We told this story at the monastery while eating lunch. The smooth panes caught the reflection of the refectory and the brown robes that passed us. The seminary was silent over the thought. Their benefactors had not considered that they would find a true and living Christ in the holy of holies, on the bare stair, and over the altar: their crucifix was of the inhabited world.

“Mother, could you tell us once more, the story of the brown loaf of 

bread . . . ”

Domini est salus

Dominis est salus

Christi est salus

Salus tua, Domine

Sit semper nobiscum.

The Latin hung in the room. Eight children had sat hungry and

silent in a bare house in old Russia once, and the conception of the immaculate had waited for a break in the snow-still sky. The old mother shook her head at the story. The traces of fugue and the old lineage, the prelude of color, and the dance of their faces was a history that could not be unraveled in the cloak of the New World.

Once, when I was a young man with seven children and a baby, the soldiers took Russia by surprise. Their guns were an ammunition too hostile for the cold, rugged plain. A month passed with no supplies. My wife was in tears at the bare cupboard. After seven days she prayed for food, but the boys were hollow-eyed at the watered-down cabbage soup. One or two potatoes were all that was left of a vegetable garden. Another week passed.

“Immaculate Christ, let the divine not leave us in the hour of our need.” The children sat as still as possible, not leaving the foyer.

At last I put on my coat with the two oldest and we left. The hours passed as we trudged on. I whispered into the night, with my sons beside me on the road. A loaf of bread was sitting at the crossroad. I was Russian Mennonite, and my staunch appetite was a dare to consumption. I said a prayer of thanks under the blessing of the yuletide. The return was joyful with praise. It was a big round loaf of Russian brown bread, enough to feed a family of ten for five days.

Each and every loaf on the truck was counted. When the soldiers arrived at the military base, one was missing. They sent them all the way back to retrieve it, but it had disappeared. The road home was not hostile in the moonlight.

--Emily Isaacson, The Fleur-de-lis Vol III