Blood of the Lamb Read Online Free PDF

(one of those times when Thomas felt it his duty to attempt the solace a priest should be able to offer), a previously unheard voice came whispering inside his own mind. “The Lord has a plan for each of us,” he’d said to the distraught woman. “It’s not ours to know, but you must never doubt it exists. To everything, there is a season, and a time—” He’d stopped, dumbfounded, hearing a silent question: Really?
    The widow, mistaking his stillness for pastoral manner, smiled sadly and completed the phrase. “—to every purpose under heaven. Yes, Father, of course.” She had, he recalled, taken strength from whatever he’d gone on to say and left with renewed hope. He, on the other hand, sat motionless in his study for the rest of the day. The afternoon faded and the streetlights spread an anemic glow across the slushy sidewalks. The voice that had asked the question didn’t stop, asking others, all different but with only one meaning. Are you sure? How can you be? Isn’t it convenient that God has for each of us what we most desperately want—a purpose, a reason to exist—but keeps it secret? Thomas, the voice whispered, you’re a smart man. Isn’t it just as likely we invented all this, a huge absurd theological security blanket, because we’re scared? That nothing has purpose, nothing has meaning, and God is just a lullaby we sing ourselves? Thomas—really?
    •   •   •
    “Thomas, the only men of God who’ve never felt what you’re feeling now are sheep. Hah! Lambs of God. Followers. Not thinkers.” In his austere, book-crammed study Lorenzo Cossa flicked the Red Sox lighter Thomas had brought as a gift and grunted in satisfaction at the steadiness of the flame. He pulled in air until his cigar glowed, and settled his long, gaunt frame in an armchair. “It’s a crisis of faith. Everyone goes through it.”
    “Yes, Father.”
    “Doesn’t help at all, does it? Knowing that?”
    Thomas shook his head. Three weeks after his counseling session with the widow, he was still spiritually dazed and unable to find footing. He’d requested a leave and flown off to Chicago, hoping his mentor could help him make sense of this onslaught of uncertainty.
    When Thomas was in graduate school at Boston College, Monsignor Lorenzo Cossa’s history seminars were legendary for their rigorous intellectual demands and equally for the priest’s galvanizing oratory. Monsignor Cossa maintained the Church had long ago strayed from the spiritual high road and, far from being a path to salvation in the debased world, was itself in danger of being devoured by it. This wasn’t a belief Thomas shared—where was the Church, and where was it needed, if not in the world?—but such was the flair of Lorenzo Cossa’s rhetoric that Thomas would have studied algebra with him for the pleasure of hearing him talk. That his courses fit Thomas’s interests was a bonus. That Lorenzo Cossa seized on Thomas Kelly as the most promising student he’d had in years was a mixed blessing. He leaned harder on Thomas than on other students; but even alone in the library at three a.m. Thomas understood he was being forced to his cerebral best, and, though exhausted, was grateful. The year after Thomas got his doctorate, Monsignor Cossa had been elevated and given charge of Church educational programs in the Midwest. They’d remained in touch, but such was the power of this earthquake that Thomas knew the telephone and computer screen would be powerless against it.
    “No,” Thomas said, in Lorenzo—now Bishop—Cossa’s study. “It doesn’t help.”
    The Bishop wasn’t fazed. “Of course not. It’s like going to the dentist. Knowing everyone who ever sat in that chair suffered the same agonies doesn’t reduce your pain. But remember this: they all survived.”
    “I’m not sure about that. Some men leave the priesthood. Some leave the Church.”
    Around the cigar, Lorenzo grinned. “I was talking about the dentist.