Every Saint a Sinner

by Pearl Solas

  During the daily confession, Paul could not wait to verbally shed the misery of whatever particular instance of abuse had been recalled to him during the previous night’s dream. While Father Matt had good reason to keep up his guard around Paul, he was convinced of the sincerity of Paul’s confession and repentance. Paul no longer justified his behavior, nor saw it as a consensual activity between willing participants—those scales had been ripped from his eyes. Paul had taken the secular consequence of imprisonment in stride, but he was undone by the perfectly proportionate form his divine discipline had taken.

  Father Matt did what most compassionate priests know they are called to do. Even though he had mixed feelings about Paul, he bore witness to his suffering. On the one hand, Paul, and those like him, had damaged countless innocents and had sullied Father Matt’s beloved Church. On the other hand, the same aspects of Father Matt’s nature and faith created space for a deep well of compassion for Paul’s suffering, even if—perhaps especially because—it had been self-inflicted.

  Another aspect of the process to which he bore witness, which filled Father Matt with wonder, was the perfect mechanism through which God worked his transformation in Paul. The biblical metaphor of a “hardened heart” had so accurately described Paul before the assault: he was unrepentant, arrogant, and wholly lacking in sympathy. Father Matt would not have wished the suffering Paul had inflicted upon anyone—even Paul himself—but he appreciated how effectively Paul being forced to inhabit his victims’ perspectives engendered remorse within Paul’s heart. It was working to soften Paul’s heart for whatever purpose God intended.

  And Paul’s heart had become tender. At first, although he had the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that experiencing for himself the damage he had inflicted was a just consequence, his pity was primarily self-focused, and he bemoaned what he was being forced to endure. In the course of the extended sacrament of confession, however, Father Matt witnessed a gradual shift in Paul’s sympathies. Over time, Paul stopped lamenting the merciless onslaught of dreams and his inability to be comfortable within his own mind. He began focusing on his victims’ misery and expressing anxiety for their mental suffering. Because of the limited scope of his dreams, he did not know exactly how his crimes had altered the course of his victims’ lives, but he experienced enough of their pain to know it could not help but take root deep in their psyches.

  Father Matt observed this shifting center of gravity with interest and hope. The confessions continued to be emotionally exhausting for both men. At the end of each confession, when it would have ordinarily been time to assign a penance, Father Matt could not conceive of a discipline more likely to further carry Paul on the path to repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation than the process God had already devised and implemented. He ended each confession with a straightforward, “Keep dreaming, and sin no more.”

  The process felt interminable both to Paul and to Father Matt, but after many hundreds of dreams and confessions, the dreams stopped. After his first night of dreamless sleep, Paul woke feeling rested for the first time in over a year.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The morning after that first, blessed, dreamless sleep, Paul was on his knees in his cell, trying to make sense of the purpose of his recent experiences, and coming up short. If the purpose had been to fill him with guilt, shame, and remorse, then it had been accomplished in spades. But to what end? Paul could not use his remorse constructively within the walls of the prison.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” a voice behind him chided.

  Paul had not heard the cell door open, so his head jerked up to see who had interrupted his contemplation. Sitting backwards in the metal chair by the door, his legs straddling the seat and his arms resting casually on the chair’s back, was Francis Muncy. Paul thought he may have been hallucinating. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, and still Frank sat, looking at him with some amusement.

  “Of course I’m not physically here, but I’m going to keep projecting into your brain until you hear what I have to say.”

  Paul found he could not look away from Frank. He had never believed in the existence of incorporeal spirits, and he certainly had never expected to see one, much less hold a conversation with one, but he discovered that he had, apparently, harbored expectations of how an otherworldly spirit would appear. Contrary to his belief that there should be some visible aura, or inner luminescence, or that the imperfections that marked Frank in life would be erased, Frank appeared solid and . . . ordinary. It was like the smoothing features on high-end televisions that made subjects appear uncomfortably close. Frank was the opposite of ethereal. He looked much as he had the last time Paul had seen him: somewhat pale from insufficient sunlight, rather too thin, and prematurely aged.

  Only Frank’s eyes, the windows to his soul, betrayed some hint of the wealth of the new horizons available to him. They were bright and clear, shining with peace, joy, and hope—without any trace of the somber anguish that had inhabited them in life.

  “God has big plans for you, you know,” remarked Frank, directing a warmth toward Paul that contrasted starkly with the iciness characterizing Frank’s manner toward Paul while he was alive.

  Paul, haggard from his months-long sleeplessness and suffering, simply glared at Frank broodingly.

  “I mean it,” said Father Frank. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve been given a gift beyond measure.”

  “If God changed our places so that he could torment me with my own actions . . . it’s been some gift.” Paul could not keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “I can see why you might feel that way, but these unpleasant experiences serve an important purpose. Do you remember me telling you that I would be with you as you did the work of seeking genuine repentance?”

  “Of course. I remember everything about that conversation.”

  “Well, where do you think you are on that path?”

