Pierced by a Sword (15 page)

The visit
by the two burly men and the one smarmy man from the Mafia–warning him of what would happen to Lee if he didn't pay off his enormous drug bill. The shock when he discovered that his own mother had taken up almost one-third of the tab.

Violently trying to destroy the Personal Power CDs in his car with his lighter, delirious with anger, as he crashed his Escalade into the storefront of the Scientology
bookstore on Vine Street. The sound of the burglar alarms ringing in his ears while he hot-wired a car a block away after he stumbled away from the demolished storefront.

Scoring enough blow to kill a horse from a dealer who didn't know about his sudden lack of credit on the street...

How did I get here?

Lee fell headlong into the present. Indeed, he did not know how he had gotten here. That information
was gone, left behind in the black hole.

There was enough blow left to do the trick on the dresser covered with contact paper next to the bed, along with a spoon, a rubber tube, and a lighter. Nearby, a needle.

In the odd way the mind works when hammered with drugs, Lee became instantly, completely lucid.

Gotta do it now. Gotta do it before you pass out, man. If you don't, you'll live. DTs. No
DTs. Is that my voice?

I control my own destiny. Die. Die. Gotta die. I control my own destiny.

Lee was completely certain that his next hit would be his last. If he took it, it certainly would be. If he took it. Lee was not alone. Above him, a battle raged. Lee had given up the struggle below.

3

Monday Morning
9 October
Chicago Skyway, Illinois

Father Chet and Becky were driving in his "priest
car," a 1984 Chevy Malibu his brothers had chipped in to buy him when he was ordained. It had over one hundred and thirty thousand miles on it.

He had not been surprised when he got the voicemail message from Nathan asking him to meet up at the Father Sorin statue.

He had an intuition about Nathan and Joanie, but he was still worried about what had gone on behind the closed door of Nathan's room
during the party. He had prayed that they had both passed out before anything untoward had happened. He had gone as far as putting his ear to the door and listening. Father Chet had barely been able to make out Nathan's mild snoring.

I'm too late,
he had thought, disappointed with himself and with his longtime friend.

Joanie Wheat was a good girl if she was anything like the rest of the Wheats.
It was a good family. Chet had resigned himself that there wasn't much he could do for Nathan except to pray.

Maybe nothing happened in there. Maybe she'll be good for him.

Chet had been drinking a bit too much himself and had been asleep on Nathan's couch when Joanie and Nathan left the apartment early yesterday morning.

Chet and Becky finished praying the Rosary in the car. Father Chet had prayed
especially for the grace to remain chaste. He was not naïve about the danger that traveling alone with Becky posed to his vocation.

Thanks Adam and Eve,
he thought sardonically.

He tried hard, successfully, to keep his eyes on the road and not on the incredibly attractive Becky Macadam. He reached up without thinking and pulled his Roman collar a little bit looser.

Becky spoke up. "Isn't it against
the rules for a priest to be, you know, alone with a woman?" she asked with genuine curiosity.

"You mean a beautiful woman, don't you?" he answered, keeping his eyes on the highway. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her blush.

"It's funny you mention it," he continued. "I was just thinking about that. To be perfectly frank, it is against the general rules. Even calling you yesterday was pushing
the envelope. I told myself that you needed to see a priest, not a man, so I bent the rules a little. Kinda like when Jesus let the apostles gather food on the Sabbath because they were hungry.

"Turned out I made a good decision, I think, and I'm glad I did it. But technically speaking, I'll be glad when we're in mixed company later. No offense. I'm human, that's all, and you
are
a beautiful woman."

"Thank you," Becky replied. She could think of nothing else to say.
Am I thanking him for the compliment, or for being such a gentleman?

Like Nathan Payne, Becky had been having the odd feeling that she was not traveling in her normal circle of friends.

This man is different,
she thought, unaware that she was echoing the exact words of Jews in Israel who had the same reaction to Jesus two thousand
years ago. She was not aware that Catholic theology maintains that priests are "other Christs."

"Anyway," he went on, "I was thinking about what Aristotle wrote about the concept of Beauty, and about my cousin Helen, who is also a beautiful woman."

"I'm very curious, Father Chet, as to what you're going to say next."

"Well, Aristotle and the classical philosophers all pretty much held that Beauty
is what they call a transcendental. That's a fancy word for saying that a beautiful thing is a reflection of an absolute principle. I'm butchering his philosophy now, but Aquinas believed that God is All Beautiful, because He is the first principle, or the absolute, of existence, of everything. If there's no God, then nothing exists.

