Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  You were not there!

  They pierced our hands and our feet.

  We were rachmanim bnai rachmanim—a compassionate people, the sons of compassionate people.

  But You did not answer. And we did not go up.

  Baruch dayan emet—God is the true Judge, we said.

  The crime goes on without end, but the Judge and the trial are no more.

  They numbered all our bones.

  Out of the depths we cried to You.

  They cast lots for our children’s drawings and songs.

  You did not answer. You have forsaken us.

  We gave You our word and our life.

  You let them humiliate our word. They took our life.

  We grew to manhood searching the sky for signs.

  But You sent no sign.

  We pleaded and pleaded for You to come.

  But You did not come.

  The old man—the old, old man named Elijah—curled into a ball beside the rock.

  “I am finished. I have had enough”, he said to the rock. “You can kill me now. I am no better than my forefathers before me.”

  Then a hand touched his shoulder.

  He did not believe in the hand.

  It shook his shoulder.

  “Get up.”

  He opened his eyes and uncurled his body. He rolled over onto his back. Across from him, standing beneath a broom tree, was the boy.

  The sunrise shot through the mist swirling around him, mingling with the smoke of a cookfire. His clothes dazzling white. His face blazing with amber light.

  “Arise and eat.”

  Elijah looked, and behold there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

  And the boy said a second time, “Arise and eat, else the journey will be too long for you.”

  Elijah arose and ate and drank. “Why did you leave me?” he croaked.

  “I did not leave you.”

  “I was alone.”

  “You were not alone.”

  “I was afraid.”

  “You were in great fear where no fear was.”

  “Why did you not protect me?”

  “The darkest place is where I will give a great light.”

  “You could have stopped it.”

  “If I had stopped it, there would be no harvest.”

  “I understand nothing.”

  “That is true. You understand nothing.”

  “Are you the Lord?”

  “I am a servant like you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Who is like God? There is none like God!”

  “Who are you?”

  “Who is like God? There is none like God!—That is my name.”

  “I am finished. Leave me. I want to die.”

  “You are exhausted. Long ago, you accepted this labor and this burden. Have you forgotten?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “Your soul remembers. Within your soul is the mark of your covenant.”

  “I know nothing.”

  “You know nothing, but you have obeyed.”

  “I want to die.”

  “Now we can begin.”

  * * *

  The boy led him into the desert. A night and a day they walked, and as long as Elijah followed without questioning, he did not grow weary or hungry, though his heart was a dying thing within him, his mind emptiness, his flesh a vessel carrying an ember.

  On the third morning, they came to a cave. The boy pointed inside.

  “Here you will rest. I will go away from your eyes, but I am with you, and your angel is with you also. Fear nothing. What has come upon you will bear fruit in many lives.”

  Elijah sat inside the mouth of the cave and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, night had come and thunder boiled up out of the east. Rain fell. Lightning flashed but the voice of the Lord was not in it.

  Fire burned wild in the valley below him, but the Lord was not in it.

  A mighty wind tore up bushes and trees, but the Lord was not in it.

  An earthquake shook the roots of the mountains, but the Lord was not in it.

  On the thirty-seventh day, the boy returned and stayed with him.

  He made the sign of the cross over the forehead of Elijah, and strength came into him.

  “Your mission is near its end, but the greater part awaits you.”

  On the thirty-eighth day, the boy said to him, “The storm did not destroy you. Neither the fire nor the lightning nor the earthquake destroyed you.”

  On the thirty-ninth day, a gentle breeze blew from the south.

  “Come out of the cave”, said the boy.

  Elijah went out of the cave saying nothing. He covered his face with his hands.

  “Why do you cover your face?”

  “Who can see God and live?”

  The breeze blew gently upon him, and the Lord was in it.

  “Look up.”

  He uncovered his eyes, and behold, the morning sky was suddenly blackness and the sign of the Son of Man was emblazoned upon it with light streaming from the holes of the wounds.

  “This is a vision of what is not yet, but is soon to be. On that day, every human creature will see his soul stripped bare before his eyes. Then he must choose. You are to give witness for me against the Man of Sin who seeks to set himself in my house, to usurp the throne of God.”

  Then Elijah raised his arms and cried out, and the sky returned to normal. He looked around, and the boy was gone from his eyes. Then putting one foot after another, he walked back toward the place from which he had come.

  * * *

  On the morning after Elijah’s disappearance, a boy had appeared at the door of the hut and informed the two others that Elijah would return in forty days. He instructed the prior to go to the Christian village to say Mass and to hear confessions during Elijah’s absence. He departed without a word of explanation.

  Too stunned to say anything, the prior and the brother stared at the empty doorway as if they had seen an apparition. They obeyed the instructions, and forty days later, Elijah returned.

