Brother Simon, as we read yesterday, was a mirror of virtue, an appropriate saint to view reflected in Agnellus’ Mirror.
He had never learned the art of grammar; nathless he spake such profound and lofty things of God and of the love of Christ that his words seemed supernatural; whence it befell that one evening when he had gone into the wood with Brother Jacques da Massa for to speak of God, and was speaking most sweetly of the love divine, they continued all the night in such discourse, and in the morning it seemed to them that they had been but a brief space together, even as was told me by the said Brother Jacques.
It befell on a day while the said Brother Simon was at prayer in the wood and was feeling great consolation in his soul, that a flock of crows began to do him annoy with their cries, wherefore he bade them in the name of Jesu depart and return there no more: whereat the said birds departing thence, from that time forward were no more seen nor heard, neither there nor in all of the country round. And this miracle was manifested unto all the Custody of Fermo, wherein the said House lay.
L’Arche Kent on pilgrimage, entering the wood.
Mrs Turnstone might be tempted to send the collared doves away from our garden! This story shows a fallible, human side to John, rather than the miracle-worker his brethren saw, and makes him a much more credible saint, just as Robert Frost’s ‘Minor Bird’ endears him to this reader at least. Laudato Si!
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
agnellusmirror 