"It follows that anything made in His image and likeness is
also beautiful. In this sense, even the Elephant Man is beautiful because he was made in God's image. And so are you. In a way, a person who is physically beautiful, like my cousin Helen and you, even more perfectly reflects God's image. Am I getting too deep, here? Just call me on it, Beck."

"No, not at all," Becky protested. "You have a gift for making complicated things seem simple. Please,
keep philosophizing."

"I knew a crusty old priest at Notre Dame–Father Duffy was his name–who used to talk with me about this stuff for hours on end. Most of it went over my head. One time I asked him how all this philosophical stuff related to real life. He gave me an example that has helped me be a better priest."

Chet flicked his blinker and changed lanes.

"I've already told you that I used
to be a wildman with Nathan back in my Notre Dame days, before Jimbo's right hook. My biggest worry going into the seminary was that I couldn't hack being celibate. Let's just say I've always been plagued with raging hormones. Anyway, Father Duffy told me what I just told you about Beauty being an absolute principle, but with much more philosophical precision, of course.

"He told me that a beautiful
woman is made in the image and likeness of God, and that I could mentally–how did he say it–transcend, yeah, transcend my own nature when I saw a beautiful girl, and think of my supernatural desire to see God, Who is All Beautiful, and is much more beautiful than any woman.

"In practical terms, it's really not healthy to repress sexual desires, as if they're something evil, which they aren't.
That kind of desire just comes back later, stronger than ever. It's much better to channel sexual desire into other areas, like work, study, and physical activities. Your physical beauty can remind me of my spiritual desire for God, instead of arousing my natural inclination to, let us say, keep the species going. It's a healthy way of redirecting what comes naturally.

"Father Duffy also told
me that the more I develop my desire to know and love God, the easier it would be, and the surest way of doing that is to pray, to talk to God. I also have to watch my eyes, to learn to control them like I control my arms or my legs. To tell you the honest truth, it hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it would be–keeping chaste, that is. It's worth it. I can't be a good priest without being
chaste. Remember that story I told you about Saint Louis DeMontfort? I read somewhere that the first stop he made when he hit town was the local brothel."

She eyed him suspiciously.

"It's true," Chet continued. "DeMontfort used to go right into the brothel, get down on his knees, and start praying the Rosary. It's like that old saying, 'you can't fight sin without going to where the sinners are.'
I doubt Saint Louis could have done that without the virtue of chastity, and without control over his eyes."

"Wow," she said, almost to herself, "that explains it."

"Explains what?" he asked.

"That explains why I'm so comfortable with you and why you remind me so much of my dad, besides the fact that you love being Catholic. I mean, Dad
loved
being Catholic."

"I'm still a little lost," Chet said.

"What I mean is, and I don't mean to sound stuck up or anything..." she was searching for the right words, "...but when men look at me, they don't look at
me,
but at my–parts! That's it! It's like I'm a piece of meat or something. They look at my body. Even when they look me in the eye, it's like they're adding up how much I cost or something."

Chet just nodded. He could see the wheels turning
inside her head.
She's pretty sharp,
he thought.
I wonder what she's going to think of Joe Jackson?

"So I know what you mean about controlling your eyes. That's why I never liked Nathan. He didn't look at me right, although I could never put my finger on it exactly. You, on the other hand, looked at me like my father used to, like I was your sister or your daughter. I know it sounds funny, us
being the same age and all–"

"It doesn't sound funny at all," he interrupted gently.

"–but even at the party," she finished her thought, "I knew there was something special about you, Father Chet. And now I know what it is. You're the real thing."

And Chet, who was indeed the real thing, did what most virtuous people would do when confronted with such a truth. He blushed.

A few minutes passed
in silence while he pondered her observations.

"Another passing thought about Beauty, as long as I've got such a receptive audience."

"Fire away, O Great One!" she teased cheerfully.

"Hey, cut out the O Great One bit. Do you want to hear this or not?" he asked, then lowered his voice, "I'm always afraid I'm talking too much."

Her look plainly told him to continue.

"Well, something I've always
admired about my cousin Helen is how well she
handled
her beauty. What I mean is, she's beautiful on the inside as well as the outside, and it makes her even more beautiful. There's something sad about a beautiful woman with a bad personality. It's almost sacrilegious. Again, I can't help but think of Father Duffy and his transcendentals. He used to say that putting an ugly frame around the Mona
Lisa was a sacrilege, and that putting an ugly personality inside a beautiful or handsome person was an insult to the Creator. You could say that being beautiful is a responsibility."