  Of his absence little can be said because little is known of it. Later, he would speak of it in vague terms, never able to articulate its true shape. The commerce of ordinary language had no equipment to convey what he had seen. Much of it had occurred in his soul, and could not be transferred to the mind of another. The language of mysticism and poetry approximated it, but fell short, pointing only in the general direction of the experience. Whenever a metaphor or a simile presented itself, he employed it in his attempts at explanation, but the prior and the small one could never quite grasp his meaning. The small one focused on the bare facts of the narrative, and the prior tended to abstract it into theology. In the end, they both misunderstood. They knew only that he had gone away into the desert and lived in a cave and had received something from God.

  Now Elijah needed few hours of sleep each night. While the others snored, he rested, reading Scripture by the light of a lantern, pondering, praying, waiting.

  Obedience, the angel had said.

  Simplicity.

  Unknowing.

  These were his only wealth. These were the foundation. His mind was no longer preoccupied with questions, anxieties, intellectual deliberations. The physical tasks of sawing firewood, sweeping, laying the stones of the oratory one upon another were actions of great sweetness to him.

  Not content with giving him visions, the Lord sent dreams. On the third night following his return, he dreamed of a gathering in a large modern city.

  Many bishops of the world were celebrating a liturgy on a splendid altar, but the altar was not in a church; it was on a raised dais in the center of a congress hall. Hundreds of prelates were there, surrounded by countless priests and lay people. All were clothed in costly garments. The sacred vessels were richly ornamented. The main celebrant opened his mouth, and a star burst through the floor and went into him, and from out of his mouth, there issued
a shining darkness. The crowd listened, and clapped, and rejoiced at the words coming from his mouth, and from their mouths there rose a tumult of praise for him. But among them, there were some who fell silent, for they did not approve of the words. They were a minority and could speak nothing against it.

  The celebrant raised a black star above the crowd, and the crowd joined hands and danced in circles around it.

  “We will build the city of Man,” they sang, “and turn our night into day.”

  No, cried Elijah, no! He tried to tell them that they were deceived, but they could not hear him.

  Those who had not approved of the shining darkness looked at him, straining to hear him, but they caught only a few of his words and looked back at the star, or at their feet, not knowing what to think.

  “Look up!” he wailed. But they would not look up.

  Then a hammering came upon the doors. Men dressed in black, wearing masks, bearing automatic weapons, came into the hall. They pointed their weapons at the prelates and fired. Bursts of flame tore into bishops and priests and laity, and they fell. Singing became screaming. People stampeded in all directions, but the doors were sealed. The gunmen sprayed the crowd until the room was a heap of silent bodies floating in blood. Then Elijah was taken away from that place, and he awoke.

  On the following night, he dreamed of a violent storm. Like a shepherd, he was guiding a flock of children through a gloomy wasteland. He was disheartened by the enormity of his task.

  Look up, said a voice.

  He looked up and saw a distant city in the sky. It had twelve gates, and upon its battlements, ten thousand times ten thousand people were waving and cheering, urging him to enter. He was some distance from the main gate, moving toward it slowly, for the crowd of children was crying, confused, and frightened, and he was hard-pressed to keep them from scattering into the dark. He was forced to slow his pace so that the smallest of them would not fall behind and be lost. Behind was the world and a storm rising to a fury, the wind howling, boiling into black clouds, lightning flashing, and in it a red eye seeking the children to devour them. The slowness of their flight toward sanctuary was at first a torment, but an angel came out from the gates and flew around the little flock with a golden string, girding them and guiding them on. He awoke as they reached the gate.

  On the following night, he saw a boy staggering around the blasted heaps of bombed ruins. He was naked, save for a tallis with which he wrapped his loins. He was weeping in agony for the loss of all that was true and beautiful and good in the world. Everything is lost, he cried, everything. He passed men and women who stopped and laughed at his nakedness.

  “Repent!” he shouted at them.

  “Repent of what?” they mocked.

  “The fire is coming”, he said.

  “Look around”, they answered. “There is no fire. We have defeated the fire.”

  “All is normal”, said another.

  “All is not normal”, said the boy.

  “Peace”, they shouted. “Peace!”

  “There is no peace!” said the boy.

  They threw rocks at him, and he ran away. He fell and got up, fell again and crawled, cutting himself on broken glass. Through the ruins, he went on hands and knees until he came to the edge of a bomb crater. In the bottom of the crater was a priest, saying Mass on a cardboard box lit by stubs of candles. His chalice was a tin cup, and his paten was a broken plate. The priest was the Pope, assisted by three bishops. Thirty or forty lay people knelt around the altar, dressed in rags. They were worshipping the Host the Pope lifted up. Its light was dazzling, and it pushed back the darkness for the space of two hours, and another hour, and a half-hour. The people worshipped, but they were frightened. The Pope prayed, but his face streamed with tears.

  Look up, said a voice.

  The boy in the tallis looked up, and there in the sky, hovering just above the Pope, was the woman clothed with the sun, and upon her head was a crown of twelve stars. She looked down with great love upon the huddled group in the crater. And around her were the saints.

  Among them, he recognized many who were beloved by him: John of Avila with his cross, David with his harp, Maximilian of Auschwitz with his two crowns, Beatus of Liébana with his quill and parchment, Maius with his puns and paint, Severa with her dove, and a strange old man carrying a raven. The old man glanced at the boy in the tallis, and smiled.

