TRILOGY: Bk I, Ch 40 (Jackass for the Hour) Part I

Jackass for the Hour

Pope Tsur-Ēzer gave the bulla to Father Alexámenos, saying, “In order to cast fire upon the earth, a little paper can help.” Cardinal Fidèle took the comment in good humour.

Father Alexámenos tightly folded the document while Mother Bernadette tied it securely, he objected to the Pope’s request: “Your Holiness, is it not time for me to go to heaven?”

“What His Holiness said at the end of the Easter Vigil has most probably given us the privilege of being martyrs this very hour, even in the sense of sixty minutes,” said padre Emet. This prophecy took everyone by surprise, including the Pope and padre Emet himself. Yet, they knew his words would be fulfilled, and that it was now too late to save themselves. “Yet, only the good die young,” he continued, speaking to Father Alexámenos. “As Confessor, I must remain. Lia-Fail cannot leave the Pope. His Holiness must stay with the nuns; some are too frail to escape. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. The hour has now arrived. They will not wait.”

“As for me,” said al-Hasan, now Paul, “I must witness to my Faith to the Muslims.”

“The same goes for me,” said al-Husayn, now Timothy. “Sooner than later is the best.”

Shelomoh, now Ben David, said in his turn, “Tsur-Ēzer has passed my litmus test. Am I to be such a hypocrite that I will not proclaim the Lord Jesus to the infidels?”

Yehezqēl added, “As the Master, so the disciple.”

“Yes,” replied the Holy Father, “but Jesus freely lays down His life – and our lives in His – when He wants. For now, you, Yehezqēl, must help Alexámenos.” Then, turning to Cardinal Fidèle, the Holy Father gave him an opportunity to express some courage, saying, “As for you, Fidèle, it is too late to escape, what with your being in a wheelchair…”

“Who said anyone wanted to escape?” the Prelate answered. “If you are prophesying … and you all seem to know that we are now in our final hour…” He hesitated, trying to comprehend his own words. “In that case, I am ready,” he said. Yet, he did not completely understand.

“Arise!” said the Holy Father to all present.

“Let us be going!” came the reply from most of them.

When they arrived in the chapel, Father Alexámenos exclaimed, “Nos, cum Prole pia…”

“Benedicat Virgo Maria!” replied those who knew the response, including Yehezqēl.

The Holy Father then gave them his blessing, after which he said, “There is little time.”

“Only an hour!” said Father Alexámenos as they turned to leave the convent with the bulla.

“We will see each other in the Lord’s hour… in the Blessed Virgin’s hour,” Yehezqēl added.

After the two of them were gone, they locked the doors in a useless measure of protection and then returned to the chapel. Pope Tsur-Ēzer, knowing what Cardinal Fidèle needed to hear, said, “Mother, you were explaining Fātimah’s vocation to the Cardinal, her appreciation of virginity…” The Cardinal knew he needed help, and that this was the way the Pope wanted to help him, but the Pontiff’s calmness seemed surreal. Ironically, the unfolding drama kept the Prelate listening.

•••—•••—•••

Father Alexámenos and Yehezqēl heard the death chants as soon as they left the convent. They set about running along the wall of Vatican City, looking for a way down the high wall to Viale Vaticano far below. They went along Viale Benedetto, discovering that death chants were coming from all lower parts of the garden, and were now closer. The wall seemed to be as high as twelve to fifteen, or even eighteen metres at some points, often with a second, deadly level near the street below. They came to the statue of Our Lady of Fātimah at the end of Viale degli Ulivi, and looked through the hedges over the wall. “The fall would be fatal,” said Father Alexámenos. They ran along Viale degli Ulivi to the heliport, the top of whose walls were further from the street below.

Yehezqēl asked with sudden enthusiasm, “What was it Mother Bernadette said about rats?”

“Sticking their noses into everything, they never make progress,” said Father Alexámenos.

