The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [55]
As the months passed, he began to feel as though something in his chest were loosening, as though something that had kept a grip on his heart had begun to let go. And then one night, the image of a full-blown rose unfolding petal by petal from its tightly wrapped bud came to him in a brief wordless dream and he woke from it, shattered, face wet with tears shed in sleep.
He told no one of this dream, tried hard to forget it himself. But when he was seventeen, he entered the novitiate.
Many were surprised, but as D. W. Yarbrough pointed out, Emilio had a good deal in common with the Basque soldier who had founded the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century. Like Ignatius of Loyola, Emilio Sandoz had known brutality and death and stinking fear, and as the days of silence during the Long Retreat passed, he had a past worthy of the name to reconsider and to turn away from.
Things that drove other young men from the path to priesthood were balm to him: the ordo regularis, the liturgical cadences, the quiet, the purposefulness. Even the celibacy. For, looking back on his chaotic youth, Emilio had no experience of sex that was not about power or pride or lust undiluted by affection. It was easy to believe that to live as a celibate was a charism—a special kind of grace. And so, it began: after the novitiate, classical and humane studies, and then philosophy. Regency, when the scholastic was sent out to teach in one of the Society’s high schools. Then years of theology with ordination at last, and from there further: to tertianship and final vows. Perhaps three out of ten who began Jesuit formation stayed the course. Emilio Sandoz, to the astonishment of many who’d known him as a boy, was among them.
And yet, in all those years of preparation, the prayer that had resonated most strongly in his soul was the cry, "Lord, I believe. Help me in my disbelief."
He found the life of Jesus profoundly moving; the miracles, on the other hand, seemed a barrier to faith, and he tended to explain them to himself in rational terms. It was as though there were only seven loaves and seven fishes. Maybe the miracle was that people shared what they had with strangers, he thought in the darkness.
He was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it. Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn’t perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt. After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward. As D.W. once told him, "Son, sometimes it’s enough just to act less like a shithead." And by that kindly if inelegant standard, Emilio Sandoz could believe himself to be a man of God.
So, while he hoped someday to find his way to a place in his soul that was closed to him now, he was content to be where he was. He never asked God to prove His existence to little Emilio Sandoz, just because he was acting less like a shithead nowadays. He never asked for anything, really. What he’d been given was more than enough to be grateful for, whether or not God was there to receive or care about thanks.
Lying in bed, that warm August night, he felt no Presence. He was aware of no Voice. He felt as alone in the cosmos as ever. But he was beginning to find it hard to avoid thinking that if ever a man had wanted a sign from God, Emilio Sandoz had been hit square in the face with one this morning, at Arecibo.
He slept, after that. Sometime just before dawn the next morning, he had a dream. He was sitting in the dark, in a small place. He was alone and it was very quiet and he could hear himself breathing, the blood singing in his ears. Then