by Jane Lebak
Michael closed his eyes too. Thank you for hope.
He took a deep breath and touched his sword.
Gabriel said, "Do you want to go look over what they've done?"
Michael shook his head. "I'm heading to the Babylonian camp. I still have a people to protect."
The Epilogue
3 BC
Watching the sun set over the Galilean hills, Gabriel sat on a roof and prayed in union with the family below. Uriel had become a guardian angel to a woman, and Gabriel often came for the evening and morning prayers because Uriel had been so present for him.
Raphael slipped onto the roof edge beside Gabriel and joined the prayer. The Seraph's fire flickered around him, and Gabriel thrilled at the beauty of the normal lives in Nazareth: the homes, the lamps, the routine, the prayers. This wasn't greatness as much as God present in the moment, and he opened his soul to Raphael to show him the wonder of ordinary time. And look, he sent to Raphael, drawing to his attention the long shafts of light piercing the sky, see that? Air is still a colloidal suspension.
Raphael chuckled.
The prayer in the house tugged at his soul, and Gabriel made himself docile to the pull. The woman was meditating, Uriel all around her and through her.
Raphael murmured, "What's going on?"
The pull increased. Gabriel said, "I'm being drawn inside."
Raphael kept his voice low. "Not that. Michael's set up a perimeter."
Gabriel absorbed the silence and felt an utter absence of demonic activity through the entire town. Michael, Raguel and Saraquael had taken positions at strategic points on the border, Remiel hovering. The demons didn't seem to be fighting, just elsewhere, as if they'd all forgotten this town at the same moment.
The tug grew in strength, and Gabriel released himself to its draw.
He found himself inhabiting the woman's prayer with Uriel, their intense contemplation of God as protector and king and guide. The hope of a promise made hundreds of years ago.
Gabriel became aware that the woman was aware of him. She grew wary. He remained present but silent.
God moved within Gabriel: it was time to speak. Gabriel reached his soul toward the woman's so they could hear one another. The woman's name was Mary.
She was paying full attention to him now. Uriel thrummed in her heart, gave her strength, and then backed off. It was just Gabriel and Mary.
Gabriel opened his hands and projected, Hail, Full of Grace!
As the words emerged, her soul opened up to him, and he realized what he'd said: full of grace. Full, as in containing nothing else. No other desires than God. No sin. Nothing other than total intensity of purpose for God alone. Full of grace. Uriel had cloaked this soul so he'd never seen it before, but now he could, and in that moment, Gabriel saw she was as God had made her to be, everything and nothing more.
The feel of her prayers hung around them both, but she was scared. He projected. The Lord is with you. Don't be afraid.
Her attention remained riveted to him. Gabriel's voice flowed into a mixture of tenor and soprano. "You have found favor with God. Listen: you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and he will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever. Of his Kingdom there will be no end."
Gabriel focused on her alone, aware he was throwing off light and leaving a shadow, but at the same time she was looking into him without blinking. "How can this be?" she whispered. "I have no husband."
She was betrothed – surely she'd get the child in the usual way? Unless…unless she'd already promised that part of herself to God. Unless she'd already consecrated her body and made an agreement with her intended, and for Gabriel's words to be true meant she would sin, something she'd never want to do. Sin…or the impossible.
There will be a new Ark, God had told him. A new Ark and a new Covenant. He was speaking the message of a new Covenant, and here he stood, now, in front of the new Ark. The one who would bear the priesthood, the totality of the law, the bread that would feed the Lord's people. The Ark had contained the Spirit of the Lord, and it would again. The Ark was pure. No man could touch it.
The message flowed from Gabriel like a dream: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you: therefore the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God."
Gabriel shivered as he said the words. His soul whirled like a kaleidoscope.
"Elizabeth your cousin has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible."
Mary clasped her hands at her chest: Behold the maidservant of the Lord. She murmured, "Let it be it done to me just as you say."
