I put my arm around Gilly’s waist as I knelt before James’s coffin and said the Lord’s Prayer. I was thinking, What just happened? What am I supposed to understand from this? Was that really the Word of God? Why has He left me to suffer again?
It came together as our car followed the hearse to the church. I had a lingering sense of what I’d experienced in the funeral parlor. I was sitting in the backseat of a hired car with Gilly beside me. And some vestigial part of me was lying in the coffin instead of James.
I understood.
God was showing me that life and death were transient states, indivisible parts of a whole.
I would see James again. I would be with my love.
Part Five
Chapter 108
IT WAS forty-five nippy degrees in New York City this Sunday morning in February, and I was excited that I would be saying Mass at the opening of the three hundredth JMJ church.
St. Barnabas was a stately, gray stone church in the East Village, built on a green in the eighteen hundreds, which over the last two hundred years had become a neighborhood.
The church had been closed by the Archdiocese of New York in 2008, along with more than two hundred and fifty other churches that had fallen into disrepair. A benefactor had bought St. Barnabas at auction, and it was now to be reopened as a JMJ church.
I walked anonymously through the throng of Sunday shoppers on East Fourth Street in my long, navy-blue coat and knitted hat and found the old church wedged between a Comfy Diner and an antique print shop, graffiti-free and perfectly intact.
When I entered the church through the red-painted doors, I had expected to be welcomed by Father Hubert Clemente. But the young priest was not alone. He seemed a little awed and off balance as he introduced me to Father Giancarlo Raphael, who wore his black vestments and cummerbund with European flair.
Father Raphael said in heavily accented English that he had just arrived from Vatican City to see me. He looked pleased and confident, but I didn’t get it.
“Pardon me. Could you say that again?”
As congregants flowed past me into the nave, Father Raphael explained, “Forgive me. I should say I’m here on behalf of Pope Gregory. I hope to have a few words with you.”
I was startled, to say the least. I managed to say, “Father Raphael, I am deeply humbled, but, as I have just enough time to get ready, can you wait? The congregation…”
“Of course. I am eager for your Mass.”
After I finished a walk-through with Father Clemente, he introduced me to his rapt congregation.
“Good friends,” he said, “you know all about our guest, who has become a guiding light to so many Catholics who have felt sidelined by the Church.
“She eschews any title but likes to be called, simply, Brigid. And that humility, that belief that we are all the same in the eyes of God, is the essence of JMJ principles that we will be adopting here.”
I felt welcomed and at peace as I began the Mass, but I couldn’t quite stop thinking about Father Raphael, the pope’s messenger, sitting three rows back on the aisle.
He was waiting for me when I left the sacristy in my street clothes, as were dozens of congregants. I shook hands and exchanged kind words, and I signed scraps of paper to commemorate the occasion. Father Raphael stood to the side until I was finally alone.
And then he had all my attention.
“Brigid,” he said, “I have a special invitation for you.” He took an envelope from his coat pocket. My name was inscribed in calligraphy, and in the corner of the envelope was a coat of arms, the emblem of the Holy See.
Father Raphael held the envelope out to me, and when I took it, it felt warm to the touch.
“His Holiness Pope Gregory would like very much to meet you. These airline tickets are for you and your daughter, and my card is inside, too. Please let me know when it would be convenient for you to come to the Vatican.”
Chapter 109
THE PEACEFULNESS of flight above the clouds gave way too quickly to the near riot that was waiting for Gilly and me at Fiumicino Airport.
We were met just outside customs by two very fit men wearing the smart blue uniforms of the Corps of Gendarmes of Vatican City State. Our driver was Alberto Rizzo, and our guard was Giuseppe Marone, who carried our slight luggage through the airport.
I gripped Gilly’s hand and followed our assigned guards out under the swooping marquis, toward the street, when we were blocked by protesters who were shouting my name, calling me a heretic and the devil. One of them, a woman my age, was brandishing a cross. She said pleasantly, “I wish you to die.”
Giuseppe strong-armed the woman out of the way. Alberto shielded us from behind, and we pushed forward through the loud and ugly crowd.
I was utterly shaken by the hatred.
I could stand up for myself, but this attack also affected Gilly. I kept my cool for my daughter’s sake and held her close to my side until we were safely inside a black Mercedes with Vatican City plates.
Still, angry people, their faces bloated with hate, hammered on the car windows and roof with their fists.