Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “I know your Father Prior very well. He blames himself, of course.”

  “Unfortunately, it is so. He feels that if he had been more conscious of security it would not have happened.”

  “Still as hard on himself as ever, I see. I will write to him.”

  “There have been so many developments lately. The New World cult has its headquarters in Haifa. One can see their temple from our bell tower. There have been riots at our gate. Small affairs staged as media events.”

  “If I recall correctly, their philosophy is one of universal tolerance, isn’t it?”

  “It is. However, they say that the Roman Catholic Church is the only remaining bastion of intolerance left on the planet.”

  “And thus they will not tolerate it.”

  “I believe they are not a significant enemy. The assault is underway on every level of society. I think the noisiest of the attacks are the least dangerous.”

  Stato turned and looked significantly at Billy.

  “You see, William, why he is the right choice?”

  “I always said he was a smart lad.”

  The cardinal looked at his watch.

  “Time to go.”

  The three men walked through a labyrinth of corridors. Elijah did not attempt to make a mental map of their route, for his attention was distracted every few feet by works of art. The collection seemed inexhaustible, and he felt a longing that was close to physical pain. Mount Carmel was a place of exquisite beauty, but a beauty of architectural restraint, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, orchards basking in the sun, dusk on the ocean, the broad sweep of the mountain as it declined toward the east, eloquent stretches of purple hills in which Christ and the devil had walked. A stark, eternal kind of beauty. Macrocosmic beauty. Here, in these varnished hallways smelling of floor wax and opulence, the beauty was of another order. Here, the imagery expressed the human drama. The interior universe. The microcosm. Raphael, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Bramante, Giacomo Manzu. Ancient funerary busts of first-century Roman couples, their faces surprisingly modern, radiating personality. The idealized marble portraits of emperors. Classic gods and goddesses. A Byzantine icon of Mother and Child. A Romanesque crucifix. Frescoes, tapestries, mosaics, Renaissance paintings. Saints, heroes, traitors, princes, popes—the height and breadth of the human soul displayed in myriad incarnate forms. There was mysticism, sanctity, sex, violence, civic stability and instability, the collapse of empires, and the clash of demonic warfare. There were visions of Heaven and Hell, the city of man and the city of God, the New Jerusalem, and the restoration of the entire creation to divine order. There was Fall and there was Redemption. There was Genesis to Apocalypse. It was all here.

  Billy grabbed his arm and pulled him along behind the cardinal. Elijah had to remind himself from moment to moment that he was on his way to meet the pontiff of the universal Church.

  “One, holy, catholic, apostolic Church”, he whispered to himself.

  “Are you all right? You look a bit distracted, old boy.”

  “I’m all right. It’s difficult to shut this out.”

  “Too bloody true”, Billy laughed. “But you get used to it. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Concentrate on the busts of the Roman emperors—a nasty-looking crew. They killed our forefathers and foremothers, remember. Focus on that. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred!”

  “The valley of death? Six hundred?”

  “Old poem. English schoolboy stuff. Doesn’t mean a thing. Relax.”

  Elijah’s heart beat hard and he breathed more deeply. He felt a mixture of fear and joy. There was no time to dwell on it because they had arrived at the entrance to the papal apartments. The cardinal spoke with a priest seated at a desk. The priest penned a notation in a book and nodded to the two Swiss guards who stood at the door.

  The Pope’s private apartment was not what Elijah had expected. It was a modern suite of rooms, carpeted in dove gray. The walls, plastered white, were appointed with one or two discreet works of art and a few furnishings of the simplest design. The lack of embellishment was in marked contrast to the opulence of the outer hallways.

  An elderly nun in a white habit came from a dining room to the right. The cardinal exchanged pleasantries with her. She explained that she and a chamberlain were just setting the table for tomorrow’s breakfast. The Holy Father was in the chapel. He would be out in a few minutes. The Holy Father would like His Eminence and guests to wait for him in the parlor. The chamberlain would bring them refreshments.

