Happy Thursday!
Today, March 3, is the feast day of St. Katherine Drexel. She was a philanthropist, foundress of the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (S.B.S.), and the second ever U.S.-born Saint of the Catholic Church (after St. Elizabeth Ann Seton).
Most of the time, God speaks to us in a small quiet voice, but sometimes he throws a curve ball and has the pope tell you to your face that you should become a nun—this is exactly what happened to St. Katherine during her papal audience with Pope Leo XIII in 1887. No, it’s not peer pressure, it’s Pe’er pressure…take a minute to cringe (although I can think of one or two of you who definitely chuckled), breathe deeply, and pray to St. Katherine Drexel, patron saint of bad Catholic puns. Just kidding, she’s the patroness of philanthropists and racial injustice. If you need to recover from a bad case of pun burn, it might be preferable to pray for Saint Lawrence’s intercession in this case. (It makes you wonder: if life is a divine comedy, then is a bad joke a sin? Please, don’t lose sleep over this question. The pun was detrimental enough as it is.)
Alas, I digress. The following post is a short story that I wrote last year for a philosophy course on ethics and imagination with Dr. McInerny, one of our distinguished subscribers. St Katherine Drexel, pray for us!
A Booming Vocation
Buh-bum! buh-bum! buh-bum! Yanni's heart pounded loudly like a nervous, young drummer approaching a battle line—anxiously, excited, and naively unaware of the true horror ahead of him. He slowed down his pacing, breathed in deeply and slowly, held the breath in suspension for a moment...and then he breathed out in one, long exhale. The discharged breath rushed out hot and heavy past his parched lips like a dry blast of wind over the desert. He did this a couple more times to calm down his rushing heartbeat — Buh-bum...buh-bum...buh-bum. It beat slower now. "That's better, just breathe it out," Yanni thought as a drop of perspiration fell from the tip of his nose and splashed silently against the dirty, yellow tile of the floor below. He wiped his glistening forehead and eyes with the back of his shaking hand to clear the sweat. His hand appeared to be covered with blood as the orange sun cast its rays through the dirty window onto the film of sweat covering his hand. It was July 11th, and the sun was setting over the city of Porto. As the sun began its slow dive into the horizon, the taller buildings of the cityscape interjected themselves slowly upon the round, piercing form of the sun which Yanni viewed from a fifth-floor hostel bedroom. The buildings began blocking out portions of the waning, but brilliant, light. As he paced back and forth, he moved between the sunlight and the shadows that competed for the room. Darkness, blinding light—darkness, blinding light—darkness, blinding light—darkness, waning light. As the sun dropped below the cityscape, however, doubts began to rise in Yanni's mind as to the imminent task at hand. The doubts had risen like hidden seeds, germinated inconspicuously in the soil of his mind only to begin budding forth now to unsettle him deeply. "Why now?!" he exclaimed, "Why in hell is this bothering me now? Where the hell did these doubts even come from?? I was so sure before, what's changed?!"
His mind raced back to three months previously when he had made his decision to do this mission. "Ahmad," Yanni had said to his elder, "I believe Allah has spoken to me and has opened my eyes to my calling." He remembered Ahmad and Nayyir's excitement at his commitment to the noble task; they had been so proud of his piety and his courage to the faith and to the Islamic cause. "This life is a paradise for pagans and hell for Muslims, so why not sacrifice this hell for the glories of the after-life." This was Yanni's belief, and he felt that no worldly power could convince him otherwise. His father had been killed by American forces back home in Damascus and he had not seen his mother or older brother for three years since they had emigrated to England. His hate of Western culture was cemented in his mind, and this would not be the first time he had struck back. His hunger for revenge, however, had not been sated, and he was at war against the West, against the infidels, and against himself.
After his initial commitment to the mission, not much training had been involved. His fellow cadres had simply walked him through the ease of using an explosive vest, and they demonstrated to him the proper positioning for the most efficient and detrimental explosion. His point of attack had been chosen for him within a week of his commitment. Yanni's target was to be a Judeo-Christian advocacy group parading for religious collaboration in front of the Bolsa Palace on the evening of July 11th. "In the name of Umayyad and Mohammad!" Yanni had thought, "That is how I will introduce myself to the world just before I blow it to pieces for the holy name of Allah."
That had been his firm sentiment only a few days ago, but now something in the wind had changed deep down in the depth of his soul, and he could not decipher what it meant for him; the wind was soft and subtle but had a weight that had disturbed the very foundation of his being. The seeds of hesitation had been planted, it seemed, in that moment back on Friday when he had passed by Livraria Chamine da Mota, a small bookshop of no real significance, on his daily commute. Everything had been the same as usual that day, except for one little thing that had caught Yanni's eye. Nestled among the many books displayed in the bookshop's window was a small, paper booklet depicting a Catholic priest that was titled “Alterus Christi.” Yanni could tell that it was a Catholic priest by the black cassock and the white collar. This clearly recognizable black garb—such an object of hate: "Sly, manipulative dogs," and "pernicious child-molesters'' were only a few phrases that exploded into Yanni's mind as he viewed the image.
