James 2:19
Sunday 23rd September: "The mass is over. Go in peace."
The mass was poorly attended in Father Sebastian's view. Could you expect better on a Sunday evening? This particular Saint's Day was no day of obligation. Though it was special for Father Sebastian. It was the Saint's Day for Padre Pio. The little Italian miracle worker was only canonized in 2002. He was beloved of millions, so much so that there was an entire satellite channel devoted to the saint and all it broadcast was continual live footage of Padre Pio's flower draped sarcophagus. Just that, hour in hour out. Strange how devotion manifests itself thought Father Seb. But Padre Pio had been Christ-like. He once said, "The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain". Padre Pio had been so devout himself that like Saint Francis of Assisi before him, he had carried the visible stigmata all his days, in imitation of the wounds inflicted on the crucified Christ.
Was such a thing a specious fraud as some had said? Was it a fraud that each Easter in the tomb of our Lord prayer mystically lit the taper for the candles in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem? Was it a fraud that Christ raised Lazarus three days dead? Was it a fraud when our Lord himself was raised from the tomb on the third day? One notable Anglican bishop, a onetime Bishop of Durham, had once said so but continued to profess a belief in the Trinity, a position Father Sebastian found so bizarre as to be incomprehensible, if not absurd.
No. These were not vulgar frauds, thought Father Sebastian as he walked slowly back that night. It took him a while to cross Sumner. The street was busy with traffic, even now, late as it was. But as the cars rolled down their progress was halted by bright yellow painted traffic lights that dangled from beams and crosswires like feeders for giant birds.
As he crossed Sumner he looked around at the brick built tenements, offices and shops that hemmed the street and stood sentinel for the well kept clapperboard of the homes behind in their many pastel shades of red and white, brown, blue and olive. Pedestrians existed but not in New York numbers. Springfield is a car friendly city where public transport is the domain of the poor; yellow school buses aside that is, which seemingly are everywhere, except of course now, at night.
It had been a gray and dreary day, he reflected, more early fall than late summer. The wintry sky had been relieved by that distant hint of brightness at low level that renders hope. But that too was gone obscured by night and neon. Seb felt his mood move towards the melancholy.
Crossing Sumner, he started meandering through the back streets towards the little clapperboard house, the ground floor of which was his home. He found himself reflecting on the issues he had been turning over in his mind a moment before. How much of church rite and ritual was mere sham and historic compromise. There could be fraud of course. He had no doubt that the occasional weeping Madonna in some remote Irish village might be the product of an over-enthusiastic parishioner with an eye on the pilgrim trade. But there were miracles. He himself had seen prayer manifest itself in the healing of a little child with a hole in the heart and collapsed arteries and no prospect of life. How the ladies of the church-sowing circle had prayed little Samantha into life had been nothing short of astonishing. But it had happened.
Father Sebastian did this sort of thing sometimes, contemplated beautiful or satisfying issues to drive out thoughts that both disturbed and distracted him, like a host of squabbling children in the dark corners of his mind. That was what he was doing now he realized, repressing a morass of disturbing issues lurking at the back of his mind. How to deal with Sean Hartnett was one such issue. Then there was the business of the bishop's confession. It had in turn raised issues about his own attitude to Angie Merill that bothered him. The ongoing abuse she suffered was troubling him in a way that went far beyond the professional. And Bob Young's assault: What response was required of him there? The graze on his cheek had healed but the recollection still made him smart.
He was lost in thought as he walked home from the church along the dark, tree-lined back street. He didn't hear the footsteps as they came closer. But he heard his own sharp intake of breath at the searing glacial coldness of the blow that hit the middle of his back below the shoulder blades to the right of the spine. There was surprisingly little pain as he tried to spin round. He didn't manage to make it. He caught a glimpse of gray sweatshirt, then he found that his legs would no longer support his weight. There was a sound like a rush of flames climbing his back and a pain similar to that of the uncomfortable sting from a mild electric shock. He could smell the recently cut grass in the lawn next to the footpath. There was a make-believe quality to the moment as the street lighting withered away to a distant spark. Only then did Seb realise how desperately he was hurt. For a moment he felt as if he were asphyxiating. Then the darkness rushed in on him.
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