  The cardinal and the little nun bowed to each other, and she left through the main entrance.

  Billy squeezed Elijah’s arm and said, “I’m gone too. See you later in State’s office for a debriefing.”

  The cardinal and Elijah seated themselves in the parlor. The only image in the room was a Russian icon of the crucifixion, with a red votive light burning beneath it. A cluster of potted trees bloomed beneath a skylight. The couch and four armchairs, upholstered in white, verged on comfort, but studiously avoided luxuriance.

  “You are surprised?” said the cardinal.

  “Yes.”

  “The decor is like him”, he explained. “Simplicity of form.” He gestured to the cross: “And holiness.”

  At that moment, the Pope walked into the room.

  He was not a tall man. Of moderate height, he walked with a slight stoop, almost unnoticeable because of his face. The face drew the attention with a gentle absoluteness. It was a radiant face, kind, grave, and serene, but in no way distant. The wrinkles expressed a lifetime of laughter and sorrow. He had been a slave laborer under the Nazis as a youth, ordained in an underground seminary during the Soviet regime. An outstanding scholar, poet, playwright, a man of vast cultural formation, in no way an isolated academic. Perhaps one of the foremost philosophers of the century, he had accepted with reluctance becoming a bishop. It had proved the making of the man. The ensuing decades of the late twentieth century had thrown him into most of its major moral and sociopolitical conflicts, during which he had learned to function under fire not only as a teacher but as a pastor. He was gifted with a genius for imparting the Gospel message as a reality anyone could live. He made goodness credible. He had impressed upon the world his conviction that Truth and Love were made to work together, were not at war with each other—an insight that had long fallen into disuse. Whether or not the world took it to heart, or even remembered that he had said it, was daily becoming a moot issue. If many had heard, many had rejected.

  Elijah fell to his knees and took the pontiff’s ring hand in order to kiss it, but the Pope grasped him by the arms and made him rise.

  “Father Elijah, welcome to Saint Peter’s.”

  “Thank you, Holy Father.”

  “Have you made a pleasant journey? You must be tired? Please, come, everyone, let us sit.”

  The Pope took the center of a grouping of three chairs facing a single chair. Stato took the seat to his right, and a slender, white-haired man took the chair to his left. This must be Dottrina, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that secretariat which guarded the purity of the Church’s teaching.

  They were introduced, and Elijah felt himself assessed by the prefect—his eyes were cool, clear, set in a transparent face.

  “I enjoyed your article on biblical spirituality very much”, said the prefect. “You write with courage, yet you avoid the vertigo of personal rancor.”

  “Thank you, Eminence.”

  “Few exegetes agree with, your position. Biblical criticism is dominated by modernist thinking, so there is a vested interest in disproving your hypothesis.”

  “The recent discoveries at Ephesus and the Dead Sea are objective facts. I believe they will restore many scholars to sanity.”

  “I hope you are right, Father. They will restore the sincere ones. Those who pursue other agendas will not be moved, not even by this overwhelming evidence offered by the new scrolls.”

  “It i
s to be hoped that the codices will at the very least expose the subjectivity of the dissidents to themselves. A moment of grace.”

  “When a scholar realizes that he has been subjective,” interjected Stato, “it is a moment of painful awakening. It is the test of a man. If he is intellectually honest, he reexamines his opinions and begins again.”

  “And, I think, he becomes a better scholar because of his humbling”, Dottrina added.

  “Much good can come from this”, said the Pope. “More than the restoration of our Catholic scholars. There is, above all, the evangelical reality. This discovery is within the plans of divine Providence, for the Lord has revealed the scrolls at precisely the moment in history when they are most needed.”

  The chamberlain wheeled in a trolley on which stood a tea pot, a carafe of coffee, cups and saucers, black bread and butter, cheese, and lemon biscuits. The chamberlain served Elijah first, the priest noted with some discomfort, the cardinals next, and the Pope last of all.

