Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “I see what you mean. It’s our world. Other times and places can only be conceived in the intellect or imagination.”

  “Exactly. The living apocalypse radiates a sense of normality. We are inside it.”

  Billy stared down at his hands, the open palms lying on his lap like fallen leaves.

  “Where’s my little sword?” he said in a faint voice. “Where’s my Sting?”

  “Sting?”

  “Fairy story. Hobbit. Literary.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine, fine”, Billy muttered, still staring down at his empty hands.

  “What is it? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I should have been there with you, Davy. I’m thinking it’s a dangerous thing to go alone into Mordor. Your head could get bent.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to. Tell me some more. What was this guy really like?”

  “I sensed a sort of personal greatness. The word destiny comes to mind. Yet there was nothing pretentious or pompous about him. Instead, I found him to be noble, even spiritual.”

  “I’ll bet he was even. . . humble”, said Billy, peering at Elijah with a sharp eye.

  “Yes. That’s the word. A unique sort of humility. I was impressed.”

  “You said that before.”

  “Did I?”

  “You’d think a chap like him would be an egomaniac. I read that people who meet him for the first time, and don’t know who he is,’think he’s a modestly well-known but not outstanding professor at a small college in the Midlands. You’d never suspect he’s a polymath, speaks all those languages, has about seven degrees, and is probably going to get the Nobel Prize for Peace this year. Leave aside the question of all that power he’s got. Start adding it up and straightaway it gets amazing. Now, tell me, how does a lad like that keep from getting a swelled head?”

  “It’s said that he is a humble person.”

  “Yeah, I’ve read that too. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. Do you believe everything the press feeds us?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Billy looked at him strangely, then looked down at his hands again. Elijah wondered why he was doing that. He felt mildly irritated.

  Billy went on: “Apparently, in his talks on spirituality he often refers to humility as one of the great virtues.”

  “Which it is. The fundamental one.”

  “I always feel uneasy about great men who talk overmuch about humility.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They remind me ever so slightly of Uriah Heep.”

  “What a comical name! You English! Who is Uriah Heep?”

  “A character in a novel by Dickens. He was always ‘umble, so very, very ‘umble. But he turned out to be rather sinister in the end.”

  They were forced to terminate their conversation on that note because a tyrannical head nurse entered the room and commanded Elijah to leave.

  “Don’t worry about me, Davy. I’ll catch the train to Rome in a few days from now, when I’ve served my sentence. Tell the boss I’m sorry about fumbling the ball. I’ll be back on duty early next week. And look. . . I’m really sorry about letting you down again.”

  “You didn’t let me down, Billy. You didn’t choose to be ill.”

  “Maybe. But this was one time I really should have been there.”

  “The mission is launched. No harm was done.”

  “I hope you’re right. Well, God bless and good-bye! Away with you now, there’s a good lad! Back home to the Shire!”

  Elijah went out shaking his head.

  VIII

  Rome

  On returning to the city, Elijah telephoned the Secretariat of State. After he passed an interrogation by an officious clerk, his call was transferred through to the cardinal himself. Stato did not want to hear the details of the journey to Capri over the telephone, asking Elijah to come to the Vatican early the next day. He would arrange a meeting with the Holy Father for ten in the morning.

  Elijah approached the papal offices with a mixture of elation and apprehension, aggravated by the fact that he would have to report that his mission had failed. The Pope’s private secretary opened a high oak door and Elijah entered.

  “Father Schäfer, Your Holiness.”

  The old man rose from his desk and approached with his right hand extended. The secretary withdrew, and Elijah bent a knee to kiss the pontiff’s ring. Once again he was not permitted to do so, as the Pope embraced him with both arms and made him rise.

  He looked deeply into the priest’s eyes, then stepped back. A worried look crossed his face. He continued to grip Elijah by the shoulders.

  “Do you bear some wounds from the encounter?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Perhaps they are hidden even from yourself, my son.”

  The Pope drew Elijah to the window overlooking Saint Peter Square. They stood side by side silently, until at last the Pope said, “He has captured the admiration of many of my brothers in the episcopate. Has he harmed you as well?”

  “Holy Father, permit me, but I don’t feel harmed in any way. Of course, I am troubled by the meeting, but he has not shaken my faith.”

  Crowds of pilgrims were streaming across the pavement. “Father Elijah, our adversary is subtle. He buries his arrows deep in men’s hearts. So deep that they are almost invisible.”

  “What is the nature of these arrows?”

  “They strike where one’s humanity is most weak. I cannot read souls as well as Don Matteo does, but I see that in your past you have suffered from that great wound which afflicts modern man.”

  “Which is. . .?”

  “The temptation to absolute despair.”

  “It is true that in the past I was much afflicted by this, but I no longer feel it.”

  “Not even when the consolations of God are absent? Not even during the times of dryness? When you are exhausted, when all your sacrifices seem to have produced little or no fruit?”

  “Not even then. But there are moments when I grieve for my wife and my child, and for my murdered family.”

  “You grieve with the heart of a husband and father. I too grieve.”