“But as Shelomoh… I mean, Ben David, said, it’s a good thing we’re not rats. We can still get where we are going with the grace of God.” With that, they both climbed to the top of the wall at the heliport, assisted by the vines covering some parts of the wall. They slowly walked along the top of the wall examining the outside of the wall to their left for any way down. Yehezqēl marvelled at the various military capacities of the wall as they went along. “This reminds me of the time I had to make my way down the volcanic walls of Lago Albano,” he said. Their search was helped by the light of the full Easter moon. As they turned along Viale degli Ulivi, still on top of the wall, the immediate danger of falling was aggravated by the untrimmed branches of the straggly olive trees jutting over the wall, constantly entangling their feet. The branches reaching over their heads to their right were a false sense of security. Were they to be tempted to grab one of the long, slender branches to avoid falling over the wall, they would have fallen all the same.

•••—•••—•••

“As far as Sister’s Fātimah’s understanding of the virginity of the Mother of God,” said Mother Bernadette, “the best place to begin is with her name in religion, for Fātimah…”
“For Fātimah was the youngest daughter of Muhammad,” interrupted Cardinal Fidèle, hoping that, for once, someone would answer his challenges. “She was supposed to be virginal even though she was a wife and mother, and was held to be personally sinless, as chastely pure as the rivers of paradise, nick-named al-Batūl, the Virgin, and even Maryam al-Kubrá, and al-Zahrā, as if Fātimah was greater than Mary, Mother of Jesus, and as if only Fātimah were radiant.”

“In fact, Jacinta chose this name against all the reasons you gave, and had many positive reasons as well,” replied Mother Bernadette. “Her family was devoted to Our Lady of the Rosary, the name Our Lady of Fatima called herself. Her favourite mystery was the annunciation to Mary that she would be the virginal Mother of God. She said that, unlike the theology of Muslims that the daughter of Muhammad remained a virgin even as a sexually active wife and mother – a pitiable attempt at one-upmanship by these heretics – Mary, the Mother of God, of the God-man, of Christ Jesus, was not sexually active, but conceived Jesus by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, giving birth to Jesus in a miraculous way, retaining her physical virginity in this way for the reason, Sister Fātimah said, that Jesus, in a very real sense, was not yet born.”

“Not yet born?” asked Cardinal Fidèle.

“Mary, radiant by a transformation in grace, as Luke’s Gospel reports,” she began, “was, from the moment she received her vocation to be Mother of God at her conception…”

“Kecaritwmenh is the exact word,” Cardinal Fidèle added for precision. “She stands transformed in grace, perfectly, continually, from the first instant of her existence up to now, a truth which, I now regret, I failed to present in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue…”

“Your Eminence,” said Mother Bernadette, “Sister Fātimah said that only Mary could be chastely pure as the rivers of paradise – and far beyond – for only she was transformed in grace by the river of grace flowing from the Heart of the Saviour…”

“Whose mercy must, then, be timeless, including the past, drawing us into unity,” he concluded. “But why physical virginity? What did Sister Fātimah think?” He didn’t understand.

“This is what impressed all the nuns, your Eminence,” replied Mother Bernadette, who intended to avoid giving any answer until he answered this himself. “When Jesus asked His Mother at the wedding at Cana of Galilee, ‘What is this to you and to me?’ He was trying to get her to think of His own wedding with His Bride, the Church, on Calvary, His hour, the hour of redemption. Satan thought it was his own hour of victory over Jesus, over God, but this hour was, instead, the hour of the glory of the love, the mercy, the Charity, that does not stop at death, but rises to bring us to life, even after we tried to put this Life to death forever. This was Mary’s hour of victory over Satan, the Serpent, her hour of intercession, by which we consumed the New Wine, the Blood of Christ. In this way, she became our Mother. The hour of her birth pangs, seeing her own Son hanging, tortured, on the Cross, was most excruciating for her, sending a sword of sorrow through her heart. The more pure she was, the more perfectly she could intercede for us, knowing our need perfectly in seeing her Son put to death. Her purity was not self-congratulatory like that of Fātimah, daughter of Muhammad. Mary’s purity was meant to make her a mother appropriate to the Son to whom she would give birth. Then, when He rose from the dead, bringing us to life, she, as His Mother, rejoiced that she had brought a Man into the world, a Man having uncountable members to His Body. Those members are all of us, for whom she interceded, the New Adam, the One Man, Christ Jesus, and we, in Him.”

