Anastasia's Grail
Page 6
interrupted Stacy’s reading to put a veined and wrinkly hand on her arm. Her bony fingers felt cold. “Dear, would you mind getting me a glass of water?” Her eyes were lively and warm in spite of her age. Stacy put down her book and ran to get a drink for the old woman.
“You know,” the old woman said, after taking a drink, “I can’t wait for my wedding day.” Seeing that Stacy had no reply, she continued, “The day that I die I will be finally united with my Spouse.” Her eyes were simple and earnest. “I can’t wait.” Stacy smiled softly. The elderly lady tapped a bony finger on Stacy’s Eucharistic Miracle book. “Would you like to hear my two miracles?” she asked. Stacy nodded and the old woman got a faraway look as she collected her memories.
“The first happened when I was a very little girl.” She shot a guilty glance at Stacy. “I just loved chocolate,” she said. “I had a habit of spending my allowance on candy bars every week but, since I am a shrewd person, I wanted to get the most for my nickel a week. You could get one bar for a nickel, three for a dime. I would save up one week and get the three. Only one time when I had my dime and I was heading off to buy the three bars, I decided to stop in the local church for a visit with Jesus. While I was kneeling I got the feeling that I should light a votive candle to pray for a special intention.” The elderly nun nodded her head, remembering the incident. “So I put my dime in the slot and lit the candle.” She caught Stacy’s hand in her own. “When I left the church, it was as though I could taste chocolate with every piece of my body.” She said this intensely, then sighed, remembering. “That,” she told Stacy, “was my first miracle. Stacy wondered how she could be certain of something so little and so long ago. “Would you like to hear the other one?” Stacy nodded.
“This was a bit later, when I was a young nun. I had just received a brand new blue suit. I remember how crisp and spotless it was. Anyway, I had been assigned to direct traffic for an event like this in my new blue suit. I was standing outside, doing my job, when I felt a few drops of rain.” Her eyes showed the alarm she was feeling, reliving this memory. “I called out to my Spouse, asking Him please, not to let my new suit get ruined,”, she met Stacy’s eyes with excitement, “and the rain stopped.” She said this with breathless excitement, then they both lapsed into a thoughtful silence.
Stacy felt ashamed. The second one was even smaller than the first. If it had been Stacy she would have probably attributed that incident to mere coincidence. Here was a woman who had selflessly given Jesus her whole life, while Stacy found it difficult to give Him one grudging hour a week. Here she was thinking she may have gone to confession three times with a dead Saint, and this holy woman had never experienced anything in the ball park. She didn’t get it.
The little old nun reached in her purse and pulled out a pamphlet. “I want you to have this. Read it when you are in doubt.” She pressed the pamphlet int Stacy’s hand, who dutifully pocketed it. By now her mother and the others had returned from their various pursuits and the Mass was about to begin. Stacy introduced Sr. Loretta to her family.
The final Mass was, if anything, more wonderful than the previous two. The Gospel reading was the episode after the Resurrection, when Thomas, who had not been with the others when Jesus appeared the first time, said he would not believe unless he was able to put his fingers into the wounds in Christ’s hands and his fist into His side. Then, when Jesus again appeared, Thomas fell to his knees, crying, “My Lord and my God!” But Jesus said, How blest are those who have not seen, but still believe.
The Mass ended with a Eucharistic Procession, eight thousand people falling to their knees as if on cue every time the bishop, who was bearing Christ aloft in the monstrance, passed before them. They were all singing songs of adoration and the Presence of the Holy Spirit was so strong that Stacy was assailed by almost continuous shivers, such as she had experienced when her sins were forgiven. Filing out afterward, she became separated from the other members of her family. She was being carried along effortlessly by the motion of the crowd when she suddenly bumped against a motionless figure clad in brown. She looked up and and into the eyes of—well, there was no denying it was Padre Pio. Stacy just stared.
He looked a bit disapproving. “How blest are those who have not seen, but still believe,” she heard him say, although he did not move his lips. Then he vanished, but she was the only person who seemed aware of this.
