“I cannot tell you how pleased I am about that,” Katie said and smiled sweetly at Reverend McCamy.
Miles thought the man was mad.
“A husband is a woman’s shepherd,” Reverend McCamy said, his dark eyes resting hard on Katie’s face. “Without his guidance, without his support and discipline, she will fall into sin and be struck down.”
Katie looked this time as if she wanted to leap on Reverend McCamy, but the flash of murder in her eyes was gone in an instant. She even smiled. “I see you love brownie batter. I do, too. Could I have some, Elsbeth?”
Miles wondered just how long Reverend McCamy had been listening outside the kitchen. Had he been afraid his wife would give something away?
Miles said, “You probably heard me asking your wife why her brother kidnapped my boy.”
Reverend McCamy didn’t acknowledge Miles’s words. He said, “Suffering draws us closer to God, even a little boy’s suffering, if it is God’s divine will.”
Katie said, “I don’t understand, Reverend McCamy. How can a little boy’s suffering conform to God’s divine will? That makes no sense to me. Do you mean that God wants everyone, including children, to suffer?”
He whispered, his eyes on Katie’s face, “You misunderstand. I’m speaking of our conforming to the Cross of Christ. It is written: ‘Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.’ It is man’s highest gift to suffer for the love of God, to suffer so that he can come closer to a union with the Divine. Of course, only a very few of the blessed ones are granted such divine grace.”
“What do you mean conforming to the cross?” Katie asked. “As in one should want to be crucified? That would please God?”
Miles could tell that Reverend McCamy wanted to lay his hands on Katie. To bless her or to punish her because he thought she was blaspheming? He couldn’t tell.
Reverend McCamy said, all patience, so patronizing that Miles imagined Katie standing up and smacking him in the jaw if she weren’t so focused on what she was doing, “We must embrace suffering to lead us ever closer to God, and in this suffering, there is greatness and submission. No, God does not wish us to be crucified like him. That is shallow and blind, meaning nothing. It is far more than that, far deeper, far more enveloping. Very rarely God’s grace is bestowed on a living creature and is manifested in the imitation of Christ’s travails on the cross.”
Katie said, never looking away from Reverend McCamy’s face, “You said that God doesn’t want us to nail ourselves to a cross in imitation of the crucifixion. What then is this gift bestowed on so very few?”
Reverend McCamy said, “How long does it take for the brownies to bake, Elsbeth?”
“Thirty minutes,” Elsbeth said. She never looked her husband in the face, nor did she look at Miles or Katie. She slipped the glass dish inside the oven, then turned to the sink to run water in the batter bowl.
Too bad, Katie had really wanted a taste of that batter. It was time to push again, time to maneuver him where she wanted him to go. She said, “These individuals who imitate Christ’s suffering, who and what are they? How are they selected? And by whom?”
Elsbeth whispered, “Don’t you understand? Reverend McCamy is one of the very few blessed by God’s grace, who is blessed by God’s ecstasy in suffering.”
Reverend McCamy looked like he wanted to slap her, but he didn’t move, just fisted his hands at his sides.
Katie said, ever so gently, her eyes as intense as Reverend McCamy’s, “You’re speaking of Christ’s wounds appearing on a mortal’s body. You’re saying that Reverend McCamy is a—what are they called?”
“Stigmatist,” said Reverend McCamy.
“And you’re a stigmatist, aren’t you, sir?”
He looked furious that she’d pushed him to this, and Miles realized in that instant that she indeed had, and she’d done it very well. For a moment Reverend McCamy didn’t say anything. Katie knew he was trying to get himself under control and it was difficult for him.
Katie said, “Homer Bean, one of your former parishioners, told us that you’d told a small group of men one evening about being a victim of God’s love, about being a stigmatist.”
Reverend McCamy said without looking up, “Since they have told you, then I will not deny it. Once in my life I was blessed to have the suffering of ecstasy with blood flowing from my hands in imitation of the nails driven through our Lord’s palms.”