“I know that people call Mary the New Eve, and that the Seed of the Woman crushes the head of the serpent by letting Himself be crushed by the fangs of the serpent on the heel,” replied Cardinal Fidèle. “But why does she have to retain physical virginity?”

•••—•••—•••

Those Muslims who still had fuel in hand – and there were many dozens, with their numbers increasing by the minute – stampeded up past the Tribunal, with hundreds of others, making their way up Vatican Hill to the Governatorato. The rest had already spread out to the lower regions of the northern part of the gardens, past the Academy of Sciences, covering every millimetre of territory, certain that they would find Pope Tsur-Ēzer and the others. When those who had gone to the Governatorato went on to the Ethiopian College, they set it ablaze and continued to comb the garden for any sign of the Pope and those with him. There were no more helicopters flying overhead since the Muslims had found some guards with bullets in their guns near the Ethiopian College and had been firing at the helicopters. They did not waste the bullets on the guards, but knocked them out with the butts of the guns. The guards knew they would have been killed had they uselessly killed one or two of the Muslims before being overwhelmed themselves.

•••—•••—•••

“Do you remember what Pope John XXIII opened on 17 August, 1960, your Eminence?” asked Mother Bernadette, only seeming to change the topic, trying to get him to understand.

“How did you know I was unofficially there when he opened the secret of Fātimah?” he asked. “It re-presents Genesis 3,15-24. There’s an angel with a flaming sword, perhaps Saint Michael…” His own words made him stop for a moment… “He’s protecting the way to the tree of life, the Cross. Mary is interceding for grace for the martyrs to be drawn up to the Cross of Life, so that we witness, even as martyrs, to this purifying fire of the Most Holy Trinity…”

“Nurtured by the Fire of the Most Holy Trinity… Fātimah of the Most Holy Trinity,” said padre Emet. “Those flames embrace all people of all time, one by one, one after another, like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…”

“Except for those who would not be gathered,” said Ben David, until they bow before the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the Almighty, Incarnate among us, the Suffering Servant.”

“But what does all this have to do with the physical virginity of Mary?” the Cardinal insisted.

“Your Eminence, the purpose for which Christ came was to save us, making us members of His one Body,” replied Mother Bernadette. “Mary conceived in her womb by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. If, instead, she were to have conceived Jesus by means of Joseph, and lost her virginity, a wonderful truth would be obscured. She is our mother by way of her perfect intercession for us under the Cross so that we are also conceived, so to speak, as children of God by the sanctifying power of the same Holy Spirit. Christ is the Seed of the Woman, Mary, and we are members of that Seed. If Mary, then, not having lost her virginity in the conception of Jesus, were to have given birth to Jesus in the normal fashion, her physical virginity would again be sundered. It would seem that she gave birth to Jesus in His entirety. Yet, Jesus is only the Head of His Body. For Him to be completely born, we must also become members of His Body. The intercession of Mary stretches throughout time, based as it is, on the infinite redemption wrought by Christ Jesus. Mary keeps her virginity perpetually as a sign of Motherhood, of the one Son of God, Jesus, and we in Him.”

Pope Tsur-Ēzer added, “You are right, Mother Bernadette. Mary is the Mother of Martyrs because she is a Virgin Mother who gives birth to us under the Cross, where we become the members of the Body of her Son… Mary’s physical virginity is a pledge of physical resurrection; if her virginity isn’t physical, neither is the resurrection we hope for, and our Faith is then in vain. It is because of Mary’s physical virginity that she had to be assumed soul and body into heaven.”

“Gaude et laetare, virgo Maria, alleluia! Rejoice and be glad oh Virgin Mary!” said Mother Bernadette.

“Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia! Because the Lord is truly risen!” responded some of the others.

“I still don’t understand why Mary must retain the physical integrity of virginity in her birth,” protested Cardinal Fidèle. “It seems to be an insult to her motherhood, despite your arguments.”

“Look it up in Leviticus 12,6,” said the Pope impatiently.

