Pierced by a Sword (10 page)

"Don't worry about that," he said. "Go on."

"My dad calls it Pascal's Wager. Ever heard of it?"

"Yeah," he replied. Now Joanie was surprised.

"Chet told me about it," he explained.

"Really?"
This is too good to be true,
she thought.

"Yeah, he's been working on me since he got religion when his brother whaled on him and literally knocked him back into the Church. I have to admit, Chet's one hell of a lot more subtle than you are. About six
years ago he gave me a book by Blaise Pascal called
Pensées.
I think it means–"

"–Thoughts," she finished for him.

"Yeah, that's it. I guess old Chetmeister was using reverse psychology on me. I don't read much. I've always been a numbers man, good at math and science. When he gave me the book, I thought he figured I'd never read it, and I read it just to spite him, you know, because I figured
he figured
I'd never read it. He's pretty wily. Never trust an Irishman with a glint in his eye. Anyway, I read it. Most of the philosophical stuff went over my head. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician; I studied some of his math stuff at Illinois, believe it or not.

"I guess I rushed through it–but I remember the Wager. 'Infinite reward is worth a finite wager.' Made sense. But I didn't take
old Blaise up on the offer. Funny name for a guy, Blaise. Reminded me of hell. You know, blazing fires of hell and all that."

"How do you possibly remember the exact words from something you rushed through years ago?" Joanie was more than a little amazed–as if she had just found gold in the backyard creek–by Nathan's memory, and because he knew about Pascal's Wager.

"I can't
not
remember most
things," he admitted sheepishly. He looked embarrassed, as if an old secret was out in the open. Many extremely intelligent people hide their intelligence from the world; Nathan was no exception. Smart kids got beat up on the playground.

"Anyway. I'll take up the Wager. I understand it. It's mathematical. Let's see: because you're a practicing Catholic and you're not going to change, you're dead
certain you will only get serious with a 'real' Catholic. You want to find out if I'll like being a real Catholic, and the only way to find out is for me to actually do it, not to think about doing it. And I
was
baptized Catholic. Is that how it works?"

"Exactly."

"Okay. I'll have to trust you about the no kissing until we get..." He stopped himself before saying the dreaded word.

"Nathan, darling,
the word is
engaged."

The determined look was back, although her tone had been loving.

Did she just call me darling?
Nathan's stomach did another flip flop. It was not an unpleasant feeling. As a matter of fact, it felt pretty good.

There's no fooling around with Miss Right-to-the-Point. And I like it.
Nathan felt a freedom to speak he hadn't felt in a long time.
Admit it, Nathan my boy, you've
never
felt the freedom to talk openly to a woman–
with
a woman. Ever.

"Can I say something, Joanie?"

She nodded. She took his hand again, holding her breath, waiting for his answer.

"I've never talked to someone who just comes right out and says things the way you do. It's unsettling, but I like it. I don't want to think about..." he hesitated, then smiled, "...marriage, at least not right now, but..."
he hesitated again, but not as long this time, "...but I can't stand the thought of having you more than twenty yards away from me. Just
thinking
about driving back to Chicago tonight and leaving you here is making me crazy."

Their eyes met. Tears welled up in Joanie's eyes. Nathan was breathing hard again. The rubbery sensation was back in his legs.

"Don't get mushy on me, Nathan Payne." She
laughed and gave out a sob at the same time. He held her, and she let him.

They were both trembling. It was the first time either of them had fallen in love.

Nathan realized that it was the first time he had held anyone (or been held) without sex crossing his mind since–since, well, Babsie, his grandmother, had held him as a child.

What's happening to me?
he thought, not for the first time during
this strange and wonderful day.

Then, as he held her, he decided to tell her the truth. It seemed so refreshing after living outside of either truth or lies for so long.

I'm in a new universe. What did she call it? Libertine? I was in the Libertine Universe. I'm in the Moral Universe now. This is where Joanie lives. This is where Professor Wheat lives. So
this
is where Chet lives!

