FICTION
Yuletide Homily
Father Pierre stepped forward in the pre-dawn gloaming. Those standing at attention for this sacred outdoor gathering rustled with uncertainty. The few lamps that clung to the courtyard wall gave only wavering light. Then Father stopped haltingly, as if from a barked signal.
He planted his feet in the firm soil. Looked down. Dust rippled on either side of his worn black leather shoes.
Although Father Pierre was used to preaching while standing before a pulpit, there was not one available at this outdoor venue. It was an atypical Christmas sunrise service, yet he marshaled himself for it as if it were for the homily of any high holy day: with sublimity and prayer. He looked out intently and kindly at those in attendance, panned his gaze across perhaps a dozen still faces, the owners of which now appeared settled and attentive after some brief unease.
Christ with me, Christ before me, his silent preparatory prayer began.
Christ behind me. Christ in me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me.
And then, glancing alternately with his eyes in accord with the closing lines:
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left.
He then exhaled, lowered his eyelids (though not all the way), settled his shoulders. Inhaling slowly, his eyes focused up to heaven and then out to the assembled.
“My faithful, this morn marks the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. We most often find solace in the sweet words of Saint Luke on this day, words which reveal the sacred birth of Jesus, born of Mary.” He again scanned the congregants. “Without this day, life would be meaningless; it would bear no promise, no hope. But, my friends, this is the day that the Lord hath made! Let us rejoice and be glad!”
The reaction was bland, not unlike that from parishioners focusing on the joyous day to come rather than the sacred feast at hand. This did not surprise Father Pierre in the least, who had in mind an alternate approach to the typical yuletide homily. His greatest concern was that his words to the assembled, in their native tongue, were accurate. So he shifted his weight, asked for strength from the Holy Spirit, glanced to the east, and saw the sky brightening. A barking noise again startled him, but he decided to pay it no heed as he opened his mouth to speak.
“‘You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil. But if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other.’ This is what Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Five.”
He paused, watched carefully, waited for a sign that His words were sinking in. This was a technique he had adopted long ago. Remembering Monsignor Dubois in Seminary: “When you speak the Blessed Words of Jesus Christ, let them rest on stunned ears for but a moment before you go on, yes? More of His words will refresh the listener’s thirsty heart, when he who hears the word of God is given a moment for them to gather there. You see: those words, like the Holy Spirit, will drip down and seep in, as the morning dew moistens arid dust.”
The memory stirred Father Pierre to glance down again at the dirt resting about his feet. Here, no morning dew had moistened the arid dust.
He raised his eyes toward the assembled and continued.
“My friends, my brothers, Our Lord then continues: ‘You have heard that it hath been said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you.’”
He paused again, allowing their thirsty hearts to moisten. He had long ago committed to memory most of the Sunday Gospel readings from the Latin Vulgate — in part from simple repetition, but also out of necessity. Lectionaries were in short supply in this part of the world, let alone Holy Bibles. He knew all of Matthew, his favorite gospel, chapter and verse. Matthew the Traitor, rejected by his people for colluding with the enemy; Matthew the Penitent, who repented and left his life of sin when Jesus beckoned him with two simple words: “Follow me.”
Faces, most blank, stared back. With a deep breath — in, and out — he calmed his nerves, settled into his rhythm. When speaking to this people, he had to work through those powerful words carefully, deliberately, translating from the Latin by memory into their native tongue.
Unless reciting from The Holy Bible, he always preached extemporaneously; he never even took pen to paper in his preparation beforehand. Which made translation all the more difficult. He had to be present in the culture of the listener. He had to understand their ways, inhabit their minds. Know their proclivities. This proved more difficult with a people such as this, whose motivations and distractions, to this day, often eluded him.
A barely perceptible glance upward and a slight smile to heaven preceded Father Pierre’s return to his homily.
“My friends, my brothers, our great commission by Jesus Christ, and therefore God Himself, is to love our enemies. After all, He was born under the eye of the enemy, but He loved that enemy. In order for us to do this also, we must open our hearts. I challenge —” he struggled for a moment, mind racing for a better translation, then chose another softer, less militant-sounding synonym “— I ask you to let your hearts not remain as hard and dry as the ground beneath you. Yet even the dry ground will be moistened and softened by the rain of love from our Heavenly Father. For the Love of the Father to the Son, returned to the Father by His only begotten Son, pours forth the Holy Spirit into the world. That Spirit is more powerful in your own life than you shall ever know.”