The Cardinal recited it in Hebrew from memory, and the Pontiff immediately translated what he said for the others: “In the fulfilment of the days of her purification for a son or for a daughter, she shall bring a lamb a year old for a holocaust offering, and she shall bring to the door of the tent of the meeting, to the priest, a fledgling dove or a turtledove for a sin offering.” The Pontiff then asked a question: “How could the angel possibly tell Mary, in Luke 1,35, that the Son being born to her – a present participle – in the very act of His being born, is to be called holy, the Son of God? After all, if His birth is holy, no holocaust or sin offerings are needed. He Himself is the holocaust. He Himself is the Lamb. Remember, the blood of any birth is the motivation for the purification, as we read in Leviticus 12,7. Any child being born is touched by this blood, except for this Child, who was born in a miraculous manner. Certainly, Mary did fulfil the statute after His birth, and had Him circumcised as well, but these things were done with the same motive that Christ had in getting baptised by John and in being crucified like any sinner for us. He was innocent, but was taking on the punishment for sin. In this way, He could have mercy on us in all justice.”

“Because she is a Virgin, she is my Mother…” Cardinal Fidèle answered. “Her virginity is the sign of her intercession for the hour of mercy, the timeless hour of virginal motherhood, which destroys would-be relativity of time. The hour of her giving birth throughout time, the hour of her physical virginity, the hour of her Son’s Holy Sacrifice, put together eternity and time, God and man in the one God-man, Christ Jesus, whose Body we are. So many in the Church have no idea… I do not think we would have had the abuse crisis if we had not pushed the false ecumenism of the lowest common denominator, with which the virginity of Mary and the Holy Sacrifice were the first things to be suppressed in our understanding of Scripture. Both spoke to us of who the Living Word of God is, and how we are – in obedience in Faith, in Tradition – to respect the words of God in Scripture. That suppression is what divided the Church, causing untold suffering. We were intent on replacing Tradition with psychology, and Scripture with our own eclectic texts devoid of the guidance of the Liturgy of the ages. Lord, I have been a great harm to the Church. I have put myself forward, not you, not your Revelation.”

The others were praying as he confessed his sorrow, and Faith, at that last hour.

“Only now do I understand,” Cardinal Fidèle went on, “that it is always the right time, the proper hour to present the fulness of Truth. Damage control, the lowest common denominator, cannot admit that there is ever a right time to present the Truth, for then, the hour of salvation can no longer be seen; it is always in a future which never arrives. I tried to exclude the hour of mercy with the feigned mercy of an infernal ‘We’re only human…’ political correctness….”

“The pearls of Truth in Charity are never to be kept back from the faithful, nor from those who seek conversion, nor from those who do not know what they are doing in rejecting religion,” said Pope Tsur-Ēzer. “The pearls of Truth in Charity are not to be given into the power of the real swine, those who claim to have the right to do with those pearls what they want, but do not have that right: the heretics, apostates and schismatics, who can include priests, bishops and cardinals, who claim to be Catholic, but are not. We preach Truth; we cannot change Truth.”

“I have cast the pearls, the words of Scripture, to the swine, and trampled on those words myself,” said Cardinal Fidèle. “I persecuted the Church. Now I know that the hour of Satan, the power of darkness, was stopped by the Woman of Eden, the Woman of Cana, the Woman under the Cross, the Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her a head a crown of twelve stars. This Woman went into labour pains for us to be borne into her Son. She ushered in the Hour of Salvation.”

“The Lamb of God bought all time with His Blood,” said Mother Bernadette.

“During His hour, the disciples fled… I fled, while Mary remained under the Cross,” confessed Cardinal Fidèle. “After I underwent the exorcism on Good Friday, at the hour of mercy, I was merely like a house swept and in order. I had not decorated the house with the good works which must accompany conversion. I merely dreaded the loss of heaven and feared the pains of hell. I had not yet been brought to my knees. But then I went to Confession. Only when the absolution was made over me did I begin to understand unity of time in the one hour of mercy. Only then did I know what it means to have a perfect act of contrition, being sorry for having abused the grace held out to me at such great cost, grace drawing me to the Living Truth, to His literally pierced Heart speaking to my heart, Cor ad cor loquitur. Yet, only now do I reason out what happened, what is now taking place in my soul… Love of God and love of neighbour is the one thing necessary in the one Charity, both now, in time, and forever, in eternity… If only I had known earlier that one does not so much spend time with the Lord in prayer as He draws us into the reality that all time is pending upon the one hour of mercy. How I wish I could tell the world to get on its knees in the Confessional… frequently.”

