Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  Before supper he accomplished a slow meditative reading of Matthew 24 and was struck especially by the warning of Christ: In the days before the flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and being married, right up until the day Noah entered the Ark. They were totally unconcerned until the flood came and destroyed them. So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

  Elijah sat in his room gazing out over the peaceful Umbrian countryside until the bell rang for supper. The Croatian brought in a tray loaded with blue cheese, sliced ham, crusty Italian rolls, olives, grapes, and a bowl of chocolate pudding. A jug of iced tea sweated beside a glass into which a quarter of a lemon had been dropped.

  Jakov seemed unusually solemn.

  Elijah saw that the Croatian’s eyes were troubled. To his amazement, Jakov sat down in the chair beside him, laid his head on his arms, and burst into sobs.

  “What is it, my brother?” Elijah said, touching the man’s shoulder.

  “I sorry, Father. I no want to make cry. I want finish serve supper, go pray, and cry nobody see me.”

  “Tell me, what is it?”

  “This day is feast of my family killed in Croatia.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Four years this day.”

  “I am sorry, Jakov. You carry a heavy suffering. I will pray for their souls at Mass.”

  “I pray. I forgive killers. But again I am want to kill them in my heart. I hate them!” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I know this feeling. My own family. . .”

  “Nobody know what I feel. They put us inside church. I see my mother shooted. I see my father shooted, my little brothers shooted. They rape my sister, many, many soldiers rape my sister and then they shoot her. They do all this in front of God. They shoot Jesus on altar. It too bad I cannot speak it.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “Soldiers hit me with hammer all over. They cut me, burn me. They shoot priest, but they keep me for torture. Our army attack next day and bomb in that house. I almost die. The bad soldiers run away. I spend long time in hospital.”

  “God will deal with those men, Jakov. Don’t let the hatred poison you.”

  “I forgive. Then I hate, then I forgive. Hate, forgive, hate, forgive.”

  “Your family is in Paradise.”

  “I hope this.”

  “They are happy now. They smile on you. They love you. They see you so unhappy and want you to be consoled.”

  “Father, but I ask one thing you tell me?”

  “What is it, Jakov?”

  “Where God?” he said in a small voice.

  “He suffered in them. They suffered on the Cross with Him. Their reward will be great in heaven.”

  “I want this be true. But today it be too hard. Today it hard believe this be true. Tomorrow maybe better.”

  “I will pray that you know it’s true.”

  “I sorry, Father. I talk too much, you no eat supper.”

  “Tonight I fast for you and your family. Please take the meal away.”

  Brother Jakov looked horrified. “I make it you no hungry!”

  “I am hungry. But I am happy to fast. I fast for you.”

  “I no like it”, he cried. “You eat. Get strong.”

  “If I don’t eat tonight I will be stronger than if I had eaten.”

  “No, no. I bad. I do this to you.”

  “You are not bad. You did not do this to me. You are a messenger, a good messenger.”

  Elijah loaded everything back onto the tray while Jakov dried his eyes on his sleeve. He took the brother by the arm and guided him through the refectory door to the kitchen. He put the food away in the refrigerator.

  “You see. It’s here if I get very hungry.”

  “Promise, Father, eat if get weak.”

  “I promise. Come here, Jakov.”

  Jakov took a step closer.

  “I wish to pray for you. May I pray for you?”

  “Yes.”

  The giant bent his head. Elijah placed both hands on the crown of the friar’s head and invoked healing upon his tormented memory. He felt a current of warmth begin to glow in his hands. He appealed to the mercy of Christ who once had been nailed in agony. He implored divine healing to come upon this anguished heart.

  Jakov began to sigh deeply, and groans came from his mouth. Tears streamed from his eyes, but they were no longer noisy sobs. Peace gradually enveloped the two men, and presently Elijah felt the current of warmth subside. Jakov’s sighs died away, and he wiped his eyes.

  “Jesus suffers in us, my brother. He heals in us too.”