  “Father,” said the Pope, “you are wondering why we have called you here to Rome under such unusual circumstances.”

  “Yes, Holy Father.”

  “The matter before us only superficially concerns archeology. It is a most delicate subject. I ask you to keep the things we are about to discuss in the strictest confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “The destiny of many souls depends on what passes between us this evening.”

  Elijah waited.

  “I will ask the Cardinal Secretary of State to describe a certain situation which now confronts the Church.”

  “As you know,” said the urbane Italian, “we face hostility on several levels. As a city-state, the Vatican is presently embroiled in difficulties with the Italian national government, which for some time has vacillated between a return to neofascism on the one hand and euro-communism on the other. That is a problem on the regional level, and although it is potentially a source of practical difficulties, it offers little threat to the survival of the universal Church. As shepherd of the universal Church, however, the Holy Father now faces a number of challenges on the level of global development, massive shifts in the geopolitical structure of the world. There is spiritual confusion everywhere, deformation of our own faithful through perversion of the communications media, and dissension within because of the influence of false teachers. These are but some of the challenges facing us in the years ahead. In none of these fields is there notable promise of improvement, at least in the near future. Throughout the world we are characterized as the major stumbling block between man and universal prosperity. All social problems are blamed on inadequate global population policy, and, of course, we stand opposed to any policy that demeans the value of a single human person for the sake of ‘the people’.”

  The Pope leaned forward.

  “Thank you, Cardinal Secretary. Of utmost concern to me is an ominous tendency in the West to remain blind to new forms of totalitarianism. Throughout the world fascist materialism and socialist materialism are almost dead, with the exception of China, but atheistic materialism in its capitalistic form is showing itself every bit as destructive. Tens of millions are dying each year through abortion and euthanasia. This has been a century of violent materialistic ideology, which has left in its wake a civilization almost entirely denuded of its sense of the meaning of life. Man is a creature of heaven and earth, but he no longer knows it. He no longer knows himself. He no longer listens. He no longer hears. As a result, we are approaching a crisis of major proportions.”

  Elijah realized that the Pope and his two most powerful cardinals were setting a stage for something. Something they wanted of him. He could not begin to imagine what that might be. He considered himself an insignificant creature in the drama of the times, so hidden that the thought of himself as a useful servant of the Church was as laughable as it was mystifying. He was in no way afflicted with false humility, for he had a sense of his own qualities. But he considered himself useful to God only to the degree that he had given away his life and to the degree that he had built a life of prayer on the foundation of self-abandonment. He was a monk. He praised God and he interceded to Him for mankind.

  Dottrina shifted in his seat and unfolded his arms.

  “It may be that we are now facing the final confrontation between the Gospel and the anti-Gospel,” he said gravely, “between the Church and the anti-Church.”

  “You use the word final, Eminence. Are you speaking in an apocalyptic sense?”

  The three men nodded in assent.

  “Do you mean in the sense of the ultimate Apocalypse?”

  “The Scriptures tell us that no man knows the hour or the day of the coming of the Son of Man”, said the Pope. “Yet each generation is called to vigilance.”

  “Holy Father, may I ask you to clarify? Do you—you personally—believe that these are the tunes prophesied by the prophets of the Old Testament, by our Lord Himself, and by Saint Paul and Saint John in the New Testament?”

  The Pope looked at the floor, his eyes filled with some vast grief of a kind no other human being could experience.

  “Several popes and many of the Church Fathers, in their respective centuries, believed that theirs was the time of the End, and that their flocks were the children of the Last Days. It is a dangerous thing to speculate. It is not always the best thing for the Pope to speak his mind. My intuitions, indeed my convictions, are not ex cathedra. However, they are mine. And I suspect that the Holy Spirit put me in this chair for a reason.”