“And so?” pressed Mother Bernadette. “What about us nuns? What about Sister Fātimah?”

“Mother, we are all shielded from the temptation of loving with our own love, for the Charity of God dwells within us,” began Cardinal Fidèle. “We, of ourselves, have nothing to do, for it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives within us. We give our assent, but He gives us the grace to assent. We have much time on our hands, for we reach out to all time in the Creator, the Lord of History, the Redeemer of time… of all history.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” said Mother Bernadette, barely audibly, as the Cardinal continued.

“I now understand,” he said, “why the prostitute in the Gospel was said by Christ to have loved much because she was forgiven much,” He said, “and that mercy is the way out of psychological relativity, the relativity of statistical anthropology, of all relativity, even of time. Our unity is found in the wounds of Him who, from eternity, entered our time. He was ravaged by those suffering the relativity of their own time, alone, with their own private interpretation of that limited time, by those suffering from being cut off, by their sin, from Him who creates time, by those unable to appreciate God’s eternal Revelation. I now see how sad it is to attempt to create unity from one time to the next by thinking of oneself as the lowest common denominator uniting each moment of time. It is an attempt to make of oneself both Scripture and Tradition. It’s as much to say, ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ If my thought expresses my entire existence, even apart from God, my thought, I myself, am nothing. I had myself as my own security. Unity with others in Charity frightened me. Truth was foreign to me. I was not in control of it. I had to run away, giving myself to dissipation, to immersing myself in ‘pass-times’, moving through life on the adrenaline of manipulating others, yet, utterly depressed. I now realise that the more busy I was – the more filled with the noise and activity of relative time – the more dead I became…”

Then, addressing the Blessed Mother of God, Cardinal Fidèle continued, “Immaculate Mary – Tu gloria Ierusalem, tu laetitia Israel! You, the glory of Jerusalem, you, the joy of Israel! – only now do I praise your virginity, by which you became our Mother, my Mother. Your virginity was part of your vocation to intercede for us under the Cross. Your hour of intercession was the hour God wed Himself to His Bride, the Church, with vows of Sacrifice – of which all the Scriptures speak – as we ‘know’ with Faith, Tradition. You have shown us that motherhood is precious in God’s sight. All mothers participate in bringing Jesus into the world. You showed the way, despite mortal danger to yourself, despite danger to other children in Bethlehem, who were all killed, and despite hardship and exile. You, the mother of martyrs, have shown us that multiplying the children of God – through your virginity – is the primary end of God’s wedding with His Bride, the Church. You love God and neighbour simultaneously in the one act of giving birth to the Body of Christ, Jesus, and all of us, the members of His Body. You show us, Mary, how to lay down our lives in martyrdom, so that we might be born, incorporated into the very life of the Most Holy Trinity, our hearts beating with His Heart as one before the Father. It is by your maternal virginity that we are made one with His Heart. Thank you, Mary. Take your daughter, Sister Fātimah, who knew you, to heaven; take us.”

He abandoned his wheelchair, kneeling on the floor, saying, “Only now do I know that when Caiaphas prophesied about you, Lord – It is better that one man die for the people rather than that a whole nation should perish – that he was not prophesying about you as the Head of your Mystical Body, but about you and all the members of your Mystical Body. He did not know that, in you, is to be found the whole nation of Israel, the whole People of God, your Body. We all perish in you, to rise to life in you. Lord, I’ve never done what I had to do in your grace. I have been as empty as my tabernacle at San Calisto. I have been less than a useless servant. Let me now live for you, in this hour… Let me now die for you, in this hour… You have thrown open the doors of my soul and entered, only to find mud and maggots… In not believing that your Mother remained a virgin with the purpose of giving birth to us as the members of your Body, I suppressed the truth, even teaching – for the sake, I said, of Christian unity – that the primary and secondary ends of marriage are reversed today, that the exclusion of children in favour of what I thought was the unity of the spouses, a reentering of the Garden of Eden with some extra intelligence. I refused to see how this would inevitably lead to lack of appreciation for the differentiation of the sexes, leading then, to homosexuality. But Jesus, you have cleansed me of my sin, filling me with Charity. I thank you, now, for riding me, your useless servant, your jackass, into the heavenly Jerusalem. May the deaths of all of us here witness to your marriage with your Bride, the Church, dying so as to propagate the children of God that we might all be one with you forever.”

