Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

Like a stormtrooper at the broken walls,

  Extinction’s genius stalks toward the ship.

  (From The Crimean Sonnets, Adam Mickiewicz)

  *

  Warsaw, 11 February 1943

  My dearest Elzbieta,

  It is night. There is not enough food. Upstairs, your little brother sleeps beneath the eaves, hidden from our enemies. He must not fall into their hands. I could not bear another loss.

  It is almost certain that you have been taken forever by them. You did not know me, but I knew you. You looked at me. A look which must have cost you nothing—instantly forgotten—yet it is my greatest treasure. Then you were arrested and you may have been put to death. I wish there had been sufficient courage to meet you that night after your performance. Your handling of the Rachmaninoff score told me more about you than a year of courtship would have. No doubt you will think me a fool to write this way, but perhaps you can read this from heaven. I will ask my guardian angel to make a copy and show it to you.

  When my heart was struck by the sight of you, I learned for the first time in my life that love yearns toward completion in the being of another. I do not mean only the meeting of the body, male and female, but more urgently, the union of soul and soul. Where this yearning is absent, love soon dies. Even the priests and nuns know this yearning, although they have chosen a Beloved who returns their embraces a hundredfold. But in all cases, love exists only as a gift freely given. You did not know me, and so it was impossible for this particular question to be raised between us. The opportunity to give your love to me was but one of countless doorways opened to a person such as you. In the end, the enemy decided for us.

  Tell me what name to give this field of mysterious communication which until now I did not know existed. I wonder what I should call it: “A Spirituality of Unrequited Love”? No—too theological. Perhaps, “The Path of Hidden Love”? Something is not quite exact in this title. Or maybe, “The Gift”? Yes, that is more my style.

  I will post this now in the usual place. Perhaps there will come a time when an angel will deliver the tin box in the bottom of my desk drawer. It is bulging with our correspondence. Will you come through the front door of the shop one day when the War is over and make my heart simply cease to beat? If so, send a message ahead of you, Elzbieta, my sister, my love.

  *

  Dear my Host,

  The alien and the sojourner have found a dwelling place within your tent. The widow and the orphan rejoice. The angels cry out for gladness.

  With respect,

  D. Schäfer, Warsaw, February 1943

  *

  1 March 1943

  The Gift:

  He sleeps upon a plank floor, breathing forth sighs as deep and as old as mankind. He searches for the truth. How could it not come to pass that many will desire to elevate him to the status of the divine. He is a fine boy, but he is no closer to being a god than is the Count Smokrev. He is a human being searching for the original unity, the image and likeness of the One who created us.

  One must maintain a vigilance of the heart that is part of the total gift of the self No such gift is possible without prayer, for man by himself is not able to master the drive for union and completion. Indeed, I suspect that we are not designed to be our own master. If in marriage it is three who make a union—the bride, the groom, and the Creator-then it must be so for friendship also. Friend or lover, by the gates of your heart there must stand a watchman, and that watchman is Truth. If you ignore his warnings, you must surely know that you are choosing. You alone are responsible for what must come to pass: the death of Love.

  *

  Elder John, startled and frightened, stared at the face of the silent Emperor. Suddenly he sprang back and, turning to his followers, shouted in a stifled voice, “Little children, it is the Antichrist!”

  (From Vladimir Soloviev’s War, Progress, and the End of History)

  *

  Warsaw, 7 March 1943

  Elzbieta, my sister, my love,

  David Schäfer is teaching me many things. I have learned that my mind is capable of deceiving me. I have long recognized this about myself, but never has it been so starkly revealed. I have projected upon him an image of what I perceive the ideal to be. He is a very good soul, but he is not the icon I created in my interior. How easily; misled are our perceptions! This is a great surprise to me.

  He has shown me that there is the seed of a father within me. Oh, yes, a very small father, a poor little man who does not know how to be a father. Yet, within me is a genuine love which desires the ultimate good of the beloved—yes, even to the point of sacrificing everything. This too is a surprise.

  *

  To reach satisfaction in all,

  Desire its possession in nothing.

  To come to the knowledge of all,

  Desire the knowledge of nothing.

  To arrive at being all,

  Desire to be nothing.

  To come to be what you are not,

  You must go by the way in which you are not.

  (From The Ascent of Mount Carmel, by Saint John of the Cross)

  *

  Paris, 1931

  Chér Paul,

  You must not despair of the art scene. No one wants your paintings, you say? Ah, such pain in your letter. Alas poor solitary! Poor exile! You have tried to paint Heaven and Hell, and you think you have failed? You say your Heaven looks like Versailles and your Hell looks like the Gare St. Lazare? I know your anguish. For sixty years I have lived in it too, and I know now I shall never leave it. I would not want to leave it.

  Have you read Péguy? He is formidable! Listen to this from Lettres et Entretiens. He is writing about Dante’s Divine Comedy: “Nowhere in the course of this great long pilgrimage does the author appear as an historian or geographer of Heaven and earth, as a visitor, an inspector, or a tourist—as a grandiose kind of tourist perhaps, but still a tourist. At no point here is the poet someone on a journey, a grandiose journey, maybe, but still a journey. At no point does he take up a position on the sidelines in order to observe what is going on in front of him, because what is going on in front of him is himself—that is to say, it concerns his damnation or salvation.

