Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  Why was this man in Billy’s apartment? Elijah shook himself and sat upright on the couch. At that moment Billy entered the room carrying steaming cups of coffee. He set them on a low table beside the couch and took the armchair opposite.

  “Drink”, he commanded.

  Elijah gestured to the visitor. “Please introduce us”, he said.

  Billy looked at him strangely.

  “Huh?”

  Elijah looked to the spot where the visitor had been and was astonished to find no one there. “You feeling all right, Davy?”

  “I must have been dreaming.”

  “You slept two hours. You must have needed it. We’ll go out for supper in a bit.”

  “My head is spinning. I can’t get that face out of my mind.”

  “Somebody you know?”

  “No. A stranger. But I saw him as if he were real, sitting just over there.”

  “Overheated brain. Drink up, lad.” Elijah rubbed his eyes.

  “So many changes; so quickly they have come. Strange how one creates an abstract picture of the world, and yet the smells, the sounds, the heat, and anguish of it escape you. It must be that the senses read some things between the lines.”

  “What are your senses telling you?”

  “It is as if some vast crime has occurred, or is occurring.”

  “Well, you’re right there. None dares call it by name. Only a few will admit that anything’s wrong. But something is wrong. Terribly wrong.”

  “I feel it in the air, Billy, like an invisible gas. You have to go away from the world and come back again after a long time, in order to see the change.”

  “Your instinct matches my feeling exactly. If you read what the Holy Father’s been saying, you know he’s spotted it too, bang-on. He knows it better than any of us.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. Exterior enemies are only part of the problem. There’s trouble inside the House of God.”

  “I have seen hints of it creeping into the journals.”

  “Hints? Lord, what have you been reading! It’s everywhere.”

  “Just how bad is it, do you think?”

  “I don’t think anyone has an accurate reading on the extent of it. But I’d say it’s pretty big. It’s going to get worse.”

  “Why is it happening?”

  “A lot of reasons. Spiritual temptation first and foremost. Intellectual pride. The thrill of being revolutionaries. It’s the disease of the century. C. S. Lewis called these people Late Western Man. They’re educated, affluent, restless, and unfulfilled. They’re rational man explaining and theorizing all the way down as he sinks into a totally subjectivized world. What better project for him than the complete demolition and reconstruction of the House of God, right?”

  “Is it as conscious as that?”

  “Not for most of them. There’s a pattern to their assumptions. With few exceptions, their ideas might be roughly summed up this way: ‘I am an idealist but a realist; I hope for a collective solution of the human problem; I no longer believe (or never have believed) in a transcendent God and organized religion. I believe in the god in man.’ ”

  “An ancient seduction.”

  “Yes, and it always works so well.”

  “This man, von Tilman, what do you think of him?”

  “Gag! Now I’m losing my appetite. Where did you hear about him?”

  “A magazine on the airplane. It reported a theological conference at Tübingen.”

  “Tübingen!” groaned Billy in disgust. “Von Tilman’s diatribes against the universal Church are disgusting. He’s one of those passionate types that got a Ph.D. before he learned to think.”

  “He sounded quite rational in the article.”

  “They usually do. They’re very nice people. They speak in measured tones. They have nothing to lose, you see. They’re not on the defensive, like us.”

  “He seemed quite optimistic about the future of man.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s a Utopian. He’s a first-class Brave New Worlder for sure. You’ve probably read that he and some of his buddies condemn the organs of institutional religion as the real monsters of history.”

  “In the article he is quoted as saying that the world he hopes for is one freed from domination by an all-powerful world regime or world bureaucracy; with no domination in the name of religion; no coercion on behalf of religious juridicism, dogmatism, or moralism.”

  “What he really means is he can’t stand the Church looking over his shoulder, making him accountable for his nutty pronouncements and for warping the minds of a generation of kids. You watch, Davy, he’ll be the first to ally himself with some political world regime, some tyranny, as long as it superficially looks like a liberator, and as long as it feeds him and lets him play revolutionary.”

  “It can’t possibly be a conscious blindness on his part.”

  “No. The dear doctor is simply stupid.” Billy’s face reddened. “Sorry, this conversation is taking a nasty turn. You always knew I had a mean streak?”

  “There is a zealot in you, I would say.”

  “But it’s so infuriating! He thinks he’s saving the Church, and he’s actually undermining it, precisely at that moment in history when we need to keep our wits about us.”

  “It is hard to discuss anything with a man like that. I have met many like him in my life: Marxist zealots, fascist zealots, Zionists, fundamentalists, materialist zealots, atheist zealots, millennialist zealots. . .”

  “Chubby English zealots?”

  “Yes, them too. But they are the least dangerous.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Billy, perhaps in von Tilman’s world the Pope and an ayatollah are fundamentally the same thing—tyrants.”

  “Exercising their tyranny most cruelly, no doubt, over the freedom of theologians.”

  “One wonders if he has examined the problem raised by the specter of a world in which everyone has become his own pope or ayatollah, in which everyone has become infallible—everyone, that is, except the Pope of Rome.”

  “Good point. I hope I go to my eternal reward before that happens.”