•••—•••—•••

It had taken a few minutes for Father Alexámenos and Yehezqēl to traverse the length of the wall, unsuccessfully finding a safe way down. They knew that they were silhouetted against the night sky with the full moon shining down on them, and that the branches of the olive trees were not enough to hide them completely. However, they thought they were still safe since the death chants were still some distance away. As they stood at the end of the wall, near the statue of Our Lady of Fātimah, about to jump down into the Gardens to continue their search, at least for a place to hide – though this seemed quite useless – a voice shouting “Blasphemers!” just on the other side of the olive trees almost made them fall over the wall the other way to their deaths below.

Having no time to be afraid, Yehezqēl instantaneously did what had entered his mind to do as an absolute last resort. With one hand he grabbed the bulla from Father Alexámenos’ hand and tossed it over the wall, while with the other hand he grabbed the nearest long olive branch that he could and shoved it into Father Alexámenos in such a way as to make him lose his balance and start falling over the wall, shouting at the same time, “Grab this! Break your fall on the ledge! Slide the rest of the way!” all the time pushing Father Alexámenos right over the wall. The ledge was a few metres down, while the rest of the canted wall at that point was another six metres to the ground. It was the lowest part of the wall, though it seemed much higher ten minutes earlier.

Within a second, Yehezqēl had grabbed another branch and had started to fall over the wall even as Father Alexámenos was losing his grip on the branch due to his yet unhealed hands. Father Alexámenos succeeded only in slamming himself against the wall as the branch slid through his hands and then broke. His shoulder hit the ledge, breaking his fall dead, but sent him tumbling in the air halfway down the canted wall, which he hit hard, again breaking his fall. He hit the ground heavily, with the momentum of the fall having him roll some metres away. He was conscious, but completely winded, hardly able to gasp for air with newly refractured ribs. He sat up with the sheer force of adrenaline, hardly realising that he had already picked up the bulla next to him. He rose to his feet, desperately trying to breath, but looking up at Yehezqēl, who was hanging from the top of the wall, upside down, from one foot, kicking with the other, writhing violently. The Muslim, shouting “We’ll burn you to death!” had jumped up and grabbed one of his feet, for the wall was only two metres high at that point in the Gardens high above.

Yehezqēl saw Father Alexámenos below with the bulla in his hand and shouted with the frustrated desperation of someone who did not yet want to die, not with a mission to help accomplish, “Run… you jackass.. Run!”

Other Muslims showed up at the wall just around the inside corner of the bastione and, having shoved their way through the hedges, watched as Yehezqēl slowly pulled their fellow Muslim over the top of the wall. They ignored Father Alexámenos, who, instead of running, shouted a prayer to the Blessed Mother: Monstra te esse Matrem! Show yourself to be a Mother!” Yehezqēl made another – last resort – attempt, shoving against the wall with his free foot, using all his might, using gravity to his advantage, bringing himself almost horizontal to the ground away from the wall. Father Alexámenos looked on as the Muslim soldier, refusing to let go until he was pulled over the wall, fell headfirst to the ground next to him, dying instantly, not having had his fall broken in any way. Yehezqēl tried to grab the ledge with his hands, but only managed to touch its edge with his fingertips, just missing cracking his head on the ledge, and slamming against the canted wall with the length of his body, half sliding, half careening the rest of the way down. He looked dead.

