The Blessed - By Tonya Hurley Page 0,101

“It’s a battle we’ve been losing for too long. It is a battle you must win.”

“Battle?”

“We are at war, and you are warriors. You are the fulfillment of almost two thousand years of devotion.”

“I don’t know how to fight,” Agnes said nervously.

“You are all fighters. The weapons you need are inside you,” Sebastian promised. “The gift you have received will strengthen your mind and body. Not just your soul. When you call on these tools, they will be there.”

“You said your mission was accomplished,” Agnes said. “What was your second miracle?”

“You.”

The pride in his voice was tempered by the sadness in his eyes.

“You were different people when you left this room, than when you entered it,” he said. “There is no changing it now.”

“So bring on the heavenly host, then!” She couldn’t quite explain it, but Cecilia was itching for a fight. For her, passivity was not part of this process.

“You are the heavenly host, Cecilia,” Sebastian said ominously. “There is no army of angels coming to save you.”

“Three girls and a guy from Brooklyn.”

“Why not,” he said simply.

His words hung in the air like a punishment. A death sentence.

“Be yourself,” Cecilia summed up.

“Trust yourself,” Agnes said.

“Save yourself,” Lucy whispered, recalling the first words of their meeting.

“You have to before you can save anyone else. Or love anyone else.”

“I believe you,” Lucy said.

“Don’t believe me,” he said. “Have faith.”

“What’s the difference?” Agnes asked.

“A child believes. In magic. In fairies. In monsters. Faith is knowledge. Certainty. Without it, we fail.”

“But faith in what?”

“Start with yourself.”

“I believe in love,” Agnes said.

Sebastian reached for her hand.

“Love is just the faith you place in someone else.”

“Then I have faith in you,” Agnes said.

A loud noise from the church above suddenly intruded.

“They’re here,” he said, preparing himself.

“I’m coming with you,” Cecilia demanded.

He took her by the shoulders gently, but firmly.

“No. You will be stronger together,” he insisted.

The rumble upstairs was getting louder and the enemy closer. He ran for the staircase.

“So, if we believe you, then we’ll die?” Agnes shouted at him.

Sebastian stopped, his back facing them. He looked up to the ceiling, mustering all his strength for his answer.

“No, if you believe me, you’ll never die.”

Monsignor Piazza took to his bedroom kneeler. He was agitated. Troubled. He removed his cassock and let it fall to his waist, exposing a scarred torso. He reached for the length of rope with knotted cords. The discipline had been preserved in the glass reliquary box in the chapel and was assumed to have belonged to one of the workers who died there, along with the rosaries, hair shirt, and other discouraged items of mortification used by the most faithful. It was the only thing he took. Father Piazza swung it over one shoulder and the next, again and again, in time, a click track to his suffering. He began to bleed. He began to pray.

The old man’s lips moved silently, only occasionally speaking words out loud. Fragments of supplications he knew by heart. In this pain, he sought redemption and punishment for his sins. He literally beat himself up over his betrayal of the boy who was once in his care. With each stroke he did penance for his naïveté. With each tear in his back, he repented his arrogance.

He was the one who shut off the chapel, after all. He was the one who discouraged the cult that had developed around the “subway saints,” as the neighborhood people called them. All in the name of modernity. He found himself on the slippery slope of secularity long before Sebastian ever came to him.

Raising his profile within the community, outside the church even, as a “voice of reason,” by certain public officials, for which he was rewarded with the trappings of status: board memberships, awards dinners, and weekend stays at seaside mansions. So that when Sebastian did come, with his unorthodox musings, wild eyes, sharp tongue, and spiritual fervor, he couldn’t believe him, wouldn’t recognize the truth staring him right in the face. Such people were crazy, not holy, he’d come to assume.

But now he knew. Now he did not celebrate. He suffered. He measured his legacy not in what he had gained, but in what he had lost, or given away at least. His church. His faith. And Sebastian.

In his urgent prayers he chastised himself and reminded himself of what he had gradually forgotten.

Bless all our life and the hour of our death.

The priest dropped the cord and clasped his hands tightly under his chin.

Amen.

“God forgive me,” he