Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  When, after a couple of months, he had established a daily routine and found out what amount of time was needed for his official duties as an assistant, he started again to cultivate his two principal hobbies: painting and English literature. Once he made a trip to New York to talk with a publisher about a study of the poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, and he returned home full of enthusiasm for the project.

  It was toward the end of 1961, a little over a year after his arrival at St. Declan’s, that the first traces of change became apparent in him.

  On an average, Yves performed ceremonies of marriage three to five times every month. He seemed to add a special note of solemnity, joy, and celebration by his mere presence. His sermons on these occasions were beautifully delivered. And it thrilled everyone present to see this handsome and graceful young priest celebrating the love of the newlyweds within the purlieu of the Church’s holiness and God’s purity, and the Lordship of Jesus. For these were the themes on which Yves preached again and again in modulated tones and poetic language.

  As time went on, however, Yves became more and more dissatisfied with the marriage ceremonial as prescribed in the Roman Ritual, the official handbook for priests that contains detailed instructions on how priests are to celebrate the various sacraments. He felt that the words and gestures assigned to the priest in performing a marriage ceremony were not merely outmoded, but that they did not convey what modern men and women thought and felt about marriage.

  Above all, Yves found the actual words of the marriage vows more and more repulsive and irrelevant. Here he was, standing in front of two young people about to embark on a marvelous union and life together; and, as official representative of the Church, all he could tell them to do in the name of God and religion was to “stick it out,” to stay together no matter what happened, until they were parted by death. Was that precisely what marriage partners promised each other? he asked himself.

  In the beginning, he made no change in the words of the actual vows. But in his sermon at each marriage, he began to outline what the marriage partners did really promise to each other.

  In the first sermons he insisted that the partners were giving each other what Jesus gave his Church. Jesus was the supreme model. Then, as he developed this theme, he began to say more explicitly what it was Jesus gave his Church.

  Consciously now, Yves was drawing on what he had heard Father “Bones” say at the seminary and what he had thought out by his own reading of Teilhardian doctrines. Mixed with all he said were lines of poetry about Jesus which he applied to the bridegroom and the bride.

  In these sermons Jesus was pictured by Yves as the summit of human development, the great Omega Point. He made all nature beautiful, including the bodies and the love of married people. Jesus was so dedicated to perfecting the material world that he was evolving as that world’s peak of perfection. In the same total way that Jesus gave himself to this human world even to the point of dying like every living element in it, so the marriage partners should, Yves pointed out, adapt themselves to this world. They would find perfection primarily in each other, secondarily in other people around them, then in nature, in life, and finally in their dying and death.

  All this was, of course, far from the normal teaching of Yves’ Church, according to which Jesus does not depend on the material world in any way, and marriage is a sacrament which enables the partners to live their lives with supernatural grace and to achieve eternal life in heaven after death.

  But the change in Yves’ beliefs was not the strangest or most dramatic thing about this early “enigmatic stage” of his possession. What is relevant and striking is that Yves constantly found his thoughts and words “coming” to him. Sometimes, having spoken to the congregation in the church, he woke up to the fact that he had said this or thought that without having willed it or even been conscious of what he had done. It was not that his mind had wandered. It was a sort of “remote control.”

  In fact, Yves’ first clear idea of what was happening within himself did not come because his clerical colleagues in the rectory and a few parishioners objected to some of his thoughts and expressions. They did, but this of itself did not bother Yves very much. He still relied on his charm and his words to get him out of any incidental difficulties.

  That “remote control” which was to increase in him until it became paramount in his life—this was the first sign to him of something alien within him. It had become apparent to him at first during his free hours.

  In his free time away from the church and his parish duties, Yves tackled painting and writing much as any other artist. He would be in the mood for painting or poetry. He would have some perceptions of color, line, form, or spatial dimensions. The perceptions burned in his imagination and inner sensibilities for some period of time. He would sit down to paint, for instance, while he thus burned inside with images, imaginings, flights of fancy and inner landscapes.

  While doing initial drafts on canvas or paper, motivated by that not unusual activity of his imagination, he normally experienced a special inner perception which was always pleasurable. It was, Yves said, his mind and will gathering in and enjoying the fruits of his imagination. And there poured back into his imagination freshly burnished forms of what originally had entered through his senses.

  It was these burnished forms he tried to depict on canvas or to express in his poetry. But even as he painted or wrote, he found his memory of past things reviving and lighting up like a panel, pouring assonances and shadings into his imagination. And his general effort suddenly expanded and became richer as he tried to reproduce the new form his experience had taken.

  It was this rather normal creative routine that began to take a peculiar turn; and it was always in strict relationship to some exterior trouble or difficulty Yves had as a priest.

