Eileen McCafferty Di Franco, RCWP, Presides atSt. Mary Magdala Community Liturgy onChristmas Eve in Philadelphia area.
God walked up and down the streets of downtown Philadelphia mourning and weeping in its many vales of tears. The people most of the city tries to forget huddled together on the park benches as the wintry February wind howled between the gleaming skyscrapers. God looked up at the towers of Liberty 1 and Liberty II and sighed. Philadelphia had come a long way from the days when no building could stand taller than City Hall. It was a shame that except for Sister Mary Scullion and Project Home, the city fathers and mothers still couldn’t figure out what to do with the homeless.
God looked sadly at Her people waiting for their handouts of daily bread, right in the shadow of a church dedicated to Her. “And still my children cry,” She thought as she passed by the court building and the public library.
God was certainly well acquainted with the sin all around her. After all, She had given human beings free will. Sin was a natural outcome of Her choice to let people learn. She knew that people would lie, cheat, fornicate, avenge, fight, envy and lust. She forgave sin because it was part of the human condition. No human being could ever be perfect. The divine goal had always been wholeness rather than perfection.
God ran Her hands through Her curly black hair and wiped away Her tears. What had happened in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia took sin to new level. What really made Her angry, if She could be angry, and want to throw thunderbolts, if there were such things, was the idolatrous use of Her Holy Name to justify heinous sin. As the late February wind gathered into a full frontal attack, God shouted, “Thou SHALT NOT take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain,” at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul.
The passers-by on 18th St. lifted up the heads they had bowed before the wind. What was that sound? When they saw a tall, well-dressed beautiful young woman with curly black hair and bright green eyes standing in the park, they resumed their walk. Thank God none of the park denizens was acting crazy today.
In his office, Cardinal Rigali heard the wind race around the corner of his office. Something in the wind made him get up and look out the window. A very tall woman with curly black hair caught his eye. He tried to move away from the window but stood transfixed by her eyes. His knees began to feel a bit weak. How could he see her eyes from this distance? And why was she waving at him?
His work beckoned. Several days before he learned that the city was going to try the former Vicar of the Clergy, the Very Reverend William Lynn for child endangerment. In His Eminence’s opinion, Msgr. Lynn had only done what he had been directed to do. A cardinal always knows what’s best for his diocese. The sacred and the profane world are so different and only he, Justin Rigali, can tell the difference between the two because his feet are planted so firmly in the former. All those people out there, eating, drinking, carousing in sin and using birth control - what could they know about the sacred work entrusted to him? What do they know about the sacred? He, the cardinal archbishop of Philadelphia had worked hard to do the Lord’s work to keep people steadfast in their faith and devoted to the church of Jesus Christ. His was the voice of authority. Only he could interpret the will and word of God. Jesus, Himself, had put bishops in charge of the church. The cardinal rested peacefully each night, assured in that knowledge.
Cardinal Rigali tried again to withdraw his eyes from the woman outside. His heart began beating fast as he head a female voice say quite clearly in his head, “Don’t kid yourself, my son. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no strange gods before me. Do not be an idolater. Cease and desist from taking My Name in vain.” To his amazement, he could see Her lips mouthing the words. The cardinal began to sweat.
The woman suddenly withdrew her eyes and the cardinal relaxed. He saw her approach the door to the archdiocesan office and smiled. The guards would stop her. He sat down, adjusted his pectoral cross and his red beanie, and began looking at the charges against his loyal deputy.
The door opened almost immediately. The cardinal’s eyes narrowed. He had told his secretary not to disturb him. His mouth opened to complain when he saw the tall woman in question entering his office.
The cardinal demanded, “Who let you in?” and reached for his phone.
“Don’t bother, Justin,” God said mildly. “The phone won’t work. And don’t be mad at your secretary. He didn’t see Me. No one did. No one but you.”
Justin began inching towards the door. This woman was insane. He was tired of those street people hanging around in the park.
God walked around to the chair Justin had just vacated, sat down, and crossed her long legs. She removed a white wool shawl from Her shoulders and took out her computer from her green bag. “Sit down,” She directed peremptorily, pointing to the visitor’s chair in front of his desk. “And stop staring at My arms. Mothers have the strongest arms in the world. The biggest hearts too. You should talk to women more often and stop worrying about them taking over things. It would stop you from saying some really stupid stuff about things you don’t remotely understand.”
Justin sat down and crossed his arms across his chest. If he made a scene, he’d have trouble explaining how this lovely young woman with bare arms came to visit him so secretly. God narrowed Her eyes as She stared at his broad red cummerbund and the red piping on his cassock. “You silly, pitiful men. You can’t imagine God as female. You really were expecting a God who looked and acted like you?” “Well,” She said, her voice rising, “Dream on!” Justin looked at the window as the wind seemed to roar again. “It wasn’t the wind,” God said calmly, as She downloaded the Grand Jury Report.
“Who are you?” he demanded. Justin was a man who gave orders. He could say to the Vicar of the Clergy, “Go cover up the sins of my brother priests and it would be done without question. He would say to his loyal men, “Keep those heretics away from communing with God,” and they would do so, even when their better instincts indicated otherwise. When some silly women from WOC asked, “What would Jesus do?” Justin could only laugh. He always did what Jesus would want him to do. Protect the church. Secure it from scandal. Eliminate dissenters. Reserve the Lord for the deserving. And he used priest underlings, wealthy patrons, lawyers, insurance agents, controllers, and public relations people to do his bidding, which after all, was really the Will of God.
