10 How the Church Has Changed the World up with him. It is like trying to hold still the flashing points of a fire. “I don’t know. He said something about the chapel being too small.” “Too small for an ox and a donkey?” “No, Brother Giles. Too small for the crowd that will come to celebrate the vigil with us.” Rufino and Giles approach the master. He is now strewing cedar branches and laurel along the sides of the grotto, as if he were decorating a stage. “My little brothers!” he cries out to them. “Come and assist me. Now is the time when what is great is small and what is small is great.” So they assist him, as if they were trying to transfigure a mountain and deck it as a sanctuary; as if the earth itself could now be a church once more, at the coming of the Lord who made it. At first they don’t know what the task is, but after a while the plan takes shape in their minds too, and they pitch themselves into it with a will. The afternoon soon fades into evening, for the days are short, and in the waning light the people come, most especially children, some of whom the master dresses in white robes, giving them country horns and pipes to play with. Men and women come too, leading sheep, and a frisking lamb or two, just born this summer. Naturally, with the commotion come man’s oldest and most loyal friends, the dogs, wagging their tails and barking, as the good Lord made them to do.
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