A Severed Wasp by L'Engle Madeleine;

Author:L'Engle, Madeleine;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

The Wooden Madonna

1

Bishop Chan was in the lectern, reading from the Bible, and when he concluded, Felix rose from the shadows of the choir stalls and stood at the head of the steps where there was a standing mike. He wore a soft grey cassock, and he looked small and frail, but when he spoke his voice was strong, and he had a quiet authority which Katherine liked.

She was too busy looking at him, thinking that he did indeed look like a bishop, to hear his first words. She picked up as he was saying, “Job is one of the dark books of the Bible, and although it is shot through with light, it has never been one of my favorite books. I turn more often to Jonah, which says much of the same things—that God’s love for his Creation is boundless, and that all he wants from us is that we love him in return.

“But today’s reading from Job has one of the greatest cries of affirmation in the entire Bible. Out of the depths of his pain, loss, anger, Job cries out, I know that my Redeemer lives! and he adds the equally extraordinary words, that he himself will see him, face to face. Not now, not in the midst of this mortal journey, because we couldn’t bear it now. Moses asked to see God, and God put him in the cleft of a rock and protected him with his hand, and Moses saw God’s hindquarters as he passed by.

“God’s hindquarters. That’s all we get, in this earthly part of our journey. But it’s the glimpses that keep us going.

“The New Testament reading, too, is a promise, a promise that what God creates, he will not abandon, that ultimately we will be as we were meant to be.”

For a moment Katherine had a glimpse of Juliana, successful at cross-breeding chickens, and yet unable to complete fifth-grade work.

“… and then we, too, will see God face to face, as Adam and Eve did when God walked and talked with them in the cool of the evening—before the choices made then and throughout the centuries brought us to the world of pain and confusion in which …”

Choices again. Katherine looked at Felix, but she was no longer listening, even though she was feeling grateful that she liked what he was saying, that his delivery was authoritative and vibrant. When he preached, the years seemed to drop from him. Odd: she had never heard Wolfi preach. Wolfi, she thought, would have liked Felix, despite the fact that the two men were totally unlike.

Had anyone ever gone running to Felix as she had gone running to Wolfi?

She had left Justin and Paris, fled blindly to the station and phoned Munich, leaving a message for the cardinal that she was on her way. She took a taxi and went directly to him, not thinking, simply running.

He was waiting for her in the great library. He embraced her tenderly, then held her at arm’s length, looking down at her with his deep-set eyes.

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