  The most important occasion which he clearly remembers hinged upon a bit of unpleasantness with the senior assistant in his parish. In late September 1962, he had preached at a marriage. Afterward, the senior assistant of the parish, who had been present at the ceremony, admonished Yves about his sermon. “You are making marriage a merely human thing,” he argued. “It is a sacrament, a channel of supernatural grace. The Lord Jesus is not going to evolve out of the earth or a woman’s body or from gases in the upper atmosphere.”

  The rebuke was potentially serious, but Yves had talked his way out of it; the senior assistant was very firm, but he liked Yves, as everyone did. For his part, Yves wanted no trouble. He liked his post too much. But, afterwards, he had a deep surge of resentment about the whole matter.

  The following day was his weekly free day. In the morning, while he was painting, the incident was still annoyingly in the forefront of his mind. But there was also a peculiarity which he was quick to notice and apparently powerless to prevent: he felt there were two parts of him or two functions going on at the same time in him, each of them working in different directions.

  He went on painting, holding the brush, choosing colors, dipping, painting, standing back and returning to his easel and continuing to paint. All the while, the normal mechanism of his inner man was at work—imagination, memory, mind, will.

  But all that while, too, another and parallel process was going on. His imagination was receiving data—images, impressions, forms—from some source other than the outside world. He knew this because they resembled nothing he had ever seen, heard, or thought. And then, too, it seemed to him that these images were not assimilated by his mind and will. Rather, they seemed to paralyze mind and will, to freeze them so that bit by bit they went fallow. An entire idea—he could not even make out its contours or details—was being “shoved” into his mind and forced into his will for acceptance.

  He resisted the “push” of the idea; but it eventually invaded his mind and will through his imagination. And finally, as far as he could make out, he yielded. Then that grossly strange idea flooded back into his imagination with all its parts, reasons, and logic, there to be clothed in n
ew images. His mind even supplied words for those images and sometimes, indeed, he found himself pronouncing these words in whole sentences.

  After about an hour, on the first vivid and eerie occasion of this kind, he was shocked to discover that he was now painting in a strange and completely alien fashion compared to his normal way. His canvas had become a hodgepodge of his initial brushings, which he had intended to portray a street scene. On top of them was a crazy quilt of other forms and shapes—shadowy trees, rivers, irregular forms with legs, squares with ears, loops that ended in numerals.

  When he resisted that inner “push” of ideas from that unknown source, his painting followed the normal course. But when he yielded, the hodgepodge started anew. He seemed to have become a means of translating into pictorial images some message or instructions or thoughts conveyed to him forcibly and not by his own choosing.

  Yves felt alone and vulnerable. He was very disturbed. On an impulse he decided to drive out to see some friends in the country. But there was no letup. Along the way, he found he could no longer concentrate on his driving, so great and distracting was the force of all that was now pouring into him. He had to stop the car on the side of the road. He sat there and tried to keep his mind and will free of all those images and forms that were pounding at them from some source he could not identify.

  But as he intensified his struggle, another element crept to the fore: his resentment about the previous day’s argument with the senior assistant. When Yves yielded to the “push” of the idea being “shoved” into his mind, it brought with it some peculiar satisfaction in resentment. When Yves resisted, the resentment smoldered there and hurt him. In the brief pauses between these inner gyrations, Yves’ mind dwelt on what he had said during the sermon and elaborated the ideas still further. He found intense satisfaction in this.

  Eventually, as he sat beside the road, his planned visit with friends forgotten, he found himself yielding willingly to the “push” of the idea. And the moment he yielded, he felt immediate relief from an internal pressure and a deep conviction that his resentment against the senior assistant was justified: Yves had been right all along. He knew what was going on. Besides, he found his imagination and feelings once more chockful of inspiration which he knew would pour into his sermons, his painting, and his poetry.

  Yves points to this experience as the moment “remote control” became a constant element in his life, because at that instant he accepted it willingly. It was, so to speak, the “consecration” of Yves’ possession.

  Once he voluntarily accepted it—and he insists today that he knew he was accepting some “remote” or “alien” control—he was suddenly inundated. He still had not moved from his car. All around him was soft-spoken countryside. But every sense—eyes, ears, taste, smell, touch—was saturated with a discordant medley of experiences. A riot of sounds, colors, odors, tastes, skin feelings washed over him. He could distinguish a certain rhythmic beat throughout this confusion and din. But he had no control and could not shake himself loose from these perceptions. Throughout, he felt a certain privileged awe, a secret pride. Then the storm in his senses gathered up inside him somewhere, absorbing utterly his imagination and memory. He now felt as if serpentine thoughts were touching the furthest reaches of his mind, and that fine tendrils were closing around each fiber of his will.

  Slowly he began again to be conscious of the world around him. What had occurred had taken only moments, but for those moments he had been totally abstracted, walled up within himself.

  Sound and light and shape now wafted back through the trellis of his senses, making him a newly aware observer of the world. He heard birds singing once more; he felt the sunlight on his face again. The coolness of the wind and the smell of morning-fresh grass and flowers became vivid for him. But now each lattice of sensation was filled by some coiling presence weaving slowly, possessively, with ease, lazily enjoying an acquired resting place in the shaded corners of his being.