  “You, Holy Father?”

  “I grieve over the state of mankind. A father’s heart grieves. Love suffers, does it not?”

  “At times I suffer, I admit. But nothing that would drive me into our adversary’s sphere of influence.”

  “I believe what you say is true. But I must warn you, as I warn myself daily and have repeatedly warned our shepherds: no man knows his own soul so well that he is invincible to the tactics of the enemy. No man.”

  The Pope spoke with firmness, even as he stared out at the square. The crowds were filling the thousands of chairs arrayed before an outdoor altar on the steps of Saint Peter’s. The cordoned sections for tens of thousands of others who would stand behind were also beginning to swell.

  “They come early today”, said the Pope. “This afternoon when I celebrate the canonization of the new African martyrs, I will speak on the question of vigilance. The press is saying that this is a political canonization. It is not. Those who died as victims of tribalism are not the same as these who died bearing witness to the Name. They were offered a means of escape and rejected it. They refused to apostatize. Priests, bishops, nuns, and the lay faithful—all those who were crucified under the hot African sun—they had spent a life of sacrifice. They were ready when the moment of choice came for them.”

  “There were children among them. Did those little ones choose?”

  “Have you ever seen a child crucified, Father?”

  “I have seen children beaten to death. In the ghetto, when I was a boy.”

  “It is beyond belief. The mind recoils. We say to ourselves, such things cannot happen. And yet they happen. In this very city, not so many centuries ago, our brothers and sisters were offered the same choice: sacrifice to the emperor or die. A
single grain of incense, that’s all. Just a grain and you are free. No death. No dismemberment. Go home and live. Be a good citizen. But they refused. Did you know, Father, there are records of Christian children who walked to the cross or to the Colosseum, ignoring the pleading of their parents? So young, but they had learned the only thing one must know. They knew something that we, who wrestle endlessly with our prodigious intellects and our complicated emotions, can rarely know. You ask me if they chose? I believe they did. They had clarity. They had the eye of childhood.”

  “I have often sensed, Holy Father, that the people of our generation move as if in a thick, but invisible, cloud. Every faculty of perception is clogged.”

  “The atmosphere infects us all, my son. That is why I ask, has the adversary infected you?”

  Elijah did not respond immediately. After some thought he said: “If the enemy has penetrated me, he could do so only at a level beyond my own self-awareness. But if he has done so, I ask God to root it out of me, whatever it may be.”

  “You are not offended by my question?”

  “No, I understand it.”

  “Good. You realize what temptation can do to even the strongest virtue?”

  “Yes. I have seen noble men descend to the level of beasts. I have seen stars fall from the heavens, and the pillars of the firmament shaken.”

  “You quote ably. So you understand that we have entered the end-phase of history.”

  “Yes, we have spoken of this.”

  “At our last meeting, we spoke of the general parameters of an apocalypse. Apocalypses contain real men and women, and children—no less the final Apocalypse. Do you understand that in those days every human being will be put to the test? Each will be asked to render an account of himself? Do you realize how universal this trial will be? How dreadful will be the cost of faithfulness?”

  “I sensed the immensity of it when I spoke to the President. There was nothing overtly ominous in his words or his manner, and yet behind him I felt a storm brewing, as if the whole sky were engorging slowly with darkness and thunderous wrath. When that storm is unleashed, there will be no holding it back. Nor will anyone fail to feel its breath.”

  “Then you have seen rightly, my son.”

  “Holy Father, I must confess that I feel a sense of failure about my mission. Despite good intentions to open a dialogue of a spiritual nature, despite all effort to find opportunities to bring the truth to bear upon this man’s soul, I was not able to do so.”

  The Pope nodded. “You will have another opportunity. He comes to Rome next month for the assembly of The Club of Rome. I am certain he will ask for a meeting with you.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. He believes he can win you over to himself.”

  “Why do you think that?” Elijah asked in a barely audible voice.

  “He knows that anyone can fall. Consider the apostles. Their performance was not outstanding on the night of Christ’s arrest. Are we made of different material than our predecessors?”

  “Isn’t there a crucial difference, Holy Father? We have the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight. Most important, we are the children of God who come after the descent of the Holy Spirit.”

  “A good point, my son. But it underlines the fact that those who do not live in the power of the Holy Spirit are most vulnerable. Even believers can reduce the Faith to a philosophical system. They can retain the exterior forms of religion and lose its heart.”

  “Do you think this of me?”

  “No. However, as your spiritual father, I am compelled to remind you to be as awake as the watchman. Guard your heart in everything. We are all in danger in times such as these. In your case, our adversary knows that with your history and your personal gifts you would be a great prize. You would greatly aid his efforts to usher in the new era.”

  “If the danger is such, then it is unwise for me to expose myself to him.”

  “And yet, you, more than almost any other man in my flock, have eyes to discern the deception. You have experiences few others can equal. Indeed, once, long ago, you approached the position of worldpower he has attained. It was offered to you, and you rejected it. I suspect that it was a kind of inoculation. You must ask yourself why you refused.”

