Father Tim shopped in the village for Christmas gifts. He bought his mother a Belleek pitcher, which she would greet with pride and joy. He bought his sisters trinkets. And he bought old Father McGowan in Dublin six fine linen handkerchiefs, and was amazed at himself. The postmistress carefully stamped everything and sent the packages off.
All at once it was the day before Christmas. Not a thing had been overlooked, thanks to Sister Mary Grace. There were no last-minute scrambles, no sudden utterances of despair. No emergencies. It was splendid, but a little dull. Father Tim wished he might be able to drop in casually at the little school, to listen to the last practicing of carols or the rehearsing of the choir, but he was afraid of Sister Mary Grace. He knew by instinct that she did not care for casual droppings-in. It’s asking for an appointment I should be doing, thought the young priest dismally, or a ticket, perhaps. He thought again of writing to the Bishop that Sister Mary Grace’s great talents were being wasted in little Carne. She should be the Reverend Mother in some enormous convent, preferably three thousand miles away, in America, for instance, which was a mission country.
The last post before Christmas delivered a letter from old Father Sullivan in Larney, wishing his young brother in Christ the joys of the season. Father Sullivan promised to visit Father Tim shortly, after the holidays, and this lifted the heart of the regimented young man. He discovered that he was indeed lonely. Father Sullivan had a few old friends in a village just south of Carne, a mere hour’s trundling on a bicycle.
Then it was Christmas Eve, and there was the fine fragrance of an onion stuffing being prepared in the kitchen by Mrs. Casey, in readiness for the fat goose contributed by a farmer. There was also the scent of mincemeat and citron and broth, and the baking of oat cakes. “You’ll be spoiling me, Mrs. Casey,” said Father Tim, deftly stealing a little tart. His vestments had been repaired and patched and mended where necessary and he looked at them proudly, white as snow, and glistening. His mother had bought them for him, secondhand, only a year ago.
Father Tim’s young heart sang with reverence and joy and gratitude this night in his first own house, in his own parish, and about to celebrate the great Mass of rejoicing in his own church. He even could feel some affection for Sister Mary Grace and her army discipline. He was not tired, though he had been hearing Confessions all afternoon. There were always some boys and girls who, overcome with the joyousness of the air in the village, had been doing some quiet celebrations of their own, and had belatedly discovered they were in a state of serious sin. Father Tim never failed to marvel at the forgetfulness of humanity, which never forgot forbidden delights and invariably forgot virtue. Even within arm-reach, as it were, of Sister Mary Grace, at that. And where they find the places she is not is beyond me, he would think.
Midnight Mass was especially affecting to him, for he had been born on the stroke of midnight, at the very moment thousands of choirs were chanting angelic joy. So, with a light step he entered the church to the entrance hymn: “The Lord has said to me, You are my Son, and this day have I begotten you. . . . Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people planned vain things? Glory be to the Father . . .”
Never was a Mass more heroic, more stately, in that tiny church, with the sea seemingly clamoring at the door and the wind sweeping the eaves. Everything was perfect. The choir had recovered from its bad colds. There was no sniffling in the church, no uncouth stumblings. The people rose, knelt, sat as a man. Blissful, his heart trembling with thanksgiving, Father Tim crossed himself with the Sacred Host. He received the Host, and fell into profound contemplation. “Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi? Calicem salutaris accipiam, et nomen Domini invocabo. Laudans invocabo Dominum, et ab inimicis meis salvus ero.” The candles flamed. This was not a little country church; it was a vast cathedral.
It was then, at this most sacred moment, that the most dreadful thing happened. For, clearly in the young priest’s mind, there was said, with calm coldness, “What is this blasphemy?”
He was so shocked that he slightly reeled. His whole body turned bitterly cold, and began to tremble. He lifted his head, dazed. The voice said, “Do you believe that the great Lord of endless universes actually condescended to notice your earth, this meanest of all mean specks of dust, and was born of a Jewish maiden nineteen hundred odd years ago — to save these wretched creatures bowing and crossing with you? Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”
Sister Mary Grace looked up from her clasped hands alertly, all her instincts alarmed. And what was wrong with the young priest? He should be crossing himself with the chalice now and chanting, “Sanguis Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam aeternam. Amen.” But he was standing dazedly with the chalice in his hand, his back to his people, and it was as if he had been struck to stone there and could not move. The organ rumbled; the choir waited. And still he did not move. One of the altar boys glanced up, wonderingly.
“Blasphemy,” repeated the calm and dreadful voice in the priest’s mind. “You teach it is the great sin to despair of God’s mercy or presume on it. How much more blasphemous it is to teach that He is even aware of your existence, He, Lord of ten hundred billion suns and their planets about them. You would drink of His blood and eat of His flesh, you, an ignorant man among ignorant children?”
With an enormous effort, and by mechanical means of habit, Father Tim crossed himself with the chalice, and hardly murmured: “Sanguis Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam aeternam. Amen.”
“Blasphemy,” said the voice. “Do you truly believe that what you are is immortal? You have seen the animals of the field die, and men on their beds, and was there a difference, a gleam at all, that an actual soul had just left its human body? No, there was not. You are not even blasphemous, for there is Nothing to blaspheme. Fool! Acknowledge your folly, and depart in the remnants of what dignity is left to you.”