  “I know it. Don Matteo, he sometime put his hands on my head. I feel warm in my head and it go down to my heart. His hands got hole in it, and God comes through this holes. Just like you. He help me.”

  Elijah nodded, although he did not quite grasp the meaning of the last comment. Yes, perhaps the hands of a healer were like that, he mused, an instrument, a channel or a hole through which the power of heaven poured into the broken heart.

  Jakov reached down and took Elijah’s hands in his. The giant bent and kissed them. Then, embarrassed, he backed through the door, after eliciting yet another promise that Father would eat if he became weak.

  He sat in the chapel without thoughts, without words. He turned out the lights before nine, but tossed and turned for some time before a fitful sleep overtook him.

  * * *

  The next morning Elijah celebrated Mass by himself in the empty chapel. Shortly afterward, Jakov delivered breakfast to the dining room. His face was composed, neither happy nor unhappy. “How are you today, my friend?”

  “I good, Father. Monsignor say he come back for supper. He go to Spoleto with friends.”

  “Thank you, Jakov.”

  Don Matteo came by after breakfast and asked if Elijah would like to see the image that “spoke” to Saint Francis. A short walk brought them to the stone building Francis and his companions had restored after the saint heard the words of Christ.

  A rose window above the central arch illuminated the interior with a faint light. The gray walls of the nave created the impression of a cave. Suspended above the altar was the famous cross. It was primitive, Byzantine, painted on wood during the twelfth century.

  “Francis fell in love with God”, said Don Matteo. “He saw the heart of God radiating from the beauty in all creation. One day he was riding on the plain of Assisi. He met a leper whose sores were so loathsome that Francis was struck with horror and desired strongly to flee. But this spoiled young man, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, had gradually come to understand that spiritual warfare for Christ begins with victory over one’s self. He dismounted, and as the leper stretched forth his hands, begging for alms, Francis embraced him and kissed him. His revulsion was overcome by love welling up within his heart.

  “Some traditions have it that when Francis remounted and turned back to the leper to say good-bye, the poor man had disappeared. The leper was Christ in disguise, you see. It is sometimes said that this last detail may be a pious embellishment. Nevertheless, it is theologically insightful.”

  “Father Matteo, do you think he was Christ in disguise?”

  “I am certain of it.”

  “Why are you certain?”

  “Because I have seen more wondrous things than that with my own eyes. And because it is so much in the character of our Lord to hide Himself, that men may learn to love with the eye that hath not seen.”

  “A love that springs from an interior seeing?”

  “Sì. That encounter was only the beginning for Francis. One day he stopped to pray in this very church. It was in a tumbledown state, uncared for. Francis knelt before the cross, probably right here where we’re standing. As he prayed, he heard a voice speak to him from the image. It said to him three times, Francis, go and repair my church, which is falling into ruins.

  “Francis was overwhelmed. But he resolved to do what the voice had asked of him. He thought the Lord meant t
hat this building must be repaired. He returned to his home and took a horseload of cloth from his father’s warehouse and sold it, along with the horse, to raise funds for the repairs. He took the money to the poor priest of San Damiano’s and asked if he could be allowed to stay with him. His father, hearing what the boy had done, came in a fury, dragged him home and locked him up until he was restored to his senses. Francis ran away again. The bishop intervened in favor of the father and declared that the Church could not profit from stolen goods. Francis returned the money, then stripped himself of his fine clothes, naked, and handed them to his father.

  “He went forth from that place dressed only in the rags of a laborer. He became a beggar and a pilgrim. Considered mad by all who had known the rich young man, he was everywhere reviled as a scandal and treated with contempt as a son who had brought shame upon his father’s house. He returned to San Damiano and began to repair it with his bare hands, stone by stone. He next did the same for another old church, then for a little chapel called the Portiuncula, which was also in ruinous condition. The boy grew in holiness. One by one, other young men came and joined in his work. They lived on scraps of food that the townsfolk threw to them. Francis was given the gift of prophecy and miracles. A man in Spoleto was afflicted with a cancer that had disfigured him quite hideously. He heard about the holy young man and came to see him in the hope of obtaining prayers. He met Francis and was about to throw himself at his feet, when Francis prevented him and kissed his diseased face, which was instantly healed.”

