every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.’ Now, Father, how can you explain that, according to your belief, it was the will of God that the Bible came down to us, but not those ‘other things’? Have they been ‘lost’, just as a boy ‘loses’ his pocket-knife?
I tell you, those ‘other things’ are still alive, they have always been alive, and will live on, even if all the lips to tell them, and all the ears to hear them, should die. The spirit will keep whispering them into life, and it will create more and more artists, with minds that vibrate when it wills it, and more and more hands, that will write as it commands. Those are the things that St. John knew of and knows of, the mysteries that were with ‘Christ’, and which he included when he made his instrument, Jesus, say, ‘Before Adam was, I am’.
I tell you – whether you cross yourself or not – the Church began with Peter, but will only be completed by John. What does that mean? Try reading the Gospels as if they were a prophecy of what will become of the Church. Perhaps if you look at them from that point of view you will see what it means that Peter denied Christ thrice and was angry when Jesus said of John, ‘I will that he tarry till I come.’ For your comfort, I will add that though I believe the Church will die – I can see it coming – it will rise from the dead, and it will be as it should be. Nothing, nor any person, not even Jesus Christ, has risen from the dead without dying first.
I know you too well as an honest man who takes his duty very seriously for me to harbour the least doubt that you have often asked yourself how it is that among the clergy, even among the Popes, there could be criminals, men unworthy of their position, unworthy to bear the name of monk? I know, too, that if anyone were to ask you for an explanation of such facts, you would say, ‘It is only the office that is free of sin, and not the man who holds the office.’ Do not think, my dear friend, that I am one of those who would mock such an explanation, or who think themselves too clever to be taken in by what they see as a piece of glib hypocrisy. My conception of a priest’s mission is too deep for that.
I know well, perhaps even better than you do, just how many Catholic priests there are whose hearts are filled with fearful doubt. ‘Can it really be the Christian religion’, they ask, ‘that is called to redeem mankind? Do not all the signs of the times indicate that the Church is decayed. Will the millennium really come? It is true that Christianity is growing like a huge tree, but where are the fruits? Day by day the number of those that call themselves Christians is increasing, but fewer and fewer are worthy of it!’
Where do these doubts come from, I ask you? From weakness of faith? No. They come from the subconscious recognition that there are too few among the priests whose sense of mission is fiery enough for them to seek the path of sanctification, as the Yogis and Sadhus do in India. There are too few to take heaven by force. Believe me, there are more paths to the resurrection than the Church dreams of. But a lukewarm hope of ‘grace’ is not one of them! How many are there among your fellow priests who can say of themselves, ‘As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God’?
They are all secretly hoping for the fulfilment of the apocryphal prophecy, which says that fifty-two popes will appear, each one bearing a hidden Latin name, which alludes to his work on earth; the last one will be called ‘flos florum’, that is the ‘flower of flowers’, and it is under his sway that the millennium will dawn.
I will make you a prophecy – I, who am more of a heathen than a Catholic – that he will be called John and will be a mirror-image of John the Evangelist; from John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Freemasons, who preserve the
Jess Oppenheimer, Gregg Oppenheimer