Maxence hoisted his rucksack onto his back, while Father Xavier picked up the wide cardboard box filled with supplies Maxence had carried off the plane. He said, “Sorry, I could only find one jar of peanut butter in Paris.”
Father Xavier laughed. “I am very glad for the one jar of peanut butter. Next time you come to Nepal, plan ahead and make sure to bring two.”
Maxence asked him, “Is there Mass this evening?”
Father Xavier shook his head. “There is one tomorrow morning over at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. We will attend that one, but I am then called away to minister in other parts of the city for the week and will be staying at the rectory there. Sadly, we do not have much time together.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to need to be reconciled before Mass tomorrow morning.”
“You, Deacon Father? I’m shocked.”
Father Xavier’s absolute earnestness as he said that shamed Maxence even more. Father Xavier had never heard one of Maxence’s confessions after he’d gotten back from Europe. “I’m afraid so, and it’s probably good that I should have sufficient time to do penance before Mass tomorrow morning.”
Father Xavier’s honest confusion forced Max to look away because he could not meet the priest’s eyes. Father Xavier asked, “Have you been having doubts about your vocation? You have wanted to take Holy Orders for years. I would have thought that you would have received that sacrament by now.”
“It’s complicated.”
“God is not complicated. The Divine is not complicated. There is only love.”
Despair left Max’s body with his next breath. “Father Xavier, that was exactly what I needed to hear today. I brought some of the butter crackers you like, too. Let’s go to the rectory and demolish the crackers and peanut butter before I unburden my soul.”
He grinned. “I was hoping very much you would say that.”
As a significant amount of peanut butter was smeared on crackers and Father Xavier rightfully fretted about sodium-sensitive hypertension and his hypothesized, impending stroke, they talked about the project that Maxence would be leading over the next few months.
“A team of five laypeople,” Father Xavier said. “This will be such a blessing, and it is so desperately needed.”
“I received the names in an email this morning,” Maxence told him while scraping a thin layer of peanut butter on his third cracker. He would probably stop after this one, and he reminded himself to send more of Father Xavier’s favorite snack foods once he returned to Europe or the US. “The medical doctor who was slated for this trip dropped out. His mother had a stroke, so he withdrew. Luckily, a nurse practitioner volunteered at the last minute to fill the slot. He’ll be arriving in a few hours. I assume it’s all right if he stays at the rectory tonight?”
“Of course, of course. He can have my room because I’ll stay over at Perpetual Help. Do we know him?”
“I’ve never met him before, but he comes highly recommended by Father Thomas Aquinas at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the United States. He’s recommended a number of laypeople for projects like this whom I have found to be excellent. Tom is very persuasive at convincing his parishioners and acquaintances to volunteer for missions.”
Father Xavier chuckled. “Yes, we don’t know anyone like that.”
Maxence declined to reply. Yes, he had a knack at persuading people, which was why two of Max’s friends from his exclusive childhood boarding school had “volunteered” their time and resources for this very worthy charitable project.
One of Max’s school friends, Alfonso, had committed a large amount of money and resources to build NICU micro-clinics all across the hinterlands of Nepal, a surprising move. The charity had approved the project while Maxence had been sitting by his uncle’s hospital bed, watching him slowly die, so Max hadn’t been available to consult on it. Undoubtedly, the charity’s board had properly vetted it. They always did.
The other guy, Isaak, was a good man who pretended he wasn’t. He was the diametric opposite of Maxence in so many ways, which was probably why they got along so well.
The whole team would arrive the next morning, the day before the mission officially began.
After Father Xavier had decimated the crackers and peanut butter, he indulgently looped the stole he wore during confession around his neck and, with a crooked smile on his face, asked Maxence what mortal sins he had committed since his last confession.
Maxence couldn’t look at the man’s dark eyes as he stated that it had been five days since his last confession and he had committed an untold number of sins of a sexual nature with a woman as acts of fornication, at least fifteen acts, impure thoughts, wrath, and an act of violence that was in self-defense.
Father Xavier stared at the swollen knuckles of his hands folded in his lap and was silent for a long moment. His black eyebrows twitched, and he breathed to say something at least once, but caught himself and bit his lip instead.
His dismay and disappointment were palpable in the small room in the rear of the rectory.
Finally, Xavier said, “My dear Deacon Maxence, please say one good Act of Contrition in penance, and let us pray together for grace and to know the true will of God in your vocation.”
Losing Father Xavier’s respect hurt, and Maxence prayed with every shred of his soul, holding Father Xavier’s weathered hands, that he would know the will of God and commit himself to it.
Even as Max prayed, soft sparks glimmered at the edges of his vision: satin skin, hair like shredded silk, a joyous laugh, a glance of blue eyes filled with kindness as she listened to him, and a quiet voice speaking gentle words with him that healed instead of wounded.
Not Dree. Don’t think about Dree.
Think about the will of God.
Maxence wrestled with his soul and his thoughts.
Father Xavier sighed, removed the stole from around his neck and kissed the cross in the center, and rose as he wound the small strip of fabric around his hand. “I sense that you have great conflict in your soul, Deacon Maxence. I hope you can reconcile it with God.”
“I hope so, too, Father Xavier.”
Father Xavier pressed his lips together and shook his head, and then said, “I have heard the ladies in the kitchen, cooking. Lunch will be served soon. I hope you can devote yourself to prayer this day before your mission begins in earnest tomorrow.”
After lunch, Father Xavier hurried off to the other church, and Maxence did devote himself to an afternoon of reading and contemplative silence, trying to remedy the trouble in his soul.
His soul did not cooperate.
Maxence slowly conquered his wayward mind. Each time he prayed the hours of the Divine Office, working his way through Sext at midday and None in the midafternoon, he felt stronger in the philosophy and practice of filling his day with prayer.
The clock’s hands slowly spun toward five o’clock in the afternoon, local time, and Maxence began to look forward to the evening prayer of Vespers, a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude for the day, when there was a knock at the front door of the rectory.
Ah, this would be the new volunteer sent by Father Thomas Aquinas in Phoenix, the one with the same last name as Dree, Clark.
What a coincidence.
She’d said it was a common surname.