The sanctuary was almost empty. The young man noticed that first of all. He normally didn’t come here apart from the services, though he made almost all of those, and thus he had never seen the broad, modern space other than filled with people. The angled rows of pews seemed strangely barren with only a few individuals scattered here and there, sparse inhabitants calling in off the streets for a moment of private comfort in the midst of the day. They looked out of place, eyes closed, kneeling in ancient postures of prayer in a sanctuary that was utterly contemporary and designed for crowds rather than casual visitors.
It was enough to be unsettling, and he was unsettled already.
The parish church of St Paul of the Cross, one of the few parishes of the Roman Catholic Church’s relatively little-known charismatic movement to exist in a city that was far more comfortable with liturgical rites that were still formal and ritualised, even if they were no longer Tridentine or Latin, was an aberration in style as much as in tradition. Its exterior was boxy, red-brick and plain, and its interior bore more in common with Baptist or Evangelical houses of worship than the Catholic churches to be found everywhere else in the city. Its walls were unadorned, white plasterboard with matt paint, floors carpeted in a commercial-grade soft maroon rather than marbled. There were no pillars or carved altarpieces, and the high windows were of a clear glass rather than stained. Only an oblong, wooden altar at the far end, covered in a plain green cloth, together with row after row of identical pews, marked the interior space out as a church at all, though this stark appearance did not stop throngs of faithful from coming each Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday to seek out a glorious refuge from the world and the enlightenment of spirit. St Paul’s worship services always packed the building to capacity.
On any other day, the plain interior would have inspired the young man who now moved hastily down the carpeted central aisle – the simplicity of style drawing out the joy within his heart rather than crowding it out with overbearing pomp and display. This building was all but his second home.
Today, however, even home wasn’t comforting. Outside, sirens hadn’t stopped sounding throughout the city since reports of gunfire were lodged in two separate locations, and the whole of Rome was on edge.
But that wasn’t the main reason for his discomfort.
As he reached the front of the aisle he made a rushed genuflection before the simple altar, which stood separated from the main space of the church by a low communion rail. He should pause, he knew. Should stop and comport himself. He should say a prayer and take the time to open his heart to God as he entered into his holy house. All this was second nature to him – but he couldn’t follow nature now, either. The news he bore within him was too monumental. He ignored it all, sweat glistening on his brow, his heavy breathing echoing in the otherwise quiet space.
He approached an elderly custodian pushing a mechanical sweeper across the carpeting behind the altar.
‘I need to see Father Alberto.’ The statement came out between deep breaths, his shoulders rising and dropping in metre with his clipped speech.
‘Father is resting.’ Denial. The janitor paused, gave his old shoulders a shrug. The two men knew each other well. Most members of the parish did, unusual as the community was. The janitor, whose name was Laurence, was a newer recruit to their number, but it never took long to integrate once it became clear that a seeker’s intentions were genuine.
‘I’m aware this is his time for personal retreat,’ the young man persisted, perhaps too testily, ‘but I must see him all the same. Please.’ Pleading strained his voice. ‘Go to his room, Laurence. Tell him I’m here. He’ll understand.’
He has to understand.
The custodian’s expression changed, and at last he looked up from his sweeping. Deep lines of age grooved his face and made canyons of his fading eyes, but even the trails of so many years couldn’t conceal a look of surprise.
Thomás didn’t normally behave like this.
‘Is everything all right, young man?’
He considered answering. He could say so many things – things that resonated with the deep faith both of them had. With their expectations, with all their experiences. His lips parted, he was so tempted; but after a moment’s contemplation he clamped his jaw closed again and shook his head.
‘Just . . . go, tell Father.’ Thomás nodded towards the sanctuary’s side door. ‘Please.’
The janitor held his gaze a moment longer, then set the sweeper aside. He walked out of the sanctuary without another word.
To speak with Father Alberto Alvarez was always a spiritual experience. Just to be in the man’s presence was enough to change a person’s soul, Thomás had often reflected, and men and women were attracted from all over the city and beyond for precisely that reason. To stand in his company, to experience something wholly different from the usual encounters of their day-to-day lives. To be inspired, changed.
In the four years of his discipleship at the Charismatic Catholic Church of St Paul of the Cross, Thomás Nascimbeni had never once been in a room with the holy priest, whether it be this sanctuary or any other, without feeling the same sense of overwhelming awe that had first drawn him to the parish and its sidelined traditions. On his first visit, walking through the strange glass doors that felt more like the entrance to a shopping mall than to a church, into a room he’d have sworn was a Presbyterian prayer hall if a tiny plaque outside hadn’t indicated the place was, at least formally, part of the Roman Catholic communion, Thomás had felt something. Deep within him, far beyond the confines of intellectual faith or the rational consolation of belief he’d associated within his religion throughout his twenty-two years of life, he’d felt . . . it had been hard to put it into words, then. Even now, it remained difficult to describe. He’d experienced the immanence, and closeness, of the divine. Unlike any other church he’d ever visited, this one was lacking madonnas and pietás, it had only the plainest and most basic of crosses mounted on a single wall. There was no glorious organ lining the apse and the customary clerical chasubles and copes were nowhere to be seen, the clergy robed in simple white with an unadorned stole around their necks. And yet Thomás had felt, in the midst of all this, this plainness, that his heart had suddenly surged into life. He’d sensed, in a way that surpassed anything he could have intellectually determined, that there was nothing worldly here for him to see, and so he’d closed his eyes and seen the face of God.