  For a brief instant, there was some echo of resistance in him. Some ancient voice protested in dim tones. Then it ceased. Yves “let go,” and all tension fled. He was at peace for the first time in many years. And he felt renewed. There was a sudden ease throughout his body and an almost fierce, certainly overpowering calm flooding his thoughts.

  He was never more conscious of being “visited.” And every image he ever had of those who had been “visited” by “another” came tumbling from his memory: Moses at the burning bush; Isaiah catching sight of the flaming seraphs in the temple of Yahweh; Mary the Virgin in Nazareth bowing before Gabriel the messenger; Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elias on Mount Tabor and conversing with God; St. John in his Patmos cavern gazing at the Mystic Lamb in all his glory; Constantine galvanized by the Cross in the clouds; Joan of Arc in her prison cell tearfully hearing her “voices” in the depths of pain; John of the Cross in his prison cell piercing the Dark Night and embracing the Beloved; Teilhard fingering the bones of Sinanthropos and seeing Jesus, Omega Point, prefigured in those pathetic pieces. Yves had a clear sense of being destined, as all those had been, for a special revelation.

  All this rushed by him and fell away as he raised his eyes and looked again at the fields, the trees, the sky. All was now moving in a new vision, animated by a life he had dreamed of, but never known. It was all, he now knew, a sacrament, a row of sacraments strung together as a lovely necklace around man’s world. And his mind, will, and inner senses were permeated with a strange new incense consecrating him—as no bishop’s hands could ever do—to the priesthood of a new being. He knew: always it had been so near him and yet so far. “Beauty, ever ancient, ever new! Too late have I known thee!” he murmured Augustine’s quiet regret.

  There was awe at the surprise of it all, humbleness at not having seen it all before. And, dominantly, an enthusiasm lush with passion. The coiling presence stirred in him; and he began to daydream.

  “Hey, Father! Having any trouble?” The shout startled Yves. It was a local state trooper who had drawn alongside in his patrol car. Yves snapped his head around, angry at the interruption, his eyes blazing. But the genial smile of the trooper reassured him. They knew each other. “Just passing a few moments in peace, Pat,” he said, recovering himself and reaching for the ignition key. “Give Jane and the kids my love.”

  With a wave of his hand he continued on his way to see his friends.

  From then on, Yves became extremely careful. It was as if he had been put on his guard. He knew with an almost uncanny foresight when trouble was in store for him. At times he was forewarned about a particular person. “Someone” told him. At other times the warning concerned activities: a request to solemnize a marriage, a request for confessions, an invitation to dinner at a parishioner’s house or with his fellow priests; or it might be a book or article in a magazine or a letter. The warning was silent, but clear and pithy: “Avoid it!” or “Don’t do it!” or “Don’t meet them!” Except for an occasional flourish in a sermon, his colleagues found no further reason to cavil at his ideas.

  But when he spoke privately with parishioners, with an engaged couple about to be married, for example, it was different. Then he explained their union so poetically, and he dwelt so insistingly on the peculiarly earthly role of Jesus, that they always departed completely charmed by his counseling.

  Yves himself clearly explains now how the entire purpose, meaning, and reason of marriage as a Sacrament had changed for him. It had become a Sacrament of nature for him. It had lost its dimension as a channel of supernatural grace, just as the senior assistant had warned him. It was something that united people with the natural universe. And this meant there had been some deep damage to Yves’ own faith.

  As time went by, and Yves introduced this same dark element to the other Sacraments, his own condition became far more extreme; and he himself began to sense more clearly the meaning of his voluntary commitment to a force he now could not control. The moment for possible resistance had passed.


  In 1963, Yves’ situation became critical for him. Saying Mass was a prime example. The servers and the people found that he began to take a longer time to say Mass. Peculiarly enough, it was only one part of the Mass that took the additional time. It was the most solemn section immediately preceding the Consecration that begins when the priest extends his hands, palms downward, fingers together, over the chalice and the bread. The ceremonial calls for complete silence, broken only by the tinkling of the Mass bell. Yves would now remain for abnormal lengths of time, with his hands outstretched—at first only three minutes, then ten, then fifteen, once thirty agonizing additional minutes, with congregation and attendants waiting and watching. Then he would take an abnormally long time to utter the actual words of Consecration. At an ordinary pace, all these ceremonial actions take no more than three to five minutes.

  His colleagues thought he was going through a “mystical” period, or that he was suffering from “religious scruples,” that he took too seriously each official prescription for the actions and words of the Mass. Some priests go through such a phase. They know that any deviation can result in venial or mortal sin. So they torture themselves, making sure they observe all the rules; they go back again and again repeating actions and words, to make sure they consciously do everything correctly.