Behind me, two doctors and the representative of United Way and the Chief Leo of the Lions Club are offended. One says to the other, “Church is out.” Another replies, “For us too.”
All four leave.
Other people begin to murmur and stir about anxiously.
Only Father Smith, lost in thought, does not appear anxious.
Max and I exchange glances. There is the slightest upward movement of his eyes. We understand each other. We have exchanged such a glance in group, past a patient. I rise and hunch over toward the priest with the air of a deacon or usher who knows what he is doing.
“Father,” I say in a low but ordinary voice, “let’s get on with the Mass.” There are patients, one learns from experience, who will simply do what they are told, never mind Freud and his “non-directive” therapy, and there are times when it is better to tell them.
“Of course,” replies the priest, giving a start. “You assist me.”
“What?”
“I said, you assist me.”
“But, Father, you know very well—” I am looking around for Milton Guidry, his crewcut assistant. No sign of him.
“Sure, I know,” says the priest. “But assist me, anyhow.”
“All right. But I only remember the old Mass.”
“That will do.”
He turns and kneels on the platform step. I kneel beside him like an altar boy.
“I will go up to the altar of God,” says the priest, holding the chalice.
“To God who gives joy to my youth,” I reply.
13. ELLEN IS RIGHT AND WRONG about Father Smith. He did not “have his hooks” in me. He only asks me to assist him when he’s out of it, needs help, Milton is sick and can’t bring him the bread and wine.
The hospice opens and down he comes from the fire tower in his right mind and very much in charge. Very much his old wiry, vigorous self, he jokes with the children, listens to the endless stories of the senile, talks at great length with the dying. He calls on me only when the depression and terrors of his AIDS patients are more than he can handle. We do little more than visit with them, these haggard young men, listen, speak openly, we to them, they to us, and we to each other in front of them, about them and about our own troubles, we being two old drunks and addled besides. They advise us about alcohol, diet, and suchlike. It seems to help them and us. At least they laugh at us.
But when he invited me to serve Mass routinely, because I was visiting the hospice early every morning, I refused. It is easy to say no at the hospice, because honesty is valued above all. I told him the truth: that since I no longer was sure what I believe, didn’t think much about religion, participation in Mass would seem to be deceitful.
He nodded cheerfully, as if he already knew.
“Don’t worry,” he said, doing a few isometrics in the hall, pushing and pulling with his hands. “It is to be expected. It is only necessary to wait and to be of good heart. It is not your fault.”
“How is that, Father?” I ask him curiously.
“You have been deprived of the faith. All of us have. It is part of the times.”
“Deprived? How do you mean?”
“It is easy enough to demonstrate,” he says, shrugging first one shoulder high, then the other.
“Yes?”
“Sure. Just consider. Even if the truths of religion could be proved to you one, two, three, it wouldn’t make much difference, would it? One hundred percent of astronomers have discovered that the universe was created from nothing. The explanation is obvious but it does not avail. Who can handle it? It does not signify. It is boring to think of. Ninety-seven percent of astronomers are still atheists. Do you blame them? They are also boring. The only thing more boring would be if the ninety-seven percent all converted, right? It follows that there must be some other force at work, right?”
“Right,” I say, noting with alarm the same brightness of eye and chipper expression he used to have in the fire tower.
But before I can escape, he has taken me by the arm and drawn me aside, as if some poor dying soul might overhear.
“Do you recall what happened in Yugoslavia a few years ago?” he asks in a low confidential voice.
“Yugoslavia,” I say, wishing I had not gotten into this.
“The six little children to whom the Mother of God appeared?”
“Oh. I do recall something of the sort, yes. Now if you will excuse—”
“What she told them has been much publicized, doubtlessly exaggerated by the superpious — who knows? — but one little item has been largely overlooked.”
“Is that so?”
“Yet I think it highly significant — one of those unintentionally authentic touches which make a story credible.”
“Very interesting. Well, I—”
“I’d like your professional opinion on this,” he says in a low voice, drawing me still closer.
“Certainly,” I say, glancing at my watch.
“The story of the apparitions is well known. Of course, no one knows for certain whether the Virgin appeared to them. The Church does not know. Many pious people believe that she did. That is not what interests me. It is one small detail which they related about one of the many apparitions which seemed so outlandish that no one could make sense of it and either laid it to childish fantasy or overlooked it altogether. You recall that though she identified herself as the Mother of God, one of the children related that she appeared not as the Queen of Heaven with a serpent under one foot and a cloud under the other, crowned with stars and so on — but as an ordinary-looking young red-cheeked Jewish girl, which of course she probably was. But what she told them on this one occasion and which they related without seeming to understand what they were saying was this: Do you know why this century has seen such terrible events happen? The Turks killing two million Armenians, the Holocaust, Hitler killing most of the Jews in Europe, Stalin killing fifteen million Ukrainians, nuclear destruction unleashed, the final war apparently inevitable? It is because God agreed to let the Great Prince Satan have his way with men for a hundred years — this one hundred years, the twentieth century. And he has. How did he do it? No great evil scenes, no demons — he’s too smart for that. All he had to do was leave us alone. We did it. Reason warred with faith. Science triumphed. The upshot? One hundred million dead. Could it be a test like Job’s? Then one must not lose hope even though the final war seems inevitable as this terrible century draws to a close. Because almost everyone has lost hope. Christians speak of the end time. Jews of the hopelessness of the mounting Arab terror. Even unbelievers, atheists, humanists, TV anchormen have lost hope — you’ve heard how these commentators speak in their grave style which conceals a certain Ed Murrow delectation of doom. Do you think that there is a secret desire for it? But you must not lose hope, she told the children. Because if you keep hope and have a loving heart and do not secretly wish for the death of others, the Great Prince Satan will not succeed in destroying the world. In a few years this dread century will be over. Perhaps the world will end in fire and the Lord will come — it is not for us to say. But it is for us to say, she said, whether hope and faith will come back into the world. What do you think?”
“What? Oh. Do you mean about Yugo — about the ah predictions. Very interesting. Well, Father, I really must be—”
“So don’t worry about it,” says the priest. He has let me go and is absently doing a few calf isometrics, balancing on the ball of one foot, then the other.
“And to be specific in your case, Tom.”