As a Thief in the Night (5 page)

"Not so much."

From that morning on the two sat with each other on Sundays during their classes. Ezra was glad he had made a friend and liked the way he felt around Leonard because none of the things that bothered him seemed to bother Leonard. He had a matter-of-fact calmness about him that none of the other children Ezra knew had—that and the fact that he made fun of Mr. Pentheus all the time.

Christopher Pentheus, his confirmation teacher, was a painter who had entered divinity school after finishing his fine arts degree. He had come to help at St. Paul's at twenty-eight as part of the requirements for the program. Tall and thin, with short black hair and a rough but cleanly shaved face, he was always animated as he spoke.

To instruct his students about the life of Christ he used art slides that he projected onto the faded yellow wall of the church hall. Ezra had always sat through church services unmoved, trading candy and pokes and light punches with Layne under cover of the pews, but the pictures that Mr. Pentheus projected onto the wall seemed to be from another world entirely, and he wondered if the terror, the pity, and the loneliness he saw in the paintings had anything at all to do with what he had endured Sunday after Sunday.

There were two old paintings in particular. To depict Christ just before his resurrection Pentheus had selected Hans Holbein's "The Body of the Dead Christ In The Tomb". Pentheus stood silently in front of the painting and looked out over the dozen or so students. "Interest in the painting you see up on the wall seems to be in what many art experts, and certain artists, have called its 'humanity'. What they mean is that, to them, Christ looks very human—not Godlike—in it. Actually, there are those that argue that in all Christian art this is the most human picture of Jesus. When you look at it closely, what do you see?  A man or a God?" He stood quietly for a moment allowing them to think then switched the slide without waiting for an answer. 

The second painting that interested Ezra, Luca Signorelli's "Sermon and Acts of The Antichrist," was put up during the last two weeks of instruction as Mr. Pentheus spoke about The Book of Revelation. Two things about this painting continued to draw his thoughts to it in the days after he had seen it on the crumbling wall: that the man who had painted it had made the false prophet in the image of Jesus, and that Satan, who stood to his side whispering in his ear, and the man who looked so much like Christ, seemed to share a left arm and hand.

Another story was read to them about a man in prison who had killed another man in a bar fight. Mr. Pentheus told them how the man had become a Christian while in jail and of the ways the man believed becoming a Christian had saved his life. "You see," Mr. Pentheus began after he was done reading, "the world out there, no matter where we go or what we have, leaves us with the feeling that something is missing, doesn't it? Ask yourselves if you feel like that's true and you will see that in your schools, or with your friends, or by yourselves, or even with your families, who love you as much as people can possibly love one another, that the feeling that something is missing, is always there. If I am wrong, please tell me."  The children looked down at the table nervously and shifted in their seats to avoid eye contact with one another.  Now there was something different about the way he was speaking to them. He clasped his hands in front of his face with his index fingers pointing at the ceiling and resting on his mouth. "We know it, don't we? Something is wrong. We look everywhere to try to rid ourselves of that feeling. And how do we try and fill up this painful hole that we feel within ourselves? With desire for the things we find out there, but those things can never fill the emptiness, can they?  So we reach out for others, we reach for sex, we reach for comfort, for alcohol, or, in our ultimate frustration we act out aggressively, violently, and selfishly. But when we get those things, when we do them, we don't find that the hole has been filled, we find that it has widened. The truth is that that space can only be filled, that wound can only be healed, by one thing: God. That is why people come to church, and that is why they read the word of God, and that is why they pray."

The room was silent for a moment so the scratching of Leonard's pen beside him caught Ezra's attention. He saw that his friend had drawn a series of elaborate mazes and spirals on the back of this Sunday's handout, a reminder to parents that the Apostles Creed, The Lord's Prayer, and The Ten Commandments had to be memorized for next week in order to be prepared for the final service with the Bishop. Leonard didn't seem to be paying the slightest attention to what was being said, whereas, for once, Ezra had been paying very close attention.

Mr. Pentheus spoke in summation: "Unlike so many other young people in the world, you have the opportunity to enter into a real relationship with God, here and now."

Leonard looked up from the spiral he was drawing and interrupted his teacher. "But Mr. Pentheus, you've been telling us from the very first day of class that it was God that made us."

Slightly put off by the interruption, yet tolerant, Mr. Pentheus turned his head curiously to one side as if he thought Leonard was speaking of something entirely different than the topic being discussed.  "What do you mean, Leonard?  I don't understand what you're asking."

"What I mean is, if all those desires you talk about are no good, and they're of this world and all that, then wasn't it God that made us with those desires or faults or whatever?"
  The students quickly turned their heads to Mr. Pentheus for an answer. 

"No, Leonard. God made us with the desire to know Him, and we have confused that with the desire for the things of this world."

"Then wouldn't it be God that made us confused? And since God knows everything, wouldn't He have known that everyone wasn't going to get it?"

"We are the ones who need to realize, Leonard."

"I don't understand."

"What
do
you understand, Mr. Peltier?"

"It made sense to me when you said that God works in mysterious ways."

"God is not won easily."

"Or maybe not at all."

The young minister clasped his hands in front of his mouth again and squinted slightly. "Are you trying to be clever, Mr. Peltier?"

"No," Leonard said innocently.

"Is your mother attending service today?"

"Yes."

"Have her come and see me when the congregation is let out."

"Okay," Leonard said nervously, not quite understanding what the problem was.

