Chapter 22 Aleys #2
She looks back up at the crucifix and doesn’t answer for a moment. Her capable hands lie quiet in her lap. Finally, she speaks. “You know, I believe he did.”
The magistra stands, smooths her dress. “Blow out the candle when you leave.” Her eyes contain an equal measure of joy and sorrow. “And Aleys? It’s not enough to be in love with love. You must be willing to suffer with him, too.”
The light seems to dim when Sophia leaves.
Aleys suppresses a shiver and slides her hands deeper into her sleeves.
How is she supposed to suffer with Christ?
She thinks of the suffering lying in the hospital now, their moaning and thrashing, the awful final stillness that comes over them.
She can witness their pain, she can give comfort and tell stories, but she doesn’t want to inhabit their suffering.
Not the way Sophia means. And if she can’t manage even that, how is she supposed to understand the suffering of God?
Aleys regards Christ’s hanging head, his seeping wounds, and feels—what?
Reverence, yes. Always. But mostly fear.
She hardly recognizes him. This is not the playful God, the divinity in dust motes and birdsong.
She’s wary of this Jesus, imagines him raising his head and fixing her with disappointed eyes.
Why can you not gaze upon my wounds? She turns her head away from the gory thorned Christ. He frightens her, and she’s ashamed of that.
She knows he sees her cowardice. Just as a horse will buck a frightened rider, she is sure that Christ sees into her heart and feels her shrink from his agony.
She presses her hands into her ribs. She cannot bear to look at him.
It’s too big, his sacrifice, incomprehensible. It’s too much to witness.
A whisper seeps into her head, Sophia’s voice: If you cannot comprehend, imagine.
But what should she imagine?
His last night.
So she shuts her eyes and pictures him at the end of the meal, his last with the apostles.
Christ knows that he will be arrested in the morning.
He has already given them bread and wine in remembrance, has initiated them into the rite of his bodily sacrifice, has named his betrayer.
Judas has slunk from the house. What does Jesus feel?
She doesn’t know. She searches inside, finds nothing.
You are an apostle. Follow.
Aleys trails them through the streets of Jerusalem, back to Gethsemane, where they have their camp outside the grove.
Some of them, the younger ones, are giddy after the good supper.
They throw their arms about each other as they go up the hill.
The older disciples are sober, they have understood his meaning, and they turn inward in contemplation, ignoring the shouts of the youth.
The evening air bears the kiss of spring. Crickets call softly.
She waits outside the camp until she sees him emerge alone.
From the darkening shadow of olives, Aleys follows Jesus, sees he is barefoot, has left his sandals behind, is stepping out with naked sole over flinted ground.
She looks back, sees Peter, James, and Paul settling against gnarled trunks, where sleep will take them soon.
She wants to slap them awake but knows she cannot.
Jesus looks back at them, hesitates, then moves on.
He is sad. She can feel this much. She will walk with him.
The stones are sharp as barbs, they lie hard upon the ground and pierce his feet.
He does not flinch. And then she understands.
He knows what is coming, and it’s not only scourge, thorns, lance, nails.
These are the least of his sorrows. It’s the eyes of Judas.
What are these bodily pains compared to the betrayal to come at dawn?
Aleys follows him deeper into the grove as the heavens glow indigo and ink.
He stumbles, then grasps a tree, and he goes like that, from branch to branch, tree to tree, the olives his last companions, until he passes even them, at the edge of the grove, overlooking the valley.
And there he calls out a single word: “Abba.” It rings over the valley, his anguish drifts down upon sleeping creatures, the cry of the child whose father is fearsome and far.
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”
His fear, she feels it now. It’s the fear of any mortal creature, the love of self and life and body, the love of heartbeat and breath, the love of tongue against roof, of sweetness of sleep, of warmth of the fire, of cricket song.
She presses her hands to her face and loves the soft grab of flesh to flesh and finds that tears have made her cheekbones slippery.
How could God ask this of his son? God asks too much. More than she has.
Then from Christ’s mouth, a soft cry: “Thy will be done.”
How? she asks him. Why?
Draw near, he says. I will show you.
He looks at her then, her Christ, with his wounded eyes, and she sees what she had not seen before.
He is in love. He is in love with her, he is in love with the sparrow and the river, he is in love with the root and trunk and flower of it all, the entire creation, and his fear and his love are inseparable.
He has love even for the fear, and it is through the vulnerable door, the portal of fear, the spear in his side that will come tomorrow, that Aleys glimpses, for a fleeting moment, the unutterable vastness of her beloved.
She returns to the dormitory, shaken. She had no idea who she loved.