Gabriel felt himself eased back, still within her prayer but no longer within her vision. As he remained, he witnessed that kiss from the Holy Spirit, that breath where a new soul sparked into being within a human woman, and now here before him stood the Ark of the Covenant imbued with the Glory of the Lord, the fulfillment of every prayer the Jewish people had ever prayed.
Gabriel dropped to his knees. He formed a flower out of his soul material and laid it on the floor before Mary, who remained in prayer with tears streaking her cheeks. And he watched the glow of the second soul in the second body within her own.
Beside him, Raphael drew close, compelled, attracted. Gabriel reached for him. Did you hear? Did you hear what I said?
But Raphael remained focused on Mary. His confusion swirled through Gabriel, but also need. Determination.
Raphael bit his lip. "What's going on?"
Gabriel kept silence because he'd just had his moment, so Raphael should have his own, should cherish the wonder of realizing what Gabriel could already see. The little one conceived in Mary, the Messiah and the Son of God, was a human being. And humans had guardian angels.
Gabriel moved closer to Raphael, wing to wing, and took his hand. Squeezed. Then backed away.
Without even noticing Gabriel, Raphael stepped forward, and then a thrill shot through him. His attention flashed to God, one huge question, and then a surge of joy at the answer. He turned to Gabriel, beaming, and Gabriel extended his hand toward Raphael with a blessing.
Raphael turned back to Jesus, his human charge, and dissociated into the space around him.
In the corner, Gabriel tucked up his knees and waited. Mary emerged from her meditation looking shocked. She found the flower on the floor and set it in a pitcher of water, then paced. Nervousness rolled off her. Gabriel could feel Uriel's reassurance, could feel Raphael when he reached for the Seraph.
So many mysteries, so many wonders. It would take the Cherubim years to finish dissecting everything that had just taken place. Years. But he was no longer needed here, so he drifted up to the roof.
Michael had taken down the perimeter. Demons seemed to have remembered the town, as if they'd never forgotten to notice it.
Thank you, Gabriel prayed. Then, watching the multicolored sunset, Gabriel sent God a question.
God said, "You did it perfectly."
Gabriel's eyes reflected the sunset. "Was that my purpose? Was that why you created me?"
"Gabri'li," God said, "you still don't understand. I didn't create you for just one thing. You don't have one goal in life that's your ultimate purpose. None of you does."
Gabriel raised his wings. "But you said we had a purpose."
"True," God said.
Gabriel's brow furrowed. A purpose. Not one thing. Based on this conversation, not two things either.
The fading light curved through layers of sky, reflecting off the curled bodies of vapor and particulate ice carried by winds that were created by the heat of the sun and spun by the planetary rotation. The distorted light bent into a myriad of hues, and Gabriel allowed his angelic sight to recognize each one individually, then merge them back into the paintbrush blur that composed
a sunset.
Gasping, he sat straight.
God laughed.
"You made us all to fit together," Gabriel said, "to work together, to be together. Life isn't a series of assignments and check-boxes. It's a continuum. We're gears that fit together like a machine to work in Your name."
Gabriel's mouth opened. "And—" He shifted his sight so he saw exclusively the Vision, looking at God face to Face. "And my ultimate purpose—?"
"You're fulfilling it now."
Gabriel opened his hands. "Anyone could have delivered that message."
"Anyone could have delivered that message, or no one. I could have done it myself. But no one else could fit into the community of angels like Gabriel ben Adonai, with your soul, your beauty, your power, your understanding, and your heart. Now not just a teacher of facts, but a teacher of life."
Gabriel bit his lip, and he hugged his knees to his chest.
"Come on home," said God to Gabriel, and the Holy Spirit wrapped him in a hug, carrying him to God's heart while the sun finished setting over the Judean hills.
Thank you so much for reading An Arrow In Flight! Please, please, please consider leaving a review at Amazon. Forget what your 4th grade teacher said about book reports: leaving a review is as easy as finding the book's entry and clicking on a number of stars, then writing a couple of sentences about what you liked or didn't like. Authors will love you for it! (Well, I can't speak for all authors. This author will love you for it.)
