapping back for his wings were angels really beset with wings, as maybe they are.
So Eve and I dress Nic as an earthly notion of angel preparing him for his flight into God’s embrace of forever. Surely Nic’s spirit will smile when the abbot unties his woolen robe and finds him fit out in the fullness of angel as I always knew him to be. When the abbot speaks the eulogy and echoes the psalm everyone who listens will know he was, for this friend who knew him well, the true patron saint.”
When did it happen that all saints are dead? When Paul wrote of saints he was naming living people. So did saints become always dead when the first saints died? I know the naming of saints wrankled local bishops who argued over the power to bestow. So now it seems the rule of the Church that all saints must be dead and they best be martyrs. Dead saints isn’t a teaching of Jesus or Paul, or even a God thing. It’s a Church thing [Footnote] offering the added assurance that no saint may yet sin.
Ezra and Daniel are here to take Nic’s body back to Ligugé where he will be buried as he always wished. I can only sit on the bench and watch out the door as they take him. And now, there is little Anatase with a new gleaming scythe cutting bundles of fresh herbs and filling the wagon with the fragrant bouquets.
Daniel comes back to walk with me back to the place I’ve been assigned by Eve.
“Thank you Daniel, but please know, I will soon return to my full strength and I will be useful to you and your papa.”
Anatase comes in completely fragranced in rosemary and lavender buds. She sits down by me to tell me what she has been up to.
Footnote – The Fourth Century need to standardize canonization of saints is well-documented and easily available in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization#Historical_development
(Continues Tuesday, May 11)
Lazarus Ink 