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Address to Beekeepers
Pius XII, November 27, 1948
Your presence in such large numbers, your desire to assemble before Us,
beloved sons, is a real comfort: and so We express our heartfelt
gratitude for your homage and your gifts, both particularly pleasing to
Us. Beyond its material and technical importance, the work which you
represent, by its nature and significance has a psychological, moral,
social, and even religious interest of no small value. Have not bees
been sung almost universally in the poetry, sacred no less than
profane, of all times?
Impelled and guided by instinct, a visible trace and testimony of the
unseen wisdom of the Creator, what lessons do not bees give to men, who
are, or should be, guided by reason, the living reflection of the
divine intellect!
Bees are models of social life and activity, in which each class has
its duty to perform and performs it exactly—one is almost tempted to
say conscientiously—without envy, without rivalry, in the order and
position assigned to each, with care and love. Even the most
inexperienced observer of bee culture admires the delicacy and
perfection of this work. Unlike the butterfly which flits from flower
to flower out of pure caprice; unlike the wasp and the hornet, brutal
aggressors, who seem intent on doing only harm with no benefit for
anyone, the bee pierces to the very depths of the flower's calix
diligently, adroitly, and so delicately, that once its precious
treasure has been gathered, it gently leaves the flowers without having
injured in the least the light texture of their garments or caused a
single one of their petals the loss of its immaculate freshness.
Then, loaded down with sweet-scented nectar, pollen, and propolis,
without capricious gyrations, without lazy delays, swift as an arrow,
with precise, unerring, certain flight, it returns to the hive, where
valorous work goes on intensely to process the riches so carefully
garnered, to produce the wax and the honey. (Virgil, 4, 169.)
Ah, if men could and would listen to the lesson of the bees: if each
one knew how to do his daily duty with order and love at the post
assigned to him by Providence; if everyone knew how to enjoy, love, and
use in the intimate harmony of the domestic hearth the little treasures
accumulated away from home during his working day: if men, with
delicacy, and to speak humanly, with elegance, and also, to speak as a
Christian, with charity in their dealings with their fellow men, would
only profit from the truth and the beauty conceived in their minds,
from the nobility and goodness carried about in the intimate depths of
their hearts, without offending by indiscretion and stupidity, without
soiling the purity of their thought and their love, if they only knew
how to assimilate without jealousy and pride the riches acquired by
contact with their brothers and to develop them in their turn by
reflection and the work of their own minds and hearts; if, in a word,
they learned to do by intelligence and wisdom what bees do by
instinct—how much better the world would be!
Working like bees with order and peace, men would learn to enjoy and
have others enjoy the fruit of their labors, the honey and the wax, the
sweetness and the light in this life here below.
Instead, how often, alas, they spoil the better and more beautiful
things by their harshness, violence, and malice: how often they seek
and find in every thing only imperfection and evil, and misinterpreting
even the most honest intentions, turn goodness into bitterness!
Let them learn therefore to enter with respect, trust, and charity into
the minds and hearts of their fellow men discreetly but deeply; then
they like the bees will know how to discover in the humblest souls the
perfume of nobility and of eminent virtue, sometimes unknown even to
those who possess it. They will learn to discern in the depths of the
most obtuse intelligence, of the most uneducated persons, in the depths
even of the minds of their enemies, at least some trace of healthy
judgment, some glimmer of truth and goodness.
As for you, beloved sons, who while bending over your beehives perform
with all care the most varied and delicate work for your bees, let your
spirits rise in mystic flight to experience the kindness of God, to
taste the sweetness of His word and His law (Ps. 18:11; 118: 103), to
contemplate the divine light symbolized by the burning flame of the
candle, product of the mother bee, as the Church sings in her admirable
liturgy of Holy Saturday: (For it is
nourished by the melting wax, which the mother bee produced for the
substance of this precious light.)
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