Graham Greene, The Power And The Glory

Graham Greene is widely regarded as the greatest British author of the last century and indeed he's one of my favourites. The Power And The Glory is one of the most powerful and engaging books I have read for a while. It is a novel, not a Christian teaching book, but do not dismiss it: there is much to challenge and excite us therein...

It is the story of the last priest in a southern state of Mexico following an anti-clerical purge. He is on the run, but from what? To what? Why what? His journey reflects at one time our journey; spiritually, mentally, physically and to Easter; persecution, betrayal, crucifixion, rebirth.

Throughout the book, there is always a sense of hope; the hope of escape, the hope of survival, the hope of sanctification - the hope of the church. But this hope is continually overshadowed and crushed by despair in many forms - as people and events, which characterise, often very close to the bone, the cancers and failings of the church.

But these are not just faults of the Roman Catholic church in Meixcio; they are generic faults and shortcomings that have dogged the church throughout its history and most of which are outlined by Jesus and/or Paul: piousness, selfishness, pride, dismissiveness, Judas, factionisation, exploitation of peoples' needs, weaknesses, ignorance and gullibility, greed, over religiousness, legalism, rebelliousness, and a lack of relevance to the community. If we think that these diseases don't/won't apply to us then we have some of them already - we must always be on our guard.

The beauty of Greene's writing is that we are subtly urged on a journey, impelled by curiosityand coaxed by almost subliminal narative, but also goaded by the all too believable caricatures which warn us thay this struggle is futile and that we are unlikely to enjoy the conclusion. It is not dogma, and he is not preaching his own ideas; the true brilliance of this book is revealed as we realise that whatever starting viewpoint we had - it has been challenged, whatever starting worldview we had - it has been tested.

So do something useful... read this book. I have one copy, which people are welcome to borrow. If, you lead such an executive life that you have no time for books, then hereunder are some intense excerpts to tantalise and to entice...

"... then she crossed herself, not as ordinary Catholics do, but in a curious and complicated pattern which included the nose and ears. Did she expect a miracle? and if she did, why should it not be granted her, the priest wondered? Faith, one was told, could move mountains, and here was faith - faith in the spittle that healed the blind man and the voice that raised the dead... ...The priest found himself watching the child for some movement. When none came, it was as if God had missed an opportunity. The woman sat down, and taking a lump of sugar from her bundle began to eat, and the child lay quietly at the foot of the cross. Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?"

" It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin - only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it. These people went out of the stable clean; he was the only one left who hadn't repented, confessed, and been absolved. He wanted to say to this man, 'Love is not wrong, but love should be happy and open - it is only wrong when it is secret, unhappy... It can be more unhappy than anything but the loss of God. It is the loss of God. You don't need a penance, my child, you have suffered quite enough,' and to this other, 'Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.' But the habit of the confessional reasserted itself ..."

"He said, 'Oh God, help her. Damn me, I deserve it, but let her live for ever.' This was the love he should have felt for every soul in the world: all the fear and the wish to save concentrated unjustly on the one child. He began to weep; it was as if he had to watch her from the shore drown slowly because he had forgotten how to swim. He thought: This is what I should feel all the time for everyone... ...calling up a long succession of faces, pushing at his attention as if it were a heavy door which wouldn't budge. For those were all in danger too. He prayed, 'God help them,' but in the moment of prayer he switched back to his child beside the rubbish-dump, and he knew it was for her only that he prayed. Another failure."

"What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead - soon he wouldn't even be a memory - perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation - even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go back to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint."