ON THAT CHRISTMAS COUNSEL, AT A GOOD MASS, I HAD A PROPHETIC VISION

       TODAY IS CHRISTMAS EVE CHRISTMAS OLD AND HOMEMADE

 

My soul is darkened by melancholy on this white, snowless morning, but the snow was falling on the hoods of the cars. My heart skips a beat between the memories I've experienced. Downstairs, my industrious wife is preparing a Christmas Eve treat. My children and grandchildren will come at dawn, and the memory of the departed will be represented in effigy, like stone guests at a dinner before the gates of Bethlehem. There are already a lot of them. They are just shadows, but their voices are clear in my memory. Today's Christmas holidays are functional and peremptory: doubts about our past, who we could have been and who we weren't, what we should have done and didn't do, and, of course, we are troubled by our conscience. The years have brought wisdom and skepticism, but they have taken away our enthusiasm and youth. I remember one Christmas in 1956 well. Segovia was hit by heavy snow. After dinner and singing Christmas carols, I had to leave home to serve as mponaquillo at the Claras Monastery of San Antonio el Real, located outside Campillo. There was a full moon. My father accompanied me halfway across the valley. The herds of the place set up camp near the Roman Valdevilla bridge. You could hear the ringing of castron bells and the barking of mastiffs, impressive dogs with a spiked collar around their necks, designed to fight wolves. I've always had wolves.

─ Don’t be afraid, son, ─ Rabadan told me that he sang an old romance to the Baby Jesus, using a bottle of anise and a pestle as percussion musical instruments. This is what they did back then if there weren’t enough tambourines or guitars. . A huge moon illuminated the white night. When I entered through the portal of the old Franciscan monastery, which the good King Enrique IV ordered to be built, the great devourer of St. Anthony, the chaplain Don Eugenio, dressed in priestly robes: chasuble, alba, amito and manipulo, was waiting for me. to me. And he entertained the anticipation by smoking a chicken soup cigarette.

─You're late, child, I was waiting for you

─I live a little far away, father, and there was a good snowfall.

   He was a heavy smoker. Poor Don Eugenio did not know that it was his last Christmas. He will die next year. Angina pectoris. He smoked a lot.

─The roads are closed, more than a quarter of the snow has fallen, father.

I left with a candle and an incense burner. Loan with epact. The church was empty. Not a soul. But behind the bars of the parlor, sweet voices moving among the shadows of the choir behind the bars sang old Christmas carols that enchanted the soul. When Don Eugenio sang the Gloria in excelsis Deo, the ringing of all the monasteries and churches of Segovia, almost hundreds in those years, was heard, announcing the birth of the Redeemer.

   The statues of the Flemish altar on one side (anaglyptic wooden effigies) looked at us with half-a-millennial amazement, as if they wanted to get out of line. Almost five hundred Christmases witnessed the worship of the Three Wise Men. They were also sad to be alone.

And no one sat on the strong and ancient monastery benches. Not a soul at midnight mass. At the moment of rising, I vigorously rang the bell with all my might, and something amazing happened. An angel appeared next to the altar and spoke to me in Russian.

─Deacon to transgress (Come, deacon)

I did what the angel told me. Don Eugenio turned around. It was not the humble surplice chaplain of the seminary who kept track of the chickpeas and black beans that we seminarians ate, but the bishop, dressed as a pontiff, with a miter and crozier in his hands. A rather old-fashioned prelate, but he spoke to me not in Russian, but in Latin, the Latin of St. Jerome, and threw a stole over my shoulders:

─Zelum domus tuae Comedit Me (jealousy of your house burns me)

The celebration continued and at the end of the mass I was confident that this message from the deity had called me to the priesthood. However, physically I would not be a priest, but the heavens were virtually transmitting sacred orders through my head, and this is not a far-fetched idea.

An angel, speaking to me in Russian, predicted my approach to the Eastern Christ, while Western churches remained empty and plunged into a hellish crisis of values. It was last year.

   Today, every Sunday I attend mass in Moscow online, and the patriarchal minister repeats the same words that I heard as a child as a seminarian: “Come closer, deacon,” and I approach these glorious liturgical celebrations as if nothing had happened. I am part of the clergy, another, perhaps one of the oldest. I repeat that jealousy of your home is driving me crazy.

After midnight mass, I told Don Eugenio about the strange vision that appeared to me when he blessed the bread and wine. Good scholarship to me