Pierced by a Sword

P
IERCED BY A
S
WORD

The Spectacular Nationwide Bestseller!

Real People Love This Book…

"It moved me so much that I wept. I was so excited I took it downstairs to read certain passages to my mom and dad! Then I urged my best friend to read it. The themes come right out of my own life. I love it!"

–
Molly Winters, Lake Bluff, IL, College Student

"I really got into Nathan Payne—he's such a great character
that I couldn't wait to find out what happened to him next. I feel like I know the guy personally—Nathan and the others remind me of real people I know."

–
Martin Maher, Tully, NY, Financial Professional

"I don't read many novels and I had low expectations. All I can say now is that I couldn't put it down. It had me turning the pages. It really moves fast. It's great!"

–
Tom Baugh, Akron, OH,
Businessman & Father

"The passage where Father Chet and Becky Macadam talk about celibacy is one of the most insightful that I've ever read on the subject—all this interwoven into a story with a great plot. I'm very excited about this book!"

–
Eileen Biehl, Westlake, OH, Mother & Writer

"The climax of the book was creative and mystical, and really gave me food for thought regarding my own life.
Bud Macfarlane has a real gift for dialogue and characterization."

–
John Madigan, Chicago, IL, Father & Lawyer

Characters so real you'll swear you know them.
A plot that twists and turns so fast you'll lose sleep to find out what happens next.
A riveting story that whisks you from Salt Lake City to Chicago to Rome to Notre Dame.
A supernatural thriller that will rock your world.

P
IERCED BY A
S
WORD

A savvy drug dealer from the meanest streets of Cleveland…

A no-nonsense Irish Pope who drives his own car
and travels in disguise…

A beautiful, unmarried pregnant woman with a quick wit and quicker temper…

A relentless, aging tycoon from Utah…

A mysterious Dark Man who sees the future before it happens…

A handsome, hard-drinking, hard-living securities broker…

A soft-spoken, shy, gigantic former NFL football star from Louisiana…

A fast-talking young priest from New Jersey with a penchant for causing
trouble…

…And the Mother of God.

I
F
Y
OU
R
EALLY
L
IKE
T
HIS
B
OOK

Consider Giving it Away.

Saint Jude Media, the nonprofit publisher of this novel, invites you to send for copies to distribute to your family, friends, and associates. We are making it available in quantities for a nominal donation. We will even send a free copy to individuals who write to us directly. There is no catch. It's a new concept in book distribution that
makes it easier for everyone to read great books.

See the back pages of this book for more details, or write to us for more information:

Saint Jude Media
PO Box 26120
Fairview Park, OH 44126-0120

www.catholicity.com

Discover a New World.
Change Your Life Forever.

Published by Saint Jude Media
PO Box 26120, Fairview Park, OH 44126-0120
www.catholicity.com

© 1995, 1996 by William N. Macfarlane, Jr. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without permission. First edition 1995, Second edition 1996.

ISBN: 0-9646316-0-1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-68985

This book is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Ron Wiggins
Cover Art by Benjamin P. Hatke, MI
Typesetting by Joe Vantaggi
Printing by Offset Paperback Manufacturers, Dallas, PA

Printed in the United States
of America

To my mother, Patricia I. Macfarlane, the
consecrated wife who sanctifies her spouse.
Among many other wonderful things, I received
theartist's urge to create from you.
Thanks Mom.

A
LSO BY
B
UD
M
ACFARLANE
J
R.

C
ONCEIVED
W
ITHOUT
S
IN
H
OUSE OF
G
OLD

P
IERCED BY A
S
WORD

B
UD
M
ACFARLANE
J
R.

S
AINT
J
UDE
M
EDIA
C
LEVELAND
, O
HIO

Foreword

Long after our century is over, long after the fifty thousand titles that are published in English each year are forgotten, you and others will turn to tattered copies of
Pierced by a Sword
and smile, and puzzle over it, and wonder how it was written, and thank God for it. You will remember the darkness of our times and realize that God prepares, that He always sends us his messengers
the prophets, his truth-sayers, his servants.

You may be cracking open this book just to please a friend or neighbor or aunt or son or mother or father or pastor who gave it to you. You may be asking yourself whether it's worth the effort to invest time to begin reading it.

You should.

The supermarket tabloids are flooded with "end times" prophecies these days, predicting disasters of all kinds,
promising saviors of all kinds, and stirring into the mix a distorted version of what Catholic prophets and mystics have been warning us about for centuries. Although
Pierced by a Sword
plunges us into an exciting roller coaster ride through the coming years, it is not that kind of prophecy. It does not attempt to predict what the future will be—rather, it is a superb story of what the future
might look like, feel like, and how each of us might fit into the drama. In this book, you will not find
the
future, but you will find
a
future.

