The Book of Love (53 page)

“Is this why you kept Lucia Santos in solitary confinement for almost eighty years?”

Father Girolamo wasn’t the least bit bothered by the question. His reply was matter-of-fact. “Yes.”

“And she wasn’t able to give you everything you needed over eight decades?”

“She wasn’t always successful. And she certainly wasn’t always cooperative, which is why we had to isolate her so completely. Those born under your stars are…headstrong.”

“Why do you think I can give you what you want, here and now? Why do you think I will, even if I can?”

“Because you’re as curious as we are. And even if you die finding out what is in that Book, you won’t resist the opportunity to see it. How can you? You were born for this day, and you know that to be true.”

“And how do I know you won’t try to lock me up as you did Lucia? Or worse?”

“You don’t know that. But it is a risk I think you will take.”

“My friends will figure this out quickly. They’ll find me, no matter what you decide to do.”

“Perhaps. But your work is controversial and you’ve made many enemies, haven’t you? You’ve run afoul of any number of fundamentalist groups and various crackpots. You have recently reported being robbed and followed in Rome to the authorities there. The death threats you receive have been widely reported in the media. It would be easy to the point of effortless to convince the authorities that one of those came to fruition. Checkmate, signorina. You cannot beat us at a game we play better than anyone in the world, and have done for nearly two thousand years. We will do with you what we will, just as we have done with all the women who preceded you.”

“But the truth…”

“Truth? What is truth?” He was suddenly impatient with her, as if he realized that he was embarking upon an argument with the enemy, and snapped to control the subject. “The truth is that it is possible for you to avoid the fate of Modesta. If the information you provide is of value, it will impact our decision regarding your fate. For example, if you were to determine that the Book of Love confirms our established and holy doctrine, and were willing to write such a thing, your circumstances could be entirely different.”

Maureen was momentarily speechless. She found her voice after a moment of hesitation. “Are you…are you offering me a…deal?”

For all of his earlier bravado about their omnipotence, Girolamo de Pazzi had a painful admission to make. “The Church is at an impasse. For the first time, we are fighting a battle in which we may ultimately be outmatched, and that is the war of words. We cannot control the information that is flooding out into the world any longer. So we must
find new ways to impact it. Young people are listening to you. Your work is in languages all over the world. If you used this growing platform to affirm our position rather than oppose it, it could beneficial to you, to your friends, and to your cousin. Think of the impact if you, the heretic, recanted because you have seen the light. Think of the impact if you were to come back to the one true religion. It would be a tremendous collaboration, and a positive force for everyone involved.”

Maureen wanted to understand completely. “Are you asking me to write a book that says that traditional Church doctrine is the truth, and everything I have ever written and stood for in opposition to that is a lie? How can I do that?”

“You will have to recant. You will have to say that you created the Arques gospel as a forgery to make a fortune, and that you have repented. We will then come forward and offer you our forgiveness as you return to the embrace of Holy Mother Church and abandon your search for heresy.”

Maureen was stunned into silence by the offer. She thought of the plaque in Bérenger Sinclair’s library, the one with the quote from Joan of Arc,
“I would rather die than do something I know to be against God’s will.”
Thinking of Bérenger at that moment gave her strength.

She remained silent, causing de Pazzi to revert to his more tried tactic. “But should you choose otherwise…there is no telling what could happen. To any of you.”

Maureen’s mind was spinning with the possible outcomes of this situation. It was very hard to think under the heavy breathing of the men in the dark hoods, the ancient priest with his raspy voice and his outrageous proposition, and the somewhat ominous presence of the wooden crate on the adjacent altar. She gestured to the box.

“Is it in there? May I see it now?”

Girolamo de Pazzi, for all his arrogant intolerance and twisted thinking, still believed himself to be a holy man. He knelt before the crate and said a prayer under his breath, genuflecting, then rising. He reached into the crate, which had no lid, and removed from within another, smaller box. This was ancient and elegant, a bejeweled reliquary
made specifically to contain the most sacred documents in Christendom, and beyond. The gilding of the hinges glittered in the candlelight, and Maureen let out a little squeal against her will as she saw the lid of the case. It was inlaid with jewels in the shape of a six-petaled rose, identical to the center of the Chartres labyrinth.

De Pazzi opened the jeweled casket and placed it before her, but she noticed that he did not reach in to touch the book itself. He seemed to be careful not to make physical contact with the actual item as he pushed the box in her direction across the altar. “Take it out,” he ordered. “And…follow your instincts. Or your voices. Or whatever comes to you. Lucia heard the voice of Our Lady when she held the book, but you may respond to it differently. You are a very different creature than the others.” He said this last as if looking at an insect—a particularly abhorrent and poisonous insect—under a microscope.

Maureen, as petite as she was, had to stand to see inside the box. She saw that the cover was plain, apparently a type of animal hide—perhaps the pergama skins she had read were used in ancient Greece. She touched the cover and felt nothing for a moment, but as she rested her palms flat on the skin, they began to tingle. The sensation ran slowly up her arms and moved through her entire body. She closed her eyes as this happened, and saw behind them the vision of Easa from her dream. She heard him then, as she had heard him before:

The fear drained from Maureen’s body as she lifted the Book from its resting place in the jeweled casket. She could hear Easa’s voice in her head, speaking rapidly now, in phrases from his own writings.

Maureen chose faith.

