Christ the Lord

The last book of Anne Rice’s that I read was Memnoch the Devil, and that was years ago. As someone on a spiritual journey myself, I was fascinated by the questions Ms. Rice both asked and answered. Memnoch was not so much one of her Vampire Chronicles, but more of a treatise on her own spiritual journey. It still had the vampires, and the carnal sensuality for which Ms. Rice is well known, but it was the personal quest for answers which made it fascinating. It was a look at Creation through the eyes of the Devil, and then a search for answers once the brutality of humanity is laid forth. I will be forever grateful to her as being hte first person to ever verbalize to me that all of these horrific and destructive things, such as the Crusades, which were done in the name of God and religion, were not about religion but were politics thinly disguised.

It was with great interest; therefore, that I picked up the first two books in her new Christ the Lord. Wow. It is apparent from the beginning of the first book that her spiritual journey has led her Home and that she is delighted to be there. Her joy in the Lord is palpable. It lifts off the page and dances it’s way through the first book.

Ms Rice has truly fallen head over heels in love with the humanity of Christ. She delights in the little boy of 7 in the first book, and, in the second book, invites the reader feels the pain of being different with the man he has become.

Many of the stories of Jesus’ childhood that she relates are stories which have been handed down orally through the Church. I know that I have heard them many times from different nuns and priests I have been fortunate to know. His wide-eyed innocence is endearing, yet he is a precocious child who knows that he is different. He knows that he calls his father Joseph, but doesn’t know why he has been taught to do so. He has an instinctive grasp of the meaning of Scripture, and astonishes his teachers, but it just comes naturally to him.

Ms Rice deals beautifully with some of the great mysteries of our faith as naturally as she deals with conversation between mother and child. He)re is her explanation of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary:

Jesus’ Cleopas is telling Jesus about when Mary forst told him of the visit from the angel.

“I believed her,” he said. “I am her brother, am I not? She was thirteen, betrothed to Joseph, and I tell you, she was never out oft he sight of any of us outside of our house, never could there have been any chance of anyone being with her, you know what I’m saying to you, I mean a man. There was no chance, and I am her brother. Remember I told you. I believed her” He lay back a little on the clothes bundled behind him. “A virgin child, a child in the service of the Temple of Jerusalem, to weave the great veil, with the other chosen ones, and then home under our eyes.”

…

My mind was working, collecting every bit of knowledge I had ever learned that could help me make sense of what he had said. It was the mind of a child who had grown up sleeping in a room with men and women in that same room and in the other rooms open to it, and sleeping in the open courtyard with the men and women in the heat of summer, and living always close with them, and hearing and seeing many things. My mind was working. But I couldn’t make sense of all he’d said.

“You remember, what I said to you, that I believed!” he said.

“But you’re not really sure, are you?” I whispered.

His eyes opened wide and a new expression came over him, as if waking from a fever.

“And Joseph isn’t either, is he?” I asked in the same whisper. “And that is why he never lies beside her.”

He rose up on his elbow, and his face was close to mine.

“Turn it around,” he said. He struggled for breath. “He never touches her because he does believe…”

If you are looking for Summer reading, pick up these two books, and then wait with me for the third. Accept Ms. Rice’s invitation to come to know the humanity of Christ and then to embrace the divinity of him. You will be glad you did.

All I can add is: Welcome home, Anne, welcome home.