CHAPTER XII.
At another time, in the territory of the same castle, swarms of locusts had settled, consuming the crops, and destroying everything with their noxious bite. Therefore, being smitten by this pest, the priests and the other inhabitants promptly betook themselves with urgent prayers to Saint Severinus, saying: "That this great and horrible plague may be removed, we ask the tried suffrage of thy prayers, which by the recent great miracle of the tapers lighted from heaven we have seen to avail much before the Lord." He answered them with great piety. "Have ye not read," he said, "what the divine authority commanded a sinful people through the prophet: 'Turn ye to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping,' and a little after, 'sanctify a fast,' he saith, |56 'call a solemn assembly, gather the congregation,' and the rest which follows? Therefore fulfill by meet works what ye teach, that ye may readily escape the evil of the present time. Let no one go out to his field, as if concerned to oppose the locusts by human effort; lest the divine wrath be yet more provoked." Without delay all gathered together in the church, and each in order sang psalms as was their custom. Every age and sex, even such as could not form the words, offered prayer to God in tears, alms were continually given, whatever good works the present necessity demanded were fulfilled, as the servant of God had instructed.
While all were occupied with exertions of this sort, a certain very poor man forsook the work of God that was begun, to look after his own field of standing corn, a little plot which stood among the sowings of the others. And having gone out, and all day anxiously and diligently driven away, so far as he could, the threatening cloud of locusts, he then went to the church to partake of the holy communion. But his little patch of corn, surrounded by his neighbors' many crops, was devoured by the dense swarm of locusts.
The locusts were that night by divine command removed from those territories: a proof of the great power of faithful prayer. So when at dawn the violator and scorner of the holy work again went forth |57 anxiously to his field, he found it swept perfectly bare by the baleful work of the locusts, while all the sowings round about were untouched. Utterly amazed, he returned with doleful outcries to the castle. When he had published what had happened, all went out to see the miracle; where the ravages of the locusts had marked out as if by a ruled line the corn plot of this contumacious fellow. Then he cast himself at their feet and with lamentations begged for the pardon of his sin by the aid of their intercession. Wherefore the man of God took occasion to give a warning, and taught all that they should learn to obey the Lord omnipotent, whose commands even the locusts observe.
But the poor man, weeping, declared that, for the rest, he could obey the commands, if but a hope of wherewithal he might live had been left him. Then the man of God addressed the others. "It is just," he said, " that he who through his own punishment hath given you an example of humility and obedience should of your liberality receive sustenance for the present year." So the poor man, both rebuked and enriched by a collection from the faithful, learned what loss unbelief inflicts, and what benefit God's bounty bestows upon his worshippers. |58