Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Oh, you poor little man. Has he conquered me? He has no army left on this earth. Billions follow me.”

  “Your army is like the retreating German army at the end the War. They were already defeated, though they could lash out as their empire crashed about them.”

  “My army grows daily, and we spread across this planet. Leave him, you fool. He was a little Christ. He is dead. The Christ of this age stands before you, and you do not recognize him.”

  “You are not Christ. You never will be. There is only one Christ.”

  “Leave him! Leave that man.”

  “He is the Root and Offspring of David, the Morning Star. Behold, He is coming. He is coming soon!”

  “He died two thousand years ago. Is the precursor greater than the one to whom he points? Is the shadow greater than the living flesh?”

  “There is no debate. Your powers are limited, and you can no longer ensnare my mind.”

  “Oh, what a prize you would have been if you hadn’t turned from the way. But it’s not too late. You can still turn toward the light.”

  “Christ is the Light of the world.”

  “Lucifer is the light-bringer!”

  “He is darkness. He is Satan—the enemy.”

  “He is the Morning Star.”

  “Christ alone is the Morning Star.”

  “My lord will lead mankind to its highest truth.”

  “Your lord is the devil—the slanderer. May the Lord rebuke him!”

  Elijah put the reliquary into his pocket and slipped the bishop’s ring onto his finger. He raised both hands to heaven in the orans position of prayer, palms open toward the President. The scorched flesh in the shape of the cross was lifted high over the most powerful man in the world. As the President looked at the sign, hating it, and yearning toward it, he staggered back.

  He tried to form a screech in his throat, but could produce nothing. He tried to bolt for the door, but his legs would not submit. He tried to tap the button on the device in his hand but his finger would not do it.

  “Get out! get out! I’ll let you go if you just get out now!”

  “Not until you have heard the word the Lord Himself sends to you. He tells you this: Though you have sold yourself a thousand times to the angel of darkness, you are granted a final choice. You can still leave him. Though the devil’s time has come and his fury has no limits, yet he shall soon come to an end. And unless you turn from him now, you shall go with him to the punishment that awaits those who lay siege to the Kingdom of God.”

  “Be silent!” roared the President.

  “No! You be silent!” cried Elijah.

  The President made as if to walk toward the door, but he hesitated. Confusion wrestled in his eyes.

  “Be still!” Elijah said. “The hand of the Restrainer is upon you. You cannot strike until God Himself permits the hand to be removed. Now you must listen! This is the moment of choice. He offers it to you because, regardless of your crimes, you are a child of Adam. You were created in His image, like all others born of woman. You are a man, no more, no less. You have been led into captivity, but this bondage is not yet absolute. Turn from Satan! Turn away from him and come home to your Father!”

  The President’s mouth fell open and closed again.

  “I adjure you, Satan, leave him!”

  The President’s eyes rolled up and the whites of them showed. His mouth opened and closed like a fish cast up on a shore, gasping for breath.

  “Vade retro, Satana! Vade retro, Draco! Crux sacra sit mihi lux!”

  The President’s body fell to the floor and writhed. Bestial noises came from his mouth. Then he shuddered and lay without moving, his eyes unblinking, staring across the carpet. Elijah, fearing that he might have died without repentance, knelt beside him and administered the sacrament of the dying. But he saw that the man was still breathing. Then the suppressed writhing began again. At one point, he opened his eyes wide and stared at Elijah. The personality that looked out through those eyes was not the President’s, Elijah resumed prayers of exorcism, and eventually the man closed his eyes and collapsed into unconsciousness.

  Elijah started, for he saw a pair of bare legs standing beside the body.

  “Rafael,” he gasped, “what are you doing in here? You shouldn’t be here!”

  The child looked down at the figure on the floor with an expression of profound pity.

  “He will awake in a few minutes”, the boy said. “Then he must choose.”

  Elijah stared at him.

  “Your work here is completed. Now you must go.”

  Speechless, Elijah allowed himself to be led from the room They passed many closing doors, footsteps disappearing down corridors, and sleeping guards. As if in a dream, they walked out of the building and back through the garden to the cliff. The moon was riding high, and the sheep path was well illuminated. They went down without speaking, and Elijah followed like a small child being led by his elder.

  Later—he could not tell how much later—they stood on the wharf, and Elijah went aboard. He turned to say good-bye. The boy raised his right hand. His expression was infinitely tender and strong. His eyes—his ten-thousand-year-old eyes—were set in a face so pure that Elijah felt conflicting impulses to stare and to look away. He glanced at the instrument panel for a second, turned the ignition switch, and looked back at the wharf. The boy was gone.

  The boat rumbled out of the harbor, and he steered it to the east. The sea was calm now, and the boat skimmed across the surface. The cold wind hit his face and refreshed him. He felt relief. It was finished.

  He looked back once and saw Monte Tiberio crawling with lights. He heard bells and sirens and understood then that the President had chosen.