The unshakable
feeling that he was breathing new air in a new world was palpable.
Morality is a place, not an idea. Perhaps it's just my mathematical mind-set.

And so he told her the truth. With her arms still holding him, he pulled away slightly and cradled her porcelain cheeks in his strong hands. He felt her tears on his fingers. He searched to meet her eyes, but Joanie was looking down. He saw her delicate
features and eyelids instead.

"Joanie?" he whispered.

"Yes, darling?" she replied quietly as she looked up to him.

"I don't know if I can do it, sweetheart. You know, follow your rules. But I promise that I will try my best. I can try hard. Harder than you know, maybe. Is that good enough for you?"

She could see that he was afraid that she might say
No.
That she could break him like a twig. She
was, after all, a very practical woman. Her answer was firm.

"Yes, Mister. Your best is enough for me. Just try. It's a wager, remember. I can't force you to do anything. I'm putting my money on Blaise Pascal." And not for the first time, Joanie surprised Nathan (although he later wondered why what she said should be a surprise, given her background).

"I'll pray for you, Nathan."

"You and Father
Chet both. Now I'm outnumbered."

For a long while they embraced in the orange light of the late afternoon sun on the clear fall day at the University of Notre Dame. As they walked in silence the long way around Saint Joseph Lake, they instinctively grasped for each other's hand. It was almost time for dinner at Tom Wheat's house, where Karl Slinger was due to arrive in less than an hour.

Somewhere,
unknown to either Nathan or Joanie, a nun was smiling.

3

The Beatific Vision, Heaven

"Somewhere" was in the light-soaked bath of the Beatific Vision–the very Mind of God, in heaven. It was here that Sister Leonardo Mary MacEvoy, baptized Kathleen Marie MacEvoy by her parents in 1933, was permitted to see and hear the conversations of Nathaniel Payne and Joanie Wheat.

Kathleen MacEvoy had been
given the name Leonardo Mary by her superior, Sister Anthony Mary, who had been a big fan of Leonardo da Vinci when Kathleen joined the Dominican Sisters of Jersey City.

Kathleen was the youngest of nine children and raised by devout parents. She had first considered becoming a nun in fourth grade. By her sophomore year in high school she realized that she was never going to be elected Queen of
the Prom. She was plain and had a weight problem, despite her father's insistence that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

She didn't hold it against her father–or God, for that matter–that she had not been created physically beautiful. She took it as a concrete sign from God that her desire to be like her Dominican teachers was not merely a figment of her active imagination. This didn't
mean that she thought all homely women should be nuns, or that all beautiful women should not be nuns.

She had little trouble convincing the Dominicans to let her drop out of Bishop Walsh High School to enter the convent before her senior year.

For Sister Leonardo, a fact was a fact. Her homeliness and girth would be an asset to living the life of chastity required of the Brides of Christ. She
was good at math. She was soon guided by her spiritual director into teaching. She turned out to be an excellent teacher with a knack for administration. Living the Rule of Saint Dominic came easily to her; the years at Our Lady of Lourdes flew by much too quickly. She loved being a nun!

Leukemia eventually killed her. It was in her bones. Before the cancer started to eat away her organs, her
five-foot frame had supported over two hundred and fifty pounds. The sturdy nun withstood six long months of suffering before death overtook her.

In purgatory (where Catholics believe the temporal punishment due to sin is measured out in the burning love of the infinite Mercy of God), Sister rejoiced that the cancer had taken so long because it mitigated her time there. (If you could call it "time,"
for in purgatory and heaven–and in hell, for that matter–there is no human conception of time.) The many sincere prayers of her fellow Dominicans had also helped Sister Leonardo enter heaven sooner.

Not much is known of the Beatific Vision, though one can certainly discover a few things about it in the great mystical works of Saint Teresa of Avila and others. What
is
known is that the Beatific
Vision is where the All Knowing Father permits human souls in heaven to "see" tiny portions of the things and events He sees. It's like a direct connection to God's homepage.