Father Pierre gathered himself with another panning glance over the assembled. Most faces remained stoic, yet in a few he noticed a flicker, a twitch, a cock of the head. Were some hearts drinking it in?
Rhythmic shouting came from the left. Father Pierre’s eyes darted toward the culprit. Sighing, internalizing a brief prayer for the offender’s redemption, Father Pierre returned his gaze to the assembly.
“Therefore, to turn the other cheek is not the passive act of a slave. Rather, it is the proud and defiant act of one who may be burdened or imprisoned, but who stands for God’s Justice and His Holy Honor. Know this, my friends: His mercy endures forever, if you only believe!”
As he spoke his next four words, he raised his two hands from his waist, clasped together in prayer, and twisted his torso slowly to the left. Then, untwisting his body toward the right, pausing after every syllable, punctuating each beat with a downward swing of his clasped hands, he cried out: “YOU! ARE! NOT! SLAVES!”
A single loud crack came from his left. Father Pierre shook, stunned for a moment, and jerked his head back toward the sound, which yanked him out of his homily, just as the words had begun to flow like an aqueduct.
Christ with me Christ before me (his preparatory prayer began)
Christ behind me Christ in me
Christ beneath me Christ above me
(and, glancing alternately with his eyes in accord with the lines)
Christ on my right
Christ on my left
Father Pierre caught a glimpse of a small white cloud rising to his left, next to the assembled. His eyes, wide open, followed the faint smoke upward, watched it diffuse into the rose-hued sky toward the upper left of the courtyard and to the east, dissipating toward the dark jagged treetops silhouetted just beyond the wall.
Then his eyes were arrested by a new vision: dynamic spectral shifts of the sunrise grew in intensity: from crimson; past blood-red; to a deep, and then brighter orange; followed by the merest glint of green which edged those dark treetops as the sun’s rays brushed over the wall and the trees, and then into the courtyard, shadows retreating from right to left as the sun rose.
Father Pierre stood frozen as the sun’s full radiant face attained, then surpassed, the trees and filled with light the space before and around him: full and warm and righteous. Eyes now reeling up into a sky emblazoned with this gift of the Christmas dawn, he thought he saw a dove pass in flight. Gazed after it.
Perhaps he was mistaken. Doves did not frequent this land.
Father Pierre swelled with desire to continue, despite some apprehension about that startling crack. Then, no longer fearing interruption, words flooded him with a rush from above. And so, on and on he went, within and outside of time: at once to those assembled here with him, and also to the generations of assembled who in this mortal world had no longer a voice. He spoke of the Way and the Truth and the Life as never before, as rich solar radiance filled the courtyard. Come, Holy Spirit! he chanted to his inner self, over and over, as he preached freely, to man and saints and thrones and dominions, on salvation, sacrifice, and the Second Coming.
There, too, was an expiation of sorts: as he finished with the assembled, he reclined on the ground, now slightly damp — refreshing the dust — and found himself passing through a life well lived, save for a misstep or two, from which by now he was, through the mercy of God, absolved. Eyes full of the rich blue sky above, he found and then focused fearlessly upon the disk of the sun — now just above the trees — the bright and redeeming sun, which for him turned from orange to gold to white, shimmering in pulses which were one with those of his slowing heart.
***
The Commandant, sidearm in hand, walked toward the prisoner, who lay motionless on his back in the prison courtyard, his bound hands resting upon his blood-drenched chest. Maroon pools soaked into the thirsty ground surrounding the fallen priest — refreshing the arid dust — as the Commandant stared down in disgust. Looking up toward the assembled company of riflemen, he shouted at them, cursing loud and foul in his native tongue. Raising his handgun toward them, a fully loaded thirteen-round magazine (minus one) nestled within, he began firing at the insubordinates, from left to right, with perfect kill shots.
Mark is a published fiction author and PhD biochemist. When not reading or writing, he supervises a fraud investigation team for a major academic publisher. Mark and his wife raised two successful daughters (one in grad school overseas; wedding plans for the other) and are nudging their teenage son toward university. Mark is a member of the Catholic Writers Guild.
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