Two Centuries?

“Why”—Leo’s eyes widened with delight—“it’s an engineering problem after all!” He hung limply in air, entranced; ....He yielded himself up to it without reservation. All. All. There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.  Falling Free

I am reading through Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, the ones that are available in my library in digital form, at least.   Falling Free is labelled as the 4th in the series, though it is a standalone and technically a prequel, set 2 centuries before the main happenings in the saga.    It doesn't actually mention the Vorkosigans -- though apparently, somewhere in the later books, one of the main characters does encounter the descendants of the original "quaddies", the genetically modified people who are depicted in the book. 

 It makes me wonder -- what was happening 2 centuries before my lifetime, that would go on to intersect with my story much, much later?

That would have been the late 1700's -- and early 1800's.  Ah, I have it!  In addition to reading about Vorkosigans, I have also recently read In a Great and Noble Tradition.   This is the title of an unfinished memoir by Dom Prosper Gueranger.    He was born soon after the French Revolution and lived in the tumultous, anti-clerical times afterwards, as a priest and then a Benedictine.

The part that intersects his life with mine:   as a child, he saw the ruins of the abbey of Solesmes.   The revolutionaries had driven the monks out in 1790, as well as all the other monastics in France.    As a young priest, he determined to restore the abbey.     This is from Wikipedia:  

The new community flourished and in 1837 not only received Papal approval but was elevated to the rank of an abbey and was to become the mother house of an extensive French Benedictine Congregation, now the Solesmes Congregation. ..... Since its restoration Solesmes has been dissolved by the French Government no fewer than four times. In 1880, 1882, and 1883 the monks were ejected by force but, receiving hospitality in the neighbourhood, succeeded each time in re-entering their abbey.  Between 1901 and 1922 the monks were forced into exile in England. They settled on the Isle of Wight and built the present Quarr Abbey.The community survived those trials and those of two World Wars and is still at Solesmes. As part of its mission of monastic revival the abbey has been the mother house of some twenty five other monastic foundations....

The reason his life and work intersects with mine?  One of the daughter houses is here in the United States, and that is another long and interesting story.   My oldest son tried his vocation there, and my daughter and her family ended up moving close to there, and now we are here too, along with 3 of our grown sons.

Another quote from Falling Free:

Don't be afraid of troubles....They're a sign of life.

 Dom Gueranger was also one of the earliest of those who strove to revive the liturgy, back in a vastly secularized France.   Solesmes is the congregation that practiced and taught Gregorian chant.   His story is not irrelevant today.     

We are in difficult times -- I don't think anyone could imagine otherwise.    The Church is struggling.  But the gates of hell do not prevail.      Sometimes struggling is a sign of life... anyone who has birthed a child understands that.    The Savior said: 

When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. 22 So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.