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We are all familiar with the story of the Holy Grail, which so many poets have wrought into verse. The Holy Grail was the cup from which Jesus drank with his disciples at the Last Supper. According to the legend this cup was lost, and it was a favorite enterprise of the knights of Arthur’s court to go in quest of it. One of the prettiest of these stories tells of Sir Launfal’s search for the Holy Grail. Far away over the cold mountains and through fierce storms and over deserts, rode the brave young knight, till youth turned to age and his hair was gray. At last, after a vain search, he turned homeward, an old man, bent, worn out and frail, with garments thin and bare. As he drew on there lay a leper, lank and wan, cowering before him. “For Christ’s sweet sake I beg alms,” the leper said. Sir Launfal saw in the beggar an image of him who died on the tree.
“He parted in twain his single crust,
He broke the ice on the streamlet’s brink,
And gave the leper to eat and drink.”
Suddenly a light shone about the place:
“The leper no longer crouched at his side,
But stood before him glorified,
Shining, and tall, and fair, and straight
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate.”
Sweetly now he spoke as the knight listened:
“In many climes, without avail,
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;
Behold, it is here–this cup which thou
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;
This crust is my body broken for thee;
This water his blood that died on the tree;
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In Whatso we share with another’s need;
Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,–
Himself, his hungering neighbour, and me.”
The path of glory for a life lies not away among the cold mountains of earthly honor, not in any paths of fame where worldly ambition climbs, but close beside us, in the lowly ways of Christ-like ministry. He, who stoops to serve the poor and the suffering, in Christ’s name, will find at length that he has served Christ himself. “I was a hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.”