  “Father, is this detail an embellishment?”

  “Ah, you mean is it romantic hagiography?”

  “Do you think it happened just like that?”

  “I do”, the friar said simply.

  “Because you have seen wondrous things with your own eyes?”

  “Once again I tell you, I have seen more wondrous things than that. But I will add what Saint Bonaventure once wrote about this incident. He said, ‘I know not which I ought to wonder at, such a cure or such a kiss.’ ”

  Elijah nodded. Bonaventure’s insight was the concise summation of the whole problem. Which was the greater miracle, the suspension of natural law for the sake of physical healing, or the conversion of the human heart by absolute love?

  The friar said no more. They returned to the convent in silence. At the New Gate, Don Matteo paused and took Elijah’s arm in his gloved hand.

  “There is another thing Francis would show you.”

  “What is that?”

  “In the beginning, he thought that he was called to repair the physical ruins of a few little churches in the Umbrian hill country. He did not see that the universal Church was falling headlong into ruin through the sins of her members, especially the clergy of the time. As his band of followers grew, he began to understand that the restoration of the House of God to grace was to be his work. His order spread rapidly throughout Italy and beyond. There were five thousand professed brothers when Francis was only in his thirties. They preached everywhere in Europe, lived a life of radical poverty, and almost singlehandedly restored Christendom to the Faith.”

  “You said that you think Francis is showing me something in this?”

  “He is showing you a simple thing, but one so often missed by those who pursue holiness. God frequently leads the soul to a rather insignificant chore. If the soul is faithful to it, he leads him on to other tasks. He begins with the particular and consummates the work in the universal.”

  “I can see that. But, I confess, I don’t see how it applies to my life.”

  “Do you not?” said the friar with his small smile. He patted Elijah’s arm then shuffled away to his enclosure.

  V

  Ruth

  For the remainder of chat day he could not shake a memory from his thoughts:

  Jerusalem in winter. Morning light. Snow fell on the city that year, as it did once every six years or so. A cold wind. Arab children singing Christmas carols. Slate-colored clouds wandering across the yellow sky. The Shrine of the Book, the museum of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was practically deserted. A tall woman in her late twenties came up beside him and gazed into a glass case where the scroll of Isaiah was displayed. David happened to be looking at a passage of the same scroll. The woman was squinting, trying to read it. He found himself staring at her face reflected in the glass. A confident intelligence shone from her eyes. She was attractive. But there was something else—a mixture of sweetness and strength—none of the stridency that was customary with many young Israelis.

  “Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth”, she said without looking at him, as if they had always known each other. “When he was but alone I called him, I blessed him and made him many.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “I think the prophet intends that passage to read, When he was but one I called him, I blessed him and made him many.” Then she turned and looked at him.

  “You are correct. I was mistaken.”

  “You were very close.”

  “I have been studying these scrolls carefully. They repudiate those scholars who say the Scriptures have changed since their original composition. The scrolls prove that they have survived perfectly, without perversion.”

  “Are you a scholar, Miss?”

  “Not of Scripture. I teach at the university, but not this. This is my avocation.”

  “What do you teach?”

  “Modern European literature.”

  “Postwar?”

  “Prewar and postwar.”

  He ran quickly out of questions and began to panic over his blank mind. He did not want the conversation to end.

  “And you. Are you a Scripture scholar?”

  “I’m a lawyer”, he said with an apologetic dip of the head.

  “You know the text very well.”

  “I studied it as a child.”

  “You’re Polish, aren’t you?”

  He had never thought of himself as Polish.

  “I came from Poland after the war.”

  “Were you one of those child prodigies the Hasidim produced?”

  “I was.”

  “Where are your payos?”

  “The Nazis cut them off. Later, when I reached Israel I had become something else. I cut them off myself.”

