He doesn't have time to think, or process, or pray. There are two parachutes, an extra safety precaution on this most dangerous of days, lying behind the pilot's seat. But up front, with himself, alone, Patrick can feel the heat of his impending doom, the fire that science had wrongly tried to master. Here is his death, here he will die, above his city, above his church, above the rock; here in the sky, as close as he can get to heaven in his corporal body, he will come to his father and Father…and he is scared, his hands shaking and trembling on the joystick; he is frightened, a thin sheet of sweat laying across his forehead; and he does not wish to go
Patrick has no time to think, no time to regret, no time to pray to Saint Hyde for guidance, (or for lost causes), he just…acts. He flicks on auto-hover like it is a primal instinct and he flees. He grabs the parachute behind the pilot's seat and he throws himself away from the helicopter, away from martyrdom, away from the meeting of his father and Father, and he falls, like a star displaced from its place in the celestial sky.
The world explodes. And then collapses on itself. And then explodes again. The wind whips him about, a rag doll hurtling towards the earth's surface, with a whimsical, cotton candy puff of white fabric the only thing slowing him down. Debris scratches at his hands and face while the force of the explosion jostles him this way and that way giving him an aerial tour, a vicious aerial tour of his city. Patrick has no control ( I leave it in your hands Father), no way to direct his fall from grace. He has no control, so he falls back on what he has always knows, what a kind man had one shown him.
Our Father, who Art in Heaven…
Both Fathers now, both of them, up there in a place that Patrick is just not ready to go to. He loves them both, and misses the man that was his father in all but name, but he cannot go. Not yet. Not when his church is hurting; not when it is breaking and bending; not when there is a chance that it will not survive the coming tide. This is where he needs to be.
Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…
He hurts. His body is not immune to trial by fire, and all around him as he plummets is fire and red and tests of his obedience and love. He is being tested as gold is put into fire and purified. What will be left of him that is pure? He wants to think he shall be whole, a vessel of God here on Earth, here to do good things. But his hands are marked with black, for deaths that were taken for his church, for deaths that were taken when he fought for the military, for his elation at the deaths of the men who killed his Father. His chest aches with the burn there, and though it seems like eons ago, he remembers that he did not regret it when the man that did this to him died.
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
He is between two worlds right now, between earth and sky, though all has been diluted in a pale grey offset by yellow tinges of amber. He could stay between forever, stay here, in the sanctity of the air, where neither man nor angel can tell him if he is wrong or right. "neminem est tutum ab ipse", no man is safe from himself, his father used to tell him back before it all. Further he falls.
Give us this day, our Daily bread, and forgive us our Trespasses…
He is getting closer. He can begin to hear the screams of the square, beautiful pilgrims who came to see their new leader elected only to be subjugated to the work of the devil; to be with fear; to know it so well. Their screams are echoed by a million more throughout his city, of people who scream because they are alive and are afraid, and Patrick welcomes their screams because it means they have succeeded. Like babes that he has baptized, he smiles at the screams, for it means their heart beats, their lungs breathe, and they have been saved by God's grace.
As we forgive those who Trespass against us…
He is afraid. He is afraid. He will die; he knows it, falling back to the city where God's church began. Here he will die and he is not submitting well, he is not greeting it as an old friend. The screams echo back and back, and the sky is illuminating in a horrific yellow and the wind breaks against him like he is the lone obstacle is a sea of chaos. His mind is jumbled, replaying scenes out of focus and alignment, of the first time he saw his father, a mass in the crass back world of Ireland, a grey and diluted land where that man alone had seemed to stand pure; the death of the Pope, the only man he thought of as a father, and he has to share his grief with a world that did not know the man beyond the cloth, did not know the man who had saved a child; of the day he had been ordained, wiping off his sins from before; of the military, flying high in the sky he now curses, thinking he could conquer all.
And lead us not into Temptation
He can see them all now; it has only been seconds since he left the helicopter, perhaps even less than that, but it has seemed as if an age has passed in that time. He can see those sacred pilgrims, as they run and flee, striving for safety that is menial, minimal. There is no safety from evil, tonight has shown him that much, there is only the truth that God is stronger, that there is a will to live because in the end, God provides. Wistfully he thinks, how else does the Camerlengo learn how to fly a helicopter, if not to be there as God's vessel on earth? He could have been infantry, but he was always destined to fly. He is here only to do God's will. Caelitus mihi vires, "My strength is from heaven".
But deliver us from Evil.
The world is blue and black and haze of regrets and half wished dreams. The earth is coming more and more into focus, clearer with every heart beat that thrums inside his burning chest. The children of God are afraid and hurting and he wonders how he appears to them now. Is he an angel from above? Or a demon in the night? Does he come with salvation or damnation? His knees brace in preparation for the worst things to come, for impact and for the days and nights ahead where he must help rebuild a crumbling church, a despairing people and breaking hearts. The yelling intensifies and then there is a silence he cannot describe, and then St. Peter's Square painfully welcomes him home.
Amen.