The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [29]
Castle made some additional notes in Bartholomew’s file.
“Are your wrist wounds painful?” he asked.
“Not all the time.”
“How about now?”
“No, they are not painful now.”
“Are they bleeding now?”
“Not that I know.”
“You went unconscious at the altar when the wounds on your wrists appeared. Tell me what happened.”
“Again, you won’t believe me if I tell you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“When the stigmata hit me, while I was saying Mass, it felt like I had traveled back in time again. I was right back at Golgotha on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, just like I experienced when I died and went to Heaven. Only this time, I was the person being nailed to the cross. Somehow I had taken the place of Christ and I was feeling his pain. The nails were being driven through my wrists. The pain was excruciating. I blacked out because I couldn’t bear the pain. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I have no idea how I got to Golgotha and I have no idea how I got back here.”
“You were a successful physicist,” Castle said. “Don’t you consider time travel far-fetched?”
“No, I don’t,” Bartholomew said, responding firmly. “You may not know much about modern physics, but I was a particle physicist. I was looking for what Einstein called the unified field theory. Multiple dimensions and time travel were part of what I studied.”
“Do you think time travel is possible?” Castle asked skeptically.
“It’s a lot more than what Jules Verne imagined,” Bartholomew answered. “I doubt if you want me to give you a graduate course in particle physics, but a lot of physicists, including me, think there are multiple dimensions, maybe as many as ten dimensions, that define our universe, not just length, height, width, and time.”
“What made you change careers and decide to become a priest?” Castle asked.
“It was my mother’s death. My mother raised me and I was devoted to her. She is maybe the only person in my life that I truly loved. After her death, I felt I needed to get closer to God. Suddenly, physics seemed to me to be going nowhere. Searching for a unified field theory only took me away from my mother while she was alive and the knowledge I gained there was no help to me whatsoever in healing her illness. She slipped away from me before I was ready to let her go.”
“How did your mother die?”
“She had ALS. I did everything I could to save her, but day by day her condition deteriorated. At the end, she lost all control of her muscles. She couldn’t even speak. I was with her, but I never really got to say good-bye to her.”
“How did you feel when she died?”
“At first I was angry,” he recalled. “Then I felt lost. I was aimless. Nothing seemed to matter.”
“Did you blame God when she died?”
“No, I blamed myself. Maybe if I had been a better son, I would have seen her illness coming on earlier, when there might have been something we could have done to prolong her life.”
“That’s exactly what you said Jesus told you about me and my wife,” Castle said. Interesting, he thought to himself. “Now tell me why you decided to become a priest.”
“I remembered my mother had always told me she believed I had a vocation and that I would have been happier had I become a priest.”
“Did you agree?”
“Not when she was alive, but after she died, it all made sense to me. I was searching for God in physics and getting nowhere. I decided to search for God in the priesthood and ever since I made that decision, my life seems to have suddenly gained purpose.”
“What about your father?”
“He died three months before I was born. In a work-related accident, I believe. I know almost nothing about my father, not even what he looked like. My mother was always reluctant to speak about him, even when I asked, and there were no photographs of him that I ever saw.”
“How about other family? Do you have any brothers or sisters that I should know about?