Wednesday of Holy Week, April 13, 2022Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Choose God always, and do not be afraid
I looked for sympathy, but there was none; for consolers, not one could I find. Rather, they put gall in my food and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. Lord, in your great love, answer me.
Father Anatoly has been caught by his crime. Inside his tangled net he cannot escape. To heat their monastery set into the Siberian seascape, he rolls wheelbarrows of coal into the furnace room, rarely washing, turning the wrong way during prayers with his brothers, keeping silent when he should speak and speaking when he should keep silent.
On The Island, Anatoly prays. In endless litanies of misery and shame, he seeks release. Nothing comes.
Rather, his spiritual energies heal others. The word gets out. An anguishing young woman makes her journey, “Father, bless my abortion.”
“What,” he shouts into her face. “And send myself to hell along with you?” Father Anatoly looks at her and loves her, and tells her she will have a beautiful blue eyed boy. She smiles. His gruff refusal reminds her of something deep inside which she had forgotten.
What was his crime? It is not clear whether he has confessed it to his abbot. Thirty-five years earlier he shot his sailor mate when their Nazi captors required it. “Shoot him! And then you will live.” His mate fell overboard. As the Nazis sailed away, Anatoly exulted in his life, shouting to the heavens. But he couldn’t keep it up. This was worse than death.
And then the bomb the Nazis left exploded in the bottom of the ship.
Shame covers my face. I have become an outcast to my brothers, a stranger to my mother’s sons. Now zeal for your house consumes me.
What can he do, this Russian sailor? Nothing but repeat the Jesus Prayer three thousand times, then six thousand, and come back tomorrow. Carry coal for thirty years, crying into the wind for God to come, rescue him from his shame, not to abandon him. My God, my God!
Perhaps he cannot hear God above the constant winds. God forgave him long ago. He has not forgiven himself, this Father Anatoly. He cannot. He cannot. Christ on the cross looks down at him in sorrow. Jesus loves him, and Father Anatoly refuses to accept. Like Judas, he has hung himself. Except he does not hang himself. Instead, winter after winter as the waves roll in every kind of weather, he hangs onto the wheelbarrow, weaving along the narrow dock with another load of black coal. Unforgiven.
In the cozy shadows Satan screams with joy, above it all. The devil’s drone hovers over the Russian priest. Anatoly sees but does not rebuke.
He rebukes when others are afflicted. A Russian admiral brings his daughter, insane with unfinished grief since her husband was killed, a thousand miles to see Father Anatoly. He does not know what else to do. “Can you heal insane people?”
“She is not insane! She is possessed.”
“How do you know?” The admiral will not believe him.
“Because I know that demon so well myself!” And while the admiral pretends to stop him, Anatoly carries his daughter onto a tiny boat and rows away. Alone on a slip of land she runs, dressed in her Moscow clothes and heels, and laughs her crazy laugh. Father Anatoly turns away from her.
Focused now on God, he prays into the sky, crossing himself over and over. She falls into the mud, her eyes wide. Her mouth turns black, and in moments she is released.
See, you lowly ones, and be glad; you who seek God, may your hearts revive! For the Lord hears the poor, and his own who are in bonds he spurns not. LORD! In your Great Love, answer me!
I can’t get enough of this film, The Island, since my friend told me about it in 2013. So many of the subtitles are prayers. It is a good film to watch during Holy Week, knowing how Satan has been defeated and reminded of that when my own sin, my remorse, my unforgiveness rears up and tries to get my attention.
(Isaiah 50, Psalm 69, Matthew 26)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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