  Behind the company of saints, he saw another choir of men and women singing and praising God, and among them were Billy and Matteo and an old woman with a string bag. Behind them stood yet another company of white-robed figures, and among them was a young woman cradling a little girl in her arms. The child raised her arms to him and smiled. Beside the woman was another, and in her hands she held a scale to weigh the judges of the earth. Beside her was a man who held an icon high above his head.

  “Who are these people?” said the boy in the tallis.

  You should know, said the voice.

  “Where have they come from?”

  These are the ones who have passed through the great trial They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

  Then the woman with the child, and the woman with the scales, and the man with the icon looked at him and smiled.

  And he awoke.

  * * *

  On August fifteenth, Elijah went with Brother Ass to the village. After Mass, there was a wedding and baptism to perform. When everyone had gone home, Mrs. Cohen served them tea and a meal in her kitchen behind the store. Generous by nature, but jealous of her reputation as a curmudgeon, she could not resist the urge to extract payment of a kind: she nattered and gossiped and scolded them about their shoddy apparel. She turned on the radio while they ate and kept up a stream of commentary about the news.

  “I don’t know what all the hoopla’s about”, she grumbled. “So he’s doing big things! So what! Anybody with millions of dollars can do big things. I don’t trust him.”

  “Why not?” said Elijah.

  “Just a feeling”, she said towering over her stove like an autocrat. “Look at that! Finished already, Father? You men don’t eat right, living out there in the desert. Here, have some more!”

  Ignoring his protests, she dumped a heap of fried corn, rice, and chopped goat meat onto his plate. She did the same to Brother Ass’s plate.

  “I mean, all this nonsense about him being the only one who can pull the world together! I’ve heard it all before.”

  “You have?”

  “Well, not from the horse’s mouth, mind you. I was only six when we left Germany. We went on a ship and got to Istanbul just before the War broke out. I don’t remember anything much about those years. But when we were growing up Mamma and Pappa told us a lot about Hitler, the way everybody thought he was going to save Europe. How could they be so stupid, I ask you?”

  “It is easy to be wise by hindsight.”

  “I guess you’re right. Still, he walked like a wolf, growled like a wolf, and in the end, he was a wolf. How come everybody was so surprised?”

  “The President doesn’t growl in public.”

  “Of course not. He’s a nice man, isn’t he. But just you watch, as soon as he’s got everybody in his pocket, he’s going to start growling.”

  She fussed over her pans moodily and then slapped her head.

  “Oi! I forgot! There’s a message for you. My brother-in-law’s driving down from Smyrna this afternoon, and he’s bringing a visitor. You mind waiting?”

  Shortly after three o’clock, a rusting Chevrolet rumbled into the yard, raising clouds of dust. A short fat man got out of the driver’s side and gave Mrs. Cohen a kiss. From the passenger side, a slender man got out and calmly surveyed the scene. He was dressed in the clothes of the working class of the region. His hair was white and his eyes thoughtful. When he saw Elijah coming out onto the front porch of the store he beamed and went up to him. The two men embraced.

  “Eminence, I am very glad to see you.�
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  “I am happy to see you also.”

  “Will you stay with us?”

  “A day or two. Mr. Cohen will come back on Wednesday to pick me up. I will try to go on to Israel. I have messages for the Patriarch of Jerusalem.”

  “An arduous way to send a message.”

  “We are having trouble getting messages through by normal channels. The Holy Father has asked me to hand-deliver it.”

  “You couldn’t fly?”

  “Italy and Israel have been stalling us with paperwork. We can’t wait any longer for a visa. Delays, endless delays. It’s a ruse, of course. No one wants us in Israel when the President arrives next month.”

  “Eminence, it’s a long trek to our house. Two hours over rough ground. Do you think you can do it?”

  “I can do it”, he said removing a large knapsack from the car. “Let’s go.”

  After making their farewells with the Cohens, they went off in the direction of the hills.

  Father Prior, Brother Ass, Dottrina, and Elijah talked far into the night. Elijah learned that Don Matteo had died of pneumonia during the winter. Stato was alive, but his heart was damaged, and he had accepted retirement. Cardinal Vettore came no more to the Vatican, but he was very active. He was back and forth across the world addressing national bishops’ conferences, giving interviews that spoke of a new age for the national churches, publishing articles, making friends.

  “I don’t know how he does it”, said Dottrina. “All doors seem to open for him, but for us every door is shut.”

  “You mentioned a breakdown in communications”, said Elijah.

  “The ties between the See of Peter and the local churches are being severed one by one. The universal Church is in disarray. The press is full of news about the divisions. Bishops against bishops, cardinals against cardinals. Efforts to rally the faithful behind the Pope have had almost no success. Our people don’t read; they don’t think! The few Catholic journals that remain orthodox are isolated and dismissed as hidebound reactionaries. The security of mail and telephone is proving unreliable. The computer net is also compromised, and the Vatican has recently been denied a license renewal for its satellite channel.”