Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “I am weakness itself. I have lost confidence. Exteriorly, I will do what I can, but I have no certainty that I can accomplish anything. Quite the reverse. I fear that I may do more damage.”

  “Why do you fear such a thing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have been a priest these many years and you don’t know?”

  “Sincerely, Father, I do not understand what has been occurring in my soul during these last few days. I feel less prepared than ever.”

  “It’s good you feel your weakness.”

  “Strength is needed for this task.”

  “No. Weakness is needed.”

  “What do you mean? I’m confused.”

  “This is what Francis wished to show you. Weakness is your strength.”

  Again, Elijah could not answer.

  “You are a man who has borne many afflictions. From your childhood you have suffered at the hands of evil men. In my mind is a picture of a little boy in a black suit. He is dancing for God. He is full of joy. The fire tries to eat him. But he runs away and a man saves him. Then he runs across the world. But he forgets to dance. He loses joy.”

  “You have described my youth accurately.”

  “Then he is dealt a severe blow. He loves a woman. This is the one great love of his life. She is life itself to him. He no longer believes in God. He believes only in this woman. She is good, but her knowledge of the truth is limited. She loves him. There is a child within her womb they have conceived together, man and wife.”

  “Now you have described my early manhood.”

  “The woman dies. The child dies within her. They are taken to a place of joy, but the young husband and father feels the darkness of the world go deeper into his soul. He is angry with God. He thinks he hates this God whom he proclaims doesn’t exist. He fills his life with brave actions. He rises to power in a nation of the East. At the very moment when he is offered a pathway into total power, he is given a message.”

  “What was that message?”

  “A word of love from his past. A word of sacrificial love. It is something wholly unexpected. It jars him, it shakes his confidence in his own judgment. He leaves the paths of power. He wanders aimless and alone. He is an empty shell. Eventually he comes to the mountain of Elijah, and there he wishes to throw himself from a height over a precipice. On the height he sees a building like a solitary fortress, the last refuge in a sea of adversity and meaninglessness. For no reason he suddenly remembers the little boy that he once was. He feels for an instant—oh, such a very short instant—a burst of joy. He remembers his dance before the throne of God.

  “He decides to give the absent God a last chance. He knocks on the door of the building and finds a place where men live together in peace. Men of all kinds, poor, rich, brave, cowardly, smart, dumb, saints, sinners. They work the soil and pray. They plant and they harvest. They listen for the voice of God. They listen in the dark. They are the ones who believe beyond the point of all believing, when it is no longer possible to believe.

  “They invite him in. He stays a day, two days, a week, a month. He no longer wishes to throw himself over a precipice. He asks new questions. He learns that until now he has seen only a part of creation. For many years he has stared into the darkness and lost all hope of dawn. Now he is given glimpses of the love that is all love. At first he is not given great amounts. He is too fragile for that. Yet he accepts that there is much, much more to existence than he had supposed. He argues, he doubts, he thinks, and he wrestles with God.”

  “Father. Say no more. I know it is me you speak of.”

  The friar nodded and Elijah felt a wave of love come to him from the old man.

  “The little dancing boy in the black suit and the fur hat,” the friar continued, “he is a chosen one of God. He is a brand pulled from the burning. He is a soul who from his earliest years has hungered for Truth. Because of this hunger, he has borne many wounds for God and did not know it.”

  “I know it now.”

  “You will bear many more wounds for Him.”

  “There is no strength in me.”

  “That is how it must be.”

  “Last night, I felt a flood of anguish that I had not experienced for years. I saw clearly everything I had lost. My family. My wife, my child. I felt as if I were falling into a bottomless pool of grief.”

  “Above us, there is an ocean of joy. You will see it. You will go up to it, and it will come down to meet you. Didn’t the woman clothed with the sun speak to you of this? I saw her come to you in a dream.”

  “She did”, he choked.

  “Why are you afraid? She is with you. Her mission is like yours, to crush the head of the serpent that coils itself around the world. You are an instrument to confound the serpent as he prepares to ensnare the very House of God. Yet no man can resist him without divine assistance. The Lord has given to the woman a role for the Last Days that no other human could accomplish, not even our saintly Pope. She sustains him just as she sustains you, by graces given to her from the hands of her Son. She will intercede for you and protect you. She too is a servant, but the greatest of servants, for she bore the Lamb within her own womb.”

  “The enemy killed the Lamb.”

  “You know the rest of it.”

  “And the Lamb overcame death.”

  “Yes. But first He had to die.”

  “Why did He have to die? Why did my wife die? Why are you covered with bruises?”

  “Because we are in a real war.”

  “It is not right!”

  “You a priest for so many years and you say that? Of course it’s not right. The Cross isn’t right. But our Lord took it and turned it into the great sign that the devil hates above all other signs. Each time we accept to bear that cross and be nailed to it, believing against all believing—when it’s impossible any longer to believe because of our pain—that’s when we defeat him. By the blood of the Lamb!”

  “What are these bruises?”

  “You don’t need to know, my brother.”

  “I think you bore them for me. Tell me the truth.”

  The old friar sighed.