And Sister Leonardo was keenly interested in the life and destiny of Nathan Payne. Of course, she had taken an interest in the shy boy when he was her student at Our Lady of Lourdes. She knew all about Nathan's tragic family
life, his ne'er-do-well father, and the stratospheric scores he achieved on his second grade IQ test. When he was in first grade, he reminded the good sister of herself. She had always regretted letting herself lose track of him after his sudden move to Illinois, caught up as she was with the lives of hundreds of other children, many of whom needed help every bit as much as Nathan had.

On earth
she had prayed for him whenever she was reminded of him (as she often was by other dysfunctional children, as they became known later in her career). She had even felt drawn during her ordeal with cancer to offer her sufferings for the mathematical genius whom she had tutored two decades earlier. After purgatory, she was finally brought to heaven by the Blessed Mother herself and by Saint Dominic
(or at least by Saint Dominic's soul, for very few are reunited with their bodies in heaven. Jesus, who ascended to heaven, and Mary, who was assumed by Jesus into heaven, are notable exceptions. It has long been taught–by Saint Thomas Aquinas, in particular–that a person will not have his soul reunited with his body until the Final Judgment).

Sister Leonardo was pleased beyond comprehension to
be given a specific task by the Savior Himself regarding the fate of one Nathaniel Payne. She was not permitted, however, to see his final destiny.

In fact, her work with Nathan during her time on earth had been part of the Divine Plan. She had cooperated with that plan on earth and now she had merited further work in this same plan in heaven. She was allowed to see him (and to know his thoughts)
during his brief period of decision as Joanie Wheat was storming away from him while he sat in his Mustang in the parking lot of the Morris Inn.

It was revealed to Sister Leonardo that the Infinite Wisdom had deigned to use
her
voice, which was one of the few feminine voices Nathan had ever trusted, to nudge him toward Joanie Wheat. Sister Leonardo was also aware of at least four other creatures
who were working with Nathan during his moment of decision–the Mother of God, Nathan's guardian angel, a priest in Chicago, and Nathan's grandmother.

Awe and other human emotions are not obliterated in the Beatific Vision. She was ardently hoping that Nathan would make the right decision, and simultaneously in awe that God was able to help the confused young man make his decision without ever
taking away his free will.

After all, during his moment of decision, Nathan
could
still have decided to drive away and leave Joanie Wheat behind, even after God spoke to him using Sister Leonardo as a conduit of grace. In fact, Sister Leonardo was absolutely certain that the reason why God chose to
not
directly reveal His Divine Self to Nathan was precisely to protect Nathan's free will. In this
sense, God is like electricity. Dealing directly with God would have overloaded Nathan. That is the reason why Moses' face changed so dramatically after he saw God on Mount Sinai. Sister Leonardo was being used as a circuit of God's grace–much as people use electrical circuits to down–size current to make it safe for appliances. Nathan's decision to pursue Joanie Wheat was as perfectly and purely
free as any other decision in his life. But he did have some extra encouragement before making it.

Opinions are also allowed in heaven. Sister Leonardo was of the opinion that the tide was turned when the casual prayer of one Reverend William Chester Sullivan entered the Beatific Vision in which she had been participating. Father Chet was also one of her former students, and he had also benefited
from Sister's heavenly role as one of God's vast number of circuits.

Because the Divine Wisdom had decided to wipe her voice from Nathan's memory as mysteriously as He had allowed her voice to be used, Nathan would never know of Sister Leonardo's role. Neither would Father Chet, stranded as he was in the murky darkness of his finite body in a Chicago coffee shop.

All lives are passion plays. Sister
Leonardo Mary, baptized Kathleen Marie MacEvoy in 1933, had lived her own passion play, and was now enjoying the fruits of her courageous life on earth. She was eager to continue to play a role in Nathan's passion play. And so, as she watched Nathan and Joanie holding hands as they drove to Professor Wheat's home, Sister Leonardo did so with a beatific smile!