  He veered far to the north and proceeded without running lights. A helicopter passed to the south, playing a spotlight over the sea. He kept close to the edge of the peninsula of the mainland until he was near Salerno. As he approached the shore, about two miles from the President’s private marina, he saw that it was ablaze with arc lights and that many figures were moving about the dock. He killed the engine and drifted along the coast. Beneath the stern seat, he found an oar and a rubber dinghy. He inflated it, dropped it over the side, and climbed down into it. Making no sound, he paddled toward a wooded area that spilled down from the heights. He beached the dinghy and searched through the trees until he found the blue Toyota in the palmettos.

  He drove east through the mountains, passing no one, meeting few vehicles. Dawn was breaking as he drove into the port of Bari. Rising above the sea was the morning star.

  XXI

  Panaya Kapulu

  The ruins of Ephesus stand in the marshy and unhealthy plain below the village of Aya Solouk, a few miles inland from the Aegean coast. A river, now silted up, once carried ships to the city, which at the time of Saint Paul’s three-year sojourn there was the capital of the Roman province of Asia Minor and a center of its commerce. It was also the seat of the cult of Diana, which attracted multitudes of visitors. Here, Paul’s miracles and preaching were responsible for the conversion of large numbers of citizens. So great was his impact on the populace that the city’s magicians, astrologers, and soothsayers voluntarily burned their books of incantation and arcane knowledge. The decline in the trade of idols sparked riots from which Paul was forced to flee for his life.

  On a typical day, hundreds of tourists prowl about one of the world’s largest ruined cities, strolling along the Roman streets from temple, stadium, and theatre, through the early Christian basilica, and the mansions of the wealthy. One morning in spring, a man moved inconspicuously among them. He did not attract the eye in any way, for he was dressed unobtrusively. He might have been a visiting archeologist, or a retired professor from Istanbul, or perhaps merely an old man with nothing to do. From a vendor he bought brown bread, white cheese, and a cup of sweet black coffee and stood consuming them in front of the ruins of the Church of Saint John. He checked his wristwatch from time to time
but appeared to be in no hurry.

  Just before noon, two men approached the church from the direction of the ancient forum. One was old, the other young. They came up to him and shook hands. Little conversation passed between them; any passersby would have heard comments about the weather, journeys, the historical merits of the tomb of Saint Luke. The three men turned and walked together to the city gate that led to the hills. Children threw pebbles into the stagnant water of roadside pools out of which broken marble columns rose like drowned forests. They went through the gate into the countryside, and soon were passing farmers tilling the soil around the outskirts of the city’s remains and women trotting by on donkeys, carrying loads of firewood.

  For half an hour they climbed into the hills. On the side of a mountain overlooking the Aegean sea and the ruins of the city, the road ended at a small structure built of rough stones.

  “What is this place, Elijah?”

  “This is Panaya Kapulu, the House of the Holy Virgin.”

  “Is it true? Can it be the one?”

  The three men glanced at the doorkeeper who sat outside on a stool reading a Turkish movie magazine. They went in and stood gazing around the dim interior.

  “Here the Apostle John brought Mary the Mother of Christ to escape the persecutions of Christians that broke out at Jerusalem. Here she lived.”

  “In this very house?”

  “More than nineteen hundred years ago! Is it possible?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  The building was about twenty-five feet long and as wide. They passed through the main room into a small chamber at the back, and from there into a little side room.

  “This is where she slept, and where she died.”

  After glancing hastily over their shoulders to make sure that the building was empty, they knelt and prayed in silence.

  The stillness in the room was a palpable presence. Ancient yet timeless, older than the reconstructed mansions in the city below, and yet younger. It was the dwelling of a poor woman who had only just departed, as if on an errand from which she would return momentarily. They felt that she would come in the door and recognize them, and though they had not met her face to face, they would know her. They had always known her, she whom they had called Mother from their birth.

  “We have a long climb ahead of us”, said Elijah. “We must go.”

  From the house of the Holy Virgin, they set off by a footpath at the road’s end and went farther into the hills. An hour later they entered a narrow gorge flanked by steep inclines, overgrown with wild shrubbery. A stone hut nestled at the bottom. A terebinth tree twisted nearby, and a young almond bloomed beside a well. A hen pecked in the gravel of the dooryard. A tethered white goat browsed at the base of the slope and greeted them with loud naahing.

  “Elijah,” said one of the newcomers, “your flock is welcoming you.”

  “Shtiler, shtiler”, Elijah cajoled the animal, stroking the back of its head. “Quiet, quiet. You will get your grain at sunset. Give us extra milk tonight, little sister; we have company.”

  The three men went into the hut, escaping the heat of the afternoon sun. Elijah served them bread and cheese, onions, herbs, raisins, figs, a mash of spiced lentils, and draughts of cold water.

  After the meal, the young man lay down on a cotton mattress in a corner and closed his one eye. He was asleep in minutes.

  Elijah turned to the other and said, “Father Prior, I thought I would never see you again.”

  Replying in German, the prior said, “I too did not think we would meet again. It is a grace we did not foresee.”

  “God is good.”

  “He is greatly to be praised.”

  “In all times and in all places.”

