Fr dear Fr: Are there any lessons that can be learned by a young priest from a tour of duty abroad in distant countries like Constantinople or Washington or Rome or Paris even on the mission for our little priesties in our little diocese?

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT OF BYZANTIUM ROME

NON DELUDERE LA GENTE

DO NOT DISAPPOINT THE PEOPLE WHO PUT YOU THERE AT THE TOP

My dear disciple:

Non Deludere La Gente:

Do not disappoint the people:

“When you are looking out over the green hills far away from here, and counting the sheep and the lambs at play on those green and pleasant hills, there will come a time when you will look back on this city and all that it has given to you and you will quietly wish that you had never scaled these heights and had never learnt so much about the mysterious power of governance in the old empires of the old worlde, yes there will come a time when you will regret not knowing too little, but knowing too much, chiefly about human nature. For yes, my disciple, your eyes have grown old while you were still young and you have contemplated the dark places of human weakness. And then you will shed a silent tear that God in his goodness got you out of Ancient Rome with all its beauties and all its treasures and all its sad knowledge of human beings, and that the good God got you back to the green and pleasant hills of your home. Byzantium Rome is like that, she is a mature but still beautiful Mistress, where Paris might be an old harrowden Wife, and like the epigram in James Joyce, she is a sow that consumes her own farrow if left to herself too long, for in her governances she consumes the children sent to her. So remember the oldest adage from Ancient Rome about staying here too long – Five years one becomes a monument, Ten years one becomes a ruin.”