Join us on April 10 for a virtual discussion of The Betrothed with Michael F. Moore.
Before the healed are allowed to leave the lazaretto, they, too, will hear a sermon that appeals to their better nature:
“As we take our first steps in this journey, may we begin a life filled with charity. May those who have regained their former strength lend a fraternal arm to the weak. May the young support the old. May those of you who have lost your own children see the children all around you who have lost their parents. Become parents to them! And this charity, by redeeming your sins, will also ease your pain.”
I found the sermons of Borromeo, Padre Cristoforo, and now Padre Felice particularly difficult to translate. They made me uncomfortable, I can’t say why, perhaps because they channel the voice of God.
Renzo finds Lucia! Praise God! But how does she respond?
“Oh, Renzo! Why did you come here?”
The dilemma we have been anticipating, of how to free Lucia from her vow, is finally resolved thanks to the counsel of Padre Cristoforo:
“The Lord, my daughter, appreciates sacrifices, offerings, when they affect us alone. When we make them from the heart, of our own free will. But you cannot offer up the free will of another, to whom you were already bound.”
Padre Cristoforo relieves her of this burden and says the most romantic words we have heard in the novel:
“I have seen how the two of you were united. And if ever two people were united by God, it seemed to me that it was you.”
Do we dare hope for a happy ending?
Since yesterday's reading I've thought how appropriate these final chapters are for the Easter weekend -- I'm guessing our calendar was not a coincidence?
The first sentences of this chapter marked not only the perfect transition from hell to being liberated from hell, a la Easter weekend, but also from the chapter of Don Rodrigo to the chapter of Lucia -- "Who would have told Renzo, a few hours earlier, as his search neared its end and his moments of greatest doubt and decision began, that his heart would be torn between Lucia and Don Rodrigo? And yet, so it was ... The words he had heard by that dismal bed were caught between the yeses and noes at war winin his mind."
As for the "happy ending" -- the one note that rang false to me here was the aspect of Fra Cristoforo's reasoning to free Lucia from her vow that depended on the power of the "Church"-- maybe it is my Protestant (albeit Episcopalian) upbringing (long long ago), but somehow the idea that as a friar or priest he has the authority to dissolve the solemn vow of Lucia's conscience did not sound true. The other argument, which we've been entertaining for a long time, that her prior vow to Renzo means she wasn't free to make the second is more persuasive. But ... even though we are seeing here a path to a "happy" ending in which they are reunited and reunited with Agnese too, I cannot help but anticipate another version of a happy ending -- which most will not regard as happy -- in which Lucia keeps both vows -- she has now kept her vow to Renzo by renewing her vow to marry him (in and for eternity) -- and the storm that's coming may still take her away. So it's still down to the wire -- is it another Vilette ending? or finally a happy family?
Each of the characters is slowly emerging from his or her own purgatory. A prayerful thanksgiving accompanies their deliverance. The mystery of grace is perhaps best expressed by Lucia when she says to fra Cristoforo : « I am better now, I, who has never done good in this world, while you…. »