Pierced by a Sword
is the story of a group of ordinary men and women who change the world, and do so at a time in history when the powers of darkness appear to have fatally undermined the political, economic, and cultural landscape. The characters in
this book are more than just fascinating and believable. They are real. You will meet poor men and yuppies, investment brokers and drug dealers, parish priests, housewives, native Americans and Irish nuns, bad Catholics and good Protestants—and vice versa, atheists and agnostics, college professors, saints, popes, an antipope, a Russian general, U.S. Marines, a New Age guru, jaded street-kids, suburbanites,
corporate magnates, a hot-shot pilot, a pro football star, a grade school teacher, authentic visionaries, hit men, and both shades of angels. And many, many more. This is our world. This is your world.

Let me tell you a little about the storyteller, the author of
Pierced by a Sword.
Like so many readers of this novel, I first heard of it when it was sent to me by a friend. She thought that since
I had written a novel about a fictional apocalypse, I would enjoy reading something by another "end times novelist." My curiosity was aroused, but I was simply too busy to spend precious time on a paperback that was two inches thick and looked like it came from the pulp fiction rack at the local corner store. Who has the time to read nowadays? Besides, I didn't need another book chock-full of bad
news. (I was especially wrong about the last item.)

Eventually, unable to sleep one night, I picked it up and thought I would just skim through it, in order to be able to tell my friend that I had read it. After the first few pages I was no longer skimming. Despite myself, I was reading it. A few more pages after that and I was hooked. After a chapter or so, I was completely
inside
the story,
living its startling events as if I were there. The story was tremendously satisfying! It was wild and humorous and moving, and full of powerful insights. The characters breathed. The author's imagination was buzzing with life. The writing was fresh and captivating, even though it was a first novel written by a young man. I realized that this was no cheap potboiler. It was something more. Much more.

I took the publisher's invitation to write in with my reaction, and even included a few pointers for the young author. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible, for I too have made mistakes over many years of writing fiction. To my surprise, Bud Macfarlane Jr. phoned me after the letter was passed along to him. (My novel
Father Elijah
had not been published at the time. As the editor of a small,
Catholic family journal in Canada, I was virtually unknown in America.) We chatted briefly, compared notes on the state of the world, writing, and the difficulties of apostolic work. From the start it was obvious that Bud Jr. was a very funny guy, a man with a fabulous sense of humor. And that struck me as odd, considering he had written a book about a very serious topic. I went back to his novel
and reread it, and found many examples of his wit, and many more examples of his deeply reflective nature. What reconciled these two traits, what made them work together, was Bud's great gift of hope. His novel seemed to be saying that, yes, modern people are in pretty rough shape, and yes, there is darkness growing in the world, but the darkness cannot overcome the light. Especially when we are
laughing.

A few months later, I was invited to speak at a conference in Chicago. I phoned Bud, who was going to be in the area that weekend, and we agreed to meet. The day before my flight, it began to storm. A freak blizzard appeared out of nowhere in late spring and dropped two feet of thick snow on us within twenty-four hours—a very unusual occurrence in my part of Canada. I argued with myself
that weather in Canada is unpredictable, and one shouldn't read too much into the snow I was shovelling. As I was lifting one last heavy shovelful, there came a tearing pain in my lower back and I collapsed to the ground. I had suffered from a sore back a few times over the years, but nothing like this. I was in agony, paralyzed, unable to move.

I desperately wanted to phone Chicago and cancel
my speaking engagement, but knew I had given my word that I would be there. I assured myself that I would probably be able to walk a little after I reached the airport, which was a two hour drive away. I crawled on hands and knees to the car, somehow managed to drag myself into the seat, and backed the vehicle out of the partly cleared drifts onto the treacherous highway. The drive to the airport
was one unending torture session, during which I remembered what I had so often forgotten during my twenty years of lay apostolic work: every time I was to give a talk or do a significant work in the service of God, I was struck by severe sickness, car troubles, or any number of similar problems which arrived in waves with uncannily bad timing. I had always chalked it up to coincidence, but now I
could no longer ignore the pattern, and it was a perfectly
consistent
pattern. If you do a work for Our Lord, you're going to take some flak; you're going to be hassled. Stop doing the work, and your troubles will just melt away like a late spring snowfall under a hot sun.

That stiffened my resolve, and it seemed a miracle when I managed to board my flight and arrive safely in O'Hare Airport in
Chicago. As I hobbled out of the arrival gate, I was met by a huge, grinning bear of a man, who introduced himself as Bud Macfarlane Jr. I was almost doubled over and having trouble walking. I told him my tale of woe. He smiled again and explained that only a few hours earlier he had been released from jail. Driving to the city the previous evening, he had been caught in a speed trap by the local
police. The officer had checked Bud's license on the computer and found that it had been suspended. The car was impounded and Bud was put in jail for the night. He was totally perplexed by this surprise turn of events because he knew that there was nothing out of order with his license. There would be fines and a trial and no end of inconvenience getting it all straightened out. Weeks later the
police bureaucracy discovered that the computer had made an error, and that Bud was completely innocent. But in Chicago that weekend, the hassles were mounting.

"Looks like Ol' Sparky's giving us some trouble," Bud said. "It's a good sign! Nah—it's a really great sign!"

A great sign?!
I was not convinced.

