I could tell it was going to be one of those days where each moment felt like a struggle — where, just like I had counted the potential moments of sleep ticking away at night, I would count the moments until my daily responsibilities were over.

As I pulled into our church parking lot, I saw that Cheryl, our administrative assistant; and Carol, our ministry director, who also doubled as our organ player; were already at work and likely chattering away about their weekends.

I shuffled in as quietly as I could and went into my office. Shortly after, I heard a quiet knock at the door and had no choice but to say, “Come in.”

It was so hard to get work done with other people in the office. Every time I wanted to truly focus and prepare for a sermon or catch up on some paperwork, somebody had a question, often just a pretext to blather on for half an hour. And if I didn’t want to be the office grouch, I had to let them.

“Hello, Father. Good morning,” said Cheryl, in her nervous pleading way. “Can I talk to you about something?”

I always wanted to grab her by the shoulders and say, “Just get it out already. Say what you need to say. You have permission to exist. Nobody is offended you have an opinion. We’re all due to have some.”

“Yes, yes, good morning,” I said. “How can I help you, Cheryl?

“Well you see, Father; it’s about my son, George. You’ve known him for years; I know. And he’s not always been easy. But he is a very intelligent boy, and he does have a big heart. And I just wonder if some of your harder teachings…

“My harder teachings?” I interrupted, trying to force her to the point. “Do you think it was me who invented hell for my own amusement, or do you think it’s the Church and our Lord himself?”

“Oh, I know, Father. You didn’t come up with these things. But there are of course different ways of putting them, or even of looking at them.”

“So George didn’t like my sermon?” I asked. Was this boy suicidal? Had he run away? Hopefully Cheryl would make the crisis clearer momentarily.

“No, Father; he did not. He talks to many of the other boys at the public school, and many of them don’t even believe in God at all. And they make fun of the idea of hell and demons and of how if he thinks about one of the girls at his school, even for a second, that’s lusting in his heart and means he’s going to burn. And he’s having some trouble believing it. More than that; George is beginning to make fun of it too.”

“Well, you can assure him that not every stray thought sends one to hell,” I said, looking up at the obsequious ball of nerves. Then adding, “Though of course lust is a grave matter.”

“It’s not just that, Father,” Cheryl said. “It’s the whole thing. He just doesn’t believe and mocks it and thinks it’s not just silly but harmful. Larry and I are trying to figure out how to approach these issues without pushing him further away.”

“Well, we all have our doubts, Cheryl,” I said. “I’m really sorry to hear that George is struggling with his faith. I’d be happy to chat with him a little bit if you think that’d be helpful.”

“No, I think right now that might actually do more harm than good,” she said, tears becoming visible in her eyes. “He said he’s done, that he doesn’t believe anymore. I don’t think I’m going to make him go to church for a little while until he can think some things over and maybe make the faith his own later.”

“And if he falls into mortal sin and dies, what then?” I asked. “I’m sorry to put it so directly, but one cannot really take a break from following the faith without great risk.”

Cheryl just looked down at her feet like a child. But after a moment, she looked up and said, “Well, I guess I’ve been having some of these thoughts myself, Father. Georgie makes some pretty good points. Why do the stakes have to be that high for a boy trying to take some time to think things over? Why would a God treat his children this way, tormenting them with no rest forever over harmless thoughts and doubts?”

“You know very well it doesn’t work like that,” I said, more than a little annoyed. “Separation from God is our own choice. And being separate from God is extremely painful because God is the source of all that is good. Of course being separated from good would feel bad, but it’s by one’s own choice.”

Just then there was another knock on our door — great. And of course it was Carol, who likely overheard our voices and wanted to join in.

“Come in, Carol,” I said, being proven right on my assumption when she quickly burst through the door.

“Hello, Father! Hi, Cheryl!” she said, as if she and Cheryl hadn’t been talking for an hour before I arrived.

She was holding a piece of paper in her hands, and I’m sure it was something for me to sign or something that we needed to discuss.

“Well, I hope y’all had a great weekend. I know I did,” she said. “We took the kids down to the new city park, and it was fantastic. You guys should really go. They have a splash pad and a beautiful baseball diamond. My boys spent all day imitating their favorite ball players and spitting in the dirt. It even has bathrooms, water fountains, and a snack bar, which wasn’t open, but I’m sure it will be during bigger events.”

“That sounds fun, Carol,” I said, looking with wonder at the smile permanently carved into her plump face. “I will have to go see it. What’s that piece of paper? Is that for me?”

