Chapter 5 Miyoshi bishop meets bitter diocese

Monsieur Bishop does not reduce his inspection tours because his carriage has been turned into relief money.Digne parish is a bitter place.There are few plains and many mountains, as we have just mentioned.Thirty-two priestly districts, forty-one pastoral districts, and 285 districts.It is indeed a problem to inspect all that, but this Mr. Bishop can complete the task.If he was nearby, he walked; on the plains, he rode in a pony cart;The two elderly women were still with him.If the journey was too hard for them, he would go alone. One day, riding a donkey, he came to Senes, an ancient bishop's city.He was so empty at the time that it was impossible to have another kind of mount.The magistrate, who came to meet him at the door of the bishop's mansion, found it inappropriate to see him dismount from his donkey.Several other gentry also laughed around him.

"Mr. Sir and gentlemen," said the bishop, "I know what shames you. You must think it presumptuous of a poor priest to straddle the steed of Jesus Christ. I did it out of compulsion, and, frankly, not out of vanity." In patrol work, he is modest and kind, spends more time chatting and less time preaching.He never raised the question of morality to an unattainable level, and never looked far for his arguments and examples.To the residents of a certain township, he often narrates the example of the neighbors.In the towns that were mean to the poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briançon. They give the poor, the widows, and the orphans the privilege of mowing their pastures three days before anyone else. .If their house is going to fall down, someone will rebuild it for no wages. It's kind of a god-sanctioned place. In a hundred years, no one has committed a murder."

In those villages where profits and crops are so preoccupied, he said: "Look at the people of Embrun. If a parent is harvesting, because the sons are in the army and the girls are working in the city, and He himself was sick and unable to work, so the parish priest mentioned his situation in the sermon, and on Sunday, after the public prayers, all the people in the village, men, women, and children, went to the field of the person who was in trouble. Go and reap for him, and carry the straw and grain into the barn for him." To those families divided by money and inheritance, he said: "Look at the people of the Defui Mountains. It is a very In a desolate place, the singing of a yellow warbler may not be heard once in fifty years. However, when the father of a family dies, his sons will go out to make a living and leave the property to the girls so that they can find a husband.” In the towns where lawsuits abound and peasants lose their fortunes by suing, he said: "Look at those good folks in the Gra Valley. There are three thousand people there. My God! It's like a little republic." They know neither judges nor law-enforcers. It is the magistrate who handles everything. He distributes the tax, draws from everyone conscientiously, resolves disputes voluntarily, distributes inheritances without payment, and judges the merits of the case. , without court fees; and everyone obeys him, because he is a righteous man among those who are simple." In those villages where there were no teachers, he again spoke of the inhabitants of Gra Valley: "You know what they do He said, "A small place with only ten to fifteen families naturally cannot support a village teacher, so they hired a few teachers from the whole valley to teach in various villages and stay in this village for eight days. The village stayed ten days. Those teachers used to go to the market place, and I often met them there. We only need to see the quill in the hatband to recognize them. Those who only teach people take a Those who teach reading and arithmetic carry two pens, and those who teach reading and arithmetic carry three pens. They are all very learned people. What a shame to be ignorant! Let the inhabitants of the valley learn."

He talked like that, solemnly, like a father and a brother; when there was a lack of examples, he invented some words that were close to the point and far from the meaning, and used concise words and rich imagination to reach his goal; that is the eloquence of Jesus Christ , can be confident, but also convincing.