A Story of the Holy Family

I would like to offer the story related below as an Advent meditation on the question asked in the Conclusion section of Ch. 11 of Giussani's The Religious Sense:

"What is the formula for the journey to the ultimate meaning of reality? Living the real. There is an experience, hidden yet implied, of that arcane, mysterious presence to be found within the opening of the eye, within the attraction reawakened by things, within the beauty of things, within an amazement, full of gratitude, comfort, and hope."

One could characterize this sad story from Everything Flows (by Vasily Grossman), whose background is the tragedy and horror of the "Great Famine" in the Ukraine in 1932-33, in many ways: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." (Mt. 5:5). "Guilt before the holiness of the other" (Levinas). An "icon" in words. A story of the holy family. However characterized, the story shows that an intense aliveness is found in the "reality" of human relationships of love. This, it seems to me, is near to Giussani's central message.

I hope you find this brief story as moving and poignant as I do, and of help in our Advent (and lifetime's) preparation to make love's gift a reality in our lives:

Everything Flows, by Vasily Grossman, chapter 15:

"Vasily Timofeyevich had a quiet voice and a hesitant way of moving. And when someone talked to Ganna, she would look down at the ground with her brown eyes and reply almost inaudibly.

"After their marriage, they both became still more timid. He was fifty years old, and the neighbors' children called him 'Grandad'; he was gray-haired, balding, and wrinkled -- and he felt embarrassed to have married someone so young. He felt ashamed to be so happy in his love, to find himself whispering 'My darling, my sweetheart' as he looked at his wife. As for her, when she was a little girl, she had tried to imagine her future husband. He was going to be a Civil War hero like Shchors; he was going to be the best accordion player in the village; and he was going to be a writer of heartfelt poems like Taras Shevchenko. Nevertheless, even though Vasily Timofeyevich was no longer young; even though he was poor, timid, and generally unlucky; even though he had always lived through others rather than living a life of his own, her meek heart understood the strength of the love he felt for her. And he understood how she, so young, had hoped for more, how she had dreamed of a village knight who would ride up and bear her away from her stepfather's cramped hut -- instead of which he had come along in his old boots, with his big brown peasant hands, coughing apologetically and clearing his throat. And now here he was, looking at her happily, adoringly, guiltily and with grief. And she, for her part, felt guilty before him and was meek and silent.

"They had a son Grisha, a quiet little baby who never cried. His mother, now once again looking like a skinny little girl, sometimes went up to his cradle at night. Seeing the boy lying there with open eyes, she would say to him, 'Try crying a bit, little Grishenka. Why are you always so silent?'

"Even when they were in their own hut, both husband and wife always talked in soft voices. 'Why do you always speak so quietly?' neighbors would ask in astonishment.

"It was strange that the young woman and her plain, elderly husband should be so alike, equally timid, equally meek in their hearts.

"They both worked without a word of complaint. They did not even dare let out a sigh when the brigade leader was unjust, when he sent them out into the fields even if it was not their turn.

"Once, Vasily Timofeyevich was sent to the district center on an errand for the collective-farm stables; he went with the farm chairman. While the chairman was going about his business in the land and finance offices, he tied the horses to a post, went into the shop, and bought his wife a treat: some poppy-seek cakes, some candies, some bread rings, some nuts. Not a lot, just 150 grams of each. When he got back home and untied his white kerchief, his wife flung her hands up in the air with joy and cried out, 'Oh, Mama!' In his embarrassment, Vasily Timofeyevich went off into the storeroom, so that she would not see the tears of happiness in his eyes.

"For Christmas she embroidered a shirt for her husband. Never did she learn that, after she had given it to him, Vasily Timofeyevich Karpenko was hardly able to sleep. All through the night he kept getting up and walking across, in his bare feet, to the little chest of drawers on top of which he had put the shirt. He kept stroking it with the palm of his hand, feeling the simple cross-stitch design. . . And when he was taking his wife home from the maternity ward of the district hospital, when he saw her holding their child in her arms, he felt that he would never forget this day -- even if he were to live a thousand years.

"Sometimes he felt frightened. How was it possible for such happiness to have come into his life? How was it possible that he could wake in the middle of the night and find himself listening to the breathing of a wife and a son?

"Whoever he was with, Vasily Timofeyevich felt shy and timid. How could he have the right to something like this?

"But that was how it was. He came home from work and saw smoke coming out of the chimney and a baby's nappy drying on the fence. He would see his wife bending down over the cradle or smiling about something as she put a bowl of borsch on the table. He would look at her hands, at her hair peeping out from beneath her kerchief. He would listen to her talking about their little one or about the neighbor's ewe. Sometimes she would go out into the storeroom and he would miss her and even feel lonely. As soon as she came back, he would feel happy again. Catching his eye, she would give him a sad, meek smile.

"Vasily Timofeyevich died first, two days ahead of little Grisha. He had been giving almost every crumb to his wife and child, and so he died before them. Probably there has been no self-sacrifice in the world greater than this -- and no despair greater than his despair as he looked at his wife, already disfigured by the dropsy of death, and at his dying son.

"Even during his last hour he felt no indignation, no anger with regard to the great and senseless thing that had been accomplished by the State and Stalin. He did not even ask, 'Why?' he did not once ask why the torment of death by starvation had been allotted to him and his wife -- meek, obedient, and hardworking as they were -- and to their quiet little one-year-old boy.

"Still in their rotten rags, the skeletons spent the winter together. The husband, his young wife, and their little son went on smiling whitely, not separated even by death.

"The next spring, after the first starlings had arrived, the representative from the district land office entered the hut, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. He looked at the paraffin lamp with no glass, at the icon in the corner, at the little chest of drawers, and the cold cast-iron pots, and at the bed.

"'Two and a child,' he called out.

"The brigade leader, standing on this most holy threshold of love and meekness, nodded his head and made a mark on a scrap of paper.

"Back in the fresh air, the representative looked at the white huts and the green orchards and said, 'Take the corpses away -- but don't bother about this ruin. It's not worth trying to repair it.

"Once again the brigade leader nodded."