The Muslims above immediately started cursing and throwing lit bottles of petrol at them. Despite his hands, Father Alexámenos dragged Yehezqēl across the grass and into the street, opening the eyes of Yehezqēl manually, weakly shouting, “Wake up! Wake up!” not wanting to believe he was dead. Fire was all around them. He dragged Yehezqēl to the far side of the street, near Clivio delle Mura Vaticana. They were still not completely out of reach of the flying bottles of fuel, which were exploding in flames in the street in front of them. “Wake up! Wake up!” he half shouted again, again opening Yehezqēl’s eyes manually. Suddenly quiet and sinking to his knees, Father Alexámenos asked Mary, Mother of God, Mother of Divine Charity, for her intercession: “Fateci santi! Make us saints!” He looked to the heavens, only to be distracted, after many long seconds, by Yehezqēl rubbing his eyes. Father Alexámenos dragged him to his feet and started pulling him, making him run in the direction of the heliport. Hardly had they begun to run when the bottles and cursing suddenly stopped. “No, Lord! Please, No!” Father Alexámenos prayed, again dropping to his knees, hardly able to breath, looking at the inside corner of the wall from which they had fallen. There was not a Muslim in sight. He had wanted them to run in the direction of the heliport so as to divert attention away from the convent up in the Gardens. It was too late. The death chants had already started as they ran over to the convent. This time the chant was in the plural: “The blasphemy will not be forgotten! Burn the jackasses! The hour has come!”

•••—•••—•••

The death chants continued for minutes on end as all the Muslims in the Vatican Gardens surrounded the convent. They pelted the convent with what stones they could find, as if it were the symbol of the great Satan that they stoned as part of the hajj. Yet, inside, a profound, lively peace reigned, the tranquillity of Truth. It was not a peace that the world could bring – a mere absence of war, nor even the mere presence of superficial justice and development – but a peace which is a witness before men of the presence of God, a peace most evident when witnessing to the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, witnessing to the very people who would be putting them to death. This was the universally available peace both Jews and Muslims were demanding to see from the Messiah, and had a right to see, that right having been provided by the death of Christ Himself.

For the two Muslim converts – al-Hasan and al-Husayn, Paul and Timothy – the stumbling block of the cross was now the glory of the cross, brought by God Himself to the world.

For Ben David and Yehezqēl, their main difficulties had been answered. They no longer held on to yom hakippurim as the only way God could have brought about atonement for man, for that very Day of Atonement depended on the Suffering Servant. They no longer saw Confession to a priest as the introduction of a mediator between God and man, but just way to bring forgiveness to a broken humanity. The redemption had to reconcile man to God as well as man to man. The priest is, then, the representative of Jesus, the Head of the Mystical Body, as well as the representative of the members of the Body of Christ. They also knew now that Christians who are actually Christian do not think of themselves as being better than Jews. They knew that the reaction of the Jews who stoned the deacon Stephen as reported in the Acts of the Apostles was not in offence to his speaking about the One God as the Triune God, which was taken for granted by the Jews, but because he reminded them of the need to receive mercy.

They went into the chapel, where Pope Tsur-Ēzer admonished everyone not to think that there was anything spectacular about what they were about to suffer, that they were not to romanticise it, congratulating themselves. “The three days of pestilence suffered last week, and now, the witness to Christ’s love unto death is the normal course of affairs for the Church, Christ’s Body. These kinds of events go on everyday in various parts of the world, now with this member of the Body of Christ, and now with another. We thank the Holy Spirit for His purifying flames of Charity. Christ’s faithful, whether or not they die a martyr’s death, know these flames of Charity in their lives.” He then gave everyone present absolution and Viaticum. The tabernacle was, then, empty, but they, the living Temple, the Body of Christ, were overflowing with grace.

