On the Third Day Read Online Free PDF

seating and whispered conversation to slip in and up the stairs.
                It wasn’t as if these people didn’t know him.  Until Father Thomas had been assigned, and the Bishop had moved to his newer, more spacious offices in San Valencez, he had performed the Mass here himself, at least every other Sunday.  He had taken their confessions, and he knew a great number of them by name, though he never would have stopped to speak to them without good cause.  That was the service of the priests.  His own communion was of a higher order, closer to God – or so he liked to believe. 
                The truth was, Bishop Michaels was not good with strangers, and though he performed well in public, his talent rose more out of an ability to withdraw into himself and make the Mass personal than from actual performance skill.  While Father Thomas had felt the call of the priesthood, the people and the responsibility, Tony Michaels had dreamed of splendor.  He had seen himself in the grand robes of a Bishop, or even a Cardinal, and he dreamed of standing before huge stained glass windows in brilliant beams of holy light, communing with a very private God.
                Bishop Michaels found Mass to be a beautiful thing.  After decades of hearing the words spoken, mouthing them along with the priests, and speaking them himself, he still felt a glow of warmth each time the first syllables rolled out.  He still felt a small thrill of pride at understanding those words, the ancient tongue as familiar to him as the modern English he spoke on a day to day basis, and the responses, the sharing of one man’s voice with those of so many others, all in praise of a shared joy – it was sometimes more than he could stand without tears. 
                That is how it had always been.  This morning, it was different.  While the words were the same, and the man standing at the altar of God wore the vestments of a priest, Bishop Michaels’ expression was one of cold contemplation.  He masked it with an icy, aloof smile, but there was no mirth or good intent in his gaze.  He reflected that this was another thing Father Quentin Thomas owed him, along with some lengthy and very detailed explanations.  He was owed this morning, and this Mass – the glory of it was slipping away as he was relegated to the mundane duty of cameraman for a charlatan.
                That he’d been forced to come here, like a parent reigning in a recalcitrant child; that he’d been made to look the part of evil while the man below was held a man of God; that the Church itself would not be content to chastise Father Thomas and ship him off to some remote, quiet place where his theatrics would find no audience to influence and impress – these things made the Bishop’s guts roil with indignation.
                There was a certain order to things, the Mass included, and one did not deviate from that order without consequence.  That miracles had been performed in the days of Jesus of Nazareth the Bishop accepted readily – that they invaded this small cathedral on Easter Sunday and sent the congregation screaming from the building in disbelief, fear, and alarm?  This was not acceptable.
                So he sat and trained his camera on the man bent on shattering these comfortable beliefs, and he waited.  Bishop Michaels did not doubt that when it was all over, one of two things would happen, either of which would begin the process of setting things right and returning his life to the order he craved.
                The first thing that might happen was absolutely nothing.  If Father Thomas was too afraid to try playing his parlor tricks under the scrutiny of the camera, or if the incident had been an isolated one – then Mass would proceed as it always did on Easter Sunday, and in a few hours the Bishop would return home with a tape of a charismatic young priest performing