“Does Christianity itself, even the Heavenly City, which is free, and the mother of us all, turn against us? Is there no refuge at all in this world for the wronged?”
“As thou sayest,” he replied, “the heavenly Jerusalem is free; we shall all be free there. And here we can always be free in soul! Moreover,” he added, “slavery does often indeed degrade the slave, and make him through all his being slavish and unfit for any high office. And on me, beloved, this does not weigh heavily after all. God helping us, we have another calling, the old reigning and serving for our own people.”
“At all events,” said Ethne, “we may add Leo’s prayer to Patrick’s hymn—‘Grant us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will.’ It is the great Bishop’s prayer for us, and for himself,” she added; “let us say it together for him as well as for ourselves.”
The entertainments, banquets, and visits of state occasioned by the return of Fabricius to Rome, necessarily made the position of the Irish captives more difficult. Although their being members of the Aventine household was their best protection, Fabricius and Damaris could not bear to have them regarded as in bondage; and yet as guests the world could not receive them.
Christmas was drawing near, with many of the old pagan festivities, as well as those of the Christian Church, gathered around the season. But to the Irish captives it brought no festive home gatherings—this their first Christian Christmas, their first homeless New Year. To them, therefore, all that was festive in the season was concentrated entirely in the great Festival of the Nativity. Their home was in the home of the Holy Childhood of the Child Jesus and the Mother Mary. The great stately basilicas were as a family hearth to these fatherless and motherless exiles, and the words of Bishop Leo on the Incarnation were as a father’s welcome to them.
“You know well, dilectissimi,” Leo said, “and have frequently heard the things which belong to the sacred observance of this day’s solemnity. But as this visible light affords pleasure to uninjured eyes, so do sound hearts receive perpetual joy from the Nativity of the Saviour. Wherefore we must never be silent, though we cannot set it forth as it deserves.”[3]
Then he spoke of “the general Confession common to all, whereby the whole body of the faithful say they believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary; by which three clauses,” he said, “the engines of attack of all the heretics are shattered.”[4]
And Ethne and Baithene, who knew the Confession well, although they knew little of the heretics, felt warm and safe as birds in their own nest within the sacred walls, which kept them safe from all these battering-rams.
Again Leo said—
“Lowliness was taken up by Majesty, weakness by Power, mortality by Eternity; and in order to pay the debt of our corruption, the inviolable nature was united to that which could suffer.