But everything passes, including temptation…. Time has passed, it is already time to rest, there is light again, and I don’t care anymore if the day is cold or cloudy or windy or sunny. All I care about is peeling my turnips, peaceful, happy, and content, contemplating the Virgin, blessing God.
What does a moment’s regret matter, an instant’s worth of suffering? All I can say is that there is no sorrow that will not be repaid, if not in this life then in the next; and in reality, so little is asked of us in order to gain heaven. Perhaps it is easier in La Trapa than it is out in the world—but not because of this or that state of life, for in the world they have the same means of offering something to God. It’s just that the world is distracting, and a great deal goes to waste.
People are the same there as they are here; our ability to suffer and to love is the same; wherever we go, we shall carry a cross.
May we be able to make the most of our time…. May we be able to love that blessed cross that the Lord places in our path, whatever it may be, no matter what.
Let us make the most of the little things in our everyday life, our ordinary life…. There is no need to do great things to become great saints. Making the little things great is enough.
In the world, people waste many opportunities, but the world is distracting…. It is worth just as much to love God by speaking as it is to love Him in Trappist silence; it is a matter of doing something for Him…keeping Him in mind…. Location, place, occupation are irrelevant.
God can make me just as holy through peeling potatoes as through governing an empire.
What a shame that the world is so distracted…because I have seen that people are not evil…and that everyone suffers, but they don’t know how to suffer…
If they would lift their eyes a little to look beyond the frivolity, beyond that layer of false joy with which the world hides its tears, beyond their ignorance of who God is, if they were to lift their eyes up above…surely what happened to that monk with the turnips would happen to them too…. Many tears would be wiped away, many sorrows would become sweet, and many crosses would be embraced as offerings to Christ.
When work ended, I placed myself in prayer at the foot of Jesus, dead on the cross…. There, at his heels, I left a basket of clean, peeled turnips…. I had nothing else to offer him, but anything offered with one’s whole heart is enough for God, be it turnips or empires.
The next time I peel root vegetables again, whatever they may be, even if they are cold and frozen, I ask that Mary not allow those little red devils to get near me and afflict me. Rather, I ask her to send me angels from heaven, so that as I peel, they might carry the work of my hands in theirs, and place red carrots at the feet of the Virgin Mary; at the feet of Jesus, white turnips, and potatoes and onions, and cabbage and lettuce.
Anyhow, if I live in La Trapa for many years, I will turn heaven into a kind of vegetable market…and when the Lord calls me and says to me, “that’s enough peeling, drop the knife and apron and come enjoy the fruits of your labor”…when I see myself in heaven among God and the saints, and so many vegetables…my Lord Jesus, I cannot help but laugh.
Ave Maria.
Excerpt from Saint Rafael Arnáiz: Collected Works, edited by Sr. María Gonzalo, OCSO, and translated by Catherine Addington, forthcoming from Cistercian Publications, spring 2022. Reproduced with permission from Liturgical Press. The translator acknowledges Fr. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., for the title “The Antics of the Turnips.”