  “I think the Holy Father would like an assurance from you”, said Dottrina, ”that his personal thoughts on apocalyptic subjects will remain strictly a private exchange between the four of us.”

  “You have my solemn assurance. If you wish, I will treat it as covered by the sacramental seal of confession.”

  “That is not necessary, Father. I know that your word is good. To answer your question, my son: Yes. I believe we are living through the culmination of history as we know it. I believe that the return of the Lord is imminent, perhaps within three or four years, possibly a decade.”

  Elijah’s heart contracted. He felt a thrill of fear. Then, a wave of blackness rose up before him. He felt his limbs tremble and was surprised by this reaction. Apocalyptics was a field of biblical studies, academic, abstract, a scenario for the future, detached from the reality of his life—at worst it was a distant thunder.

  The wave subsided as he called upon his faith in Christ.

  “You are silent. Almost surely you are feeling in your heart what untold millions would feel if I were to speak of this from the Chair of Peter. They would hear it without the benefit of your strong faith. Modern man could not presently endure this knowledge. He suffers from the major disease of our century, a kind of absolute despair. As a result, he would simply ignore the truth or reject it out of hand.”

  Stato spoke next: “If you have followed the Holy Father’s pastoral plan for his pontificate, you will see that he goes everywhere on earth proclaiming Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, as Lord of History. The Pope is everywhere maligned because he is a sign of contradiction, because men no longer think history is redeemable by ordinary methods. They are turning more and more to radical solutions of a collectivist nature. Marxism and fascism are brutal forms of the same principle. Despair drives modern man to these solutions, but horrified by the brutality of the recent past, he seeks new forms that preserve the appearances of democracy. The horror is now hidden.”

  During this soliloquy, the Pope appeared to be no longer listening. He was staring toward the end of the room where the trees grew. One of them was in flower.

  “It is a dark century”, said Dottrina. “To look into this darkness and see there the victory of Christ is the essence of hope.”

  The Pope stood up, walked to the end of the room, and stopped at the cluster of trees. He looked at them without speaking.

  Stato continued as if the Pope were not present: “The
Holy Father goes about the world speaking of Jesus and speaking of hope. He believes that when men have hope they can look into the face of reality and awaken to their danger.”

  The Pope turned and looked at the two cardinals and the priest.

  “Do you recall the passage in Matthew’s Gospel where the Lord curses the barren fig tree?” he asked.

  They murmured assent.

  “Do you know why the Lord did such an amazing thing?”

  “As a sign to them”, said Stato. ”The barren tree was a figure of the Pharisees, masters of the Law who would not produce good fruit because of their unbelief.”

  “That is part of the meaning”, said the Pope. “There is more. Father Elijah?”

  “Your Holiness, I think the Lord meant it as a warning to the shepherds of his people. A fig tree that is covered with leaves yet bears no fruit has the appearance of life, but does not bear life.”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “It is a warning.”

  “One of the Lord’s hard sayings?”

  “Yes.”

  “My brothers,” said the Pope, touching the branch of a tree, looking sternly at the cardinals, “do you know what species of tree this is?”

  “A fig”, said the cardinals simultaneously.

  “And you, Father, do you recognize this other one, this flowering one?”

  “An almond. We have many in our garden at Carmel.”

  “What does it say to us?”

  “The local people sometimes call it the watching tree, because it is the first to bloom in the spring. It is like a watchman.”

  “Do you know what the Lord has to say to the watchman who does not keep a watchful eye over his household?”

  None of the others knew the answer precisely.

  “You will find his admonition in Ezekiel, chapter 3”, said the Pope. “And you know what the Lord has to say to shepherds who do not feed and protect their flocks. Ezekiel again, my friends. Chapter 34.”

  He returned to his seat and looked at Elijah.

  “In Matthew 24 are written the Lord’s apocalyptic warnings. There, he again speaks of the fig tree. I ask you, is the household of faith bearing the fruit it is called to bear?”