  “Tell me what has happened to you since we last met.”

  “You have read the papers?”

  The prior nodded. “Of course we didn’t believe it. Our Elijah a murderer! I knew it was nothing other than a sign of how greatly you have impeded the enemy’s plans.”

  “It is so.”

  “Still, he goes about his business as if no one can stop him. He comes to Jerusalem in September. The preparations in the country are nothing short of a royal welcome. I have never seen anything like it. The pagan cults and some Jewish sects are already acclaiming him as a new messiah. The Christian journals are also full of praise for him.”

  “A strong delusion. It falls on wise and foolish alike.”

  “What are we to do, Elijah? Did the Holy Father give you any directions for the near future?”

  “He instructed me to wait and to pray—until the appointed time, he called it.”

  “Until the appointed time. I wonder what he meant?”

  “We will know when it is necessary to know, and not until then.”

  The prior sighed, “As always, the Lord demands faith from us. First faith, and then help comes after.”

  “You too have been through many trials since we last met.”

  The prior bent his head. “Your letter reached me at Nazareth just as I was close to utter discouragement. When the riots started at Haifa in January, some of the fathers wanted me to take the community to the Christian settlements across the Jordan, but I refused. I said we must show confidence. If we begin to run, I argued, our enemies will only chase us harder and farther. But when the New World people sacked the monastery, I had no choice. We went to Nazareth, those of us who were left.”

  “How many died?”

  “Eleven fathers and seven brothers.”

  “Who survived?”

  “Myself, Father John, this brother here, and old Photosphorous who was in the hospital down in Haifa. I don’t yet know his fate.”

  “The small one is exhausted.”

  “Brother Ass? Yes, he has done more good during the past few months than you can imagine. He saved my life.”

  “He has changed. His face is older and he is no longer noisy.”

  “We thought of him as the least of the brothers, didn’t we? Simple, uneducated. We, with our advanced degrees and our finely nuanced theological homilies, we smiled upon him benignly. Brother Ass we called him. We, who were oh-so-humbly superior, are lesser men than he.”

  “How did he save you?”

  “The rioters beat us and left us for dead. I don’t know where he disappeared to during the attack, but he returned by night and pulled me from the heap of bodies. Out of nowhere, he produced a car and drove me and John to Nazareth, where the Franciscans took us into their hospice.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. The superior in Rome says we shouldn’t go back there. Too much civic unrest. He said we must wait until he arranges transportation to America. That was six weeks ago. I haven’t heard from him since. Things are very confused in Rome. There’s no hint of it in the media, but I think there are struggles going on. Religious in several orders tell me the same story; communications are breaking down. We don’t know what’s happening.”

  “Can you return to the sisters?”

  “Their own situation is precarious. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is negotiating with the Israeli government for a promise of protection for the Christian orders, but it’s the same everywhere—vagueness, delay, inaction.”

  “Father Prior, you are welcome to remain here.”

  “Thank you, Elijah, but I can see you have little food. How can you feed three on a diet that’s barely adequate for one?”

  “The Lord provides. I have a flock.”

  “A flock? One goat?”

  “A little more than that. There is a village about two hours walk from here. I go every Sunday to say Mass. They make sure I have enough to eat and oil for the lamps.”

  “I didn’t know there were any Catholics left in the region.”

  “There are perhaps forty families scattered throughout these hills.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Most of them are Greeks, but they have had no sacraments since the Melkite Patri
arch was arrested. Many of their priests have fled. A few pastors remain in Asia Minor, but they are in the cities, and it is difficult to find them. There are some Palestinians, of course. Also a group of Jewish converts. They are the most fervent of all.”

  “Even if there should be food for the three of us, of what use can I be? I don’t think these arthritic hands could milk your goat.”

  “I need priests desperately.”

  “You need?” said the prior slowly.

  Elijah went to an alcove at the back of the hut and drew aside a curtain, revealing a red vigil lamp and a small brass tabernacle set into the stones of the wall. He genuflected before the tabernacle, then picked up a ring from the ledge beneath it. He put the ring on his finger and seated himself across from the prior. The prior looked at it without speaking then went down on his knees and took Elijah’s hand in his own. He kissed the ring.

  Elijah helped him back to his seat.

  “The Lord is full of humor”, said the prior.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Elijah, Elijah! Do you remember the time I was elected?”

  “I remember it well. I voted for you.”

  “Did I ever tell you what happened to me the night before the election? No, I didn’t. Well, now is the time, for the story has come full circle. You recall that it was fairly certain you would be elected. You were well loved; I wasn’t. I was sure you would be our next prior, and I was very happy about that. To tell you the truth, I was relieved.”

  “And so, what is the Lord’s little joke?”

  “On the night before the election, I had a dream. It was a happy dream. I saw myself kneeling at your feet and kissing your ring; you had a shepherd’s staff in your hand. The next day, when they made me the prior, I thought, ‘Oh, no, a terrible mistake has been made!’ I cried out to God. I decided to refuse the office. I knew that God had ordained you to shepherd our house.”