We spent the remainder of that day driving around Chicago and going to the University of
Notre Dame, a couple of hours away. We saw first hand the places where many of the events of
Pierced by a Sword
take place. We sat in Bruno's, the Italian restaurant in the novel, eating pizza (which is a staple of Bud's diet), and discussing books. Gradually our excitement grew as we compared notes about the craft of writing and spiritual truths. So many of our experiences, especially ones regarding
the faith, were identical. We were citizens of two different nations, had come from different backgrounds and cultures (he from suburban New Jersey and me from the Great White North). I was fifteen years older than he. Yet we shared the same vision of supernatural realities and had come to the same conclusions about what is happening in the world. Later, we drove back to the conference center
in Chicago, carefully parked in the lot, and called it a night. The next morning Bud awoke to find that the car had been towed away. He was
laughing
when he showed me the empty spot. We decided to walk together (despite my back!) the few miles to the towing garage, and hours later and a hundred dollars lighter, he was restored to his car. This time I laughed, too, reinforced by a new understanding
of the nature of the battlefield we all fight upon.

"This is a good sign," I said to him. "In fact, it's a really great sign!"

He smiled at me, nodding.

So began a friendship that should last forever.

Bud Macfarlane took a degree in History from Notre Dame, taught high school, drove a UPS truck, travelled the nation as a successful executive in two different industries, played all your American
sports, cooked in restaurants, and is now the founder of the Mary Foundation, which is the world's largest producer of Catholic CDs and tapes. Millions of people have heard these CDs, and millions more will hear them as the work of the foundation continues to grow at an astounding rate. Yet, for all that, Bud remains a humble man, is quite "normal," and is more dedicated to his family than to his
work, only a part of which is writing novels. He has devoted his life to conveying Catholic teaching to the world. He doesn't bowl anybody over: he trusts that most of us are open-minded, and will respond to the truth if presented in a respectful and straightforward manner.

These messages are of the greatest importance, and we ignore them at our own risk. In
Pierced by a Sword,
the author has
blended them into a fascinating, compelling story. This new edition of the book boasts a beautiful new cover, and the text has been fine-tuned by careful editing. The story is largely unchanged, although some sections have been expanded in order to enrich the tale and to clarify certain points that might have been misunderstood in the first version.

A novel which attempts to imaginatively express
the spiritual drama of our times may take many forms. It can be populated by saints or sinners, or both. It can be situated in times of war or peace, or both. It may be well-written or not so well-written. It can show how low man is capable of sinking and how much in need of redemption he is, or it can restrict itself to pious platitudes and cardboard figures trotted through simplistic morality
plays. It can err in the direction of being too explicit in describing sin, thus glamourizing it; or fail to show us the urgency of the struggle over every human soul. It can make the mistake of overestimating the power of darkness or underestimating it. The underlying theology of a work can all too easily veer slightly off track and cause damage to an unknown reader; alternatively, it can pull
back so far from realism that it loses credibility and ceases to touch the heart. When writing about the things of God and the things of man and the things in between them, the dangers are great. The author faces a minefield of choices.

Even though I have been through every line of this book with Bud during the rewrite, I'm still not certain how he managed to avoid all the dangers listed above.
I believe this is the gift of inspired storytelling. Many have used this gift for good or for bad, or for personal gain, or for fame, or even let the gift atrophy while pursuing other things. The author has given Catholic readers much that is familiar and much that is new. Our Protestant brothers will be pleasantly surprised to find farseeing insight into spiritual warfare and the Bible. Those who
think the End Times are hogwash can read it for fun (you'll find that it offers more page-turning pleasure than Stephen King or Tom Clancy!). And I would challenge the reader who is skeptical about the things of God, but is sincerely questioning, to jump in and try to find your own story in one of the characters.

The universe is big—much bigger than we suppose. Don't be afraid. This book is not
a trite put-down of sinners. In fact, sinners are the protagonists of this novel. Perhaps this is because the author knows that we all struggle with darkness. It is obvious from the opening lines that Bud is in love with his characters. Maybe that is what makes them so real. They are us. They stumble through the confusing temptations and stagger toward the enticing mirages that dominate our culture;
they are imperfect, they fall, they are in pain, and they long for something better but don't know where to turn for help. Sound familiar?

And as the author reveals to us the destruction we bring upon ourselves in so many ways—carnal, ideological, spiritual—he steers carefully away from obsessively focusing on our sinfulness. At every turn he demonstrates that grace is more powerful than evil,
divine providence is always going ahead of us preparing the way for moments of choice, moments of conversion, moments of light.

"Private revelation" is a tricky thing, controversial to say the least. Wisely, the author entrusts the final decisions on these matters to the discernment of the Church. Those who have met him know he is quick to point out that this novel is a piece of fiction. The purpose
of prophecy is not to give an inside track on the future: that would merely be a kind of "baptized" fortune-telling. Genuine prophecy, by contrast, is concerned with the timeless truths as they apply to the current situation. One hundred years from now, virtually every person alive today on this earth will be dead. In this sense, we are always in the End Times.