Chapter Eleven

"My thoughts," says the Lord, "Are not like yours, and my ways are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways and thoughts above yours."

 Isaiah 55: 8-9

Wednesday 12th September: "Well. It's a little late for coffee. Would you take something stronger?"

Sean Hartnett smiled in answer, hesitated, then said, "Coffee is fine, Bishop."

Bishop O'Malley raised an eyebrow. "If you are sure, Sean," and turned to his housekeeper issuing the requisite order.

He indicated a chair at right angles to his own, "And call me Patrick."

"Uh huh, Patrick it is," said Sean, surprising himself by the ease with which he mimicked the bishop's urbane manner.

"I'm glad you accepted this invitation," the bishop was saying as Molly, the housekeeper, brought a tray. He smiled at Molly, nodding thanks, and turned back to Sean, his entire attention focused on his visitor. "But what made you come to see me?" and as an afterthought, "Sugar?"

Sean shook his head, accepting the cup. "'Cause of that conversation I guess, at Bob Young's wake." He took a sip from the too hot coffee and set it aside on the coaster the bishop had provided.

"Ah, yes. About suffering." The bishop smiled just a little, more with his eyes than his mouth. He reached across and grasped Sean's arm above the elbow as if to get his full attention. "And you Sean, are you suffering?"

Sean's answer was soft spoken; the bishop could barely catch it. "Yeh," he said. "My marriage is not what it was. At first we were attentive to one another's needs, but that's changed," he said, his words almost a whisper. Then he continued in a more normal voice. "Is there a devil, Bishop? A Satan? Who sets out to tempt us? To corrupt us?"

"Patrick, call me Patrick." The words were staccato, almost sharp. Then more gently, "Yes Sean, there is a devil. The cannon of scripture tells us half the story. There are apocryphal writings, including the Muslim Koran, that give us a fuller idea of the ancient myth."

"Which was?"

"Which was that God created all the angels before he made man, that he made them out of light and fire, and the greatest of these, the prince of the angels, was Lucifer." The bishop paused. "Then God made man. And God told the angels to serve man, to bow down and worship him.

"But Lucifer was not happy. He said, 'I am made from fire and light and he is made from mud and clay. Should I worship him?'

"And God said, 'Yes. You must.'

"But Lucifer was still reluctant, and said so.

"And God asked him, 'Why?'

"And Lucifer answered, 'I am better than him.'

"And for that answer God took Lucifer and cast him down from heaven to earth." The bishop raised his coffee cup to his lips to punctuate the end of his observation.

Sean Hartnett managed a smile. "A beautiful story. But it doesn't gimme' an answer."

"Does it not? Well then there is another idea that the Christian Scientists favor. Not that I am an apologist for the Christian Scientists. They believe that evil is a sort of absence of God, essentially that it is error, unreality. But that you can make this evil real with your belief. They call evil, 'Mortal Mind' as opposed to the omnipotent mind that is God. The personification of this Mortal Mind is Satan. Does that satisfy you?"

"Yeh," answered Sean who was unfazed by this curious conversation, a dialogue that was fast reaching its climax. "Perhaps it does. And does this temptation that we experience come from God or from Satan?"

"A difficult question Sean. One on which crystal clarity is hard to find. I favor the belief that God is quintessentially good and that all trials are from Satan; that God uses the trials Satan puts our way to hone us, like silver in the furnace. We fall; we experience the fall; and we learn from that experience as we repent what we have done."

The bishop reflected for a moment before continuing. "Indeed what I am telling you is scripturally sound. God himself tempts no one, or so we are told in the first chapter of James.

"Well that's pretty conveniently 'bout lets Him off the hook," said Sean. "I'm still not entirely sure if I wanna buy this as an excuse for suffering."

The bishop smiled, then answered kindly, "Some say God cannot truly perceive evil. There's an Old Testament book called Habakkuk that has a statement in its first chapter that God's eyes are too holy to even look at evil. And similarly the first letter of John opens with a statement that, 'God is light. There is no darkness in him.'

"Some early Christians resorted to a kind of dualism to accommodate this idea of a perfect God. A dualism whereby Christ was the creator on behalf of God the Father. The early gnostic Christians took the concept of dualism further. They developed the idea of the creation of good and evil each in their own domain, heaven and hell respectively - and humanity torn between the two. Modern science echoes the same concept. We believe today that you can't have the creation of matter without the making of its opposite, antimatter.

"But suffering is a relative concept. Relative to your belief in God that is. For if there is a caring God and the logical concomitant of that idea is indeed eternal life, then God can put the first last and the last first and suffering thus becomes staggeringly transient when viewed from the perspective of eternity. So ironically suffering is only truly unjust if there is no such thing as a merciful God in the equation."

The bishop, who's hand had fallen from Sean's shoulder, reached across to place his right hand over Sean's. "Now Sean, that drink?"

"Huh." Sean grimaced. "I think after all that, a bourbon would be good, on ice."

The bishop smiled. "There's a great little cocktail: Maker's Mark bourbon, Amaretto, lime juice, one-third each, chilled. You want to try it? It's called a stiletto."

"Sure. Whyn't lemme try it." Sean nodded. "Thank you, Patrick."

The bishop moved to a small discreet bar in a corner of his study. Sean watched the long-fingered hands of Patrick O'Malley as he mixed the cocktail, intent on this non-priestly task. He watched as the bishop looked back at him, passed him his glass and murmured the word, "Skoal".

And their eyes locked and Sean said, "Skoal Patrick."

And then Sean knew what the bishop was and what the bishop wanted. And Sean accepted the consequences of this moment. And he realised that he didn't mind. He didn't mind one little bit.