  “It may already be happening.”

  Billy sighed again and said, “Maybe so. Well, you almost succeeded in making me lose my appetite. Almost, I say. Let’s go to Mamma Garibaldi’s. They make a lasagna there called the red shirt. It’s unbeatable.”

  After Elijah changed clothes, they set off for the restaurant across town. Elijah marveled at the way Billy maneuvered his Jaguar through the hysteria of city traffic. Neither of them spoke until they were past the worst of it.

  “Why does a Catholic priest drive a car that costs what this thing costs?” said Billy.

  “I don’t know. Why does he?”

  “Because his mum gave it to him.”

  “You don’t need to justify yourself to me.”

  “I’m trying to justify myself to myself.”

  “Are you ashamed of the car?”

  “Ashamed and infatuated. It’s the third one Mum gave me this year. I auctioned the Mercedes and gave the proceeds to the sisters in Calcutta, and the Maserati for a refugee center in Tanzania. I’m just screwing up my courage to dispose of this one.”

  “How wealthy is your mother?”

  “Very, Davy, very. She wants her little monsignor to be happy. She can’t imagine a man being happy without sex—you know what men are like—so she makes sure there are compensations. All boys like toy cars, right?”

  Billy looked over at Elijah archly, and both men broke into laughter.

  “It’s absolutely astounding how few people, I mean even very religious people,” Billy said, “believe that celibate happiness is possible.”

  “It’s not always easy.”

  “They don’t understand how you can fall in love with Christ.”

  “I know.”

  “I had everything in life. I mean everything that you could want. I spent most of my youth enjoying it, and th
inking about women. I was crazy in love with several. Then it hit me one day that there was a pattern to my life. I’d be willing to die today for this one, and forget her tomorrow, and ready to die for somebody else the day after, only to forget the whole thing the following morning.”

  “A passionate heart, Billy.”

  “A fickle heart.”

  “An undisciplined heart.”

  “A greedy heart and that’s the truth.”

  “A zealot’s heart.”

  “Zealous for every sensation life could offer. But not much of a brain, Davy. I was so bloody stupid it boggles my mind. I lived like a drug addict. And like an addict, I couldn’t believe there was happiness outside of my addiction. The addiction had become life itself, you see.”

  “What changed you?”

  “A Saint Paul experience. I got knocked off my horse one day. I don’t mean literally. I mean I was driving through the Cotswolds on a back road. I wasn’t depressed or anything like that. In fact, things were going rather marvelously. But it struck me with some kind of magisterial certainty that my way of life was pointless. It all seemed so meaningless. I stopped the car, got out, and walked up a knoll and sat under a tree and looked at my life. And I saw it. I really saw it. A nice life. I wasn’t an evil man. Just incredibly shallow. It was a moment of hard grace.”

  “Perhaps the real grace was the ability to accept what you had seen.”

  “Maybe so. But then I heard a voice. A quiet voice. Where it came from I don’t know. I never heard it before and I haven’t heard it since, at least not like that.”

  “What did the voice say?”

  “It said, I open a door before you. I ask you to walk through it. Then I turned around and saw a light in the trees, a piece of sky where a cutting had been made through the forest. It was a deer path running into the woods. I knew that I was supposed to go there. At first I wanted to wipe it out of my mind. But I just kept looking at it. I was frightened and happy all at once. I saw that the biggest thing a fellow like me could do was to scoop the whole thing up in my hands—all of it, the ladies, the degrees, the money, the fame, the seat in Parliament—and just give it away. Crazy eh?”

  “Crazy and holy.”

  “Believe me, I wasn’t a holy joe at the time. I wasn’t even religious.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I just walked into the woods. I wanted to give it all away on the spot. I wanted to walk forever into those woods and just be empty and poor. It was a great feeling. Like release from prison. I walked over an oak-covered hill. It was autumn, the trees were dropping brown leaves and acorns on me, the wind was so sweet. It was just perfect joy. I came over this rise and what to my wondering eyes did appear?”

  “What did appear?”

  “A monastery.”

  “A monastery?”

  “That’s when I began to suspect that God might have a few tricks up His sleeve. I argued to myself that it was an accident. It could just as easily have been an ashram up there, I said, or a college, or a scientific institute, or just miles of bog. But it was a Catholic monastery and it wouldn’t go away. It refused to mutate. So I went up to the door, knocked on it, and asked to speak to the boss.

  “The porter told me the abbot was busy.

  “I said, that’s okay; I’ll wait. So I sat on the grass outside the church and I waited. For hours I waited. I’ve come this far, I said to myself. I’m going all the way. All the way! I was beginning to doubt my sanity at that point, but I didn’t care anymore. You see, for the first time in my life I had one little scrap of evidence that there might be something more than my comfortable, well-ordered life. I saw that I’d succeeded at everything so far. Simply everything. I decided I wanted to try being a failure for awhile. I thought it might teach me something useful.”

  “Has it?”