The week before they were to be confirmed Mr. Pentheus tested each of the students on whether or not he had memorized The Ten Commandments, The Lord's Prayer, and The Apostles' Creed.
  Each stumbled badly as Pentheus prompted him. When it was Ezra's turn to recite his cheeks flushed when he faltered and he looked at the ceiling and floor in search of the words he had so diligently studied at home. Instead of looking Mr. Pentheus in the eyes, he focused on the small window just above his head. It was raining outside. Leonard's turn to recite came and he barely knew a single verse, though he seemed not the least bit concerned. Mr. Pentheus told him that he would have to repeat all three next Sunday before he would be allowed to take part in the service with the Bishop.

Even today, with Ezra dressed in a shirt and tie, his hair cut and gelled appropriately, and standing before the approving eyes of the congregation, Olyvia had not come to church. Elsie had become angry with her the night before and called her selfish. Selfish, she said, because she could not get past herself for the sake of the boy. Even so, Olyvia had spent the night. She was trimming the vines and checking the grapes near the driveway when they had left, and she had not even looked up as they got into the old Beaumont.

They had almost arrived late for the service. As usual, preparing to leave had been an ordeal. Ezra and Layne refused to move quickly enough, Elsie became angry at Gord because he wasn't being helpful or moving quickly enough himself, Gord grew angry at Elsie because he thought she had been rude to him in front of the children, and lastly, all of the clothes Layne had finally put on were grass stained and filthy. Elsie was always waiting for them in the driveway.  She sat in the Beaumont, laying on the horn for them to hurry. Just after they left they had discovered that they had no money for the offering, and Elsie had had to run back into the house to scrounge up five dollars.

The Beaumont was in bad shape. They always had problems with it. In the back seat the floor on one side had rusted right through so that Ezra and Layne saw the road move beneath them as they drove. Gord would become furious with them when they laughed and dropped things through the hole as they drove. Because they could never afford to fix the car properly he was always coming up with some ridiculous way of keeping it glued together. Household string or wire was used to keep the exhaust system secured to the bottom of the car, two windows were held in place with electric tape, the hood ornament was broken off, and rust framed the whole churning rattling monstrosity. Once, the police had pulled them over and then followed them all the way home saying that the car was unfit for the road and dangerous. Elsie glared at Gord as the officers walked back to their cruiser. She never said another word all the way home. But that was all they could afford, so that is how they pulled up to the church, seconds before the service began. They stopped outside the large arched double doors and Elsie shooed Ezra, his shirttails flying out behind him, out of the rusty green disgrace and into the house of God.

He struggled with the tie and collar and then pulled it away from his neck while Father Michael spoke. Elsie shook her head and silently scolded him. Taking a deep breath, he left it as it was. Gord sat passively beside her, smiling kindly, dressed in his best humble clothing, his beard trimmed and his hands resting on his belly. Ezra's little brother, his hair gelled the only way he would have it, sticking up in one ridiculous spot on his tangled blonde head, sat on Elsie's other side blowing spit bubbles and staring absently. Sarah, his Uncle George, and their daughter Rebecca sat just behind them, his aunt beaming at him as if he were hers. Little Marty, Sarah’s son, was at home in bed. The Friday before he had had four teeth pulled for horrible cavities and his face was swollen.

"Reverend Father in God, I present to you these persons to receive the laying on of hands."
  Father Richard, with the bishop standing beside him, projected his voice out over the congregation, paused for the purpose of profundity, and then raised his eyes to indicate Ezra and his classmates.

Bishop Wrychuss cleared his throat audibly: "Take heed that the persons whom ye present be duly prepared and meet to receive the laying on of hands."

"I have instructed them and inquired of them and believe them so to be," Father Richard responded. 

Ezra shifted nervously from side to side and looked up at the stained glass windows behind the bishop and the minister. The bright sun broke through the glass and made the inside of the church uncomfortably hot.

Bishop Wrychuss' voice moved out over Ezra and his well-dressed classmates. He spoke of the obligations and purpose that the confirmed would carry having reached the age of discretion. "In order that by prayer and laying on of hands they may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit, manfully to fight under the banner of Christ crucified, against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue as Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto their life's end."

The Bishop, endowed through piety and tradition, meant to lay his hands on Ezra as the orphan knelt before him and call forth the descent of the dove from whatever azure cathedrals, pillared with faith, it awaits such calls. The 'laying on of hands'? Philip had baptized the citizens of Samaria, driving out the unclean spirits. Screaming and railing against the great worded weapons, sharpened on the tongues of the appointed, the demons had fled. He had healed those who had palsy or were lame, those who had previously stood outside the fiery borders of God's mercy. The apostles, hearing the echoes of God from Samaria, sent Peter and John to them, because, though baptized by Philip, the Holy Spirit had not yet fallen on them. Peter and John laid hands on those who knelt before them, and the cool shadows of the wings of grace fell, all embracing, over the needy. Paul, his eyes still lit with the shocks of his second birth, had done likewise for the people of Ephesus. And so Ezra, having been told this story, knelt before Bishop Wrychuss and waited for 'the laying on of hands'.

"Do you here, in the presence of God and of this congregation, renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh?"

Mr. Pentheus had been through all of this with them. He sat in the front row of the congregation, his hands folded loosely in his lap, listening attentively, certain that he was not as other men were. As they had practiced when responding to Pentheus they now responded to Bishop Wrychuss. "I do," they said in unison. Ezra listened for Leonard's voice and heard it two boys over. In fact, he listened for Leonard's voice more so than he paid attention to the agreements his own was shaping.

"Do you believe the Christian Faith as it is set forth in the Apostles' Creed?"

"I do."

Bishop Wrychuss opened his right hand, palm towards the ceiling, while the other held the small book he was reciting from, and motioned toward Ezra and his classmates, "Will you endeavor to keep God's holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of your life?"