Fifth Gospel(114)
‘I promise.’
I gave her the benediction and placed the Gospel of John near for her to kiss, now my hands found her head and I prayed for the Holy Spirit to descend upon her. I said the Lord’s Prayer as I had done countless times but now a peculiar thing happened. It seemed to me that I was not hearing my voice alone, but another voice, a higher voice, a voice weaving with mine. Recollection of the words of the Bath-Kol came to me, recollections of the transfiguration, and all of the words spoken by Christ Jesus. They welled inside me, I could feel the mighty power of their wisdom entering into me, and oh! What a love did I then feel to know it! A love more rapturous than words can tell! The light of the spirit flowed through my hands like fire, a flame of gleaming colours and lights that came pouring out from me into the Marquésia to make her glow. Between us, wisdom moved the soul to pictures and I saw how Christ lived in me and in the Marquésia. I saw how He lived in every man who came and went, both within the fortress and without. He was in every child and woman, He was even in the inquisitors and the French who fought us.
I don’t know how long we stood there, the Marquésia and I, locked in the flow of heaven’s grace, only a moment perhaps, and yet it seemed like hours. When the spirit finally let go of us I was left expanded, panting and shaken. I looked at the form of the Marquésia as she knelt and told her she was pure now, blameless like a rose. I touched her back with the Holy Book, and she stood and was paused a moment. I could sense that she had felt the strength of the spirit, as I had felt it.
‘Thank you, pairé,’ she said, wiping her face, perhaps wet with tears. ‘I have always wondered how I would feel when I received the consolamentum. Now I know it does not matter how I feel…but how Christ feels in me! That is what matters!’ she said this and walked away from me.
For my part I stood in that court with the sounds of battle fading to nothing and no other noise save the beating of my heart in my ears. And in that moment I knew without a doubt that among the errors of our faith we had managed to understand one truth, that it was possible for every person to receive the Holy Spirit. I also knew that despite our suffering, or perhaps because of our suffering, this understanding was destined to be our most important gift to the world.
When I fell out of this peaceful reverie and returned to the world of men I saw that the garrison had managed to repel the French assailants. They had retreated to the barbican and the gates were closed again. So many lay dying I could not walk without stepping over the mutilated bodies.
Two nights later Lea came again; she said she would tell of the crown of all earthly misunderstandings.
‘I will show you how a God died an earthly death in the body of a man and how He raised this man to a God.’ She said, and I opened my spirit’s heart to her.
As she began to weave her wonders into my soul I imagined that I was walking a path lit by the light of an Easter moon; I imagined that ahead of me stood a diaphanous apparition, paused, with her hand outstretched. On her brow, the evening star spread its rays like wings, and made her gleam like a silver ghost in the moonlight.
She asked me, ‘What comes before love?’
‘Faith,’ I told her.
‘Then do not be tempted to sleep, pairé,’ she said, ‘For it is on the eve of Passover, upon the sun’s decline into the bosom of the night that the end begins; when the first three stars become visible and the threefold blast of the trumpets from the Temple announce the commencement of the Feast. Now, more than ever…faith is needed.’
I opened my eyes and I realised that I was sitting at my table and that the quill, having fallen from my hand, had made a blot on the parchment. I realised too that I had been listening to Lea and dreaming her words to life.
‡
On the south side of Mount Zion, there stood a property owned by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, which they had given over to the Essenes of Jerusalem for their celebrations. Here, in an upper room called the cenacle, a room reached only from the outside by a staircase, Jesus gathered with his disciples for the celebration of the Passover feast.
The room glowed from the warmth of firelight, and from the windows there came only the scant light of the silver moon rising now in the ocean of black above. The tables, set like a horseshoe, followed the shape of the room and were surrounded by divans upon which the disciples inclined. On the middle divan sat his master, John sat to his left, and on the right sat Judas, with the rest dispersed here and there, according to their fellowship.
The tumultuous events of the past week had given way to a contemplative mood among and a renewed feeling of gloom, of foreboding, began to fall over those present, which the oncoming night made more real. They could hear the whispering of an unearthly wind that whistled around the walls of the houses, and made the trees shiver – made them shiver. This wind recalled to John the stories of that first Passover, and the sweeping destruction that had been visited on the people of Egypt by the angel of death. That destruction had passed over the houses whose doors were painted with the blood of the lamb. A thought now came to John: