But I see now a great coherence to the life of Christ and the beginning of Christianity that eluded me before, and I see also the subtle transformation of the ancient world because of its economic stagnation and the assault upon it of the values of monotheism, Jewish values melded with Christian values, for which it was not perhaps prepared.
There are also theologians who must be studied, more of Teilhard de Chardin, and Rahner, and St. Augustine.
Now somewhere during my journey through all of this, as I became disillusioned with the skeptics and with the flimsy evidence for their conclusions, I realized something about my book.
It was this. The challenge was to write about the Jesus of the Gospels, of course!
Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a g*y Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The "Quest for the Historical Jesus" had become a joke because of all the many definitions it had ascribed to Jesus.
The true challenge was to take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Gospels which were becoming ever more coherent to me, the Gospels which appealed to me as elegant first-person witness, dictated to scribes no doubt, but definitely early, the Gospels produced before Jerusalem fell - to take the Jesus of the Gospels, and try to get inside him and imagine what he felt.
Then there were the legends - the Apocrypha - including the tantalizing tales in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas describing a boy Jesus who could strike a child dead, bring another to life, turn clay birds into living creatures, and perform other miracles. I'd stumbled on them very early in my research, in multiple editions, and never forgotten them. And neither had the world. They were fanciful, some of them humorous, extreme to be sure, but they had lived on into the Middle Ages, and beyond. I couldn't get these legends out of my mind.
Ultimately I chose to embrace this material, to enclose it within the canonical framework as best I could. I felt there was a deep truth in it, and I wanted to preserve that truth as it spoke to me. Of course that is an assumption. But I made it. And perhaps in assuming that Jesus did manifest supernatural powers at an early age I am somehow being true to the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus was God and Man at all times.
I am certainly trying to be true to Paul when he said that Our Lord emptied himself for us, in that my character has emptied himself of his Divine awareness in order to suffer as a human being.
This is a book I offer to all Christians - to the fundamentalists, to the Roman Catholics, to the most liberal Christians in the hope that my embrace of more conservative doctrines will have some coherence for them in the here and now of the book. I offer it to scholars in the hope that they will perhaps enjoy seeing the evidence of the research that's gone into it, and of course I offer it to those whom I so greatly admire who have been my teachers though I've never met them and probably never will.
I offer this book to those who know nothing of Jesus Christ in the hope that you will see him in these pages in some form. I offer this novel with love to my readers who've followed me through one strange turn after another in the hope that Jesus will be as real to you as any other character I've ever launched into the world we share.
After all, is Christ Our Lord not the ultimate supernatural hero, the ultimate outsider, the ultimate immortal of them all?
If you've followed me this far, I thank you. I could append to this a bibliography of stifling length but I will not.
Let me in conclusion thank several people who have been my support and inspiration throughout these years:
Fr. Dennis Hayes, my spiritual director, who has answered my theological questions with patience always.
Fr. Joseph Callipare, whose sermons on the Gospel of John were brilliant and wonderful. My time spent in his parish in Florida was one of the most beautiful periods of my research and work.
Fr. Joseph Cocucci, whose letters and discussions on theology with me have been inspiring and truly great.
The Redemptorist Fathers, the priests of my parish in New Orleans, whose sermons have sustained me, and whose example has been a shining light. I leave them with regret. My father's education in the Redemptorist Seminary at Kirkwood, Missouri, no doubt changed the course of his life. My debt to the Redemptorists can never be paid.
Fr. Dean Robins and Fr. Curtis Thomas of the Nativity of Our Lord Parish, who have been welcoming to me as a new parishioner. I leave them with regret.
Br. Becket Ghioto, whose letters have been patient, wise, and full of wonderful insights and answers.
And last, but hardly least, Amy Troxler, my friend and companion, who has answered so many fundamental questions for me, and listened to my endless ravings, who has been with me to Mass, and brought me Communion when I couldn't go, who has been more of a help to me than I can ever say. It was Amy who was there for me on the afternoon in 1998 when I asked if she knew a priest who could hear my confession, who could help me go back to the Church. It was Amy who found the priest and took me to see him. It was Amy's example during those early months of attending the Mass in English that helped me so much to adjust to a liturgy that was wholly different from that which I'd left behind. I leave Amy as I leave New Orleans with the deepest regret.
My beloved staff, my dearest friends, my editor Vicky Wilson who read and commented on this manuscript much to its benefit, my family, I thank them all. I live in the environment of their nourishing love. I am blessed.
As for my son, this novel is dedicated to him. That says it all.