Yet something about the depiction struck against his visceral hatred. Curious, but unsure why, he leaned in closer to scrutinize the booklet's cover. The priest's face was relaxed, joyful, and light, yet it withheld a force, a sobering purpose, which seemed to transcend human understanding. His hands, held to his sides, were slightly raised in a manner that was outward, forward, and vulnerable. Open wounds on both hands pierced Yanni's eyes. And then, there were the eyes of the priest; dark and beautiful, somber and warm, and they broke into him like rocks upon the ice of a frozen lake. From the blackness of the pupils, there reflected a light—it was almost hyper realistic, Yanni thought, and so detailed—yet it was broken up by some mysterious shape within the eyes. Yanni bent down closer to the window to discern what it was. Upon apprehending what the shape was, he, without knowing why, let out a gasp. It was a cross. Fascinated and curious, the vision kept beckoning Yanni onward, drawing him into the depths of the figure, out of the present moment, and suddenly he was there, standing at the foot of the hill where that same cross was planted. Yanni now wanted nothing more than to turn away, to escape from this spot, but his body remined frozen and fixated, as if in a dream. His eyes were carried toward the cross and he discerned a man, tortured and bloody, and he was nailed to the crossed timbers. Dark, bloody lashes covered his body and fresh, bright blood poured from his pierced hands and feet, which were stretched out upon the crossbeams. His matted hair was enwreathed by a heap of thorns and drenched with sweat and blood, which poured down his face from a seemingly infinite spring. Yanni was shocked: “it is the priest!” The same peaceful eyes—now full of indefinite agony—addressed Yanni with a sundering compassion. As he met those peaceful yet piercing eyes, Yanni felt a subtlety growing horror. It was not just a horror at what he saw, but a horror within himself, as if the eyes had pierced through the black clouds in his heart to reveal a broken, crippled young boy who was hurting, hateful, and afraid, a frozen heart of stone at the bottom of a deep, dark lake. Slowly, however, the horror melted into dismay and remorse, and his heart cried out within him. "Who are you?!" Suddenly another voice cried out from behind him, "In the name of Umayyad and Mohammad, you shall perish!" Yanni turned around quickly. There before him was he himself, a mirrored likeness, or so it seemed, dressed in a suicide vest running and screaming toward the crucified priest. Without thinking, and suddenly free to move, Yanni lurched forward quickly to stop him from harming the tortured man any further. With a quick hurl he threw himself forward...But he met no resistance and instead felt his body fall into empty space, and the world spun violently around him; images of pain, explosions, and death flew past his eyes. Then everything was still. He was face to face with himself again; but it was only his mirrored reflection in the bookshop window now. Beyond his reflection, he met again the eyes of the priest on the booklet cover. He looked around the street, dazed and confused. A sickening weight filled his stomach and Yanni scurried away feeling lost and blind.
The last waning rays of the sun dissipated in the horizon, yielding to the darkness, and a loud, rapid knock at the hostel bedroom door brought Yanni back to the present. His calmed heart jumped to his throat and pounded with horror. "I'm not ready, I can't do this!" he thought frantically, "They're going to force me to do this now, even if I don't want to. How do I explain this? They'll think I am a coward, and they’ll probably kill me!" He ran to the outdoor balcony and peered over the edge. His foot knocked over a small wicker basket that has been perched precariously under the railing and it fell five-stories to land softly on the quiet sidewalk of the street below. There was no way he would make the jump without breaking his legs. "Yanni! Open the door," yelled Nayyir from the other side, "it is time to go. Come now." Yanni was drenched with sweat. His mind raced. "If I don't jump then either I will have to go through with this, or they will kill me." He did not know why or how but something in his heart had changed through his strange encounter with the priestly image. He knew that what he was going to do was wrong. He did not know why, but he felt it now through some internal sense buried in the depth of his heart. A fresh breeze came suddenly upon him as the door was being beaten down, and, without an explanation, the sweat in his eyes dissipated, his sight became acute and clear, as if scales had fallen from his eyes, and he felt a strange peace, even as his heart pounded faster and harder than it ever had. He knew what he was going to do. He ran back into the bedroom and grabbed his vest from the bed and then quickly returned to the balcony. The door crashed open and Nayyir and two others ran in and then out to the balcony where Yanni stood waiting. As the three men rushed at Yanni and closed in on him, he pulled out the vest from behind him and pressed down on the button with his shaking thumb.
In mysterio Verbi,
James
“Mercy is a force beyond our imagination. It is more powerful that an infinity of nuclear explosions, more gentle than a baby’s smile, more intimate that a young couple’s first kiss, and more tender than a sleeping child in his mother’s arms.”
~ Fr. Jeffrey Kirby