Broken Elevators
It was raining when the family packed up and pulled out of the conference. Stacy was quiet on the trip back home. She couldn’t help replaying the events of the previous few days, mulling them over in her mind, but she suspected that no sane person would believe her if she told them about it.
Instead of talking she began to read, switching off between the Heller book on the Shroud of Turin that Zeke had loaned her and the book about the life of St. Padre Pio. The Shroud book began with a personal testimony-style progression to explain how he, a southern Baptist, had become involved in a research project dealing with what he had always considered a Catholic relic. He read an article in Science magazine about a research team lead by John Jackson, a scientist from the Air force Academy. The team included Walter McCrone, an analytical chemist from Yale who was famous for debunking the Vinland map that had placed Vikings in the new World long before Columbus and the pilgrims. There was also Ray Rogers, who worked with thermal effects. Rogers said that since the Shroud had been through a fire that had heated it to 200 degrees inside its container, if the image had been painted there would be a significant change in color in portions of the Shroud. This seemed plausible to Heller, who still had no intention of getting involved. Heller called Jackson, anyway, to ask him about the presence of blood. Jackson said previous tests had been inconclusive, which Heller said was bunk—either there was blood or there wasn’t. They didn’t do the right tests. What they needed to do was to get the porphyrins to flouresce. Another member of the team, Dr. Cook, came to his house and showed him the docudrama, The Silent Witness, based on the Ian Wilson book about the Shroud. Heller had also been curious to hear that the Shroud, in addition to being a photographic negative-- and this was long before photography would be invented-- possessed 3-D characteristics. This film showed how a photo of the Shroud, placed in a VP-8 image analyzer, would yield a three dimensional image of a man. This was not so with other two dimensional photographs.
Behind the rhythmic swish-swish of the windshield wipers, Stacy could hear a faint ring. She looked up from her book.
“Oh, Dear, is that your phone?” Grandma Annie fumbled near her feet, looking for Rose’s purse. Plucking the object from her daughter’s bag just before the fourth ring, she said, “Hello…? George, is that you? Oh, hi. You’re what…?” She glanced at Stacy’s mom with consternation. “No, George, please leave the bread in the freezer… George, are you listening…? We mail it frozen-—oh, dear!” She turned to face her daughter. “I think we got cut off. Drive faster, Rose. George said he’s taking all the bread out of the freezers to fill those orders he took. Dear me,” she fretted, “if we don’t get back pronto, he’ll probably hold a super-sale and sell it all for a quarter!”
As Rose kicked the cruise control up a notch, Stacy gazed out the window for awhile. A sign read Green Lake Bridge—1 mile. As they approached the bridge, another sign alerted them to the Green Lake Dam. There was a small sign with an arrow pointing to the left. This one read Dam Bar. Stacy cleared her throat. She leaned forward and nudged her mom on the shoulder. “I suppose you and Gram will want to stop at the Dam Bar,” she said, mock-disapproval in her tone.
“Stacy, really!” her mother seemed shocked.
“Didn’t you see the sign back there on the bridge. It said, “Dam Bar.” Stacy looked to the others, “You saw it, right?” When they all just looked blank, she shook her head and poked it back into the Heller book.
Heller decided to sift through the pro and con data, and there was an unbelievable amount of it, but, historically, the cons mostly came down to one l
etter written by a Bishop six hundred years ago. In this letter the bishop denounced the Shroud as a painted forgery. This bishop was mad because the local church was getting rich off of pilgrims’ donations and he said that a previous bishop had told him that a painter had confessed to having painted the thing. But to Heller, no matter. A few simple tests would prove if the Shroud was painted or not. He joined the team.
She did not read the Padre Pio book from beginning to end, instead opening at random and reading snippets. She read about the long lines of people who traveled to have him hear their confession, sometimes waiting for up to ten days, and how he would sometimes read their minds, telling them their sins. She read a story of a bilocation incident in a palace where a dying man, who was Masonic and whose lodge-members were guarding the entrance lest a priest should be let in to give him the last rites, received absolution from Padre Pio, the man’s premature daughter being born simultaneously. The child would later become a spiritual daughter of Padre Pio. Many of the stories were fanciful—how he received the stigmata, his many battles with the Devil, verbal and physical. Stacy