When the Pope had finished, Mother Bernadette took advantage of the homily given by the Pontiff at the Easter Vigil, speaking calmly for the sake of those who might panic under pressure, saying, “The least that Jesus loves our Father in Heaven is the most He loves us.” This made everyone smile at this clever usage of the Pope’s words, knowing that Jesus is in absolute communion of love with our Father in heaven. “The same Charity with which He loves the Father is the same Charity with which He simultaneously loves us, the members of His Body. The Father loves Jesus, the Word by whom He expresses Himself, and us, the members of His Body, simultaneously, with the same Charity. The purifying, enlivening flames of the Holy Spirit so make us one with this Heart of Christ, burning with love, that we see the Father with Eucharistic vision on this earth, and then, in heaven… Oh my God… even now…”

As Mother Bernadette spoke these words, the windows of the convent were broken and bottles of burning petrol were tossed in. The convent was engulfed in flames. The Muslims were standing as close as they could, watching those inside burn to death. They were burning, but it did not seem to matter to them, for there was another in their midst, one like the Son of God… “It is the Son of God,” one of the Muslims said, then another, and another. It looked like those inside were nurtured by the fire of the Most Holy Trinity. One, who was watching from outside, paraphrased a verse from the Qur’an, changing it for his newly found Faith: “Blessed are those in the Fire! Glory to God, the Eternal Lord. Truly Christ is God, exalted in might and wise.” As they watched, those inside ascended to heaven with the Son of God and, except for the Lord, they left their bodies behind, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Those who had said, “It is the Son of God” – now, in this hour, no longer being Muslim – were immediately doused with petrol by the Muslims around them and pushed closer to the windows, where they, catching fire, dropped to their knees and, then, to the ground, only to follow the Lord of History to heaven.

Those who had been persecuting Christ were now to benefit from the words of Christ on the Cross to Dismas, one of the thieves crucified with Him: “Today you will be with me, in Paradise.” Some of the others, seeing this, also converted. The disciples flourished as disciples by making other disciples with their witness unto death, unto life eternal.

•••—•••—•••

Outside the Gardens, on the street, Father Alexámenos and Yehezqēl tried to run, but, because of the trouble Father Alexámenos was having in breathing, they could do no more than walk quickly. They went over to and, then, precipitously down Via Aurelia, having no idea where they could go to keep the bulla safe until the next conclave. When they arrived at the bottom of the hill and had gone underneath the railway bridge leading into Vatican City, they saw the agitated crowds. Father Alexámenos said, “No. This way.” He turned to his left and went labouriously up a huge stone staircase. “It’s locked,” he said. “Be careful.” They started to make their way over the metal gate at the top of the steps, to the left, which had a row of long spikes on its top edge, just waiting to impale anyone who ignored their mortal threat. The street behind them, usually guarded by police at the entrance of Domus Sanctae Martae, was vacant. No one dared go near that entrance of Vatican City. Father Alexámenos, whose body was already so broken, slipped on the top of the gate, trying to hold the bulla and climb over the spear like spikes at the same time. As Yehezqēl fell to his back on the far side of the gate, he heard blood filled gurgling sounds as two of the metal spikes traversed the chest of Father Alexámenos. His death, so banal, was still precious in the eyes of God, just as all the other deaths of countless billions of people who quietly live and die, doing the will of God, not for all to see, not for applause, but because this is God’s good will for us all. Yehezqēl, on the ground, stared up into the dead, open eyes of Father Alexámenos, who had streams of blood flowing out of his mouth, and from his lungs and heart. Half a minute passed. Suddenly, gravity had its way; the spikes ripped the rest of the way through Father Alexámenos, so that his body slid abruptly another ten centimetres down the spikes of the gate, causing a shower of blood to fall upon Yehezqēl, who remained, frozen. After some moments, he heard the Muslims shouting again. Coming to himself, he lightly slipped from Father Alexámenos’ hand the bulla which now had blood streaming through it. Seeing the ring, he said to Father Alexámenos, “Asinus es sed Christum portas… You’re a jackass, but you carry Christ,” quoting Saint Augustine. “You’re a martyr anyway! Pray for me!” As he said this, he took the ring and put it on his own hand, not a ring of evil power, but one which held the Cross of the Lord of History, whose Charity reigned from that Cross. Yehezqēl heard the shouting again, and, this time, saw the Muslims through the bars of the gate, down the road, pouring out the gate next to Domus Sanctae Martae.

=====================

Part II to Bk I, Ch 40 coming soon, that is, after a few minor corrections to the text and some more additions to AEternus ille caelestium, etc.

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© 2007-2008 Renzo di Lorenzo — All rights reserved

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