“I think so,” she said. “It’s about a woman named Maria Cosway. Apparently she may have been a mistress of Thomas Jefferson’s when he was living overseas in Europe. And she ended up dying at a convent where she started a Catholic school? Is that why you were interested in this? Cheryl and I talked about it, but neither of us printed it. So must have been you, right?”

I had tried to print that out Saturday evening after the Angel of Death brought her up in confession, to get more information. But nothing came out, so I assumed the printer was broken again.

“Oh yes, has the printer been fixed? I did try to print that,” I said.

“Well you printed five copies?” Cheryl chimed in.

“I only brought you the one, cause I figured you only wanted it once,” Carol said chuckling. “I do that too sometimes. If it doesn’t work once, just keep clicking, right? But when I had Mr. McCormick come by to work on my laptop, I had him take a look at the printer as well, since it wasn’t printing. And so many things were in the queue that it was printing for half an hour after he fixed it. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yes, Carol; it is,” I said, giving a polite smile and a forced chuckle.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I read the whole thing,” she continued. “Miss Cosway was an amazing woman. I know she likely committed adultery with Thomas Jefferson, but her artistic genius and social life were quite something, it sounds like. And she came back to the Church at the end of life and started that convent school, so I’m sure God forgave her any earlier adventures.”

I said nothing, hoping she’d change the subject.

“But that was really disturbing what happened to her family when she was a child,” Cheryl interjected. “They said her Catholic nanny killed four of the eight children, almost including her!”

“Oh please, Cheryl,” Carol pushed back. “Why mention she’s Catholic? I’m sure everyone in Italy was back then, and it doesn’t sound like she was a very good one.”

“Well that’s just the thing,” Cheryl said. “Her whole justification, it sounds like, was that she was killing the baptized children to send them to heaven to give them a real chance. I was actually going to bring up this point up to Father before you came in. I was telling him about George’s questions.”

“Well that’s just awful and psychotic. Isn’t it, Father?” said Carol, looking over to him for the final word.

Again, I said nothing, then gave a slight nod of my head to indicate that of course it was.

I have always enjoyed a simple walk in the woods to clear my mind and refresh my body. Fortunately for me, my street deadended at a fairly underutilized park. So on Saturdays, I loved to put on civilian clothes (no collar) and to get lost deep in those woods for hours. I would bring a small backpack with nothing but a book, a couple granola bars, and a big bottle of water. Sadly, I did have to bring my cell phone with me just in case someone from the church had an emergency. They knew not to bother Father on Saturdays if they could help it, but sometimes emergencies happened.

At night, I enjoyed making myself a gourmet meal, maybe steak or ribs, with ample sides. After eating in perfect silence and solitude, often with a good glass of wine or ale, I retired to my favorite chair, put a fire in the fireplace, and read something totally unrelated to religion or philosophy. I liked a good detective novel or a Western.

Some in my parish would worry that I would be lonely on Saturdays with that routine of solitude, but after a week full of other people‘s problems and sins and questions and existential crises, this time by myself to recharge was not lonely. It was liberating. If I could get through the entire schedule of gardening, hiking, a couple good meals, and some time to read, I would be very grateful.

That Monday, though, I did none of those things. That Monday, while I was eating breakfast, I could think of nothing but the poor infant whose life had been snuffed out. She may have had a full life, but the man’s decision put an end to that possibility. It was hard to find gaping holes in the man’s logic though. If so few really are saved, and if baptism really does regenerate infallibly, wouldn’t he be doing her a favor? Didn’t he move her from the category of almost certainly damned to almost certainly saved?

And it seemed that my main rebuttal, which was that these matters should be left to God, had very little effect on him. If he was willing to risk his soul to do this, to make a martyr of himself, accepting his own eternal torment in exchange for the eternal bliss of the child, how could I convince him that this was wrong? But he didn’t quite accept this exchange — of his soul for hers — did he? No, he came to confession to ask for forgiveness and to try to get right with God so that he too could avoid eternal fire. That meant he was a coward trying to have it both ways.

With all these thoughts swirling in my head, I went over to my full wall of theology books in my study and picked out a few that would be particularly relevant. I grabbed St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Summa, St. Augustine’s writings against the Pelagians. I grabbed anything else I could think of relating to baptismal regeneration, the age of reason, original sin, and the fewness of the saved — even the Catechism, though I did believe it had been fairly tainted with sly modernist corruptions.

Rather than a relaxing day of recreation and recovery, I spent the day buried in these key texts, feverishly taking notes, challenging the premises of the man, only to find his logic frustratingly difficult to refute.

I then, just as fervently, researched the seal of confession, whether a priest can report a murderer if that person remains a danger. But the guidance was fairly unambiguous in the Code of Canon Law, simply stating, “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason.”