Father Chet noticed that Becky's expression changed when he mentioned the Mona Lisa. She had a look of far away sadness.

"My dad used to say something like that to me when I was a little girl. My mom was very pretty
you know. She was Junior Miss Illinois before she met Dad. But she didn't have the personality to go with her looks. Oh! I must sound like a monster talking about my mom like that!"

"Look, Becky, I'm a priest, not a psychologist. Kind of like McCoy in the old Star Trek series, 'Jim, I'm a doctor not a mechanic!'" His impersonation of the actor who played McCoy was right on the mark. Becky laughed.

"Like I said, I'm not a shrink, but it sounds like you've got some good reasons to be bitter about your mom. I don't want you to necessarily spill your guts about her and how she's not Florence Nightingale or anything, but I do want to let you know that it's okay to air it out in front of me. I'm not going to judge you. Or her. Maybe
her
mom was messed up, eh? We could probably trace it all the
way back to Adam and Eve."

"I know, I know," she said. "I was just thinking about my dad, that's all, and how horribly she treated him. When they got married, Daddy was supposed to be on the fast track in Chicago politics. He was too nice, I guess, and when he never got past local alderman, Mom dumped him. And dumped me, too."

She paused.

"Look, you're right," she said with a note of finality,
"I don't really want to talk about her right now. Let's change the subject. I'm philosophically soaked."

I bet you're not,
Chet thought.
I bet you get this stuff better than I do.

Chapter Seven

1

Monday Morning
9 October
Notre Dame, Indiana

Joe Jackson casually tossed the football in the air and caught it as he walked down Notre Dame Avenue toward the Father Sorin statue. He was early for his meeting with Father Chet and Becky. He was thinking.

His high school football coach had convinced him that tossing a ball in the air while walking to school would help Joe develop his
hands. Years later Joe still found that the activity helped him to think. He kept an extra football in his car and another next to his apartment door just in case he ever needed to go for a walk.

He enjoyed pondering things. And he was also singularly good at catching footballs, having spent two years in the NFL before rupturing a disk in his upper back. His career ended, and although his neck
often gave him pain, he considered himself lucky to be able to walk and run like a normal man.

If Father Chet were asked to explain Joe's temperament, the priest would surely describe him as a melancholic–a man who needs to think before making up his mind. Once he made up his mind it was hard for him to change it back again.

He had literally
thought
his way into the Catholic Church as a young
boy growing up in Metairie, Louisiana. He was raised a Baptist and had embraced the Bible wholeheartedly. Like many fundamentalists, he had immersed himself in Holy Scripture. He didn't have the awesome memory of Nathan Payne, although he was quite intelligent, but his melancholic nature did help him enjoy meditation on the Bible. As a boy he often found himself distracted during class as the sayings
of Jesus echoed in his mind from his Bible reading the night before.

A single word from three passages had echoed in his mind for over three months during seventh grade. He didn't understand the connection among the passages, which perked his curiosity all the more. The word that echoed in his mind was
Woman.

"Woman, behold thy son. After that, He saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother."

"Woman,
what is it to thee and me?"

"And I will put enmity between thee and the Woman, and between your seed and her seed."

He had been forced to look up the word
enmity
in the gigantic dictionary in the local library. It meant "a state of hatred" or "completely without common ground, never touching"–like two magnets that repel each other.

In the first passage from the Gospel of John (which was Joe's
favorite gospel), Jesus was talking to Saint John and Mary at the foot of the cross. In the second passage Jesus was addressing his mother before performing His first public miracle of changing water to wine during the wedding at Cana. In the last passage God was speaking to the serpent just after the fall of Adam and Eve.

By seventh grade Joe had two great desires in life–to play professional
football and to be a "beloved disciple" like Saint John.

Joe was quite shy; he didn't discuss theology with his parents or teachers. Nevertheless, he had deduced that each passage was pivotal in the overall scheme of the Bible. Most theologians, Protestant or Catholic, would have agreed, although each tradition would give conflicting interpretations to the passages. Joe knew nothing of differing
traditional interpretations in seventh grade. He knew just one thing:

The word
Woman
was ringing in his ears.

Joe turned the passages over and over in his mind. He prayed to Jesus for understanding.

