Chapter 398 - 281: The Scorned Priest

The Priest was certain the villagers had never heard the central doctrines of Christianity, so he demanded they come to the Church every day to hear his sermons. If they didn’t, he would go to their homes himself.

He told the story of Christ, from His glorious birth to His bloody suffering on the Cross.

He recounted all the famous details, summoning every ounce of his eloquence while keeping the narrative concise.

After he finished, he leaned back in his chair and waited to see how the villagers would react.

"Is this story you’re telling something that happened a long time ago?" a villager asked.

"It happened a thousand years ago," the Priest said. "If that’s what you mean by ’a long time ago’."

"Oh, that’s a while, then," the villager said. He looked at the base of his palm, stretched his fingers, and examined them critically as if getting to know a new tool. He mulled over the stories, then asked, "So this fellow came down from the heavens just to save us?"

"Yes," the Priest said.

"To save us from our wicked nature and other vices?"

"Yes."

"But they still treated him like that? Nailed him up, stabbed him, and all that sort of thing?"

"Yes, indeed they did," the Priest said.

"But you said this story has been passed down for over a thousand years?" the villager asked.

"More or less."

"So, a long time."

"A very long time."

The villager grinned as if he’d solved a puzzle. He stood, patted the Priest on the shoulder, and said, "Well, all we can do is hope it isn’t so."

The Priest loved to cite scripture and authority; his sermons were filled with quotes from various Saints and were incredibly profound.

The young Priest loved to cite scripture and authority; his sermons were filled with quotes from various Saints and were incredibly profound. These difficult words gave the villagers a headache, but Laila didn’t mind them.

Laila recalled one time when he quoted something that wasn’t from the Bible. It sounded a bit like an incantation.

But she only remembered one passage, which the Priest repeated four times at the most passionate point of his sermon: "If God is within me, then I have a fortress in my heart. But if God is outside of me, then I am but a cyst, a malignant tumor, and my existence is meaningless. The long shadow of an early grave already creeps over my flesh, and I shall be forever weakened."

Laila thought it was the best sermon she had ever heard, but it was also the day the villagers were most vexed with the Priest, for he had delayed their wheat harvest.

On Sundays and Wednesdays, the Priest spoke only of what he considered life’s ultimate mystery: Why are people destined to die?

On the surface, it seemed a pointless endeavor. For weeks on end, he tried to explore the question from every angle: what the Bible had to say, how the great sages of every age and land had interpreted it, and what metaphors were hidden within nature itself.

The Priest wracked his brain, trying every method he could think of to force an answer, but his efforts were in vain. After a few weeks, the congregation’s widespread complaints made it clear that they were far less concerned with the question of death than he was.

"What is your view on death, Lord Eric?" Laila asked, looking at Eric.

"If there is a place to go after one dies, it would likely be a good thing for most people," Eric said. "At the very least, it would be a comfort."

"Yes, many in the village think so. They see it as a good thing, as they’re all desperate for a proper rest.

But the Priest believes most deaths are a tragedy, because many people die without having fulfilled their mission."

"’Mission?’" Eric was suddenly interested.

"Lord Eric, do you believe Christ has given us a mission?

Even though you now go to the lands of Heretics in the name of Christ, bearing His Cross." Laila asked, her gaze falling upon the Cross on Eric’s robes.

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, ’Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.’"

"What?"

"The Old Testament. Genesis 1:28."

"My apologies, I have never read the Bible. Reading it is a privilege reserved for the Priest. We are only able to listen to his recitation, and we cannot even tell if the scriptures he recites are misquoted." Laila watched Eric calmly.

Her reaction seemed a little unusual.

"What did he say?" Eric replied, deflecting Laila’s question.

"He said that if they deluded themselves into believing that one day, all things in the world would love them, then they had misunderstood the meaning of the Psalms.

The true meaning of the Psalms, he said, was that their mission was to love all things in the world.

Some people suggested the Priest should go back to the old ways of his late predecessor—to focus his sermons on condemning sinners, explaining stories from the Bible, and throwing in a few pleasant crowd-pleasers, like the baby Moses in the ark of bulrushes or the boy David with his slingshot. They felt things would be much more peaceful for him if he did.

But the Priest rejected their advice, telling the villagers that his mission as a Priest was to spread the Word, and that this mission was above all else.

His response spread throughout the mountains. None of them understood the Bible, nor had they ever read it, but they all came to the same conclusion: by using the word ’mission,’ he was treating his flock like ignorant Barbarians.

Many among them donated money, planning to send the Priest to a truly savage land so that he could fulfill his sacred ’mission’ to his heart’s content.

In their minds, those Heretics had skin of every shade and lived in places far more remote and uncivilized than their own, which was why they found his words so hard to swallow.

To placate his furious congregation, the Priest began his sermon that Sunday by explaining why every man and woman has a mission.

He explained that the word ’mission’ was really no different from ’work.’ Pondering why people are destined to die was part of his work, he said, and he would continue to think on it and preach about it as relentlessly as one tames a horse or clears stones from a field. And he did continue, speaking on and on.

But by then, no one wanted to listen anymore. Their patience had reached its limit.

In the end, the villagers stuffed him in a crate while he slept and secretly loaded it onto the ship of a Heretic merchant.

And that was how he left Chenxi Village. My father became the temporary Priest of the Church.

Most people in the village were illiterate, you see, and my father had studied Greek in the army. Of course, studying written Greek and speaking the Greek language are two different things.

My father only knew a few simple words and phrases. During his sermons, if he came across a word he didn’t know, he would just muddle through by substituting some Bedouin words.

But it was harmless, really. In fact, no one ever questioned it.

No one ever cared about the sermon itself. What they cared about were the stories my father told after the sermon—tales of the Bedouin tribes, of wars in the desert, and all sorts of hearsay and anecdotes.

"People care deeply about doctrine at times, especially when Heretics show up. But other times, they couldn’t care less. They find it tedious and boring. They prefer stories to sermons, concrete experiences to abstract theories." Laila finished, looking at Eric.