And on whether he could choose to withhold absolution from someone who was likely to sin again in such a grave manner, it only said, “If the confessor has no doubt about the disposition of the penitent, and the penitent seeks absolution, absolution is to be neither refused nor deferred.”

That gave me a little wiggle room, since if I had a good reason to doubt his penitence, I could refuse absolution. But he made a good point, that many others confess grave sins over and over and are granted absolution over and over.

Before I knew it, night was beginning to fall. There had been no gardening, no hiking, no rest. And the next day began another long week of confessions, Masses, hospital visits, and the enormous burdens of administrative office keeping.

The weight of it all, especially with the fate of the child on my mind, made sleep impossible. As I lay awake, I remembered that I left the half-prepared meatloaf, which I had so looked forward to making and enjoying, on the counter. Drat. I would clean it up in the morning.

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But how? How could I go on with my normal routine? It was like trying to calmly do your dishes while the house is on fire. But I did. I began the Mass as usual, simply going into autopilot, repeating words I’d said countless times before.

Then, as I read the Gospel, a thought came to mind: If the man was scrupulous about not committing grave sins, he was likely going to take advantage of the timing and attend this vigil Mass. Maybe he’d be too cautious, trying to hide his identity from me, and attend somewhere else, maybe in the morning. But his boldness made me think he may be among those assembled, trusting that even if I did somehow determine his identity, I would maintain the seal of confession.

So after I was done reading the parable on the rich man and Lazarus, I scanned the congregation as I began my homily. There were a few young men that I considered as possible suspects.

“Lazarus, you see, was Christ himself, testing us to see if we have any of His Holy Spirit, any of His charity, the life of the divine within us. Elsewhere, Our Lord said that if we face Him on Judgement Day and have not fed others, not clothed others, not visited others in prison, not given drink to the thirsty, then He will say He does not know us, and we will be tossed into the outer darkness.”

One father in the back, corralling three children, caught my eye. He had not been here before, I did not believe. But he had his wife and children with him, so he was a fairly unlikely suspect. But who knows? I continued:

“Very few of us show the kind of love that will cause Christ to say, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’ The rest of us, sadly, will share the fate of the rich man.”

Next, my eyes landed on an occasional attendee — a young man, very large, with slicked back black hair. He wore a dark suit and a very serious expression. This seemed a much more likely possibility.

“A moment with our hand in a fire causes us to jerk our hand back, maybe even shout out in pain. What if one were forced to hold their hand there an entire day, or longer? Our minds cannot really begin to understand what an eternity of pain even means. This reality should trouble the spirits of anyone who takes it seriously.”

Scanning the room again, I noticed something else — many of those gathered looked distraught, angry, or terrified. My bishop often urged us to treat this topic carefully and indirectly, but it was clear that when I spoke directly about it, the impact was much greater.

A young woman stood up and walked out. The bishop may hear about this one. But if what I am saying is true, it is necessary to warn people. Is it not? I continued:

“In addition to this ‘Pain of Sense,’ of the fire, they also experience the ‘Pain of Loss,’ which the saints say is even worse and the Catechism says is the principal punishment of hell — eternal separation from God. They experience an unquenchable thirst for the living water, insatiable hunger for the bread of life in their souls. But neither can ever be satisfied, as they will never look on the face of God. We must not lose hope though. Remember: God’s arms are always open to those who wish to repent and be joined to him. And for those few, we know eye has not seen, nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

When I was done, I looked up from my typed notes and saw tears in some eyes. I knew the message had struck just the chord I’d hoped. There was not a sound from the congregation other than a couple crying babies, which was unavoidable in most Catholic parishes of any size. I didn’t like to deliver this message. But it was necessary to do so at least a couple times a year, so the seriousness of the Four Last Things set in amongst my flock. I always wondered afterwards if I had gone too far, or maybe not far enough, in preaching this hard truth.

As we moved to other parts of the Mass, I strained my ears to listen for the voice within the congregation’s responses and singing. I thought I heard it more than once but could not be sure.

After Mass, I received the usual greetings and appreciation (and from some, avoidance) when I give this sermon. Many said things like, “Thank you, Father. I needed to hear this.”

Others said things like, “Don’t you think that was a little over the top, Father?” or “You really think a good God created most of us just to throw us away like that?”

To those, I would respond, “I’m just trying to preach like the Church always has.” At this, they would usually shake their heads and walk away. Of course when they saw me at some parish festival a week later they’d pretend the interaction had never happened, that they had never questioned my theology and pastoral judgement.

When I saw the young man in black enter the greeting line, I took notice. It would be an opportunity to hear his voice and compare it to the distinctive voice of the Angel of Death.

