Whenever I return to Georges Bernano’s Journal d’un curé de campagne, I again realize why a novel might actually matter. Bernanos integrity as a writer is almost blinding. This is nowhere more evident than in the Journal d’un curé de campagne, although Les grands cimetieres sous la lune is also a great work not only of integrity but of unsurpassed moral courage. To return to the lowly cure’s diary, however, I recall that first time I read it I was completely captivated for an entire summer. The more I live, the more I see the truth on which it is founded. It is a book which reminds us that always, even in our darkest moments, “Tout est grâce.” Bernanos doesn’t spare us from the darkness that ravages the hearts of so many in an ordinary village, a place like any other in this world—hearts devastated by bitterness, tragedy, wrongdoing, and disappointment—but he helps us to see that holiness is found precisely in the ability of one to bring healing and love to those like Mme la comtesse, Mlle Chantal, little Séraphita, and the soldier of fortune, M. Olivier, people who seem beyond “saving”; beyond, or perhaps not even deserving of, redemption. In the end, grace triumphs despite our limitations, it even triumphs over the fear of death and the even greater fear of life—the fear of trusting in life, come what may. Grace can overcome anything, even an obstacle like that. This book is not widely read in English, I presume, but it is a book that people of all faiths and even of no faith would find deeply moving.
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