  “You were exhausted when you came here. The enemy knows of you, and he sees you approaching, though he doesn’t grasp the mind of Christ in your mission. He sees only a threat to his plans, though he can’t guess what it is. He never learns.”

  “You took these blows in my place.”

  “I asked a favor of the Lord. I asked that some of the attack intended for you would be deflected onto me.”

  “But to strike you in the flesh! What purpose does that serve?”

  “The enemy rages. He tries to frighten. He would like to frighten you. Ordinarily, he is not permitted to frighten souls by material appearances. His work is largely silent. He is most effective when he is unseen. On occasion, God permits that the devil should be allowed to use crude weapons, and thereby reveal himself for what he is. He grabs the opportunity, even though he knows he is losing ground by revealing himself. But his malice is so great he can’t resist.”

  “I ask you to pray for me”, Elijah said in a broken voice. “I am afraid.”

  “Do you see these wounds? These bruises?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are my joy.”

  “Pain is your joy?”

  “The pain in itself is not joy. It is simply pain. But the meaning of the pain, that is joy.”

  Elijah lay his head on the bed beside the friar’s hand. “Please pray for me.”

  With much effort Don Matteo turned on his side and put his hands on Elijah’s head. He prayed, and Elijah felt a warm current flow through him.

  “You are going into the lion’s mouth”, said the old man. “You must not be afraid. Be at peace and trust in God. Trust in the Father, in Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit.”

  They remained without moving for some time. Then, Don Matteo pointed to the wall shrine.

  “Get me the relic. Over there by our La
dy. It’s in the brass thing.”

  He found a reliquary at the foot of the statue. A plain round container, the size of a pillbox. “Bring it here.” Elijah did so. “Open it.”

  Inside was a dark brown chip of wood. “This is a relic of the true Cross. I give it to you. It’s now yours.”

  “This is too great a gift!”

  “That’s true”, said the friar sadly. “It’s so great a gift that we bear it badly. Even so, carry it, my son.”

  “I will carry it next to my heart. I thank you, Father.”

  “Do you know that the scoffers say if all the supposed relics of the Cross were gathered together, it would compose ten crosses?”

  “I have heard.”

  “Did you know that’s a lie? If all the relics of the true Cross that are known today were to be collected, they would not come near to making a single cross. You see, the scoffers hate the Cross. The Cross is scandalous. They can’t understand it. And so they can only believe it’s a superstition of gullible Catholics.”

  “Who are the gullible?”

  “Indeed. Now, my son, I must tell you that this splinter of wood was soaked in the blood of the Lamb. I know it. I have placed this relic on the incurable, and they have been healed. Demons screech and flee when they see it.”

  “Father, why didn’t this relic of the Lord’s Cross protect you from the evil one?”

  “Ordinarily, he loathes the sign of the cross, and most of all he hates those pieces that come from the true Cross. But he is not an ordinary demon, easily driven away with a word. Furthermore, the Lord permitted that I should feel some of the blows that fell on Him.”

  At that moment the hall door squealed open and a friar entered. He wore a stethoscope around his neck, and he carried a tray of medicine. A shocked expression crossed his face.

  “It is not permitted”, he said. “He must have rest! Don Matteo, the prior expressly forbid. . .”

  Don Matteo made the sign of the cross on Elijah’s forehead and observed with some amusement as the brother physician conducted Elijah from the room without any pretense of diplomacy.

  “Go to the cathedral at Orvieto!” called Don Matteo. “And write to me, my son.”

  VI

  Naples

  He knocked repeatedly on Billy’s door before he heard a mumbled reply.

  “Billy not happy. Billy got sore bloody head. Billy no feel good. Billy drink lots o’ coffee, feel better. Meet nice Father at parking lot by nine.”

  Elijah left a goodbye note for Don Matteo. He left another for the giant.

  Dear Brother Jakov,

  This gift was carved by a member of my community, He gave it to me on the day of my ordination. He is a Christian Arab. He lost his family in the bombing of a Palestinian camp by the Israeli army. Those who have lost everything belong to a fellowship of the spirit. To survive is a suffering that only another survivor can know. I too lost my family. They were massacred in Poland during the war. None was saved. Only me. I am a Christian Jew. All my life I have asked, why did God save me and not them? It is the hardest question of all. But God will answer it. Trust in this. God will answer it. I believe that our pain, united to the pain of Jesus on the Cross, may help in the saving of souls. I pray for you. Please pray for me.

  In Christ, true Savior of the World,

  Father Elijah.

  Into the envelope he put a wooden crucifix. Though it lacked art, Brother Ass had carved it with love. He was the first of the Palestinian brothers who had accepted him.

  “Father, see this cross I made for you. It’s from a tree that grows in Bethlehem. I cut a piece from it myself. Ooh, you wouldn’t believe what I had to pay that rich olive merchant who said he owned the tree. How can anyone own a tree of the Lord, I ask you? This tree is a seed of the seed of the tree that grew beside the stable of Bethlehem. Baby Jesus blessed this tree on the night when he was a running away from Herod. It was watered by the blood of the babies who were slaughtered. It’s holy wood!”

