One reads about them and what they did, but the facts
one reads don't really tell anything. I always feel that what we
really depend on is a kind of tradition of their absolute
saintliness handed on from the people who experienced it. I suppose
in a way the same applies to Our Lord. I always feel it wouldn't
matter a bit to me if the four Gospels were proved to be forgeries
to-morrow, because I should still be convinced that Our Lord was
God. I know this is a platitude, but I don't think until I met
Father Rowley that I ever realized the force and power that goes
with exceptional goodness. There are so many people who are good
because they were born good. Richard Ford, for example, he couldn't
have ever been anything else but good, but I always feel that
people like him remain practically out of reach of the ordinary
person and that the goodness is all their own and dies with them
just as it was born with them. What I feel about a man like Father
Rowley is that he probably had a tremendous fight to be good. Of
course, I may be perfectly wrong and he may have had no fight at
all. I know one of the people at the Mission House told me that,
though there is nobody who likes smoking better than he or more
enjoys a pint of beer with his dinner, he has given up both at St.
Pages:
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265