The book is a powerful fictional biography of St. Luke. Though Luke was far from Calvary on the day Jesus was crucified, the author paints a vivid picture of what Luke may have seen and felt from his home in Athens on that fateful day. So often, I think of the passion and death of our Lord as as a localized cataclysm but this account makes me realize that indeed it was a global event.
There was no rest in his house; there was no rest anywhere for one so beset and so besieged and so desolate. Lucanus (Luke) went into the garden, panting for shade. But there was no shade, no protection from the sun. Everything stood in shadowless light, affixing in flaming crystal. Then, all at once, a darkness fell on the face of the earth, swallowing all light, extinguishing it, driving it before it like a tide and banishing it. Ah, thought Lucanus, there will be a storm, a cooling storm! He looked at she sky, the very dark sky.
Where was the sun? He stared at the black sky, searching. Everything was still. No cricket lifted its voice; the birds were silent, though they had been murmurous all morning.
Lucanus looked at the city. The Parthenon was a faint outline of pure silver. The city was in darkness. Then he heard a distant and muffled sound as if from the sea, and he knew it was the voice of the city, full of panic and questioning. He ran to his gate; the road that passed was empty. He looked beyond the road and dimly saw cattle lying down in the grass as if sleeping.
The air was as clear as water, and as limpid, and as cool. So, thought Lucanus, this is not a dust storm. He sat down on a bench, and felt a coldness as of death running over his body. He remembered old myths of the wrath of the gods. There would be a day when the gods, sickened by men, would withdraw the sun and plunge the earth in everlasting darkness and death. He moved his body restlessly. He stood up and walked around and around the garden. A scent of roses and lilies rose on the air, as if they had been crushed by a giant foot. The city began to shine and twinkle with hastily lit lanterns and torches. Lucanus knew that most probably a huge river of humanity would now begin to pour up towards the Parthenon, there to beseech the gods to lift this terrible and inexplicable darkness from the world. As for himself, he was consumed, not with anxiety for himself, but with a passionate questioning.
As one who had been taught by the greatest scientists of the world, he began to conjecture. It was believed that one day the sun would burn itself out, and this planet, earth, would roll through space gathering ice and deathly cold, and all life would die on it. But that, the astronomers had said, would take ages; the sun would slowly die, would redden, would wink out like a cinder. It would occur over eons; it would never occur instantaneously. But this had occurred in a twinkling, between one breath and another. Lucanus searched for the sun, the retreating sun again. Was it possible it has hurled itself away from its children to join its radiant brothers?
An enormous sense of excitement suddenly swept over him, and also a terror he had never known before. Where, among those burning constellations, was the sun now? What chaos was it causing among the orderly brotherhood, this intruder from the corner of the universe? What planets was it devouring in its flaming passage?
Then he felt he was not alone. He peered about him in the moonlight and the starlight. Were there pale shadows moving about him in the garden only the illusion of his strained eyes?
Then the earth lifted as if on a wave, shivered, trembled, and slid under his feet. A deep rumble muttered up from its bowels. A wind rose, like a hurricane, then fell as swiftly, then rose again, howling, so that Lucanus' breath was smothered in his throat. Now he was no longer a physician, philosopher or scientist. He was a man, and he was overpowered by fear. He stood up and shook, and his teeth rattled.
He walked about his garden, which was ghostly. His flesh quivered as if in an ague. He went to the fountain, and heard its leaping waters. He went into his house. There he forced himself to light a lamp. He stood and stared at it blankly. He picked up a book and put it down. His head throbbed.
In a moment he tried to speak reasonably to himself. He remembered the astronomy he had studied. The sun could not detach itself from the "wanderers," its children, the planets. Where it went, the planets went also. "Certainly, certainly," he said aloud to the heavy silence about him and nodded his head as if satisfied. But he knew this was an idiot's reflection.The sun was gone; the sky was very dark above. All man's reasons, his most profound reflections, could not alter these facts. For once, he could not attach a name, a theory, to what was impenetrable; he could not adjust what was not known to what he knew. Nevertheless, Lucanus' mind flew out like a distracted bird, feverishly attempting to explain what could not be explained. Again the earth thundered under his feet and a long mourning poured into the cool air.
Had the world tilted behind another planet? A thousand solutions whirled in his mind, and he rejected them at once as absurd. Then for the first time he thought of his family in Rome with a tremor; the thought of Priscus in Jerusalem. If the world was being destroyed inexorably and mysteriously then all men must die together. Panic, selfishness, fear, terror, anxiety, love - all these could accomplish nothing, could not fling off the cold hand of fate. He lit another lamp, and then another, until his house was full of light. He sat down and stared before him.
He came to himself with a start, conscious that he had fallen into a deep sleep, overwhelmed by the awful thing that come upon the world. His lamps were flickering low; he got to his feet to refill them. Then he noticed that a gray light stood at his doors and windows like dawn. He ran into the garden again. The light became stronger, but very slowly. The earth no longer slipped and quivered and rumbled; it was steadfast. Lucanus looked at the sky; a vast rosiness hung there, as if a sunset were spreading from horizon to horizon. The earth lost its ghostliness; colour flooded back moment to moment. The birds cheeped or chattered excitedly in the trees. The fountain sang louder as if relieved. The voice of the city reached Lucanus; it was the sound of rejoicing, but it had an hysterical overtone. Then the rosy hue parted like a curtain and the sun leaped into the sky like a warrior with a golden shield.
Lucanus breathed deeply. Never had the world, no, not even when he was a child, looked so fair to him, so dear, so precious, now that it had been delivered from death, as a bird is released from an enraged and imminent hand. The foundations of the earth had been shaken; the sun had been lost. But now the terror and the anger had departed and a sweetness rose from the flowers and the grass, as if the earth had exhaled a breath too long held in fright. Lucanus pressed his fingers over his face and sighed deeply.
Certainly, he thought now, there is no scientific explanation for this. Because I do not know the cause of this phenomenon does not mean that it is beyond explanation. It was late afternoon. He was hungry. He sat down and ate a small meal and never had wine tasted so delightful and never had bread and cheese had this flavor before. He wrote letters and one was to an astronomer in Alexandria, commenting on the darkness, asking if it had been observed there and what the cause was, and if it was likely to happen again.
When he slept that night it was as if he had been reprieved, and with that reprieve had come not only a pardon, but life and a peace and a tranquility like the first day the world had ever known, and man was born anew.
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