“I have lost patience with Stella,” she said. Father James needed no explanation for this. He knew them all far too well to need explanation. “I have had angry words with Rigo….” Words about the Hunt, words about his risking his neck and more than his neck. “I have doubted God….”
Father James woke up at this. “How have you doubted?”
If God were good, Rigo and I would be in love, and Rigo would not treat me as he does, she thought. If God were good, Father Sandoval would not treat me as a mere adjunct to my husband, sentencing me to obedience every time I am unhappy. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I’m the one who is being punished and it isn’t fair. She longed for justice. She bit her lip and said none of this, but instead dragged false scent across the trial. “If God is truly powerful, he would not let this plague go on.”
There was silence in the confessional, silence lasting long enough for Marjorie to wonder whether Father James might not really have fallen asleep. Not that she blamed him. Their sins were all boring enough, repetitive enough. They had enough capital sins roiling around to condemn them all. Pride, that was Rigo’s bent. Sloth, Eugenie’s trademark. Envy, that was for Stella. And she, Marjorie, boiling with uncharitable anger toward them all. Herself, who had always tried so hard not to be guilty of anything!
“Marjorie.” Father James recalled her to herself. “I cut my hand upon a grass blade a few days ago, a bad cut. It hurt a great deal. Grass cuts do not seem to heal easily, either.”
“That’s true,” she murmured, familiar with the experience but wondering what he was getting at.
“It came to me suddenly as I was standing there bleeding all over the ground that I could see the cut there between my fingers but I could not heal it. I could observe it, but I couldn’t do anything about it even though I greatly desired to do so. I could not command the cells at the edges of the wound to close. I was not, am not privy to their operations I am too gross to enter my own cells and observe their function. Nor can you do so, nor any of us.
“But suppose, just suppose, that you could create … oh, a virus that sees and reproduces and thinks! Suppose you could send it into your body, commanding it to multiply and find whatever disease or evil there may be and destroy it. Suppose you could send these creatures to the site of the wound with an order to stitch it up and repair it. You would not be able to see them with your naked eye. You would be unable to know how many of them there were in the fight. You would not know where each one of them was or what it was doing, what agonies of effort each was expending or whether some gave up the battle out of fatigue or despair. All you would know is that you had created a tribe of warriors and sent it into battle. Until you healed or died, you would not know whether that battle was won.”
“I don’t understand, Father.”
“I wonder sometimes if this is what God has done with us.”
Marjorie groped for his meaning. “Wouldn’t that limit God’s omnipotence?”
“Perhaps not. It might be an expression of that omnipotence. In the microcosm, perhaps He needs—or chooses—to create help. Perhaps He has created help. Perhaps he creates in us the biological equivalent of microscopes and antibiotics.”
“You are saying God cannot intervene in this plague?” The invisible person beyond the grating sighed. “I am saying that perhaps God has already done his intervening by creating us. Perhaps He intends us to do what we keep praying He will do. Having designed us for a particular task, he has sent us into battle. We do not particularly enjoy the battle, so we keep begging him to let us off. He pays no attention because He does not keep track of us individually. He does not know where in the body we are or how many of us there are. He does not check to see whether we despair or persevere. Only if the body of the universe is healed will he know whether we have done what we were sent to do!” The young priest coughed. After a moment, Marjorie realized he was laughing. Was it at her, or at himself? “Do you know of the uncertainty principle, Marjorie?”