  She did not respond and he sensed disapproval.

  “You don’t wear a kipah, a yarmulke. Why not?”

  “I’m no longer a believer.”

  “Oh”, she said sadly. “Like so many postwar writers.”

  “Do you have faith?”

  “A kind of faith.”

  “The Shoah burnt faith out of us.”

  “The Shoah made the faith of some grow stronger. In others it grew weaker, and in some it disappeared altogether.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair of me to conjecture. I didn’t suffer as so many did. My family has been here in Israel since the eighteen-hundreds. We came from Germany and were involved with the first agricultural settlements.”

  “Yet you have strong opinions. I can hear them beneath your polite words.”

  “You are indeed a lawyer”, she said.

  “My first love is Scripture. But it has become a literary interest. When I was a boy I thought the world was founded upon the Torah.”

  “You think it isn’t?”

  He was surprised by her surprise. To meet an intellectual who radiated at least the minimal symptoms of biblical faith was an oddity. He did not know what to make of her.

  “Many were burned in the body and died”, she said. “Others were burned in the soul and lived. Are you one of those?”

  He shrugged. “I must be one of those.”

  “I think you are. And I think you need a drink of wine. You need to dance and to laugh. I wager that you don’t laugh overmuch.”

  He was being analyzed with discomfiting accuracy. He did not like it.

  “I have experienced very little in my life that is amusing
.”

  “I’m sorry”, she said, chastened. “I have been intrusive. Please forgive me?”

  “What is your name? How can I forgive you if I don’t know your name?”

  “My name is Ruth Sonnenberg.”

  “I forgive you, Ruth.”

  “What is your name?”

  He did not immediately answer because he had a number of names. There was the name of the boy who had lived on Zamenhofa in Warsaw. There was the name he gave to the British, hoping they would believe he was a Jewish Palestinian accidentally fallen on the wrong side of the border, needing repatriation. They spotted that nonsense instantly and put him in a detention camp on Cyprus. Then there was the name that the Haganah gave to him when he became an agent, before the declaration of Independence. He had kept that name. It was his public persona in the new Israel and had been for the past twelve years.

  He realized suddenly that her head was cocked sideways, waiting for him to answer.

  “Don’t you have a name, payos boy?”

  “I have a name.”

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  “It’s David. . .” For his last name he used the one the Haganah had given him.

  “David. King David.” She laughed. He loved her laugh because it revealed who she was. It was a gentle, joy-bearing sound. It contained delight. He fell in love with that laugh, and asked her to come with him for a glass of tea, so that she would bring that sound along with her. They passed several hours together in a café and chatted about inconsequential things. He merely sat, planning nothing, hoping for nothing, simply overcome by her presence. It was not her large black eyes or her physical grace that gripped him. It was not her intelligence, though she had been amply endowed with that.

  He liked the sweetness, but he puzzled over the strength. The combination was unnerving. He told himself that this was a passing diversion. That he would never see her again. That it was merely interesting to look through a warp in existence and observe a person who lived on a different planet.

  Then he admitted to himself that he was lying. He knew that he would have to be physically evicted from the café before he would willingly part from her presence. They would have to bludgeon him to stop him being with her. Yet he could not tell her that. Despite the fact that he was a master of words—legal words—he could barely speak coherently. He began sentences and did not complete them. He stammered. His mind was an empty chamber waiting to be filled. She sensed this and did most of the talking, leaving him plenty of room for interjections. They stayed together until closing time. He kept clearing his throat, preparing things to say that he did not, in the end, say. She kept looking at him with a disturbing blend of curiosity and affection, in which was mixed a thread of sympathy for his unnamed sufferings. She talked of many things: books and political figures, the ever-looming threat of war, flowers, the ocean. She loved the ocean. She loved all water. She loved floating in the Dead Sea, she told him. She asked him if he had seen Masada. No, he had not. Some day they must go there together, she said. Yes, they should, he agreed. Together, he said.