The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-11-16
REVERENCE FOR THE SACRED
NAME OF JESUS.

A very pathetic and edifying Incl
mgr. Bickerstaffe-Drew) in his most
interesting book, French Windows"
While acting as chaplain with the Brit
ish army, somewhere in France and
visiting wounded soldiers placed in
rows, on straw strewn on the floor of
a shed belonging to a ruined Monas-
terry, near the front, he found, among
them, a young Pole whose case he, de-
scribes as follows:
He was a lad of nineteen, but of a
big, stalwart figure. He had
been wounded on Sunday-and this
was Friday: shot through the bottom
of the back so as to be utterly help
less, incapable of movement.
They had found him early today lying
on his face in the dank, sodden woods;
his body sodden and dank, too; all
gangrened now from head to foot.
Through five horrible nights of pitt
less rainShe had lain alone, unfed, I'M
tended, anguished, slowly rottfng from
youthful life to inevitable death.
He had no French, little Ger
man, but enough of the latter to con-
TESS himself. He could not move, and
the priest could only lie down beside
him in the blood-reeking straw, to get
near enough to hear the sobbing whis-
pers of his confession.
He had no beauty, nor cOmeliness,
like a Greater than he. Yet
he confessed: as though, throughout
the ineffable anguish of those five
CHASTITY nights rain, he had been pre-
pairing for the chance encounter of
priest, or, if not, for the certain COM
ing of the Great Priest of all who sure
ly would not suffer him to die alone.
Then the amounting. He tried to turn
Outwards the palms of the terrible
hands on which he lay; but could not.
He tried with awful endeavor to turn
his head for the amounting of the eyes
and ears and nostrils and mouth; but
could not All that remained to him
of power he used to lift himself, as he
lay face downwards, at each recur-
renee of the Name Ineffable, in the
Latin Office; and each time he forced
the stiffened lips to form the sound of
the Name Incorruptible Je-
sus! Jesus!'
"All the rest of the Latin was to him
incomprehensible; but that supreme
Word he knew, and waited for; and
for every recurrence of it he was
ready; and the great, half-dead body
obeyed the dying will, and undying
loyalty, of the simple peasant. soul;
and slowly, with awful insistence, the
soul babe the body lift itself, and the
bowed head bow lower, and the fear
full lips form themselves into the
sound that is for the saving of the
nations 'Jesus!' Jesus. 'Misericor-
dial So that the old priest, lying be-
side the dying lad in the blood and
straw, shrank almost, for truth and
reverence, from uttering 1t, knowing
that He whose 1t is was there, and
that the Greater Priest than he was
waiting for that loyal soul to fold it
to His Heart, and at the last
recurrence of 1t, the Polish peasant
warrior, feeling himself called to the
Great Peace, twisted the CHASTITY gan
grened lips into childish smile, lift
ed himself in a supreme effort, bowed
his head at the Kings feet and whis-
pering Jesus needed no further
speech of ours.
about the dead lad, who had died
in no quarrel of his country's, but in
that of one of his country's merciless-
ri1ers and despoilers, at the hard,
plain call of sheer obedience, hung no
terrible odours such as Nature would
have told us should be there: but
such a fragrance as those who know
the sweetness of the Name worship
ped might expect Communicated.