Strangers

but God could've granted you such curing power?"
        "I don't know," Brendan said. "Wish I did. But it wasn't God. I felt no divine presence, Father."
        "Good grief, how much more strongly do you expect Him to make His presence felt? Do you expect Him to thump you on the head with His great Staff of Justice, tip His diadem to you, and introduce Himself? You've got to meet Him halfway, Brendan."
        The curate smiled and shrugged. "Father, I know these amazing events seem to have no explanation other than a religious one. But I feel very strongly that something other than God lies behind it."
        "Like what?" Stefan challenged.
        "I don't know. Something tremendously important, something really wonderful and magnificent… but not God. Look, you've said that the rings were stigmata. But if that's what they were, why wouldn't they have been in a form that had some Christian significance? Why rings - which seem to have no relation to the message of Christ?"
        When Brendan began Stefan's unconventional course of psychological therapy at St. Joseph's Hospital for Children three weeks ago, the young priest had been so troubled by his loss of faith that he'd been growing rapidly thinner. Now he had stopped losing weight. He was still thirty pounds lighter than usual, but he was no longer as wan and haggard as he had been following his shocking outburst during Mass on the first of December. In spite of his spiritual fall, there was a glow to his skin and a light in his eyes that was almost… beatific.
        "You feel splendid, don't you?" Stefan asked. "Yes, though I'm not sure why."
        "Your soul's no longer troubled."
        "No."
        "Even though you've still not found your way back to God."
        "Even though," Brendan agreed. "Maybe it has something to do with the dream I had last night."
        "The black gloves again?"
        "No. Haven't had that one in a while," Brendan said. "Last night I dreamed that I was walking in a place of pure golden light, beautiful light, so bright I could see nothing around me, and yet it didn't hurt my eyes." A peculiar note, perhaps Of reverence, (intered the curate's voice. "In the dream, I keep walking and walking, not knowing where I am or where I'm going, but with the sense that I'm approaching a thing or a place of monumental importance and unbearable beauty. Not just approaching but… being called to it. Not an audible call but a summons that just… reverberates in me. My heart is pounding, and I'm a little afraid. But it isn't a bad fear, Father, what I feel in that bright place, not bad at all. So I just keep walking through the light, toward something magnificent that I can't see but that I know is there."
        Drawn by Brendan's hushed voice as if by a magnet, Father Wycazik moved to the bed and sat upon the corner of it. "But surely this is a spiritual dream, the call of God coming to you in sleep. He's calling you back to your faith, back to the duties of your office."
        Brendan shook his head. "No. There was no religious quality to the dream, no sense of a divine presence. It was a different kind of awe that filled me, a joy unlike the joy I knew in Christ. I woke up four times during the night, and each time I woke, the rings were on my hands. And each time that I fell back to sleep, I dropped into the same dream again. Something very strange and important is happening, Father, and I'm a part of it; but whatever it is, it's not anything that my education, experiences, or previous beliefs have prepared me for."
        Father Wycazik wondered if the call that had come to Brendan in the dream had been from Satan instead of God. Perhaps the devil, aware that a priest's soul was in jeopardy, had dressed his hateful form in this deceptively attractive golden light, the better to lead the curate from the righteous path.
        Still firmly determined to bring his curate back into the fold, but temporarily out of winning strategies, Stefan Wycazik decided to call a truce. He said, "So… what now? You aren't ready to put on your Roman collar and resume your duties, as I thought you'd be by now. Do you want me to contact Lee Kellog, the Illinois Provincial, and ask him to authorize psychiatric counseling?"
        Brendan smiled. "No. That doesn't appeal to me any more. I don't believe it'd do any good. What I'd like to do - if it's all right with you, Father - is move back into my room in the rectory and wait