Our Lady with the Baby Jesus

The Third Kind of Alchemist.

Dear readers, I would like to share this simple story that has made a huge impression on me. The following story is found in the preface of the Alchemist.

The story told by the Teacher of Paulo Coelho to illustrate to him the third kind of Alchemist. The kind who will never hear about alchemy, but who will succeed, through the lives they lead in discovering the Philosopher’s Stone.

“Our Lady, with the Baby Jesus in her arms, decided to come down to earth and visit a monastery. The monks proudly joined in a long queue, and each of them came before the Virgin to render their homage. One declaimed beautiful poetry, another showed his illuminated paintings of biblical subjects, and a third repeated the names of all the Saints. And so on, one monk after the other, praising Our Lady and the Baby Jesus.

The last monk of all there was the humblest in the whole monastery. Who had never studied the learned books of the time, His parents were simple people, who worked in an old traveling circus, and all they had taught him was to throw balls into the air and juggle with them.

When it was his turn, the other members of the order wanted to bring the homage to a conclusion since the old juggler would have nothing important to say, and might lower the image of the monastery. But in the bottom if his heart, he also felt a burning need to give something of himself to Jesus and the Virgin.

Ashamed, conscious of the disapproving looks of his brothers, he took a few oranges from the his bag, and started to juggle them in the air, saying that juggling was all he knew how to do.

It was at that moment that Baby Jesus, sitting on Our Lady’s lap. Smiled and started to clap his hands. And the Virgin reached out her arms, inviting him to hold the baby.”

So till my next post ya, its bye from Ganz.

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