If you'd like to hear from me when new books appear, you can sign up for my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bcnCNX. Everyone who signs up gets a free copy of the Seven Angels Short Story Bundle. (And in the Bundle, there are two stories that fit into Gabriel’s story in this book. They didn’t work in the book itself, but I had to write them because they were fun.)
Below I’ve included a snippet of the follow-up novel, Seven Archangels: Sacred Cups
Gabriel and the other Archangels of the Presence have a new assignment: guard the Messiah through his childhood and ministry. Gabriel still struggles to synthesize the lessons for his year as a man, but he carries the shame of his punishment with him into his relations with the other angels. When created beings kill the Son of God, mortal enemies suddenly become allies while close friends become enemies, and Gabriel finds himself on the battle field of a war he never wanted to fight.
Ready? Ready!
Year Eighteen
“Raphael!”
Mary’s voice in Raphael’s mind was so urgent that Jesus dropped his hammer and looked right at him.
Raphael replied, Mary, what’s happening?
“It’s Joseph. Come now. Right now!”
Gabriel already vanished, and in an instant he returned. “Joseph is ill. You’re needed.”
Jesus left the worksite and bolted for home. When he was out of sight of the other workers, though, Raphael said, “Stop. Wait,” and grabbed his hand. “Close your eyes. Okay, now open them.”
When Jesus looked up again, Raphael had transported them both to an alcove within Nazareth. Jesus got his bearings and pelted for the house.
Just inside, he ran through Gabriel in the doorway and pulled up short beside Mary. She was crouching beside Joseph, collapsed on the floor. “Help him up. Something’s wrong and I don’t know what.”
Raphael laid a hand on Joseph’s head and moved with him as Jesus gathered him up, then laid him out on his bed. What are you getting from him? Jesus asked Raphael.
Raphael kept his focus on the blood flow through the man’s body, the rhythm of his heartbeat, his shallow breaths, the unsteady and tiny blips like lightning flashes in his brain. Gabriel fed him energy, but energy wasn’t what Raphael needed. What he needed was permission, and none came. Jesus could give the command and he’d heal Joseph in an instant. For that matter, Jesus could heal Joseph himself, something he was praying for permission to do right now.
Mary looked at Jesus. “Will you do anything for him?”
Will. Not can.
Raphael waited. Jesus brushed the hair from Joseph’s forehead and settled him. Joseph never stirred, only kept breathing lightly.
Is that a brain bleed? Gabriel asked.
Raphael acknowledged. He’s not in any pain. But he’s not going to recover unless we intervene.
Gabriel said nothing. He knew the rules as well as Raphael did, but Raphael could feel him praying. He could feel Uriel channeling and delivering Mary’s prayer, even if her prayer didn’t take the form of words as much as tears.
Jesus too was praying, waiting. And as Mary looked to him, Raphael felt a chalky darkness fall through the house. Asmodeus.
Raphael reached for his sword, but God stilled him. A test, then. It had to be permitted.
Asmodeus’ touch permeated the prayer. Wasn’t Joseph a good man? A man chosen specially to be Jesus’s father? And if Jesus had power, didn’t it stand to reason he ought to use it in order to help good men?
Jesus kept praying, but Raphael felt a curious doubling happen to the prayer: there was Jesus’s own prayer and then an anharmonic resonance with a prayer that wasn’t his own and yet felt as if it could be. What would Mary do without her husband? Who would care for her? If Jesus had a role to fill, who would provide for her in his absence? Life was hard for a widow. She needed Joseph so Jesus could be free to fulfill whatever God wanted.
Raphael bristled, but Jesus’s prayers did turn toward that avenue: for Mary’s sake, he was asking the Father, please bring healing to Joseph. And for his own – he still needed guidance.
No permission. Only silence.