  “At no point does he take up his position on the pavement to observe sinners go by, because the sinners are himself. This immense multitude is what he is himself within, not something alongside it. The whole task consists in the right orientation of mankind, turned full-face toward the Last Judgment.”

  Paul, we are inside of it, though we feel outside. Hold the ground that has been given to you. Do not try to fight on other fronts. If you abandon the very one that has been given to you, no matter how small, the war may be lost. Do not be a success too young. Go without baggage across the desert. Poverty and silence are the natural abode of truth.

  Amitiés,

  G. Rouault

  *

  Warsaw, 2 November 1942, All Souls

  Words came to me last night. Broken pieces falling like large crystals from the ice-clouds that cover heaven, each flake a galaxy spinning down. They fuse in space and form a thought.

  The thought is this: It is the artist’s danger, being master of the form, to forget that he is poor, to think he is the master of the invisible reality which this pale scribble represents.

  I am going to write a play about it. I will put the thought into the mouth of Andrei Rublev.

  *

  Zakopane, 15 August 1919

  Pawel,

  My little grandson. How brave you were today! When we climbed down into the cave of Wrog the dragon, I trembled. Yes, even grown men are sometimes afraid, but we learn to overcome fear with courage. Did you tremble too? We were brave together, weren’t we?

  You said to me, “Why did we not see the dragon?”

  I answered, “Because he fled at our coming.”

  “Why did he flee?” you asked.

  “Because he is afraid of us!”

  Never forget what we learned t
oday. Always remember it.

  Do not be afraid, Pawel. It is the biggest insult you can give to a dragon. I give you this medal of the Mother of God of Częstochowa as a memorial of our victory.

  I kiss you,

  Your Ja-Ja.

  *

  There were more letters and fragments. Elijah read until the sun sank below the dome of Saint Peter’s. He got up stiffly and returned to his cell. He placed the box on a shelf in his closet. He bowed toward the icon of Saint Michael of the Apocalypse, went forward, and kissed it. From between the pages of his Bible he extracted a badly worn piece of yellow paper, a paper that contained a message he had read countless times. In his bureau drawer he found a silver medallion on which were inscribed an icon of the Mother of God and the Polish word Mądrość-Wisdom.

  Then he took the medallion and the scrap of yellow paper and went down to the chapel. There, in front of the burning light he read for the thousandth time the last words of Pawel Tarnowski, hurled from a train, written as he was borne away to Oświęcim.

  David, my son, my friend,

  Never have I wanted to live so much as I do now. I go down into darkness in your place. I give you my life. I carry your image within me like an icon. This is my joy. I go down at last to sleep, but my heart is awake.

  Pawel.

  XV

  Rome

  That summer was one of surpassing beauty. The dazzling light, the gentleness of the heat, the breezes that blew inland toward the city from the Tyrrhenian Sea, the fruit- and flowersellers pushing their bounty, combined to make a conspiracy of such sweetness that even the most brooding temperaments would have recanted their pessimism.

  Elijah was no exception. He felt himself resting inwardly, and his physical health improved. He took long daily walks through the more congenial sections of the city and went often to Saint Peter’s to pray at the shrine of the fisherman from Galilee.

  For the Fisherman of this generation, however, it was not going well.

  The secular press was full of speculations about “the present pope”, as they called him. Their professionalism was only just maintained, a veneer of carefully worded editorials and news items beneath which was growing disdain for the “remote” aging pontiff. Rumor had it, they announced, that he was about to retire. Reliable sources in the Vatican, they said, had confirmed that he was losing some of his mental faculties. Should a man in this condition, any man, no matter how great he had once been, be permitted to cling to such a powerful office? He was well past retirement age, and in the “new church” (lower case c) was it not reasonable to suggest that a bishop of Rome be subject to the same laws that he enforced on his brother bishops? Many good administrators had been pushed from active ministry upon reaching the age of seventy-five; it was obvious that they were being summarily dismissed on a technicality of canon law, simply because they did not agree with this Pope’s every opinion. Was he not the last of a dying line, an autocrat ruling in the old style, no longer capable of “facilitating” the progress the Council Fathers had mandated?

  The liberal Catholic press was no better. In fact, it led the pack of critics. Strangely, the heretical Catholic journals seemed increasingly moderate in their tone. They said the same devastating things they had always said, but expressed themselves in terms that were more subtly nuanced than was habitual with them. They became models of restraint. Their subscription numbers increased steadily. People began to think of them as the new moderates; by the same token, the truly moderate were now considered ultraconservative, and the conservatives to be sociopaths.

  During the previous decade, several of the more balanced Catholic journals had been turned over to new editors. The bishops, frightened by the aggressiveness of dissidents in their dioceses, and even more afraid of being condemned as preconciliar, had made concessions. One after another, they turned over the organs of Catholic information and opinion to likable, articulate editors who squirmed at the very concept of the Roman Catholic Church, but took pains to disguise it.

