Massimo's return to Christ and the Church

Massimo's return to Christ and the Church is the decisive turn in his religious crisis, made not in private reflection but during the funeral voyage carrying Benedetto’s body toward Oria. As the dead teacher draws near, Massimo recognizes that his intellectual separation from the Church has not erased his attachment to its worship and inherited practices; amid the funeral journey, he openly declares his return to Don Aurelio.

The Crisis Behind the Return

The turn answers a doubt that had been gathering for years. In a letter to Donna Fedele, Massimo traced its beginnings to his youth and described how meeting Benedetto, while studying in Rome, had once quieted his doubts. While his teacher lived, he says, he could have given his life for his faith and the Church. After Benedetto’s death, hostility toward the teacher and toward Massimo as his disciple, along with the corrosive influence of what he considered aimless hypercriticism, began to unsettle his beliefs.

Massimo did not describe his crisis as a simple rejection of Catholicism over disliked practices or difficult doctrines. He wondered instead whether Catholicism might, like the religion of Moses before it, be succeeded by a higher religious form. The possibility that he might be called to preach such a future faith horrified him: if he spoke at Benedetto’s grave while doubting the Church’s permanence and the duty of obedience, he feared he would be hypocritical and would injure the memory of the man he revered. He had not told Don Aurelio about this state of mind, believing that the priest’s own faithful example could not resolve the question and that disclosure would only cause him pain.

His private reflections at the Montanina show the fatigue and temptation beneath these arguments. Exhausted by the attacks of both freethinkers and religious conservatives, and by the effort of concealing lapses in hope and sometimes faith, Massimo imagines withdrawing from religious action altogether. The thought of leaving the struggle behind for the world’s beauty, love, joy, and pleasure offers a temporary release. The narrator presents these thoughts as bitter venting rather than a settled decision, but they establish how far the conflict has pressed him toward retreat.

The Funeral Voyage

At Porto Ceresio, Massimo waits for the delayed funeral party, expecting Don Aurelio and friends from Rome to arrive with Benedetto’s body. He has already left Lelia and Donna Fedele earlier than necessary, unaware that the arrival has been delayed. In the still water before him, his thoughts hold three figures: Lelia, the ardent young woman he loves; Donna Fedele, who has come for their sake and may be dying in a hotel; and Benedetto, more distant, beloved and feared at once.

The remembered teacher comes suddenly nearer. Massimo feels again the dying man’s hand on his head and recalls his final injunctions: to be holy, and to fulfill religious duties as the Church prescribes, in strict justice and perfect obedience. The recollection is not abstract doctrine alone. Massimo realizes that the previous day, a Sunday, he had failed to attend Mass for the first time in his life. In thought, he had found it easier to break with the Church than to break with its outward worship and old habits, which seemed bound up with the memory of the dead he loved.

That omission gives the inward conflict a concrete measure. Massimo feels a small pang of conscience and tries to bring his will to bear against what he considers an unruly emotional impulse. But the contest has been intensifying for days, sharpened by the news that Benedetto’s body is coming. As the funeral traveler approaches, Massimo senses feeling gaining force over reason; the lake’s gusts and shifting reflections become an image of his own unsettled anticipation.

The Declaration to Don Aurelio

The special steamer arrives crowded with people. More than a hundred people from Albogasio have come with their parish priest to meet Benedetto, whom they regarded as a benefactor. During the voyage, as the boat moves through the darkness toward Oria, Massimo takes Don Aurelio’s arm and asks whether he may speak. Trembling, he tells him that he has returned to Christ and the Church, and that he has returned now.

Don Aurelio embraces him tightly and answers with joy, saying that Massimo has lifted a great weight from his heart. The exchange makes the return both personal and witnessed: Massimo’s concealed spiritual struggle is spoken aloud to the priest who had not known its extent, and Don Aurelio receives the declaration as relief rather than argument. Its timing gives the words their force. They are spoken on the way to the burial of the teacher whose faith had once steadied Massimo, while that teacher’s final words press upon his conscience again.

Meaning and Consequences

The scene distinguishes intellectual dissent from the lived forms of religious belonging. Massimo had entertained the possibility that Catholicism might be superseded, yet the remembered command to obey and the habitual obligation of Sunday worship remained powerful. His return is not presented as a newly reasoned answer to every theological question in his letter; it is a decisive commitment made at the point when doubt, grief, memory, and religious practice converge.

The funeral setting also gives the declaration a communal horizon. The steamer carries not only Benedetto’s body but more than a hundred people who have come to honor him. After Massimo’s announcement, Don Aurelio speaks publicly about Benedetto’s religious life. He acknowledges that Benedetto may have erred in theological questions, but presents his essential work as calling believers back to the spirit of the Gospel in life, feeling, and action. He also insists that Benedetto professed obedience to Church authority and conformed to Catholic belief and practice after turning from the world to God. Don Aurelio’s address is not the cause of Massimo’s earlier declaration; it places the declaration beside a public defense of the teacher whose memory has helped bring it about.

Don Aurelio’s subsequent words about forgiveness and the limits of human judgment extend the funeral’s moral frame beyond Massimo’s personal decision. The mourners are urged to forgive those who condemned or insulted Benedetto, and to recognize that people moving through darkness cannot know all that impedes another’s way. Against Massimo’s earlier temptation to abandon the religious field, the return marks a renewed place within the Church’s practices and community. The narrative leaves theological uncertainty in view while making the change unmistakable: on the dark crossing to Oria, Massimo declares himself returned.