Of Love and Evil (The Songs of the Seraphim 2)

That night I took a plane to New York.

And the next day, I did the same things in the garage that I kept there. It had been almost a year since I’d been in that particular way station, and I didn’t like going back there at all. New York had too many shocking memories for me, and I felt especially sensitive to them now. But I knew this had to be done. I dumped the vehicles in areas where they would most certainly be stolen, and left the garage finally as I had done the other one, open to whoever might wander in.

I wanted to leave New York then, but there was something else I wanted badly to do. I had to think about it a great deal before executing my little plan. I spent the evening and the next morning doing just that. I was very glad that the angels weren’t visibly with me. I understood now why they were not. And the terms of my new existence were making a little more sense to me.

When afternoon came, I left my hotel and went out walking to find a Catholic church.

I must have walked for hours before coming upon a church that looked and felt the way that I wanted it to feel; and this was all purely feelings, as I had no thoughts on the matter at all.

I knew only that I was somewhere in Midtown when I rang the bell at the rectory and told the woman who answered that I wanted to go to confession. She stared at my hands. It was warm and I was wearing gloves.

“Can you ask the oldest priest in the house?” I asked her.

I wasn’t sure she heard or understood. She showed me into a small sparsely furnished parlor with a table and several upright wooden chairs. There was a small window with dusty curtains revealing part of a yard paved in asphalt. A large old-fashioned crucifix hung on the wall. I sat very still, and I prayed.

It seemed I waited half an hour before a very elderly priest came in. Had it been a young priest, I would probably have left a donation and gone out without a word. As it was, this man was ancient, somewhat shrunken, with an extremely large squarish head, and with wire-rimmed glasses that he took off and set on the table to his right.

He took out his requisite purple stole, a long thin strip of silk required for the hearing of confessions, and he put it around his neck. His gray hair was thick and messy. He sat back in his wooden chair and closed his eyes.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I said. “It has been over ten years since my last confession and I have been too far from the Lord. For ten years I’ve committed terrible sins more numerous than I can mention, and I can only estimate how many times I have done any one bad thing.”

There was no change in his demeanor whatsoever.

“I took life willfully and deliberately,” I said. “I told myself I was killing men who were bad, but in fact I destroyed the lives of innocent persons, especially in the beginning, and I cannot now name how many there were. After those first and most terrible crimes, I went to work for an agency which used me to kill others, and I obeyed their orders without question, annihilating about three persons on average a year for ten years. This agency told me we were The Good Guys. And I think you understand why I can tell you no more about this than what I’ve said so far. I cannot tell you who these people were, nor for whom specifically I did these things. I can only tell you that I am sorry for them, and I have vowed on my knees never to take life again. I have repented with my whole heart. I have also resolved to walk a path of reparation, to make up in my remaining years for what I did in these last ten. I have a spiritual director who knows the full extent of what I have done and is directing me to reparation. I am confident God has forgiven me but I have come for absolution to you.”

“Why?” he asked. He had a deep sonorous baritone voice. He did not move or open his eyes.

“Because I want to go back to Communion,” I said. “I want to be in my church with others who believe in God as I do, and I want to go to the banquet table of the Lord once again.”

He remained as before.

“This spiritual director?” he asked. “Why doesn’t he give you absolution?” He said the last word with force, his deep voice almost a rumble in his chest.

“He’s not a Roman Catholic priest,” I said. “He’s a person of impeccable credentials and judgment, and his advice has guided my repentance. But I’m a Catholic man, and that’s why I’ve come to you.” I went on to explain that I’d committed other sins, sins of lust and sins of greed and sins of pedestrian unkindness. I listed everything that I could think of. Of course I had missed Mass on Sundays. I had missed Holy Days of Obligation. I had not kept feast days such as Christmas or Easter. I had lived away from God. I went on and on. I told him that as the result of my early indiscretions, I had a child, and I had now made contact with that child, and that almost all the money I had earned from my past actions was being set aside for the child and the mother of the child. I would keep what I required to sustain me, but I would never kill again.

“I beg you to give me absolution,” I said, finally.

A silence fell between us. “You realize some innocent person might be charged with the crimes you’ve committed?” he ventured. His baritone voice quavered slightly.

“It’s never happened to my knowledge. Well, except for my blundering actions in the beginning, everything I did for hire was covert. But even in the case of those early murders, to my knowledge, no one was ever charged. And I did have some knowledge, and no, no one was ever charged.”

“If someone is charged you have to come forward,” he said. He sighed but he didn’t open his eyes.

“I will.”

“And you will not kill again even for these people who call themselves The Good Guys,” he murmured.

“Correct. Never. No matter what happens I will not.”

He sat quiet for a moment. “This spiritual director,” he started.

“I ask that you not press me on his identity, any more than you would press me on the identity of those for whom I did the killing. I ask that you trust me that I am telling you the truth. I’ve come here for no other reason.”

He reflected. The deep voice rolled out of him once more. “You know that to lie in the confessional is sacrilege.”

“I have left out nothing. I have lied about nothing. And I thank you for your compassion in not pressing me for further details.”

He didn’t respond. One gnarly wrinkled hand came down uneasily on the surface of the table.

“Father,” I said, “it’s hard for a man like me to be a responsible person in the world. It’s impossible for me to confide my history to anyone. It’s impossible for me ever to bridge the gap between me and those innocent human beings who have never done the awful things that I have done. I am consecrated now to God. I will work for Him and for Him only. But I am a man in this world, and I want to go to my church in this world with other men and women, and I want to hear Mass with them, and I want to reach out and hold their hands as we say the Lord’s Prayer together under God’s roof. I want to approach Holy Communion with them and receive it with them. I want to be part of my church in this world in which I live.”