Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

He began again with his usual excursions of life in the Holy City.

"If I had converted to your faith," he wrote, "and we were righteous man and wife, poor and happy, surely, that would be better in the eyes of the Lord--if the Lord exists--than a life such as these men live here, for whom the church is nothing but a source of power and greed."

But then he went on to explain the strange occurrence. He'd been drawn, it seemed, to one quiet little church over and over, where he sat upon the stone floor, his back to the cold stone wall, as he talked to the Lord contemptuously of the dismal prospects he saw for himself as a wenching and drinking priest or bishop. "How can you have sent me here?" he demanded of God, "to be among seminarians who make my former drunken friends in Oxford seem positively saintly?" He gnashed his teeth as he uttered his prayers, even insulting The Maker of All Things by reminding Him that he, Godwin, did not believe in Him and considered His church an edifice of the filthiest lies.

He went on with his heartless mockery of The Almighty. "Why should I wear the garments of Your church when I have nothing but contempt for all I see, and no desire to serve You? Why have You denied me the love of Fluria, which was the one pure and selfless impulse of my eager heart?"

You can imagine, I shuddered to read this blasphemy and he had written it down, all of it, before he described what then came to pass.

On a certain evening, as he was saying these very prayers to the Lord, in hatred and rage, brooding and repeating himself, and even demanding of the Lord why He had taken from Godwin not only my love but the love of his father as well, a young man appeared before him, and without preamble began to speak to him.

At first Godwin thought this young man was mad, or some sort of tall child, as he was very beautiful, as beautiful as angels painted on the walls, and also he spoke with a directness that was completely arresting.

In fact, for a moment Godwin considered that this might be a woman in male disguise, which was not so uncommon, apparently, as I might think, Godwin said, but he soon realized that this was no woman at all, but an angelic being in his midst.

And how did Godwin know? He knew on account of the fact that the creature knew Godwin's prayers and spoke directly to him now of his deepest hurt and his deepest and most destructive intentions.

"All around you," said the angel or creature or whatever it was, "you see corruption. You see how easy it is to advance in the Church, how simple to study words for the sake of words, and covet for the sake of coveting. You already have a mistress, and are thinking of taking another. You write letters to the lover you've forsworn with little regard for how this might affect her and her father, who loves her. You blame your fate on your love for Fluria and your disappointments, and you seek to bind her to you still, whether it is good or bad for her. Will you live an empty and bitter life, a selfish and profane life, because something precious was denied you? Will you waste every chance for honor and happiness given you in this world simply because you have been thwarted?"

In that instant, Godwin saw the folly of it. That he was constructing a life upon anger and hate. And amazed that this man would speak this way to him, he said, "What can I do?"

"Give yourself to God," said the strange man. "Give him your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole life. Outsmart all of those others--your selfish companions who love your gold as much as you, and your angry father who has sent you here to be corrupt and unhappy. Outsmart the world that would make of you a common thing when you can yet be exceptional. Be agood priest, be agood bishop, and before you become either one, give away all you possess down to the last of your many gold rings, and become a humble friar."

Godwin was even more amazed.

"Become a friar, and to be good will become much easier for you," said the stranger. "Strive to be a saint. What greater thing could you achieve? And the choice is yours. No one can rob you of such a choice. Only you can throw it away and continue forever in your debauchery and your misery, crawling from your lover's bed to write to pure and holy Fluria, so that these letters to her are the only good thing in your life."

And then as quietly as he had come, the strange man went away, all but melting into the semidarkness of the little church.

He was there and then he was not there.

And Godwin was alone in the cold stone corner of the church staring at the distant candles.

He wrote to me that at that moment the light of the candles seemed to him to be the light of the dimming sun or the rising sun, a thing precious and eternal and a miracle wrought by God, a miracle meant for his eyes at that moment so that he would understand the magnitude of all that God had done in making him and in making the world around him.

"I will seek to be a saint," he vowed then and there. "Dear Lord, I give You my life. I give You all that I am and all that I can be and all that I can do. I forswear every instrument of wickedness."

That's what he wrote. And you can see that I've read the letter so many times that I know it by memory.

The letter went on to tell me that that very day he had gone to the Friary of the Dominicans and asked to be taken among them.

They took him with open arms.

They were very pleased that he was educated, and knew the ancient Hebrew language, and they were even more pleased that he had a fortune in jewels and rich fabrics to give them to be sold for the poor.

In the manner of Francis, he stripped off all the luxuriant clothing he wore, gave them his gold walking stick as well, and his fine gold-studded boots. And he took from them a patched and worn black habit.

He even said he would leave behind his learning and pray on his knees for the rest of his life, if that is what they wanted. He would bathe lepers. He would work with the dying. He would do whatever the Prior told him to do. The Prior laughed at this. "Godwin," he said, "a preacher must be educated if he is to preach well, whether to the rich or to the poor. And we are the Order of Preachers, first and above all.

"Your education is to us a treasure. Too many want to study theology who have no knowledge of the arts and sciences, but you possess all this already, and we can send you now to the University of Paris, to study with our great teacher Albert, who is already there. Nothing would give us greater happiness than to see you there in our Paris friary and delving deep into the works of Aristotle, and the works of your fellow students, to sharpen your obvious eloquence in the finest spiritual light."

That was not all that Godwin had to tell me.

He went on with a ruthless self-examination such as I'd never read from him before.