  Paul considered. “If repentance is the same thing as being overwhelmed with remorse and shame, then I repent. I understand now how I tried to justify myself, and how I lied to myself, in order to continue doing what I wanted without being annoyed by an active conscience. So, yes, I’m remorseful and I repent. But so what? God ‘forgives’ me? What does my being forgiven do for the kids I hurt? It’s pretty unsatisfying to claim forgiveness for myself and then call it a day.”

  Frank smiled like a teacher whose struggling pupil has finally grasped an elusive concept.

  “This is the part that gives value to your recent suffering. You needed that tempering to see beyond yourself and to gain the perspective that would lead you to genuine repentance. I hear you saying that you repent, but that you’re unworthy of forgiveness because you can’t undo the damage you caused. You’re right. You are unworthy and you can’t undo anything. But here’s the beauty—forgiveness, like so many of the best gifts in life, never comes because we deserve it. If we got what we deserved, it wouldn’t be called ‘forgiveness,’ it would be called ‘justice.’

  “If God’s love is for everyone, then it’s also for you. If God’s mercy and forgiveness are for everyone, then they’re also for you. If God’s reconciliation is for everyone, then it’s also for you. How much more valuable are those precious gifts when we know, beyond doubt, that we do not deserve them? And how much more energetically are we willing to work for God’s purposes when we know that we can never hope to repay his generosity?

  “I told you God has big plans for you. You need to go into his work with a small glimpse of how he feels for you. He doesn’t give you his forgiveness begrudgingly, and when he grants you a role in his ministry of reconciliation, he doesn’t do it hesitantly. He’s not forced into this choice because he promised to extend his forgiveness to the whole world and, unfortunately, that world includes someone as miserable as you.

  “No, Paul, he extends these gifts to you because he delights in you. He knows every atom of your body, your mind, and your soul—much better
than you could ever hope to know yourself—and still he delights in you. His love for you is what has made your choice to separate yourself from him, through your selfish and revolting sins, so painful for him, and it’s what motivated his extraordinary efforts to bring you back into relationship with him.

  Frank spoke with a quiet certainty and awe infused in every word. He crossed the room to where Paul sat with his head in his hands, still overwhelmed with self-loathing.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Frank repeated for the third time, the love in his voice removing the sting from his rebuke. “You are so loved. He knows you, Paul. Knowing you, he still chooses you. Choose him, and he will redeem even the evil choices you’ve made and, in his divine creativity, use them for his good purposes.”

  Paul’s voice broke as he responded, “That isn’t even possible. You don’t know how I used those boys—how I destroyed them. That can’t be used for good.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” rebuked Frank, his features darkening as, for the first time during their encounter, he invoked the words of his Master and filled the room with his otherworldliness. “Who are you to say what is or isn’t possible for the God of creation? Is anything that happened with you and me ‘possible’? His ways are not our ways, and thank God for that.”

  As quickly as it appeared, Frank’s anger faded. “It’s hearing about the things that shouldn’t be possible that gives us joy and hope. You feel discouraged right now, but when God did the impossible with you and me, and with how he’s been refining you since then, he paved the way for you to have that joy and share it with others.

  “It’s like that beautiful passage in Luke’s gospel. Jesus had just healed the sick and raised the dead, and he told the disciples to go and tell John the Baptist about what they had seen and heard. I’ve always thought Jesus wanted to encourage John, in his work to amplify God’s message of love, with concrete news of God’s immanence and power. You need to answer that same call. Go find the people who need the encouragement you’re in a unique position to give. Tell them what you’ve seen and heard.

  “I understand, Brother, that it feels like a daunting task. Even with all your intelligence, you don’t see what shape his redemption could possibly take. Here’s the beauty: you don’t need to see it, or to plan it, or to control how it’s implemented. He does all of that heavy lifting. He’s the landscape architect. He just wants you to plant the flowers according to his design, and then to enjoy their beauty.”

  “How will I know where he wants me to plant them?”

  Frank chuckled. “This is going to be a challenge for your pragmatic, take-charge mind, but you’ll need to wait, seek relationship with God, and keep yourself open to his instruction. It probably won’t be as straightforward as this conversation, but when you know, you’ll know.”

  “Now,” Frank said in a business-like tone that signaled a shift, “get some rest. You need to re-charge for what’s to come.”

  Paul bowed his head to hide the flood of tears that had welled up on account of the hope Frank’s words had inspired. When he lifted his gaze, he discovered that he was, once again, alone in his cell. He was exhausted. But pushing his fatigue aside, Paul eased his knees onto the cement floor to pray.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  J.P. was a big, hard motherfucker. At least, that’s how his fellow inmates described him. For more than ten years, as he served his time, he crafted a quietly menacing physical and psychological presence. The combination of his height, the musculature he honed for hours each day, and the tattoos that covered his arms and neck and face, rendered him singularly imposing. Other men took pains to stay out of his way, giving him a wide berth while he lifted weights during his daily exercise regimen. The only person to observe him on the day Paul returned to general population was the guard responsible for monitoring the area.