Chapter Five

1

Saturday Morning
7 October
Detroit Metropolitan Airport
Wayne, Michigan

He had come to the end of one of his country-hopping tours to the four corners of the earth. In a sense it was his earth. This was a business trip. Detroit was the last leg on a tour that had brought him to Russia, Japan, and then Los Angeles. Detroit was just a stopover–no big crowds were scheduled to see him
here. He would fly back to Rome this morning.

Pope Patrick, formerly Angus Cardinal O'Hara of Dublin, descended the steps of the TWA 747 toward the tarmac. Behind the jet, the engine of one of those odd-looking, low slung refueling trucks backfired, sounding much like a gunshot. Everyone in the entourage and the crowd ducked; a woman screamed. Police and secret service agents rushed toward the
poor mechanic at the fuel truck, who limply held up his specialized wrench, which he had been using to open the fuel cap. A plainclothes Secret Service agent pulled the radio in the lapel of his jacket toward his mouth.

"This is Agent One! False alarm! Repeat! False Alarm! Report Keyholder's status. Check in Three, over."

Keyholder was the radio code name for Pope Patrick.

"Agent One, this is
Agent Three, Keyholder is okay. He's laughing, as a matter of fact. Repeat, Keyholder okay. Copy?"

"Copy that, Three. Condition Green. Resume agenda. Laughing? Keep the editorials off the security line. Over."

Agent One was a stickler for details, which was one of the reasons why he was Agent One, Officer-in-Charge.

"Roger, One. Over and out."

Agent Three, O'Malley, cleared the line. O'Malley,
who was a Catholic American of obvious Irish descent, turned toward the pope and broke one of the unwritten rules of

Secret Service agents.

O'Malley smiled.

+  +  +

The false gunfire incident didn't make the local news. Individuals in the crowd did go home that evening and remark to their families that the only one who hadn't ducked was the slender, wiry pope. Pope Patrick was used to gunfire,
they reasoned.

Pope Patrick, still Angus to his cronies in Dublin and Belfast, was the Cardinal Who United Ireland three years before becoming pope. During the final stages of negotiations he had been shot in the neck by an IRA terrorist who didn't take kindly to the Cardinal of Dublin's efforts to end the Troubles.

Public sympathy built up on both sides of the conflict as the entire world waited
for three days to see if the courageous and gregarious cardinal would pull through. He lost three pints of blood but the .22 bullet miraculously missed his spinal cord. He was back negotiating in less than three weeks. His strategy was to concede everything to the Protestants except the necessity for religious freedom and civil rights for Catholics. In exchange, the six northern counties were
reunited with the Republic of Ireland, now called the New Republic of Ireland.

In return, the Protestants got a clean slate from the Catholics: governmental appointments, guarantees of rights to lands taken from Catholics centuries earlier, special courts, fairly strong laws to suppress Catholic (and Protestant) terrorist movements, and so on.

Many Catholics were not pleased with the deal. The
man in the street didn't seem to be too concerned with the details after the shooting. After a few tense months, the treaty worked. Just like that.

Angus kept the real reason why it worked to himself. He had begun his thirty-year, one-man effort to reunite the Six Counties while he had been a seminarian. Over decades he had developed personal (and often secret) friendships with the most publicly
anti-Catholic Protestant leaders. Angus had rarely discussed and never argued religion with them. They knew they could trust Angus. He had even gone as far as donning disguises, visiting the Protestants in secret, and drinking more than one under the table. He sent their children gifts on their birthdays. He called them with condolences when their relatives passed away. More than once he risked
his life by attending Protestant funerals.

Angus always avoided publicity. He kept at his project so tenaciously for so many years that hatred melted away in the hearts of Protestants for this one particular Catholic. Some kept their contacts with him simply because he was the only Catholic from the Republic they knew with any degree of intimacy. As he rose in the ranks of the Catholic hierarchy
over the decades, it became a kind of badge of political prestige to "know" Angus. It helped that Angus had a lion's share of disarming, devastating Irish charm.