When he reached the front of the line, he gripped my hand firmly and said in almost a whisper, “This message needs to get out. It’s sad, but people need to know.”

Was it the same voice? He spoke too softly for me to have been able to accurately compare. I thought it possible, so I responded with a question to see if he would say more.

“Of course, but how many have ears to hear?”

He just gave me a slow nod of his head — either in agreement with my rhetorical question or to say goodbye. And with that, he joined the crowd filing out the doors to the parking lot.

Streetlights show how hard it’s raining

Coming down on my bare head

Guess I’ve got no one to blame

But sometimes I wish I did

So I’m, waiting for the night to be over

Nothing’s gone right tonight and the rain keeps coming down

Waiting for the night to be over

To catch that train out of town

Thought by now my luck would turn

That the sun would one day shine on me

But each street’s an ode to her

And the life that could not be

Chorus

Bridge:

Why do the days always

End in nights that never do?

Why does every street and thought

Bring me right back here to you?

Instrumental then chorus

The Angel of Death went to my small Midwestern parish, though I’m not sure I could identify him. I don’t know if I ever saw him. Nor am I sure if — amid the screams of the babies during Mass or the chattering of parents about their children after Mass — I heard him either until the day he entered my confessional one Saturday afternoon. I was immediately struck by his deep, calm voice, the voice that would echo in my head from that day on.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said from behind the screen. “It has been almost 5 years since my last confession.”

“You do know, son, that a faithful Catholic must go to confession once a year, even if they haven’t committed a mortal sin,” I admonished him. “It’s a requirement of the faith.”

“And is it a mortal sin if they do not?” he countered.

“I don’t believe so,” I said. “But you really should make a larger effort to get to confession. Now please continue and make a good confession.”

“Father, have you heard of Maria Cosway?”

I said that I had not, but I was tired of people bringing up irrelevant details rather than just listing their sins. I prepared for another such detour… and to nip it in the bud.

“She was a mistress of Thomas Jefferson, when he spent some time in France,” he said. “Cosway had spent her childhood in Italy, and her Italian nurse killed four of her seven siblings. She only narrowly escaped herself.”

“You will have to get to the point,” I said. “The confessional is only for a short description of one’s sins, not for the sharing of historical facts.”

“My point will be very clear shortly,” he said. “Miss Cosway’s nurse was only caught when she was heard talking to herself about how she was sending the children to heaven one by one, and how Maria was next. This is the sin I’ve come to confess.”

“First you had been too verbose, but now I will need more detail,” I said. “What exactly are you confessing?”

“I killed a baptized infant to ensure her salvation,” he said, as firmly and calmly as he had spoken the previous sentences. “For these and all my sins, I am sorry.

“Son, I’m surprised you are telling me this,” I stammered. “I am bound by the seal of confession, of course, but why the confidence that I will conceal such a horrible crime rather than leave an anonymous tip to the police?”

“I’ve observed you, and I know your conscience wouldn’t allow that,” he said.

“Well, I’m not so sure yet,” I said. “But give me more details, so I at least know a bit more about what we’re dealing with.”

“Very well,” he responded, as my knee began to bounce on the other side of the screen. “I was at the hospital earlier this week to visit the sick, and I ended up in the intensive care unit for babies — the NICU, they call it. I spoke with the nurses there. They said that many of the babies were born early in poor health due to the drug or alcohol use of their parents. And many of these parents do not visit them. As I was there, one such parent loudly inquired about adoption. I know the statistics. I spent some time in foster care myself. I know that these children have very little chance to end up faithful Catholics bound for heaven. Even less of a chance if they were to die unbaptized in their fragile state.”

“Not necessarily,” I interjected. “God has mercy on whom He will, this may even include unbaptized infants.”

“That’s an opinion, Father,” he said. “The Church has never guaranteed that to be the case. If it’s alright, I’ll return to providing the details you requested.”

I grunted an assent. And I also considered the fact that I may very well have been present in the same place that day. I was a chaplain at the hospital, and each time I went, I made sure to visit every unit to pray with anyone who might need it. I made a particular point of visiting the NICU unit, since they were unable to request prayer but often suffered greatly. If I’d passed this man in the hall, I did not recall.

He continued: “The nurse took the loud mother to an office to give her options on finding a way to unload her infant. I approached the child to pray for her; it was a girl. While there, I noticed she began to labor in her breathing. Nobody else was around. If she really were dying, it seemed obvious to me that baptizing her would be much more important to her eternal destiny than extending her earthly existence. I remembered an ‘Emergency Baptism’ pamphlet I once read, and that in a true life-or-death emergency, anyone could baptize a person.”

