The first Sunday Father Trandafir preached before the people, who had assembled in considerable numbers to see the new priest. There is nothing more agreeable to a man who desires the welfare of others than to see his words making an impression. A good thought multiplies itself, penetrating many hearts, and whoever possesses it and passes it on, if he values it, rejoices to see it gaining ground in the world. Father Trandafir felt happy that day. Never before had he been listened to with such attention as on this occasion. It seemed as though these people were listening to something which they knew but which they did not understand well. They drank in his words with such eagerness, it was as though they wanted to read his very soul the better to understand his teaching. That day he read the gospel of “The Prodigal Son.” Father Trandafir showed how God, in His unending love for man, had created him to be happy. Having placed man in the world, God wishes him to enjoy all the innocent pleasures of life, for only so will he learn to love life and live charitably with his neighbours. The man who, through his own fault or owing to other causes, only feels the bitterness and sorrow of this world cannot love life; and, not loving it, he despises in a sinful manner the great gift of God.
What kind of people are the lazy people, the people who make no effort, who do not stretch out a hand to take this gift? They are sinners! They have no desires—only carnal appetites. Man has been given pure desires which he may gratify with the fruit of his labours; longings are put into his heart that he may conquer the world while God Himself contemplates him with pleasure from on high. To work is the first duty of man; and he who does not work is a sinner.
After this, the Father sketched in words which seemed to give life to his ideas the miserable existence of a man perishing from hunger, and he gave his faithful hearers the thoughts which had germinated in his own intelligent brain—how they must work in the spring and in the summer, in the autumn and in the winter.
The people had listened; the Father’s words were written on their faces; going home they could only talk of what they had heard in church, and each one felt himself more of a man than before.
Maybe there were many among them who only waited for Sunday to pass that they might begin their first day of work.
“There has never been such a priest in Saraceni!” said Marcu Flori Cucu, as he parted from his neighbour, Mitru.
“A priest that does honour to a village,” replied Mitru, as if he felt that his village was not exactly honoured.
Other Sundays followed. Father Trandafir was ready with his sermon. The second Sunday he had no one to address. The weather was wet, and people stayed at home. Other Sundays the weather was fine; probably then the people did not remember in time; they were loath to part from God’s blue sky. And so the Father only had in church some old woman or some aged man with failing sight and deaf ears. Sometimes there was only Cozonac, the bell-ringer. In this way he made no progress. Had he been a different kind of man he would have stopped here.
But Father Trandafir was like the goat among cabbages in the garden. When you turn it out at the door, it comes in through the fence, when you mend the fence, it jumps over it, and does a lot more damage by destroying the top of the hedge.
God keep him! Father Trandafir still remained a good man.