The organ coughed tentatively; the choir cleared its throat. Sister Mary Grace felt a thrill of deep fear as Father Tim turned feebly and yet rigidly on his heel, and she saw his blind white face and dark staring eyes. But he was whispering, audible only to those in the first pews: “Misereatus vestri omnipotens Deus, et, dimissis peccatis vestris, perducat vos ad vitam aeternam. Amen.”
Sister Mary Grace pressed her clasped hands to her breast in heightened fear. She tried to see a single shifting light in those blank eyes, but not even the candles illuminated them. It was as if the priest were seeing into some awful pit and could not prevent himself.
The calm voice was murmuring derisively, “But there is no God to forgive! To invoke Him is to invoke the mindless wind, which is violent but without sentience.”
If ever Father Tim had had doubt before, he would at this moment have been able to say quietly in himself, “Go and let me be.” It would have been an old struggle once again, and again overcome. But he was an untrained soldier on the battlefield, for he had never doubted and had never been wounded before.
In some manner he was able to proceed by mere instinct and remembrance, but there was nothing in him now but black silence and a deathly cold. There was no voice, no shaft of light, no joy, no bliss, no reverence. There was nothing where once had shone a flame. There was a dull deafening in his ear, so that even his own voice sounded far off, like an echo, and the choir was only a distant and impertinent mutter. Somewhere within him there was a vast upheaval, as if something dear beyond all life had been thrown down and shattered, beyond all recall and beyond the help of prayer.
The candles dazzled his eyes and misted them. He genuflected when he must, and moved when he must. His mouth was filled with raw acid. Who were those before him who rose and fell and bent their heads like marionettes, like silly things on strings? What were they to him, and to any God? If there was a God?
He must speak, and he spoke, languidly, heavy with a weariness he had never known, aware of weakness but held by it. And then there was a hiatus in his mind which he could never fill again all the
rest of his life. He simply was unable to remember what happened, or if anything happened at all.
His next really sharp memory was of finding himself in his chair before his own fire, and Mrs. Casey’s hand swam into view containing a glass of liquor. He waved it aside; his body was drenched with icy sweat, and shuddering in it. His vestments — he had at some time removed them, but he did not remember. Opposite him sat the Sister Superior, Sister Mary Grace. She was very pale. Her bloom was gone, and it was an old face that was turned on him, with white lips and webbed cheeks.
He could not speak. Mrs. Casey spoke soothingly for him. “Ah, and what a hard thing it is, in a strange church, among strangers, and on your own! Do have a sip, Faether.”
“Let him be,” said the nun, quietly, then added with more kindness, “Yes, and wearing it is. A cup of hot tea would be better then, Mrs. Casey.”
Mrs. Casey went to the kitchen, sadly shaking her head. Sister Mary Grace leaned towards the young priest and murmured, “Faether? It is not sick you are?”
He groaned. He felt very numb and detached. He said, “Was it a fool I made of myself?”
“No, not that, Faether. It was all perfect, that it was.” It was an old voice that was speaking now, no longer brisk and authoritative. “Did you have a chill?”
He appeared to be considering that, but he was not thinking. He nodded his head and said, “Yes. A chill.” (How could he possibly celebrate Mass in the morning? How could he possibly eat, sleep and drink again? Live again? God have mercy on me! he said in himself, and it was as if something stirred in him and he heard the calm, cold voice again: “What God?”)
He had put his lean young hands over his face and felt very sick and broken. Then he had a wild thought: he would get on his bicycle, and he would ride away at once, and never would anyone who had known him see him again. “Only honest disillusionment,” said the voice. “But honest it is. Go then, and do not return, in all honor, for you are no hypocrite.”
“And would you have me send for Faether Dolan’s young curate?” asked Sister Mary Grace, anxiously. “For the morning? From Murtagh’s Woods?” (This was the village five miles away, and Father Tim now knew Father Dolan and his new curate well.)
He hesitated. Then his natural Irish strength returned to him, and his common sense. He must think about this thing which had come to him. He had not given it a name yet, nor did he think it had a being except in his own imaginings. In the meantime, he would conduct himself properly. His numbed body and mind sat in heavy listlessness together.
“Thank you, Sister,” he said. “I had a chill. It is over now.”
Mrs. Casey returned with the hot sweet tea, thick with cream, and he drank it slowly and stared at the fire, which did not warm him. When he looked up again — and it seemed a long time had passed — Sister Mary Grace had left him and Mrs. Casey sat in the chair. “I do not like your color, Faether,” she said, “but there are the little ones waiting me at home — ”
“And it’s a cold, black night,” said Father Tim, rousing himself a little. A cold, black night, he repeated in himself. “Go, then, Mrs. Casey.”
“I’ll be in, in the morning,” said Mrs. Casey. Go, go! he shouted in himself at her. I must be alone! She stood up, gave him several hesitant glances, then left.