  J.P. was taking a brief rest after putting up a set of back squats that would have staggered most of the other inmates. He visibly blanched when he saw Paul enter the yard. All of the inmates had heard some version of Frank’s sudden death and Paul’s stunning recovery, but it had been easy to forget the rumors of a miracle during Paul’s long segregation in the protective unit.

  As Paul walked toward the squat rack near where J.P. rested, J.P. observed with incredulity that, while Paul was significantly thinner than he had been during his previous time in the general population, he was unmarred and did not walk with the limp one would have expected based on the severity of his beating.

  Instead, he glided with a smooth, upright gait infused with a serene dignity that replaced his previous arrogant swagger. When he got close to J.P., Paul dropped to his knees. Looking directly into J.P.’s eyes while his own brimmed with tears, Paul said, “Oh, Joshua. I won’t ask you to forgive me, but I am so sorry for hurting you.”

  J.P. couldn’t have said what he expected when he saw the approach of the man he had known in another life as Father Paul, but it certainly wasn’t this. J.P.’s face remained impassive, but his surprise at Paul’s words caused him to sit heavily on the nearby weight bench. When he was finally able to speak, the words came from deep in his throat, like a growl, “You’d best move the fuck on, old man.”

  “I will,” Paul assured, swallowing his fear. “But first, I have to say some things to you.”

  The words gathered velocity as J.P. stood and glowered over Paul. “Even if you beat me again, I need to say these things to you. I know I have no right to talk to you about God, but God requires this of me regardless of my fear. You need to know that you did nothing, absolutely nothing, to cause what I did to you. I manipulated you into believing that perhaps you sent signals to which I responded, but that’s just not the truth. I intentionally took advantage of your youth, and of the fact that you trusted me, admired me, and relied on me as a priest and as someone who could help you reach your goals. I abused your trust, and I actively encouraged you to believe what happened was your fault.

  “I am so sorry, Joshua. Now that I’ve said what God required of me, I’ll add that I won’t try to speak with you again. But if you ever need anything from me for any reason, I’m here.”

  The guard responsible for the fitness area watched the interaction with interest, but was not close enough to hear the men’s words. He watched J.P. wipe the sweat from his face as he towered over a prone Paul. When he removed the towel, J.P.’s eyes were blazing so dangerously that the guard, his instincts honed with long experience, began running toward the men and requesting back-up through his shirt-mounted walkie. J.P. punched Paul forcefully one time, and then put up his hands.

  “You’d better tell that old faggot to stay away from me!” J.P. called out to the guard running toward them. Then he dropped to the ground as the guard demanded.

  * * *

  When Paul met with Father Matt the next morning, his eyes shone, though one of them was bruised and swollen. Paul didn’t mention J.P.’s name, but he explained that one of his victims resided within the prison, and he described what had happened.

  “I knew God wanted me to talk to him,” he explained. “This man expressed his anger, which I understand, but I have no idea what the long-term impact will be. This hurt, obviously,” he said, pointing to his face, “but I feel a little lighter. I don’t deserve to feel any relief from my guilt, I know that, but accepting responsibility and apologizing—genuinely apologizing . . . it felt important. It felt right.”

  Father Matt spoke slowly and thoughtfully, “I’m concerned about you imposing yourself on your victims in any way. I know you’ve been praying for discernment, and you’ve been working to align yourself with God’s will. If what you did yesterday really was responding to God’s call, then that probably explains why your burden feels lighter. You can’t do much to ease the suffering of your victims, but there has to be some healing value to owning your responsibility.”

  “Do you think . . .” Paul began, and then his sentence trailed off as he worked through the maze of his thoughts. F
ather Matt waited patiently.

  “Sorry,” Paul said, coming back to himself. “I was just thinking I would like to offer the same apology to everyone I hurt.”

  Father Matt considered silently before speaking, “It’s a good thought, but it’s also a real can of worms. How would you go about contacting them? Ideally, they are in therapy, and an unsolicited communication from you could derail progress they’ve made toward healing. And if they’re not in therapy, the risk is greater if they don’t have a healthy framework to process the intense emotions hearing from you would certainly evoke.”

  The two men sat in silence for a few minutes, each struggling to find an approach that would allow Paul to offer apology and take responsibility without causing greater harm. Finally Father Matt said, “Let’s continue to think about it and, most importantly, let’s ask God to align us with his will. If it’s something he wants to happen, he’ll clear a way.”

  Paul bowed his head as the young priest began to pray, invoking God’s presence, requesting clarification of God’s will, and pleading for God’s strength.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  That night, Paul experienced a dream of similar intensity to the ones in which he occupied the perspective of those he had raped. Like his other dreams, it began with a scenario that had actually occurred—it was a meeting he had attended with the bishop when, years earlier, he had been transferred to a school in a different part of the state. The parents of a couple of his students had made the usual complaints, and he had been hauled before the bishop like a recalcitrant child.