The Good Shepherd by Thomas Fleming

Author:Thomas Fleming [Thomas Fleming]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/Christian/General
ISBN: 9781612308401
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2015-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

After leaving Bishop Cronin with Dennis, Matthew Mahan took a quick shower and shaved. Freshened, though a little lightheaded, he stepped into the hall and headed for the elevator. He was looking forward to saying mass at the Church of St. Peter in Chains. He wanted to combine what he had experienced there two nights ago with the words of the consecration. Out of this might come stronger, clearer insight.

He had not taken more than ten steps when a woman appeared in the hall about 100 feet ahead of him. She had high, delicate cheekbones, a sensual, rather arrogant mouth, and dark hair elaborately done in Empire style. A white evening dress fell from beneath her maroon cloak to the tops of her high-heeled silver sandals. She stared coolly down the hall at him for a moment, and her hand went instinctively to her hair, which was in some disarray. A mocking smile played across her lips. She turned and walked ahead of him to the elevators.

Well before he reached the door, Matthew Mahan knew that she had come from Mike Furia’s room. He was shaken by a strange combination of emotions. First anger, then a kind of fear. Was there anyone he could trust, anyone who did not betray him in one way or another? A new brutal loneliness assailed him. But now there was nothing, not even the faintest touch of the sweetness he had felt with Mary Shea. It was the bitter isolation that Jesus must have felt alone in the High Priest’s dungeon exposed to the whips and rods and insults of the temple police. All through his mass, Matthew Mahan struggled to accept the pain as Jesus had accepted it.

After mass, he met the somber gaze of Moses with a new, more anguished understanding of his sadness. He said a silent prayer to Pope John, asking him for guidance. Slowly he became convinced that he must do something. He could not look the other way as he had done more than once during the war in France and Germany. Then he had told himself that men who faced death every day had to be forgiven a great deal. When he saw lines of G.I.s outside a local whorehouse, he had always turned down a side street before he got close enough to recognize anyone. Maybe Mike Furia had been in one of those lines. Maybe Father Mahan should have descended on the customers in the style of a few chaplains he had known and lectured them angrily, ordered them to disperse. But for every convert that technique made, there were a dozen enemies. Besides, all that was long ago in a different world.

Mike Furia was more than a face in the congregation, a soul he was ordained to shepherd. He was a personal friend, a man with whom he had shared his life, who had often sought his advice, his help. To be silent now would be more than cowardice; it would be betrayal of Mike’s soul.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.