Chapter 25: Father Ambrose

“This is entirely too much! This generosity exceeds our demands. I’ve provided for every needy family in the valley! Where can I possibly use all this money?”

Jim Brightman smiled to himself. Such a complaint could come only from Fr. Ambrose, the elderly priest who had devoted so many years of his life to his small parish.

“You know as well as I, this money comes from our friend in the mountains. He was led to it that it might serve those whom the spirits would aid. That means you, and we’ve had this argument before. So, please, be quiet and take the money. If you can’t use it here, use it for your reservation work.”

Jim handed the banded stack of bills to Fr. Ambrose, smiled at his old friend, and reached out to give the priest a gentle squeeze on his shoulder. He turned and left, smiling to himself. Each time he returned from making a delivery to his trusted precious metals dealer in Wenatchee and handed over the charity share to Fr. Ambrose, he faced this same protest: “It is too much!”

It was a great deal of money, but the needs were great. Mike Peterson and Jim Brightman knew of no other who could be so trusted to use the money wisely and well. No family in the valley would suffer; no child would go hungry; no deserving student would miss a chance at a good education. Fr. Ambrose and his “spy network” of elderly ladies knew every family and every need in the valley and well beyond.

The fact that the gold came directly from the mountain made sharing a fair and reasonable endeavor: the wealth of the land was meant for the needs of all who lived there. Fr. Ambrose was the Creator’s humble servant who tended those needs.

Antonio Augustus Bernard was born in 1883 to an humble peasant family who owned two milk cows, a small band of sheep, a goat, and a two-room cottage high in the Swiss Alps, barely north of the Italian border. From the moment he was able to walk he went each day with the family flock high into the mountain pastures. When his hands grew larger and stronger, he milked the family cows, dawn and sunset. He walked down the steep hillside to the village school, and when he had learned his letters and words he begged his father for extra candles so he could read stories and scriptures beside the fireplace each evening.

Their village supported a small chapel, served by an elderly priest whose soul was exceeded in quality only by his rich and varied knowledge gained from many years of travel and study before he had settled into the remote Swiss village. When he looked into young Antonio’s eyes, he saw reflected in that child his own thirst that had led him to acquire knowledge, and then to an accommodation with his spiritual nature, and then to steadfast devotion to service. He knew this child would go far along that path if he was shown the first few steps. From that first moment, the student and the mentor were never far apart.

Antonio grew tall and strong, a son of the mountains. His keen mind thrived on the many books and lectures his mentor provided. It was inevitable that he would go to seminary and into the priesthood.

He chose for himself the singular name of Ambrose and for the remainder of his life he would be known by that simple name. Despite his impressive physical and mental gifts, he preferred to remain humble in spirit and simple in taste. He lived frugally and worked in service wherever he was sent.

He was drawn to the shores of the new world, to the great expanse of the American continent. The motto of the welcoming statue in New York harbor appealed to him: “Send us your poor, your huddled masses.” Europe had become too confining, too rigidly bound by prejudice and class. His first glimpse of the towering Rocky Mountains; his first breath of the rich, hot desert air of the vast southwestern desert, gave his spirit wings. Here was room to grow and a hugely isolated population to serve. The native Americans were a deeply spiritual people but were virtually imprisoned, economically and culturally, in their own land.

Fr. Ambrose begged his superiors to be allowed to live and serve in this great new land, and they eventually relented. He chose the poorest of missions, the most remote, forsaken, poverty-cursed missions in the entire region. He prayed the hardship would strengthen him in his resolve.

A greater need arose with the outbreak of the Great War. Armies marched across Europe and a veil of darkness descended on the world. Fr. Ambrose knew that the youth of his adopted country would encounter an evil such as they had never seen; they would be caught up in unimaginable carnage. He volunteered to become a chaplain in the armed forces and was sent with the first American Expeditionary Force to arrive in Europe.

It was there that he met Colonel James Brightman and Captain Michael Peterson. Lieutenant Antonio “Ambrose” Bernard ministered to the fighting men of their command. Two things emerged from that experience: a friendship forged in fire between the three men that would never perish; and a grief born of death and desolation that would sear the chaplain’s heart. This wound would never completely heal.

Fr. Ambrose was thirty-seven years old when he went off to war, strong of body and absolutely convinced of the correctness of his faith. He was forty when he returned, sick in body and soul, his faith shredded, his spirit wounded. So many men had fallen. Some died in his arms. He tended their souls but dared not be their friends. He exhausted his tears weeping for the agony of his friends; too many were maimed, killed, sacrificed to the cruel, insatiable god of war.

It seemed that the very best among them were chosen to die: husbands and fathers, artists, teachers, craftsmen, students, all were taken by the bloody scythe. They rotted as cold, mutilated corpses in the bloodied mud of Satan’s field. He beheld the carnage on both sides of the battle lines and raised his face to curse the very heavens where a heedless God sat with blind eyes. He felt himself impelled to curse Creation itself, but he knew this was wrong. The fault lay with man, not with his God. Fr. Ambrose nearly lost his own soul to grief, yet a dim spark of faith remained deep within.

As many had done before, Fr. Ambrose lost himself in travels to distant lands. He found solace in the ancient highlands of the far east. He devoted himself to studies of ancient philosophy and religion with Buddhist priests and Confucian scholars. He discovered that millennia of human travail and pain have created a certain insularity of existence: each soul is singular; each moves through life alone, making choices, questing, seeking acceptance and resolution. A soul might seek to place itself on a chosen path and move steadily toward an ultimate destination, or it might stray and lose itself in lust or anger or grief, ultimately to waste itself, alone and forlorn in the void of dissolution.

Fr. Ambrose moved as a solitary pilgrim throughout the greater breadth of the Asian wildernesses, serving, studying, fasting and praying. As his consciousness and wisdom expanded, his heart healed. His lungs, scarred by poison gas, regained much of their function; his body, wasted by trench diseases, thrived on the simple diet and rigorous discipline of the mountain retreats.

He returned to America where he found himself mysteriously drawn to a remote mountain valley in the high Cascade mountains of the Pacific northwest, a landscape that he recognized as similar to the alpine peaks and meadows of his birthplace. He had, in a sense, been led home.

There, a modest chapel served a small rural population. Eastward, over a high range of foothills, lay a neglected and impoverished reserve of native people. The chapel, the valley, and the natives challenged his resolve to settle and serve. Fr. Ambrose not only returned home, he rediscovered his life’s work. He knew he would remain in the valley and serve its people for however many years remained to him.

He was stunned when he found his two lost friends, veterans of the war that nearly consumed them all. Never again would the three friends be separated.