It's hard to hate a man when your twelve-year-old daughter calls him Uncle Angus,
Angus told himself.

As he grew older, his position teaching languages at Maynooth Seminary gave him more time to travel. Angus began quiet and secret discussions
with a few influential Protestants who had by now become close friends. They were convinced, as was Angus, that if they could get over their personal prejudices, then why couldn't both bleedin' sides settle their differences? It wasn't long before he began to enjoy the company of his sincere Protestant friends more than the often lax Catholics in the Irish hierarchy. When he became a cardinal,
he convinced his friends to open negotiations with the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and England. Unknown to the general public, the pope himself had made a few calls on Angus's behalf to dignitaries at the highest levels of the governments of all sides.

Every night since his ordination Angus had prayed:
I love my separated brothers, Mary. Help me love them more.

Work, prayer, and love
were his guiding principles. Reading biographies of great men and women who changed the course of history convinced him that his personal doubts about his quixotic quest were a temptation from the evil one.
Great men all seem ordinary up close, and I'm as ordinary as the next man. Maybe I don't need to be great to get this done.

But Angus O'Hara was much more relentless than an ordinary man.

His other secret weapon had been Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who is nicknamed the Little Flower by her devotees. He was born on her feast day, the first of October. His sainted mother had tutored him in devotion to the precocious French Carmelite nun who had died in her early twenties in 1897. Angus's mother had been very devout. Angus's maternal grandfather had converted to the faith from Presbyterianism,
and had come to Dublin from Belfast to work for the Guinness Brewery. On his father's side, he was pure Irish. His Scottish ancestors had been "planted" in Belfast from Scotland by the English during the days of William of Orange. This may explain part of young Angus's implacable desire to reunite the two Irelands. It also explains his decidedly Scottish first name.

The Little Flower's intercessory
power in heaven was legendary among Catholics. He decided to become a priest in eighth grade after reading her autobiography,
The Story of a Soul.

When he wasn't on his "commando raids" in Northern Ireland, Angus spent his vacations visiting Carmelite convents in Ireland, Europe, and the United States. He enlisted them in his private war to end the war in Northern Ireland.

During his triumphant
speech at the signing of the Belfast Treaties, as they became known, he attributed the success not to himself but rather to "the generosity of the Protestants, whom I love as brothers, and to the power of God." Angus presented Thomas Jefferson's Quiet Revolution of 1800 in America, and the more recent bloodless coup in the Philippines, as historical precedents for the rarest of historical rarities:
a major transfer of geopolitical power that did not cost lives. Ever the diplomat, and to avoid hurting the sensibilities of his Protestant brethren, Angus left out the part about cloistered Catholic nuns fasting and praying for three consecutive decades for the Troubles to end.

Many Catholics were embittered by the Belfast Treaties, which seemed to greatly favor the Protestants, but no one dared
question Cardinal O'Hara's motives after the assassination attempt. One year after the Belfast Treaties, many on both sides were wondering what the centuries-old fuss had been about in the first place. Only time would tell if peace would last. The more strident Protestants and the IRA had vowed to continue terrorist attacks. Cardinal O'Hara kept visiting his Carmelites just to cover his bets.
He wasn't one to put faith in man-made treaties. He almost flaunted his now public friendships with Protestant leaders.

Angus never neglected two of his personal passions, namely, the study of languages and contemplative prayer. He prayed at least two hours each day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. On the average, he slept less than four hours a night.

He was not a proud man, and despite his
success at moving crowds with his legendary Irish wit and aplomb, he was not comfortable in the spotlight. He was more comfortable working with people one-on-one, and his language studies helped this. His goal was to be able to hear confessions in twenty languages before he died.

To the everlasting shock of his longtime spiritual director, who just happened to be the Bishop of Belfast, Angus still
considered himself ordinary. Angus knew that the fruit of his lifelong work came from the power of God's grace to change hearts. He scrupulously avoided the ecclesial politics of the hierarchy in Ireland. He was genuinely surprised when the pope conferred the Office of Cardinal upon him. It never occurred to him that he had taken the same tack in bringing peace to Ireland that Saint Patrick had
taken hundreds of years before to convert Ireland to Catholicism; namely, the conversion of leaders' hearts.