She opened the book, determined to cherish this moment of holding something so sacred, in spite of the circumstances that surrounded her. Ignoring the old priest and his henchmen completely now, she ran her fingers over the faded pages in reverence. She could not read the ancient writing: some of it looked like Greek; some of it appeared to be Aramaic; some of it was definitely Hebrew. But it didn’t matter. This was not a question of reading the words, for something else was happening as Maureen held the Book of Love. As in her dream, the pages began to grow brighter, letters shimmering with indigo light, blue and violet patterns on the heavy, linenlike paper. The light grew brighter as it emanated from the Book, filling the room now, seeming to swirl with special intensity around the statue of Our Lady Under the Earth. The light penetrated Maureen’s body; she could feel its heat and radiance filling her. And as it did, she was absorbing the Book of Love. She did not need to read it or to see it in translation. She was becoming it, embodying the teachings in their entirety as the vibrant blue light ran through her.

Visions came in rapid succession: Solomon and Sheba, Jesus and Magdalene, his mother Mary and his grandmother Anne, his daughter Sarah-Tamar. She saw the little girl in Orval—
I am not who you think I am
—followed by the ethereal and ultimately feminine apparition of the Holy Spirit in Knock. And then came an understanding so clear that it brought her to her knees, clutching the Book to her heart. Jesus had written this Book of Love as a celebration of the women in his life, their wisdom and grace. This was his tribute and his monument to the lost feminine principle of spirituality that had brought him to this truth: that our father and mother in heaven are One in their union, that they love us, their children, and that as the time returns, we come back in all our forms as our Creator made us in their holy image, male and female, to experience love over and over again.

It was the Nazarene mission of Jesus and his followers to bring the balance back, to restore Asherah to her throne beside her beloved El, and to reunite humankind in an understanding of that love here on
earth. Jesus died trying to make the world understand the power of love, while resurrecting the divine element of feminine spirituality in balance with the divine masculine.

The light grew brighter, the room spun faster, as Maureen clung to the Book, listening, feeling, understanding everything that Easa was conveying to her: Love, and only love, is real. Everything else is an illusion that keeps us from the purity of the experience that our parents in heaven created for us. And Jesus did not mean for us to create a new religion
about him
. He meant for us to reclaim the truth as it had been distorted over time. A truth that was simple and beautiful and about love in all its forms: romantic, parental, filial, neighborly. It wasn’t so much a New Covenant as it was the
original
Covenant coming back to us in his hand, with him as the messenger: him, and his family of spirit. Us and our families of spirit.

She heard him whisper it, and now the phrase reverberated with new meaning. The time returns was the most sacred of the prophecies because it foretold the second coming. But the second coming was not the physical return of Jesus. It was the return of his message and his teachings through a global effort of love and service.

Maureen was lost in the visions as she came to another understanding: that she had seen this specific, beautiful, radiant blue light very recently—in the stained glass right here in Chartres Cathedral. She knew then without any doubt that the builders of this temple to love had seen this light themselves and reproduced it so that it would shine on each individual who entered, blessing them with a fraction of what she was experiencing now.

Her mind was spinning with all she had seen on the exterior of the cathedral. Solomon and Sheba, the tragic and lovely Modesta, the many Marys, Saint Anne, the countless, nameless women who were celebrated in bas-relief. The sculptures flashed through her consciousness in rapid succession. What did they all have in common?

Maureen saw now, in her mind’s eye, the filtered light from the stained glass in the main cathedral as she had walked the labyrinth earlier that morning; it shimmered around her as she was lost in the vision. When she took this turn, she could see the window of Mary Magdalene with her true story told in elaborate and careful detail. All the while, the great western rose shone its sacred blue light into the center of the labyrinth. She walked faster now, in rhythm with the escalating beat of her heart, as other windows in the cathedral came to life: Saint Anne was aged and wise; the majestic Blue Madonna was strong and compassionate; lives of saints and martyrs danced around her as she continued in the circuits of the labyrinth. She was being drawn to the center by a force that was extraordinary and magnetic. Her pace quickened and her heart pounded as the blue light pulled her into the central temple, into the tabernacle, into the place where the voice of God can be heard for those with ears to hear.

Oh, sweet Easa. Is this what you’ve been trying to tell us all along? Could it have always been this simple?

She saw him now, standing in the center of the labyrinth with his kind, dark eyes. In his hands he held the tools of the master mason, the compass and the square. Easa held them out together so that they formed the elongated diamond shape that represented the sacred union of beloveds. Behind him now appeared his own beloved: Mary Magdalene, a vision of auburn hair and ethereal beauty, arriving at his side.

They looked at her in the vision, across time and space, and Easa said once more, as he gestured around him to indicate the entire, massive structure of the cathedral,
“Behold, the Book of Love. You must share it with the world and fulfill the promise that you made. Our truth has been in darkness for too long.”

The sob that broke through Maureen’s body echoed through the ancient stone of Chartres. She raised her head and the kaleidoscope of stained glass prisms from her vision swirled past her through her tears. Finally, she understood.

It wasn’t that the Book of Love was in Chartres Cathedral. It wasn’t that the Libro Rosso was in Chartres Cathedral. The most holy teachings of Christianity, perhaps of all humanity, weren’t hidden
in
Chartres Cathedral.

They
were
Chartres Cathedral.

The cathedral had often been called “a book made in stone” by the many writers through history who had celebrated its grandeur. How right they were.

Maureen saw clearly now the master architect in her vision, and this time he was a man with a terrible zigzagging scar across one side of his face. He was guiding the sculptural program that would encase the Book of Love in stone for all humanity to learn and celebrate for all time. The teachings of the Order lived on here, and the tradition of the Master lived with it.

The entire Libro Rosso had been built into the façade and the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, an eternal book in stone that could never be destroyed by the Church, as the Church would never destroy itself. It was an utterly brilliant strategy. The labyrinth was installed at its center as the starting point of initiation for all pilgrims who would have eyes to see and ears to hear. Walking the labyrinth allowed the heart and spirit access to the codes that enshrined the Book of Love within this unparalleled temple.