  “It’s taught me everything important there is to know. That and meeting Pete under the altar.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Eventually the abbot himself came out. A nice chap. He smiled when I told him who I was and what I wanted to do. He suggested that I go home and think about it some more.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Nope. I threw myself on his mercy and asked to stay as a guest. He agreed reluctantly. I was a nominal Anglican with just a scrap of faith that I clung to as if it were life itself. I left eight months later, a Catholic. I wanted to become a saint. I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a contemplative. I’m too bloody outgoing for that.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To L’École Biblique in Jerusalem. That’s where we met.”

  “You seemed such a sensible English Catholic. I had no idea you’d been knocked off a horse.”

  “A Bentley. I was knocked off a Bentley.”

  “It sounds to me as if you were chosen.”

  “Chosen for what, I wonder. I’m just a glorified errand boy.”

  “Zealots think of themselves as useless unless they are in the thick of battle.”

  “The battlefront is so ominously quiet, like a dead calm before a storm. The rumble of the von Tilmans is just saber rattling. I keep asking myself when’s the real fighting going to start.”

  “It began in earnest some time ago. The deadliest part of the battle is hidden. Some of it is above our heads in the heavenly realms where the righteous angels battle against the demons. But there is much unseen warfare on earth.”

  “Please, Davy, I want a sword. Push me out into the Colosseum. Anything other than this ennui that’s slowly crushing the lite out of the world. I wanted to be a missionary, but they sent me to the Secretariat of State. I wanted to be poor like Saint Francis, live in rags, love God, beg for crusts. No bloody way. I get an apartment and a salary. Tell me why I was knocked off my Bentley only to be popped into a Jaguar?”

  “Perhaps you are asked to use your gifts in a less heroic way. The Church needs good administrators.”

  “It’s a perverse form of martyrdom, I suppose. Sports cars and lasagna when you want it. I’d much prefer a concentration camp.”

  Elijah looked out the passenger window.

  “Oh, God,” exclaimed Billy, “I forgot. Your parents died in one, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. Practically everyone I knew died in one.”

  “Bloody insensitive I am.”

  “Real suffering is always different from what we imagine”, Elijah said quietly.

  “I got peas for brains.”

  “Obedience is the best form of poverty, Billy. I think that is the kind of martyrdom you have been given.”

  “What! No flags and flashing swords? No glory on the battlefield?”

  “No false glory.”

  III

  The Vatican

  After supper they drove to the Vatican. Billy parked the car in the Belvedere Courtyard and led Elijah by an indirect route of halls, elevators, and staircases to the offices of the Secretariat of State. He went into a side office off the main corridor and emerged a moment later buttoning up a black soutane with purple piping and a gash of violet across the midriff.

  “Camouflage”, said Billy.

  He walked past a secretary and two Swiss guards into a spacious light-filled reception office, and through another door into a smaller room. A cardinal stood behind a desk with his back to them, looking out a window to the courtyard below.

  “Ahem”, said Billy.

  The cardinal turned. Tall and silver-haired, he came to them with his hand extended, a slight smile on his face. Elijah thought that this face, urbane and composed, princely and Italian, contained the most intelligent eyes he had ever seen.

  “William”, said the cardinal in heavily accented English. “You have brought us Father Elijah.”

  After an exchange of greetings and cordialities, the cardinal gestured them toward a cluster of easy chairs.

  “Has William told you anything about the purpose of your visit?”

  “Nothing, Your Eminence.”

  “A p
rodigious feat for William.”

  “That’s His Eminence’s subtle way of telling you, Davy, that I’m not to be trusted.”

  Elijah looked back and forth between the two men, unsure of how to respond. The cardinal and his secretary burst out laughing.

  “Don’t look so worried. That was your first dose of romanità.”

  Elijah saw that there was a bond of humor between the two men, and something rarer—mutual trust.

  “We will leave it to the Holy Father to explain the situation”, said the cardinal. He glanced at his watch. “We meet him ten minutes from now.”

  “You’ve never met him before?” said Billy.

  “No.”

  “Nervous?”

  “A little.”

  “You’ll like him. He’s not imposing.”

  “Unlike Stato and Dottrina”, said the cardinal.

  “Precisely”, said Billy with a wink at Elijah.

  “The Holy Father has asked me and the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to be present at your meeting with him.”

  “Your Eminence, I’m surprised by the swiftness of this”, said Elijah. “Yesterday evening at this time, I was working in the garden at Carmel. I have rarely left the monastery for almost twenty years. There have been no explanations.”

  “I know how overwhelming this must be for you”, said the cardinal. “There are good reasons why there have been no explanations. You’ll understand shortly. Now, tell me, how is your good prior? We taught together at Freiburg, you know, many years ago.”

  “The prior is aging, though his mind is young.”

  “He has been through much during the past year.”

  “The murder of two of our brothers by terrorists weighs heavily on him.”

  “He is grieving.”

  “Yes.”

  The cardinal sighed. “No doubt that angst of his is compounding his sorrows. He never should have got into Hegel as a young man. And Nietzsche, Feuerbach. Brrrr! They leave an icy spot in the soul.”

  “Father Prior sends you his fraternal greetings”, said Elijah, hoping to change the subject.