In sum, as is often the case for a person who is a saint with a capital
s
, Angus was blissfully unaware that he was one of the greatest saints who ever walked the earth. He was just doing his job the best way he knew how, and his job was to be a priest. He wasn't planning to attend the
ceremony to receive the Nobel Peace Prize until the pope himself called him up and ordered him to go to Stockholm.

When Angus returned from Stockholm, he found that his schedule was less hectic. He could now spend a great deal of time visiting the parishes of Dublin. Children ran into the streets to play soccer with the spry cardinal, who still wore the traditional black outfit and Roman collar
of a parish priest. Angus still drove his own beat up "commando car," as he called his old Fiat. Several weeks after the Belfast Treaties were signed, it became common knowledge that if you wanted to find Father Angus (as he was still known, despite his title), the last place to look for him was at the chancery.

The pope began to call Angus every month. The cardinal developed a genuine friendship
with the Magnificent Pole (as Angus thought of him). Angus spoke passable Polish. Sometimes they spoke in Latin. They often practiced languages while discussing Catholic problems. Angus and the pope were like two steelworkers discussing a mechanical problem at a poorly run factory. Indeed, the "factory" which the pope inherited was in extremely bad shape. And, what the pope related to Angus about
Marian apparitions was even more disturbing than the dismal state of the Catholic faithful. When the pope failed to make his regular monthly call, Angus deduced that something was wrong. He read in the papers that the Magnificent Pole had died of mysterious causes, much like his predecessor, but the official word put out by the Vatican bureaucracy was that the pope had succumbed to congestive
heart failure. Angus had his doubts, but no proof of a conspiracy.

Three weeks later, Angus Cardinal O'Hara of Dublin was elected as the first Irish pope in history–with most of his votes coming from third world cardinals appointed by the man he succeeded.

Angus soon discovered that most Vatican insiders thought the powerful Cardinal Casino of Milan had been favored to win by a close but comfortable
margin, but at the very last moment exactly one dozen cardinals had changed their votes due to the "prompting of the Holy Spirit." According to the grapevine, Casino backers derided them as "the Twelve Apostates." Two hours before the controversial vote, another four Casino backers died on their way to the Vatican in a tragic collision with a busload of German tourists.

There was a strong move
by the Casino backers to delay the vote, which was barely defeated. Angus was elected by one vote. No canon lawyer could dispute the validity of the conclave.

Despite the whispers of
confreres
during the dizzying conclave that he was "Number Two" after Casino, Angus was as genuinely surprised as anyone by his elevation to pontifical office.

Angus had thought of just one thing the moment the result
of the vote was announced. It was an offhand remark made by his friend, the Magnificent Pole, during one of their monthly phone chats: "I watch what I eat, Angus. I brought my own cooks from Poland."

Angus had the distinct impression during the conversation that the pope had not been speaking about the relative merits of Polish and Italian cuisine, but something sinister.

Within two months of
becoming pope, Angus had the Catholic world distracted by his controversial appointments to various posts within the Vatican. Angus was up to his old tricks. In a view he kept to himself, he saw the millennial long Schism between the Roman and Eastern Churches as a problem as scandalous as the Irish Troubles, only writ large.

He began to disappear for days at a time, sometimes in disguise. He
began to use his tremendous skills to win over the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Angus sent letters, notes, and gifts. He scheduled informal, secret meetings. The new pope saw nothing wrong with calling Eastern leaders for advice, which they found refreshing. He found it helpful.

A simple form letter to his Carmelite Army, laser printed on handsome papal stationery, deployed prayer
troopers in cloistered battlefronts. He thought peace would take years, even decades, but found his entreaties well received from the word go.

Pope Patrick was just doing his job.

2

Sunday Afternoon
8 October
Michiana Regional Airport
South Bend, Indiana