Luke Mohan’s Reviews > The Master of Hestviken > Status Update

The Christian faith had been to him a power like the king and the law of the land – he knew that it was to govern his life, and he bowed to it, without reluctance, with reverence and with the recognition that a man must be loyal to all these things if he was to be able to meet his equals, and look them freely in the face without shame.

God sees my heart, and he knows it. But he knows, too, I ween, that the hardest thing you can require of a man is that he shall not avenge his kinswoman’s honour with the sword… I tell you, Olav, the man who can forgive such a thing from his heart, him I would call a Holy man.

A beautiful confession. “Think you then that the load which your friend has laid upon you is so heavy that you are not able to bear it—a Christian man and His man?”…
“Nay. Nay, I think not that—“

Prayer before confession: “God my Lord, give me discretion to say what I have to say and no more and no less.”

“Men and women must bear resolutely what they have brought upon themselves—“ Olav to Ingunn

On suffering, penance

It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man’s faith is put to the test on the day God‘s will is not his.