Why does God warn Satan about the
Woman
in practically the first thing He says in the Old Testament? Satan will have no common ground with this Woman. Satan will never touch her.

Why did Jesus call
his mother
Woman
at the very beginning of his public ministry, before his first miracle? Why didn't He call her Mom, Mother, or simply Mary? It was one of the first things He said.

Why did Jesus call Mary
Woman
on the cross? It was practically the last thing Jesus said before He died.

As a Protestant, Joe was well aware that the Old and New Testaments were intricately related. He knew that God
often inspired the authors of the Bible to emphasize significant words in key passages.

Joe sorely wanted to ask his pastor about the passages after services on Sunday. But he knew that his pastor would definitely not like his questions. He wanted to know about Mary.

Protestants didn't talk about Mary. Only Catholic Papists talked about Mary and every Baptist knew Catholics worshipped Mary and
prayed to her, which was the terrible sin of idolatry.

So he kept thinking. The answer came to him one day while praying between plays at football practice. It was so simple:
The Woman is Mary. Mary is the Woman.

Joe was so elated that he nearly injured his teammate on the next play. Unlike many players, the young man was always in an extremely good mood during football games. Joe never got angry.
Football was sheer joy. The happier he was, the better he played. It was downright unnerving to opposing players, even during his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, to see somber Joe Jackson laughing and smiling while participating in gargantuan collisions on the gridiron.

The pieces fell into place so easily for Joe that it started a cascade of new "if-then" statements. On his walk home from
football practice, the statements came into his head as if infused from another being. In fact, this was exactly what was happening to Joe although he didn't realize it. The other being was the Holy Spirit working with Joe's highly developed sense of logic.

If Mary is the Woman God is talking about in Genesis, then Satan hates her. Because Satan never has common ground with Mary.

If sin is the
common ground Satan has with people, as the serpent just demonstrated by his contact with Adam and Eve, then maybe Satan never touched Mary.

If Satan never had common ground with Mary, then maybe Mary has no sin, like the Papists say.

This last thought disturbed Joe, but he was too excited to stop. His thoughts washed over his doubts like a tidal wave.

If I want to be a part of Jesus' public ministry,
then I must participate with the Woman–with "thee and me" like Jesus said. The Woman had practically ordered her son to get started! And He did!

If Jesus gave his beloved disciple John his own mother for John to take into his home, then all beloved disciples were given the Woman, Mary, and should take her into their homes.

If I want to be a beloved disciple, then I have to take Mary into my home.

Then came the most disturbing questions:
Why isn't Mary in my home? Whose home
is
Mary in?

Joe knew the answers, but uncharacteristically did not want to think about them. Mary lived in the Catholic churches all around him. Her statues were a reminder, he reasoned, just as Joe kept a photograph of his own mother on the desk in his bedroom.

Why, the Catholics love Mary!
a little voice added.
Just
like John loved Mary. Jesus told John to love Mary.

That's going a little too far, Joe. Catholics are messed up. Everybody knows that. The Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon–it says so right in the Book of Revelation.
Joe consoled himself with a common Protestant misinterpretation.

The last thing on his mind as he walked home from practice that day was the thought that he might become Catholic.
It was unthinkable. Such a thought might have ended his line of reasoning quickly.

But Joe was taking the first steps. He had already taken the most important step. Baptist or not, he had decided that Mary was
the Woman.
This was an unalterably Catholic position, whether he realized it or not.

And, due to his melancholic nature, it would be nearly impossible for him to change his mind. The
Bible
was clear on that subject. And like every good Baptist, he knew that the Bible contained no errors.

Two weeks later, with surprisingly little struggle, at age twelve, Joe decided to join the Catholic Church. Huddled in his room next to the radio with the volume down as low as possible, he prayed a Rosary with the Metairie Family Rosary Program. He had not known what a Rosary was before he happened
upon the program by accident (he was trying to find the LSU game). He knew only that praying the Rosary was a bad thing.

The announcer's words seized Joe like a vice: "Welcome brothers and sisters of Southern Louisiana. Show your love for Mary, the Woman of the Book of Genesis who crushes the head of the serpent with her heel. Show your love for the Woman who stood at the foot of the cross and
suffered along with her Son. Pray the Rosary with the people of Saint Catherine's Church of Metairie!"

Joe's whole body shook as he asked Jesus to forgive him for wanting to pray the Rosary. Before the Rosary actually began, he tried to anticipate the vile words the Catholics would use to "worship" Mary.