He’d never gone to another church since.
In the years that had passed since then, he’d become a devoted disciple of the Catholic Charismatic Movement. He’d known nothing about that group before his first visit, nothing about the way its similarities to Evangelical Pentecostalism – with its emphases on mystical experience, charismatic gifts and personal inspiration – had led to its being marginalised by mainstream Catholics the world over, especially here in the capital city of its religious empire. Gradually, the pieces of its history had become known to him, including the barely concealed disdain in evidence in the faces of his pious family and friends when he mentioned his new-found affiliation. But for Thomás, the movement’s dismissal by so many rank-and-file religious only reinforced the truth of its message. Since childhood he’d known only dry services mired in formulaic ritual and the institutionalised shape of church governance. At last he’d found a place where the living, beating heart of faith was still alive. Where hope would speak, and God could move.
And Thomás had never known him to move more forcefully, and yet more gracefully and tenderly, than in the person of Father Alberto. In a world where priests had become businessmen and bishops politicians, he had found a good pastor who was a true mystic. Father Alberto had no ulterior motives. He wanted only to be, in his typically poetic words, ‘clay in the hands of a loving God, ready to be shaped by him according to his will’. And so he had been. And was.
He was a man worthy of being followed, and a man who absolutely needed to know what Thomás had seen.
Only the slightest of creaks, wood rubbing against wood, announced motion from the side door. All Thomás’s emotion halted at the sound. He realised that he was holding his breath, that he could hear his pulse pounding through his ears. If the kindly but stern janitor reappeared and said anything other than ‘Father is ready to see you,’ Thomás thought his soul might burst.
He turned towards the sound, but the janitor was not there – and then Thomás’s heart went from thrashing to what felt like a dead halt. Before him stood Father Alberto himself.
Thomás’s emotions swelled back into life. He was elated that the priest had come out at his request – this was more than he had expected. Father Alberto’s curling hair, once a dark black but now spiced with bold locks of grey that were almost white, was trimmed short but otherwise untended, and his greyer beard reached down to his upper chest. His face was not so much wrinkled as pockmarked by age, with caverns and hills that made smooth places rough and gave him the natural appearance of an outcast, of one who’d been scarred by the world. And yet, it was a face of serenity. Thomás had gazed into it so many times before, into Father Alberto’s alarmingly blue eyes, and felt that there was something far more than just the priest staring back at him.
At this moment, however, those eyes were different. Within them was something Thomás had rarely seen there.
Concern.
‘What is it, Thomás?’ he asked. ‘Your heart . . . it is deeply upset.’
Thomás swallowed. ‘Yes, Father, I am disturbed.’
‘Try to calm yourself.’ The priest laid a hand on his shoulder. A disarming warmth descended through the fabric and eased into his bones. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you.’
Rumours of gun attacks came to Thomás’s mind again. The police barricades he’d passed on his way here. But he shoved them aside.
‘It’s the prophecy, Father,’ Thomás blurted out. He felt that his eyes had gone glassy. Perhaps there were tears welling within them. They may have been tears of joy. ‘The prophecy . . . the hand of God. All the things that have been revealed to us in bits and pieces over the past months, they’ve all come together. Just like you said.’
He could feel Father Alberto’s grip tighten on his shoulder. ‘My son, calm yourself. You’re overcome.’
‘They’ve found it!’ Thomás exclaimed. ‘The whole of it!’
‘You’re speaking in riddles, Thomás. Tell me what you mean.’
Thomás reached into his trouser pocket and dug out his phone. He slid his finger effortlessly across its screen and brought it to life. A web browser was already open, an image centred on the screen.
‘They’ve found it!’ he exclaimed again, handing the phone to the priest. ‘A tablet, written in some ancient script. Apparently it was unearthed a month ago, but they’ve just announced it today, with parts of it translated. Father, it’s a tablet of prophecy, and it confirms everything you’ve been telling us would come!’
Father Alberto stared at the small screen of Thomás’s phone. As he scrolled through the news article his features grew tighter, his eyes narrower.
‘You know what’s been going on outside today,’ Thomás added, his words finally delivered more softly, filled with wonder. ‘It’s the first of the miracles.’
‘This text calls them plagues,’ Father Alberto countered, reading.
‘Its translators can call them whatever they want,’ Thomás answered. ‘The first was revealed to us months ago, and now we find it’s written right there,’ he pointed towards the display, ‘on a tablet produced who knows how many centuries ago. And it’s happened. Right here, outside.’
Thomás beamed. This was reality, and it was overwhelming.
‘That tablet,’ he added, ‘confirms what we already know.’ He reached forward and gently wrapped his fingers in an embrace around the priest’s hands.
‘The Lord has begun to act. And this wonder is only the first.’