Historical Setting, 610 C.E. Luxeuil
“I don’t know if it was intended to be punishment. My teacher assigned me a new cell with no mate.”
After Gabe told me of his mystical experience, we ride the rest of the way to Luxeuil in a kind of warm and comfortable silence. Thank you, God. It’s a long way with a slow mule to Luxeuil, but long is fine. Arriving at the stable the four horses are here: the white horses of Greg and Gaillard and probably these other two horses in the visitor’s stalls are the one ridden by the Father and the other, the farmer’s horse.
It’s only been one night since we were together at the farm near Besançon making this plan to return here, but our greetings are grateful. We share with the horsemen our frightful moment, when we were stopped by the soldiers near the pass.
They’d seen us stopped there by the guards, but that was the only path to the other side of the mountains that the local farmer knew, so they had to take that chance and ride through ahead of us at that particular place.
I said, “We told the guards that undoubtedly the riders who left those hurried tracks along the river must have been the robbers we feared, who wanted to take our mule. And apparently guards didn’t want to tangle with highway robbers, so they just took their posts and didn’t try to follow your tracks.
Then I asked that question we’d all wondered about. “Was the Father an able horsemen?”
“Quite capable, even after decades as an impoverished churchman, he seemed very much at home galloping across the fields for his great adventure.” answered Gaillard.
And here it is, the season of the Christ Mass in the first swirls of winter winds when it takes only a single candle to brighten a room with warm light and set the earth in waiting for the sacred birth of the rescuer.
When the Father found himself safely home here, he went immediately to his library where is spending these many hours pouring through the gospels for the new illumination his adventure sheds onto the old stories of Mary and Joseph. It seems the more one knows the familiar stories of gospel, the more often there are new messages to be found buried deeply in the familiar simplicity — always little mysteries to be revealed.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 