When the Our Father came on, he was slightly confused.

The Lord's Prayer is in the Bible,
he thought.

When the first Hail Mary came on he was stunned.

That's what the Angel Gabriel said to Mary! That's what Elizabeth said to Mary in the Gospel of Luke! That's in the Bible too!

Although it usually took Joe a long time to figure things out, it didn't take him long to feel angry with his pastor.

Pastor Jellison's been lying to me. I've been had. Those aren't "worship" words. "Pray for
us?" That's what Pastor Jellison says five times a sermon every Sunday! If he can ask me to pray for him, why can't I ask Mary to pray for me?

He finished the Rosary with delight, disappointed that it had to end, and relieved that his parents hadn't walked in on him while he prayed it.

I'm going to be a Catholic,
he thought.

Then,
Okay.

Joe's mind was made up. He would join the Roman Catholic
Church. He didn't worry about breaking the news to his parents; he was already starting to think about how he was going to convert them to Catholicism. He had decided to move on to the next step–evangelization.

I'll have to learn about Catholicism to do that.

Then another thought came to his head:
After all, my mom and dad were born Baptist. It's not their fault. My
real
parents could have been
Catholics for all I know. Catholics don't have abortions. Catholics believe in Adoptions Not Abortions. I read it all the time on their bumper stickers, along with Pray the Rosary to End Abortion.

Joe's reasoning was without fault and his supposition was almost completely true. But the football player had no way of knowing for sure. In truth, his biological parents
had been
Catholics, although
they were not very serious ones when he was conceived. His biological mother was a former LSU cheerleader and gymnast named Mary Johns. She had gotten pregnant by a second string defensive tackle during homecoming weekend.

The football player had talked the reluctant girl into getting an illegal abortion. Before the abortion could be arranged, a fellow cheerleader concerned for Mary's health convinced
Mary Johns to talk with a dedicated nurse named Jackie Jackson. Deep down inside, Joe's biological mother had
wanted
to be talked out of the abortion. Without much resistance, Mary allowed herself to be persuaded by the Baptist nurse to carry the baby to term. Like Rebecca Macadam, after she got pregnant, the cheerleader discovered that she was more prolife than she had realized.

"What will I
do with the baby?" Joe's biological mother, Mary Johns, had asked.

"I'll take it. I already have two girls, and I can't have any more kids. If it's a boy, my husband will go bonkers. We'll even pay the hospital costs," Joe's adoptive mother, Jackie Jackson, had replied.

The cheerleader broke up with the football player, dropped out of school, and returned home to Pittsburgh. The adoption was quietly
arranged after Joseph was born during the following summer.

Mary Johns, who had not gone to church since grammar school, found solace praying the Rosary during the long and often humiliating wait for the baby to be born. She had given up her popularity and her gymnastic scholarship. She suffered mental anguish for her son, but she knew that she was doing the right thing. This gave her some comfort.

Believing that it would be better for the boy, she purposely allowed herself no contact with the Jacksons after the adoption. She transferred to Pitt to finish her degree. Eventually she found a good husband, a Catholic, and gave birth to four children of her own. Years later, when she watched Joe play for the Steelers on television, it didn't even begin to occur to her that this was her lost
son.

She knew only that her lost son had weighed over twelve pounds at birth, and had been delivered via cæsarean section after eight excruciating hours of labor. She remembered him during her Rosary every day.

Of course Joe had no knowledge of any of this. His parents never told him directly that he was adopted, but he was quite certain of it. By seventh grade he weighed over two hundred and
twenty pounds and stood two inches above six feet. He had tanned Mediterranean skin, dark brown hair, and a long Roman nose. His two older sisters were light-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and under five-feet tall. His family didn't talk about it, though he could tell his parents knew he knew. Even the other kids in school thought Joe Jackson was adopted–it was that obvious.

But no one teased
him. Joe was regarded as the gentlest and kindest boy in his school by teachers and students alike. He was also the largest boy his age in the county, and was absolutely ferocious on the football field. Why antagonize a gentle giant?

And that is how Joseph Jackson came to be baptized and confirmed into the Catholic faith during eighth grade, and why he chose Notre Dame from the dozens of Division
1-A colleges that offered him full scholarships to play football.

It was also how he came to be walking down Notre Dame Avenue, tossing a football with a hand that could have been adorned with both an NCAA Championship Ring and a Super Bowl Ring. He was too self-conscious to wear either one. He was looking forward to seeing Chet Sullivan.