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.Thinking she was a medicine woman, the people fell silent, waiting for her to speak.But she did not.Neither did she move.Was she dead? they wondered.But her eyes were open and she smiled.Thinking that the intruders were presenting a holy lady, the chiefs laid down their bows and arrows out of respect, and their mothers and sisters came forth to offer beads and seeds.And when the strangers built a shelter for their lady, and laid flowers at her feet, the Topaa and Tongva and others likewise came and left offerings for her.Teresa had wondered at the time how the lady could remain still for so long, but she had since learned about paintings, and that it had not been a real woman at all but a representation of one on something called “canvas.” However, they all agreed on one thing, intruders and people alike: that she was called the Lady.After six years, Teresa and the Topaa were still wondering why the intruders were here.Surely it couldn’t be for much longer, the chiefs and medicine men and women speculated, because no people can stay far away from their ancestors for long.And according to the Fathers, they had traveled a very great distance.But there was something about the visitors that, despite their generous ways, troubled Teresa.In the spring, the chief of the Fathers arrived for a visit.A very short man— the Topaa towered over him— he called himself Junipero, after the juniper bush.And Teresa overheard this Father Serra discussing a people called Indians who had revolted at a Mission called San Diego, and that this was a very disturbing thing.Then Teresa heard Junipero say to the Fathers: “The spiritual fathers should be able to punish their sons, the Indians, with blows.”So much about the Fathers’ way of thinking confused her.For example, when the priests discovered that the women used concoctions of herbs to prevent conception, they were severely punished.But everyone knew that controlling conception was vital to the health of the tribe for otherwise the tribe would grow beyond the capacity for the land to feed the people.It was what the gods had taught the Topaa generations ago: that too many people meant not enough food and therefore famine.But the Fathers’ answer was to grow more food.They showed the Topaa how to plant seeds and water them and care for them, and then harvest the corn and beans and squash that they had brought with them from their faraway world.As there was now enough food, women should no longer prevent conception.But Teresa saw chaos in this, undoing a pattern the gods had woven at the beginning of Creation.Food and population growing until not a handspan of space was left in the land.And anyway, the Fathers’ plan wasn’t working because they weren’t growing enough crops to meet the demands of the soldiers in the presidios, and now in the villages the people were dying of starvation.Every day, more and more Topaa, Tongva, and Chumash arrived at the Mission, their empty baskets held out for food.The Fathers gave food if the Indians stayed and became Christians.And so Teresa’s people filled their bellies with Jesus and wheat, and allowed their names to be changed to Juan and Pedro and Maria.Her thoughts returned to Brother Felipe and her growing worry that a sickness was eating his spirit.If Teresa could look into the young man’s soul, she would see a yearning so great that it was consuming him like fire.Felipe had come to the New World for one thing: to experience rapture.So far, it had eluded him.Like Blessed Brother Bernard of Quintavalle who lived five hundred years ago, Felipe thought now as he stared at the bell-shaped flowers in his hands, having forgotten for the moment what he was supposed to do with them.Ever since Bernard took the habit of St.Francis, he was often rapt in God through the contemplation of celestial things.Oh Blessed Grace, to experience that sublime gift from God! Felipe dreamed of it often, wondering how it must have felt for Brother Bernard when, in church one day hearing Mass, his mind had been so lifted to God that he had become transfixed and enraptured, remaining motionless, his eyes gazing upward from Matins till the hour of Nones! For fifteen years afterward, Brother Bernard was rewarded with this celestial treasure, his heart and countenance raised daily to God.So completely was his mind detached and withdrawn from all things earthly, that Bernard soared like a dove above the earth, and remained sometimes thirty days at the top of a high mountain contemplating things divine.Felipe dreamed of being rewarded as Brother Masseo, companion to St.Francis, had been when, after shutting himself in his cell and punishing his body with fasts, whippings, and prayers, he entered a forest and asked the Lord with cries and tears to grant him divine virtue.Whereupon the voice of Christ called from Heaven, “What wilt thou give in exchange for this virtue thou seekest?” And Brother Masseo replied: “Lord, I will willingly give the eyes out of my head.” And the Lord said, “I grant thee the virtue, and command that thou keep thine eyes.”To hear the voice of Christ! Felipe shuddered beneath his heavy woolen robe.This was what he had come to this savage land for— to be blessed with divine revelation, to gaze upon The Sacred Countenance.When God had called him to missionary service, Felipe had eagerly answered.What rejoicing there had been in his village back home, when it was announced he had been chosen to join the mission to Alta California! How proud his father had been.How everyone had crowded into their small church to offer prayers for Felipe’s safety and for the success of his mission.And how Felipe’s heart had beat with hope and the sure knowledge that in that distant land his lifelong dream of meeting the Savior in person was certain to come true.All during his long sea journey halfway around the world Felipe had imagined what it must have been like that first day of contact six years ago, when the Fathers had arrived at the River of Porciuncula and were threatened by a multitude of savages brandishing their war spears and bows and arrows.Fearing that they were about to be killed, the Fathers had produced a canvas painting of Our Lady of Sorrows and had held it up for the savages to see.God’s blessed miracle! The heathens instantly recognized that they were in the presence of the Virgin and had laid their weapons down.It was a sign, Felipe was certain, that here was where humble men might find grace.Grace…Forgetting the flowers in his hands and the Indian girl at his side, Felipe lifted his eyes and stared for a long time out to the horizon.A voice sounded in his head: Blessed St.Francis, who spoke with the Lord on a daily basis, as he lay dying at Porciuncula in Italy begged to be buried in a criminals’ graveyard.I wish for the same.I want my body to be laid in the humblest grave in the most detested piece of ground.Saint Francis had called himself the “vilest of God’s creatures.” Felipe ached to humble himself so, to degrade himself as the Blessed Saint had.He wanted men to spit upon him and rain him with dirt as he welcomed the humiliation as St.Francis and his brethren had
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