God noted his thoughts and looked up from Her computer. In fact, She stood up and said. “I am the Lord thy God.” The cardinal’s mind recoiled in protest in spite of the vision of a woman clothed in the sun with a crown of stars on her head, Looking down from Her great height, She added, “ I shall be Who I shall be. I wish you guys would be more anal about that sort of translation and worry less about that consubstantial nonsense. Do you think complicated words can ever describe Me?”
Then God was back in her seat leaning towards Justin, Her chin in Her hand. Justin refused to look into Her eyes. “You know, Justin, men like you continue to amaze Me. I have given you visions, signs, indeed, even portents if you believe in prophecy, and yet you disbelieve. The message is so big, a runner would see it as My son Habbakuk wrote so many years ago. Yet, you destroy the prophets among you. Your idolatry blinds you. You refuse to see me so You cannot believe in Me. All you see is yourself. You are seeing the house that you think Justin built, the house you think Rome built. But he who loses his life will find it. Lose yourself in Me, Justin. Forget about who you think you are. Forget about who you think I AM. You have been blessed with a great gift, Justin, and yet you refuse to accept it.”
Justin sat still, his eyes staring straight in front of him, refusing to meet the eyes of God. He had worked really hard to get to this place. All those years in Rome, rubbing elbows and clinking wine glasses in the finest restaurants in town with the most powerful men in the world meant a great deal to him.
“Justin, my boy, I would not worry about all those clanging brass cymbals in Rome any more. The only power they have, as my son Tom McMahon said on a wonderful e-group to which you should subscribe because you might learn something about the church you lead, is the power to use something they call god as a threat. If you truly believed in Me, as my daughter Marguerite Sexton said when she sadly left the church, you would never, ever use ME, the Lord, thy God, as a weapon against your sisters and brothers.”
God shrugged at Justin’s flat affect and continued to read through the 2011 Grand Jury Report mumbling “Yuck” and “Gross.”
“You do this type of thing and then believe you speak for Me? Quite frankly Justin, I am suffering from what your psychologists call cognitive dissonance. You have major hissy fits over my sons Roy and Bill and my daughters, the priests and then you coddle criminals, sick men who did these things?” She pointed in disgust at the computer. “You, my son – and all your brothers- not only presume, you also engaged in some really bad judgment.”
God closed Her computer and put Her flash drive into Her purse. “Now, I’ve had more than enough of this stuff. You have screwed up big time being a shepherd. Few recognize your voice. You left your flock alone and instead protected the wolves whom you allowed to roam in your midst with impunity. It is always and everywhere My will and intention to protect the weak and the vulnerable. It is in doing this that you give Me glory and honor. Why do you think I told believers to see Me in all humanity?”
Justin remained unconvinced. This self-described God was a WOC plant. He knew these women well. They would do anything, even hire a master magician, to push their feminist agenda. All they wanted to do was destroy the church, which had grown up perfectly intact from the heads of the church, the apostles. The male, celibate clergy had served the world well these last centuries. It would not change any time soon, certainly not while he was in charge. The church as it now existed was the will of God. Case closed.
God looked sadly at the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia. “ You are not in charge, son. I AM. If you were, as you claim, ontologically changed by Holy Orders, you would know Me and Mine. Instead, you know only you and yours. And so you will fail.” God stood up and prepared to leave.
Justin’s secretary walked into the office. “Your Eminence, I heard strange noises and thought…” The man closed his mouth and stood in stunned silence watching as God draped her white shawl over Her broad shoulders. “Your Eminence,” he fairly gasped, “Who is this woman? How did she get in here?”
“I AM,” She replied, “The Lord, thy God.” The vision of God filled the room with a great pulsating light that extinguished the winter darkness with each beat of God’s heart. The secretary got down on his knees and looked up at the divine as though through the clouds of heaven. The stars in Her crown twinkled in a bright sky. He could see the world at Her feet. “Now you can dismiss your servant,” he began, when the cardinal interrupted. “This is all a ploy, get off your knees, John. It’s those WOC women priests at it again.”
The secretary saw blood from the wounds in her hands drip onto her shawl. “No, no, no Your Eminence,’ he protested, “This is real. Look at Her hands! We have met the Lord! I must go and tell the others! It’s the Second Coming! Jesus has returned! Praise God!” Then remembering his sins, for they were many, John bowed his head and wept. “God, please forgive me,” he said over and over again, holding Her Hands and kissing them with great fervor. John felt Her grace, Her sweetness, and Her divine life flow through Her hands to him. He was forgiven.
God gently brought John to his feet and wiped the tears from his eyes with Her shawl. “Not just yet, John. Please keep this Good News to yourself for there is much business to conduct,” She said. “But I do want you to bring Anthony Bevilaqua to this office tomorrow at 9 A.M. You need to be here as well, John, my beloved, and you too Justin.”
“Obviously God,” Justin said archly , “You don’t know that Cardinal Bevilaqua is ill and suffering from dementia.”
“Obviously, Justin,” She replied, “I know that aside from a malformed moral compass, your predecessor is just fine, thank you.” We’ll talk tomorrow at nine sharp. Be there.”
Eileen McCafferty DiFranco
May 18, 2011
