The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana   ::   Эко Умберто

He tells me nothing I have not already read in those little handbooks at Solara, but perhaps his words were what sent me back to Don Bosco’s Provident Young Man:

Evenat your tender age the devil is laying snares to rob you of your soul … It will aid greatly in preserving you from temptation should you remain far from opportunities , from scandalous conversations , from public spectacles , from which no good can come… Endeavor to keep busy at all times; when you do not know what to do , adorn altars , straighten images or small pictures… If afterward the temptation persists , make the sign of the Holy Cross , kiss some blessed object and say: Saintly Aloysius , let me not offend my God. I give you this saint’s name because the Church has declared him the special protector of youth…

Above all else , flee the company of persons of the opposite sex. Understand well: I mean to say that young men should not ever enter into any familiarity with girls… The eyes are windows through which sin makes its way into our hearts… thus you must never stop to gaze upon that which is contrary in the slightest to modesty. Saint Aloysius Gonzaga did not want even his feet to be seen as he put himself to bed or rose from it. He did not permit his own mother to look him in the eyes… He spent two years with the queen of Spain as a page and never once gazed upon her face.

Imitating Saint Aloysius is not easy, or rather the price of fleeing temptation seems rather exorbitant, given that the young fellow, having scourged himself bloody, would put pieces of wood beneath his sheets, to torture himself even in his sleep. He hid riding spurs beneath his clothes because he had no hair shirts; he sought his displeasure wherever he stood, or sat, or walked… But the exemplar of virtue my confessor proposes to me is Domenico Savio, whose trouser legs were misshapen from too much kneeling but whose penances were less bloody than Saint Aloysius’s, and he also exhorts me to contemplate, as an example of holy beauty, Mary’s exquisite face.

I try to become infatuated with a sublime and sublimated femininity. I sing in the boys’ choir, in the apse of the church or at other sanctuaries during Sunday field trips:

Thou risest at dawn full of beauty to gladden the earth with each ray. The sky puts its night stars away , for none is so lovely as Thee.

Lovely Thou art as the sun , white as the light of the moon , and the loveliest star is but a far candle to Thee.

Thine eyes are more lovely than oceans ,

the color of lilies Thy brow ,

Thy cheeks are two roses , kissed

by the Son , and Thy lips are a flower.