He thought that when he was alone he would be able to think clearly and surely. But instead it was as if his soul had been frozen, and all its thoughts, and that it lay a thousand miles under thick green ice on another planet. He could feel only that evil stirring in himself, that alert and watchful stirring which had nothing to do with him, and was apart from him. It was, he was to say later, like a dry rustling of something that would not sleep or be quiet, but slid about the ruins of the great thing that had been shattered in his heart.
It was Christmas morning, and he did not pray, for he could not pray. Or, rather, he would not attempt it, for a now-deadly fear of alerting the horror in himself. So long as it only twisted about the ruins and did not speak, he was not too threatened. He went to bed and did not blow out his candle, but stared at the cold brick wall until it was time to rise for Mass.
The word had gone about, through Sister Mary Grace, that the young Faether ‘was not himself’, and that any mistakes or fumblings must be overlooked. They were, but not without some sad headshakings and murmurings later.
“I must have eaten part of Mrs. Casey’s good Christmas dinner,” said old Father Tim now to Grandmother’s friends. “But I do not remember it. I remember only that I wrote a desperate letter to Father Sullivan in Larney, and begged him to come to see me at the first possible moment, as I needed him as much as life, itself. Mrs. Casey posted it.”
Mrs. Casey was no sooner out of the rectory, with her loaded, black string bag, than he vomited, not once but many times, he who had no memory of ever vomiting before in his strong young life. The retching tore him apart. Staggering, crimson-faced, he fell on his bed and must have dozed. But he would not let himself think. The horror was still rustling about the ruins within him, and he dared not arouse it. He dared have no dialogue with it.
If there is no God, how can I live? he said only once to himself, for the thing stirred eagerly and he deafened his ear to its voice. He would wait for Father Sullivan, who would have the letter tomorrow. And how soon would he come, that old priest who had insisted that he be called if necessary?
Father Sullivan arrived two days of hell later. (“I know what hell is now,” said Father Tim to his friends. “It is the total absence of God. It is a hell beyond endurance — this separation of the soul from God.”)
Father Tim could have wept with agonized relief when Father Sullivan arrived, all white curls and cherubic face and craggy, benign profile. He clasped the younger priest’s hands and studied his face with an expression of fatherly concern. He told ‘the lad’ that he was so distressed over the letter that he had begged Father Dolan to send his curate to the Larney parish for a day or two so that he could visit Father Tim. In the meantime, he was staying in Murtagh’s Woods with Father Dolan.
They sat before the peat fire and Father Tim began to talk, at first stammeringly, then with wild, loud words of despair, and with wide, disordered gestures. He spoke as if in the Confessional.
“I accuse myself of blasphemy, of all the dark sins that infest the mind of man!” he cried. “But I do not call it blasphemy, for how can it be blasphemy if there is no God? Father, I never — doubted — not one moment in my life, from the time I could toddle until this Christmas Eve. But the doubt must have been there, festering. I am an honest man, Father. I cannot continue to be a hypocrite, but yet I must until I either stop doubting or — go away.”
Father Sullivan did not reply for a little while. He had listened gravely; he was graver now. He knocked out the dottle in his pipe, refilled the pipe, lit it, then puffed slowly and thoughtfully. Then he looked directly at Father Tim.
“It is not wrong to doubt,” he said. “The saints have all doubted.”
“So I learned,” said Father Tim, rubbing his white cheek with his knuckles. “But though they fell they rose again, stumbling on. I cannot even rise.”
“There is no virtue, I am thinking, in never having doubted,” said the old priest. “Lack of opportunity is not a grace, either in chastity or faith. The opportunity must come, and it always comes unexpected, lad. The mind must reject; the soul must reject doubt.”
“Tell me!” cried Father Tim. He paused, and there were tears in his eyes. “For how can a man live without God, a priest or a shepherd or a woodsman or a farmer, or a banker or a king?”
Father Sullivan smiled coldly. “They do, that they do,” he said. “More live without God than with Him. It is the child who thinks that the world is full of faith. The man knows it is not.”
Father Tim stared at him in bewildered silence, not understanding.
“Nor must you believe,” said the old priest, with derision, “that faithless men are unhappy, that the marks of their doubt
, and their rejection, lie like smallpox pits on their faces. I have met many of them. Many of them. And most of them are the happiest of men, for they believe only in themselves and are dependent only on their own strength.”
Father Tim moistened his paper-dry lips. He could not look away from the pink and tranquil face near him. Then he said, faintly, “I am not so young nor inexperienced, Father, that I do not know that the world is full of faithless men, and that they do not suffer from their doubt. But — afterwards?”
“You are talking, I think, of after death?” Father Sullivan’s lip lifted. “But why should the thought of eternity distress the faithless man? He does not believe in eternity, in the life of the soul. He believes that when he dies he is as dead as his dog.”
“But, after death,” mumbled the young priest. The cold sweat was on him again.
Father Sullivan said carefully, “You know, I am thinking that the Church is not explicit about the condition of the soul after death, unless the soul is saintly and so goes at once to heaven. There have been thousands of conjectures. We know there is Purgatory, but what its environment is — that we do not know. We are taught of hell, and more has been written of that than of heaven, and we believe it is the eternal separation of the soul from God, which is agony unbelievable.”