  The small brother’s faith, as strong as an ass, and as unpredictable, could not be dislodged from certain embellishments on doctrine. Was the mystique of this crucifix merely a superstition? A pious fiction? Or was it a literary device of the illiterate, formed over centuries of suffering by simple people who had no other way to hold hope on high when the soldiers of Herod left their bloody litter throughout history? Nevertheless, the carving was an icon of redemption, sitting in the palm of his hand like a solid compression of a million words, a summation of the entire Gospel. This crude image was his greatest earthly treasure. He placed it into an envelope, printed the Croatian brother’s name on it, and left it at the porter’s desk.

  Billy arrived at the parking lot looking miserable.

  “Good morning, Monsignor.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You look ill. Do you have a fever, a chill?”

  “Grappa”, grunted Billy.

  “Grappa?”

  “These friends of mine. They asked me back to their place last night after Frankie’s bar closed. They served home-made grappa. Like a fool, I drank it.”

  “And so, you pay the price today.”

  “Don’t look at me with that pitying smile. If you had a skull like this, you wouldn’t think it quite so funny.”

  “Would you like me to drive? It’s a long way to Naples.”

  “Right. You drive”, he groaned, holding his head.

  Elijah drove the Jaguar sedately out of the town and turned south.

  “I wasn’t drunk, you understand. I only had a shot glass or two, but it kicked like a rhino.”

  “Your head hurts?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “This couple and me got to talking at Frankie’s. We took a liking to each other. The mum’s a Brit married to an Italian. They have a villa around the mountain. We were having such a good time, but they had to get back to their kids. Babysitter had to be home by midnight or the carriage would turn into a pumpkin.”

  Elijah’s brow furrowed. He did not always understand Billy’s ideas.

  “So they asked me back to the villa for a nightcap. While the mum’s driving the babysitter home, the dad cranks open a bottle of this stuff that looks like pure kero. Have a sip of this, Monsignor, he says as innocent as a lamb. The blighter!”

  “What is grappa?”

  “It’s an unbelievable liquor that only the bloody Romans could have invented. This lad takes me down to the cellar and shows me his private still. He has a crock of green wine down there. Sticking out of it are two bare wires, the remains of an electric lamp. He plugs it in and sparks go zapping inside the glass. Steam starts bubbling up the top, coiling through a bunch of copper tubes and before you know it, he’s got distilled alcohol dripping out the end.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Aaaar! So resourceful these people. It looked like Doctor Frankenstein’s workshop down there. The stuff tasted like it too.”

  “You perhaps sipped more of it than you had intended?”

  “That’s very charitable of you. The answer to that question is yes.”

  “I’m sorry you feel unwell.”

  “I feel properly chastened by my head. Every sin has its consequences, doesn’t it?”

  They drove on without further conversation until Elijah turned west toward Orvieto.

  “Where you going? Naples is the other way.”

  “Don Matteo suggested we make a detour to the cathedral at Orvieto.”

  “What for? There are a dozen cathedrals on the way south, most of them just as impressive.”

  “Have you seen inside?”

  “No. I’ve passed it once or twice. Did he say why you’re supposed to go there?”

  “He wants me to see something. But I didn’t have time to find out what it is.”

  They reached Orvieto by midmorning. Spatters of rain had begun to hit the pavement outside the cathedral. The air was cooler than the day before, but humidity was high,
and there was rumbling above the gray blanket of sky.

  It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness of the interior. It smelled of incense and beeswax. The apse echoed faintly with hushed whispers. A few old women were praying their beads and making the Stations.

  Elijah and Billy genuflected toward the tabernacle and then stood gazing about them.

  The interior was beautiful but did not differ notably from the numerous other cathedrals that dotted Italy.

  “Well, where’s the big secret?”

  “It’s here. Whatever it is, Don Matteo thought it important enough for us to make a detour to find it.”

  They entered a side chapel.

  Four monumental frescoes, representing the end of the world, had been painted on the walls in vivid colors, in a style of epic grandeur that must have been innovative at the time of its execution.

  “1499 to 1500”, said Billy reading a bronze plaque. “These frescoes are by Luca Signorelli.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A disciple of the painter Piero della Francesco. Michelangelo admired his work.”

  “He has made an apocalypse.”

  “And a jolly unattractive one it is! This mural here is The Damned Cast into Hell. Ugh! I hate crowds. That lot isn’t bound for a soccer match. Gor, I wouldn’t trade my mind for this man’s imagination, not for a million pounds. It’s horrible.”

  “Yes. I think that must be what he wanted to teach us. The horror of damnation.”

  “Looks like all the deadly sins are here. Let’s see, I’m going to try to find drunkenness. Sure enough, there it is, right beside lust. Let me look into the drunkard’s face. I knew it! I knew it! He looks just like me.”

  Billy’s attempt at humor did nothing to relieve the pall of tragedy hanging over the scene.

  “They look too damned human for my taste. And so do the devils.”

  Elijah went over to another mural.

  His eyes were drawn to the central figure of the image, a figure of Christ. How strange, he thought, to see a representation of the Lord with the figure of Satan whispering in His ear, and his arm penetrating His robes. Is that Christ’s hand or the devil’s that emerges from the folds of cloth?