  “I’m not entirely sure of the motivations of my heart during that period of my life. My mind was no less confused than it had been before my decision to abandon power. I think it was something quite deep in the soul. It may have been a brief parting of the curtain that covers the meaning of things. Perhaps it was a word of pure love, a life sacrificed for me, that shattered an illusion. I can make no more sense of it than that.”

  “You have answered well. There is more, but I will leave it to the Lord Himself to reveal it to you. You are not far from seeing it.”

  “I understand less and less, Holiness.”

  “Yes, yes,” the old man smiled, “that is how it should be.”

  “It leaves me uncertain of the landscape, and the parameters of my own soul. What if I should be deceived?”

  “I do not think you would be easily deceived, though of course you must not let down your guard for a moment. I think, Father, you have endured many fearful things in your life. There is still a great uncertainty in your heart.”

  “I thought it had gone forever. Those feelings gradually faded as I grew in faith. I thought I would never again be afraid.”

  “But you are afraid?”

  “I am afraid.”

  “Why do you feel so?”

  “Lately, I have felt very much alone. As if I were thrown back upon my own feeble strength, returned to the darkness of my youth when I was forced to depend only upon myself. I was betrayed. I was a hunted thing. It does something to a child’s heart to know that powerful men wish to kill him. I believed for a very long time that no human being could be trusted. None. . . except one. The one who had saved me. And he is dead.”

  “Was God not with you?”

  “I know now that He was. I see His hand upon all of my life during that period. Yet at the time I felt absolutely abandoned. I felt rage. The rage came from a kind of total fear, a cosmic terror that grew and grew. Eventually, it grew into hatred.”

  “Long ago.”

  “Yes. So long ago that I thought it was gone forever.”

  “And now you are afraid of your own fear, once again, is it not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do not be afraid. The enemy has not harmed you mortally.”

  “But Holy Father, there have been some grave doubts in my mind. I have recently wondered about grace. I felt nothing of divine intervention during my meeting with the President.”

  “Surely you must know that the most powerful graces cannot be felt in the senses or the affections.”

  “I forgot this truth when I was in his presence. Strange, how I forgot a number of important things. I have failed. I was manipulated in so subtle a manner that the very words which might have altered the storm refused to take shape on my tongue. In that atmosphere, in that cordial and reasonable atmosphere, words of warning would have seemed inappropriate. For a moment, despite my years of study, despite the riches of the Catholic intellectual life, I felt myself to be. . . a defender of the irrational.”

  “You felt perhaps that you were the ambassador of a myth?”

  “Yes, something like that. The champion of a pathetic legend.”

  “That was to be expected. It is in the nature of his cosmology to perceive all religions as the same, each a culturally conditioned complex of symbols, each in its own limited way a path to the divine principle.”

  “Yes, he hinted as much. In one of his books, he says that all religions are merely misunderstood mythologies. That is why he can send you presents, as if there is no contradiction between his beliefs and ours.”

  “Yesterday, the codex arrived at the Vatican Library by special courier.”

  “It is really a display of overwhelming generosity on his part.”
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br />   “Oh, yes, it is a magnificent gift”, said the Pope, musing. “Yet it is flawed. He does nothing without calculation. The gift is intended to lull us into easing our vigilance. At the same time, it speeds the subjectivization of scholarly life. It is a treasure, but this treasure, curiously, will further weaken the rational mind of the West.”

  “But it is by Aristotle!”

  “It is an interpretation of Aristotle—Iustitia adapted by the oriental mind.”

  “You do not think it authentic?”

  “It is undoubtedly authentic. It is what the President says it is, an Averroëst copy of a Syrian translation of the lost book. As such, it is an invaluable cultural artifact. But in this version, the shape of reality itself is bent. The warp will be discernible to scholars who know Aristotle to the core and who know the history of ideas in its height and breadth. The ordinary scholar, the young especially, will be swayed by a concept of state and cosmos that is cultic. This manuscript breathes a spirit far from that wisdom which, in Aristotle and other pre-Christian philosophers, we might call ‘natural theology’.”

  “I am straining to understand. I have a hunger to read it.”

  “Many will hunger when they hear of it.”

  “Is there such great danger in this manuscript?”

  “I have spent an entire night reading it. The book is not a danger such as we faced when fascism and Marxism swept across the West. Those voracious beasts revealed their appetites openly. Nor is it like postcommunist materialism, that dark and sly thing which coils about the vital organs of the world, killing it slowly. The danger in this book is that it is spiritual. It reintroduces the concept of the divine into the civic order, precisely at the moment of history when the mass of men have lost their bearings, have abandoned all hope that there is anything beyond this material world. More and more, they long for systemic solutions to ‘the problem of man’. They want totalitarianism without brutality This book is a gentle, oh, so very subtle, but powerful, nudge toward that world system, mixed with intoxications of the pagan East. Although there is no evidence in the text, its gnostic origins are obvious. As if Aristotle’s great intellect were to be mixed with that of a necromancer, or a shaman! It may provide the philosophical motivation for the New Age the President hopes to usher in.”