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Saint Brendan - 06 The Voyage of Saint Brendan
Identifier
015583
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Voyages of Saint Brendan – A Journey to the Promised Land translated from the Latin by John J O’Meara
THE COMMUNITY OF AILBE
……………..The abbot for his part was urging on the brothers, saying with great glee :
'ln joy and fear of the Lord, drink in love now water from the well from which you wanted to drink in stealth today ! The feet of the brothers are washed every day from the other, muddy, well that you saw, because it is always warm.
We have no idea where the loaves that you see are baked or who carries them to our larder. What we do know is that they are given to his servants from the great charity of God by means of some dependant creature.
There are twenty-four of us brothers here. Every day we have twelve loaves for our food, a loaf between every two. On feast-days and Sundays God increases the supply to one full loaf for each brother, so that they can have supper from what is left over. Just now on your coming we have a double supply. Thus Christ feeds us from the time of Saint Patrick and Saint Ailbe, our father, for eighty years until now.
Yet neither sign of old age nor weakness spreads in our limbs. On this island we need nothing to eat that is prepared by fire.
Neither cold nor heat ever overcomes us. And when the time comes for Masses or vigils, we light in our church the lights that we brought with us from our homeland under divine predestination. They burn till day and still none of them is reduced in any way.