Asmodeus raised a thought: whatever wasn’t forbidden must be permissible. Healing was good. God was good. Healing would be a work of God. It was time to act.
Jesus closed his eyes.
Mary stroked Joseph’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, either to Jesus or to Joseph or to both. “I’m sorry.”
Jesus leaned forward and breathed over Joseph, but Raphael didn’t feel him reaching out the way he’d reached out for Gabriel. Nothing like, Dad, be whole. Instead it was more a blessing, a farewell, a wish.
Asmodeus retreated. Raphael sat at the head of the bed with Jesus and remained close until Joseph died. He remained close as Jesus tended the body for burial, and he remained close during the next morning as Jesus shuffled through a fog of grief.
When the sun rose, Mary approached Jesus holding a leather bag. “Take these.” Tears glistened in her bloodshot eyes. “They belong to you now.”
Jesus accepted the bag, and he headed to the work site.
Dad’s tools, he thought to Raphael. They made a familiar sound as they clanked against one another in the bag slung over his shoulder. The bag bore Joseph’s sweat, his hand marks, everything he’d worked with on an everyday basis. He made so many buildings and pieces of furniture and carts. That was his life, and now I have his work left to do.
At the work site, Jesus reported to the foreman and apologized for leaving but that he’d gotten a message his father was dying. The foreman said he wouldn’t be paid for yesterday and sent Jesus out to build a staircase.
He used Joseph’s tools. Tools where the flaws were worn down into a part of the instrument, every shortcoming known and every good feature appreciated. In the evening, the foreman paid him for a staircase and sent him home.
Jesus hadn’t spoken to Raphael all day, and Raphael had been busy deflecting attacks: guilt that Jesus had let down his mother, plus guilt that he’d stayed his hand and not tried to force a healing or not tried to force God to relent. There was a sense of self-indulgence at his own sadness: why be sad when he’d chosen to let Joseph die? And finally discouragement because he wasn’t as good a carpenter at age eighteen as Joseph had been at sixty.
Raphael kept sending reassurance: Jesus had done what he was permitted, and that was right.
As the sun dipped over the road, Jesus rounded a bend to find a lone Roman soldier. “You, there!” The soldier pointed at Jesus. “Carr
y my gear!”
Raphael bristled, but that was the law: a Roman soldier could conscript a man to carry his gear one mile. Jesus, exhausted from the day’s work, sighed, but the Roman thrust him his shield and a pack. “Take those.”
Jesus shifted Joseph’s work bag so he could heft the additional load. The Roman said, “This way.”
They headed back up the road the way they’d come, and Jesus sent word to Gabriel to tell Mary he’d be home after dark. The Roman said nothing, but Jesus kept looking at him. Finally Jesus said, “Are you injured?”
The Roman glared at him. “Just carry my gear.”
Jesus handed him the waterskin. “Well, regardless, you look thirsty. Here.”
The Roman said, “Are you trying to trick me?”
Jesus said, “It’s water. You’re thirsty. Drink.”
The Roman took the waterskin and drank, then tilted it up and gulped down the whole thing. He gasped, wiping water from his cheeks, then handed the skin back to Jesus.
It grew dark. Jesus said, “Are you stationed in Caparnum?”
The soldier grunted an agreement.
“You got separated from your platoon?”
“I was sent to deliver a message.”
Jesus smiled. “Some of my best friends are messengers.”
The Roman’s voice grew tight. “Well, maybe they know the roads around here better than I do. All your towns look the same, so how was I supposed to find the right way to go?”
Jesus said, “Oh, you got lost. That’s why you ran out of water.”
The Roman said, “How did you know that?”
Jesus raised the empty waterskin. “Your own is empty, and you finished off mine. People aren’t overly friendly to Romans, no? You got directed all over the place by the least likely routes. Well, this will get you to Caparnum, and you’ll be back with your centurion.”
The Roman said, “Are you some kind of rabbi?”