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The God of Six Points

Father Larose stood at the entrance of Our Lady of Peace Church and preached to the crowd gathered on the steps and spilling out onto Bloor Street. Traffic was blocked in both directions. Car horns honked, motorists screamed in frustration but still the priest continued to preach. He preached about the illusion of permanence, about the certainty of death, about the bureaucratic neatness of time. God did not operate on a punch clock. The soul of man was always a child. Salvation was as messy as a teenager’s room. We must imitate Christ, climb up onto the Cross, and be crucified with Him, the priest declared.

And then the police arrived and dragged Father Larose off the steps and into a police cruiser. I looked in on the priest as he sat in the back, sad and friendless. I had never been so proud of him. The police dispersed the crowd. Moments later the cruiser sped off into the afternoon.

The next Sunday the pastor informed his congregation that Father Larose had a nervous breakdown. He had been placed in an institution for rest. I looked up at the cross behind the pastor, at the nails in the feet and hands of Christ, put there I thought so he wouldn’t step down off the Cross and start preaching in front of the Church. And I recalled the sad smile on Father Larose’s face sitting like a criminal in the back seat of the cruiser, abandoned.