The plans of your father to make you a priest make me understand once again that civil wars are worse than foreign wars, domestic wars worse than civil wars, and among domestic wars those that derive from persons the closest to us are greater than the others. For wars and persecutions increase in intensity according to the degree of nearness that those persons have with us who persecute us. But I find nothing strange in the difficulty you are having with your father since the Son of God predicted it, and especially with fathers whom he named in more than five places speaking about family members. Matthew writes, And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. Mark and Luke say the same thing using almost the same language.
You should live simply as a religious person withdrawn from regular dealings with men as much as possible. You have visited Port-Royal des Champs in the countryside near Paris and you have seen how men live there as religious hermits. They are not monks or friars and certainly not priests. They are simply religious men who have cut themselves off from the world and live only for God. You must resist your father since he wants to force you to become a priest. The life of a priest is naturally much more involved in human affairs than the life of a religious person. Your life should be the life of penitence that everyone is obliged to lead by the vows of the Christian religion. He will be complaining continually if you persist in wishing to live like a true Christian. Support your father as much as is possible and do the best you can so that he does not become bitter but even the least principle of Christianity forbids that you obey him.
Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill.
The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
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