  Since leaving Mount Carmel, Elijah had paid close attention to one American weekly in particular, The Catholic Times. Its editor, a certain Father Smith, a native of Idaho, had been dismissed without just cause. No reasons had been given, other than the excuse that Smith had been unable to adapt to the postconciliar age. Smith wrote to Elijah about the situation. He was a man of unusual perspicacity. He was neither conservative nor liberal—despised those political terms. He had steered his paper through the minefield of North American ecclesial politics with considerable agility and, one might even say, sanctity. He had navigated by the light of the early Church Fathers, by the Second Vatican Council, and by the writings of the Pope. He had avoided rancor on one hand and indifference on the other. He was considered to be one of the sanest voices in the modern Church. He was also a true priest, and after love of Christ, he valued obedience above all else. He believed that obedience and genuine love were inseparable.

  When the superior of his order demanded that he hire certain columnists, writers whom Smith knew were infected with modernism, he declined, citing the fact that he had been given complete editorial freedom by the archbishop of his city, the man who under civil law actually owned and published the newspaper. His superior insisted, reminding Smith that he was under obedience, pointing out that refusal to comply would be unworthy of a faithful priest.

  The priest now found himself caught in a confusion of obediences. He begged Elijah for advice. He also appealed to the archbishop, and the archbishop agreed with him. The archbishop, however, asked Father Smith to make a minor concession for the sake of preserving unity among the flock. Would he please admit to the company of his writers the least offensive of the dissidents? This would be a favorable sign to critics within his diocese that orthodoxy was not authoritarian, was loving, and never closed to discussion. He added that he personally had suffered as a young curate under autocratic pastors, and before that in the seminary—well, one could not begin to describe the abuses he had suffered under the old system! The new Church must always remain open to dialogue, he insisted, and it must be seen that he, the archbishop, was a sympathetic shepherd who had the interests of all his flock at heart, no matter their disagreements.

  Smith, torn, exhausted, and pushed into making a snap decision by the archbishop’s office of communications, had agreed. Elijah’s reply, urging him to stand firm and to appeal to a higher ecclesiastical court if necessary, arrived too late. The priest, deciding to make the best of a bad situation, reasoned that one questionable columnist was a lesser evil than a paper full of them. Over the following year, he gradually ceded more and more of his authority. He was a gentle man and a perfectionist; his nervous system was not what it had once been. He lacked the talent for detecting the more subtle forms of manipulation. Piece by piece, he lost ground to a newly formed editorial committee, composed mostly of reliable people. It seemed harmless at first. When the archbishop appointed a representative of the diocesan communications office to the committee, a nun who had recently obtained a masters’ degree in theology, he could think of no objection; he did not wish to be thought of as that kind of territorial male who fights rapaciously for power. But the sister had a strong personality and an agenda. Smith became discouraged, then depressed. The archbishop suggested a three-month sabbatical. He took it.

  His temporary replacement was a competent man of impeccable credentials. He was a protégé of the cardinal archbishop of a larger diocese, a close friend of Smith’s own archbishop. The two prelates had been at seminary together, and while they did not always agree on matters ecclesiastical, they were of one mind concerning the maintenance of unity as the highest value. The interim replacement was a gifted writer and editor. He was also adept at diplomacy and never lost his temper. He had risen in the echelons of the secretariat of the national bishops’ conference and was currently the head of their communications office. He knew how to reason with unprogressive bishops and to set their fears at rest. He said many moderate thi
ngs. He neither spoke nor wrote a single divisive word. He had proved himself an able trouble-shooter for the bishops and was considered by all to be a conciliator.

  Within a month, he had eased out one of the less popular orthodox columnists and brought in a second dissident, not an inflammatory one, of course, but one who could broaden the paper’s approach to the many complex problems facing the modern Church. A second orthodox columnist disappeared from the paper the following month.

  By this time, Smith was beginning to realize what had happened. He was taking his sabbatical at a Benedictine monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States. From there, he wrote in protest to his archbishop. The archbishop replied that while he was not perfectly at peace about the directions taken by the new editorial board, it would be “inappropriate” for him to use his episcopal office to interfere. The interim editor was just trying out his wings, he explained, and the paper would gradually find its balance. Father Smith must give the man a chance. The interim editor was considered a very good administrator and an outstanding theologian. Sister X was also doing an able job of keeping the more extreme rebels from getting into print. Between the two of them, they were steering the paper back toward the center. Delegation of authority was not a simple thing, and, after all, it was the age of the laity.

  At that point, Smith experienced a failure of charity. He did something imprudent. He penned an angry response, quite out of character for such a gentle man. He pointed out that the archbishop had neglected to take his own advice. He had not supported him in his struggle with his superior. He had interfered. Moreover, the paper had always been steered on center—the true center—until the new management had taken over. Did the archbishop not see the spiritual damage being done by the present editorial approach? Did the archbishop not know that he was playing by two sets of rules? Perhaps the archbishop secretly agreed with the dissidents. Perhaps his Excellency was using the laity as a tool of revolt, one step removed from his own hands. He felt betrayed, he said, and the archbishop had played no small part in the betrayal. He signed the letter and fired it off.