“Yes, that is the case,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I was speaking with an admitted killer to weigh in on a fine point of Canon Law.

“So I crammed the tips of three fingers in the opening of my water bottle and gave it a shake to wet them, then I baptized her in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, swiping her forehead with each of the fingers in turn. Then I gave her the name Therese, after the Little Flower, and took a step back in case anyone entered the room. Therese continued to gasp for breath. I was about to sprint out of the room to find a nurse, but then I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t the best thing for her be to die right now?’ I know. It’s wrong to think such things. But no real rebuttal entered my mind that didn’t just seem like emotional nonsense. Not knowing when they would return, I made a quick decision, took a step forward, and pinched her nose and covered her mouth. My hand was so much bigger than her entire head. Therese looked up at me, and we had a moment of staring in each other’s eyes, soul to soul, where I believe we both understood the other. She thrashed a little, but I continued until her little chest stopped going up and down.”

We were both silent a second, taking in the gravity of what he’d done.

“Her machines began beeping, so I quickly walked to the other corner and began praying over another child,” he continued. “When the nurses rushed in, I gave a calm smile as if all was well and said, ‘I think there’s some beeping over there. You should check on that one.’ And not a few minutes later, they declared Therese dead. Then they took her body out, probably to be tossed in an incinerator in the basement.”

“Well that’s just plainly evil,” I managed to get out.

“Incinerating a body rather than giving it a proper burial? I agree.”

“No, you know exactly what I mean — pinching the nose of a baby struggling to breathe. Depriving a family who may have been waiting to adopt from the opportunity to have the joy of parenthood. Deciding you can play God and kill for good. All of it.”

“Is it? Is it evil to see a struggling child that is about to fall like one of so many snowflakes down to hell, deprived for eternity of the beatific vision, and instead send her to the Father, to an eternity of bliss?”

“But that wasn’t your call to make,” I nearly shouted.

“Didn’t the Holy Apostle Paul wish he could be cut off from Christ for the sake of his kinsmen, the Jews? Didn’t Moses and other prophets and saints throughout the ages desire for a way to do the same? Well, I found a way to do so. But maybe I don’t have to be cut off. Maybe I can still be reconciled to God.”

“Well, you don’t sound too remorseful,” I said. “You need to show full contrition if it’s to be a good confession. And you keep justifying your decision.”

“No, Father. I’m just explaining my thinking at the time. I feel remorse and the weight of what I’ve done, even if I also have a very hard time escaping the logic of it. Can you deny that what I have done for that girl almost certainly provided her eternal bliss where otherwise she almost certainly would have been among the damned?”

“Well, your first inclination, to baptize her, was a noble one. But that doesn’t justify the second part,” I said, trying to remain calm as both of my knees were now bouncing like jackrabbits. “If one follows St. Augustine’s thought on this, an unbaptized baby would go to hell, due to the stain of Original Sin. But they are punished with less severe punishments. Most rejected this harsher view and went with Aquinas, who said they go to the Limbo of the Infants, at the edge, or limbus, of hell, which he says would actually be a pleasant place for them. I agree with you, though, that many of the more recent theories are a bit too hopeful.”

“Yes, well now her eternity doesn’t hang on a hypothesis of the Angelic Doctor. Have I made a good confession?”

I paused.

“When you say you are remorseful, does that mean you regret what you’ve done and intend to never repeat the action, even if you do see some twisted logic to it?” I asked.

“Yes, Father,” he said.

I tried to think of any other questions that I could ask or any other way to delay granting this man the forgiveness that only the Church — in its power to bind and loose — was granted the authority to give. But it wasn’t entirely up to me to keep one bound. Those claiming to be remorseful must be granted forgiveness. What else could I do but absolve him?

“Well, do you intend to avoid this and all sins and avoid whatever leads you to sin?” I asked.

“Yes, as I search my present intentions, I do.”

“And that’s all I can require,” I said.

For his penance, I required that he meditate on the face of the child whose life he had taken and say 150 Hail Marys for her.

“Gladly,” he said. Then he spoke his Act of Contrition, the shortest approved one, the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

I had never absolved a murder. But there didn’t seem to be a way around it. Some bishops reserve absolution for the sin of murder only to themselves, but not my bishop. So I had the faculties necessary and no cause not to.

“God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

“Thank you, Father,” he said.

My knees stopped bouncing. As I heard the Angel of Death exit the booth, I entered a thick cloud of spiritual despair, a dark night of the soul that I was not sure I could ever find my way out of.

And sadly, this time it would not be five years until his next confession.