Blood Canticle Read Free

suddenly an understanding, or rather I come to perceive something about him which the entire world ought to know:
    His deep selflessness, his profound spirituality, come not only from his complete love of Christ but from his life lived under Communism. People forget. Communism, for all its hideous abuses and cruelties, is in essence a vaunting spiritual code. And before that great puritanical government shrouded John Paul’s young years, the violent paradoxes and horrifying absurdities of the Second World War surrounded him, tutoring him in self-sacrifice and courage. The man has never, ever, in his life lived in anything but a Spiritual World. Deprivation and self-denial are intertwined in his history like the double helix.
    It is no wonder that he cannot yield his deep-rooted suspicions of the tumultuous voices of the prosperous capitalist countries. He simply cannot grasp the pure charity that can arise from abundance, the sublime immensity of vision possible from the vantage point of secure excess, the selflessness and sweeping sacrificial ambition that can be born when all needs are luxuriantly met.
    Can I broach this subject with him in this quiet moment? Or should I only assure him that he must not worry about the “greed” of the Western World?
    Softly I talk to him. I begin to elucidate these points. (Yeah, I know, he’s the Pope, and I’m a vampire writing this story; but in this story I’m a great Saint. I cannot be intimidated within the risks of my own work!)
    I remind him that the sublime principles of Greek philosophy arose in affluence, and slowly, acceptingly, he nods. He is quite the educated philosopher. A lot of people don’t know that about him, either. But I must impress upon him something infinitely more profound.
    I see it so beautifully. I see everything.
    Our biggest mistake worldwide is our insistence on perceiving every new development as a culmination or a climax. The great “at last” or “inth degree.” A constitutional fatalism continuously adjusts itself to the ever-changing present. A pervasive alarmism greets every advance. For two thousand years we have been getting “out of hand.”
    This derives of course from our susceptibility to viewing the “now” as the End Time, an Apocalyptic obsession that has endured since Christ ascended into Heaven. We must stop this! We must perceive that we are at the dawn of a sublime age! Enemies will no longer be conquered. They will be devoured, and transformed.
    But here’s the point I
really
want to make: Modernism and Materialism—elements that the Church has feared for so long—are in their philosophical and practical infancy! Their sacramental nature is only just being revealed!
    Never mind the infantile blunders! The electronic revolution has transmuted the industrial world beyond all predictive thinking of the twentieth century. We’re still having birth pangs. Get into it! Work with it. Play it out.
    Daily life for millions in the developed countries is not only comfortable but a compilation of wonders that borders on the miraculous. And so new spiritual desires arise which are infinitely more courageous than the missionary goals of the past.
    We must bear witness that political atheism has failed totally. Think about it. In the trash, the whole system. Except for the island of Cuba, maybe. But what does Castro prove? And even the most secular power brokers in America exude high virtue as a matter of course. That’s why we have corporate scandals! That’s why people get so upset! No morals, no scandals. In fact, we may have to re-examine all the areas of society which we have so blithely labeled as “secular.” Who is really without profound and unshakable altruistic beliefs?
    Judeo-Christianity
is
the religion of the secular West, no matter how many millions claim to disregard it. Its profound tenets have been internalized by the most remote and intellectual agnostics. Its expectations inform Wall Street as well as the common