From Chapter 25 of The Little Prince

... The well that we had come to was not like the wells of the Sahara. The wells of the Sahara are mere holes dug in the sand. This one was like a well in a village. But there was no village here, and I thought I must be dreaming...

"It is strange," I said to the little prince. "Everything is ready for use: the pulley, the bucket, the rope..."

He laughed, touched the rope, and set the pulley to working. And the pulley moaned, like an old weathervane which the wind has long since forgotten.

"Do you hear?" said the little prince. "We have wakened the well, and it is singing..."

I did not want him to tire himself with the rope.

"Leave it to me," I said. "It is too heavy for you."

I hoisted the bucket slowly to the edge of the well and set it there - happy, tired as I was, over my achievement. The song of the pulley was still in my ears, and I could see the sunlight shimmer in the still trembling water.

"I am thirsty for this water," said the little prince. "Give me some of it to drink..."

And I understood what he had been looking for.

I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. It was as sweet as some special festival treat. This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the Midnight Mass, the tenderness of the smiling faces, used to make up, so, the radiance of the gifts I received.

"The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden - and they do not find in it what they are looking for."

"They do not find it," I replied.

"And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water."

"Yes, that is true," I said.

And the little prince added:

"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart..."

Merry Christmas!

Constantine and his mother, Helena




Technically, I should still be wishing everyone a happy and fruitful Advent. But it's close enough, isn't it?

Present-wise this Christmas is going to be a bit minimal in my family. Gift-wise it will be as sumptuous as ever, since we will still get to celebrate the birth of the Incarnate God. I think we are going to skip Midnight Mass this year and instead go to the Bishop's Mass during the Day at the Cathedral downtown. I have yet to hear Bishop Lennon preach, so I am very curious to hear what that Boston accent sounds like.

In other news, I have been doing some genealogical research and discovered the online marriage, birth, and death records for my grandfather's little home village in Romania/Transylvania. It goes back a couple centuries, but it is a little confusing because apparently many of my cousins married other cousins... I even found the entry where the christening of my grandfather, Walter Stefan, was noted down!

I also discovered that our rather mysterious last name, Kostendt, refers to the Eastern Catholic/Eastern Orthodox saint, St. Constantine the Great. He of the Milvian Bridge and the Edict of Milan.

In the Latin Church the emperor is not formally celebrated as a saint, for a number of reasons; his continued fondness for the pagan god Sol throughout his reign, for instance. Nevertheless he was baptized on his death bed and therefore I imagine he got to Heaven pretty quickly! His mother, Helena, is a saint in the Latin Church.

It surprised me at first, but Kostendt (KAH-stent) does sound like Constantine (KAHN-stent-tine). It amuses me a little because that side of our family is Protestant, and here they are named after an Eastern saint! Romania is a very Orthodox country. There are not a lot of Catholics there; in my grandfather's village, there is a Lutheran church and an Orthodox church, and that is it.

Since the Eastern Catholic Church recognizes him, I suppose I could develop a devotion to St. Constantine. He is listed at Catholic Online with a feast day of May 21. It would have been cooler if we were named after, say, St. Martin of Tours or St. Anthony of Padua, but I'm not complaining!