The Power and The Glory describes
the story of a Catholic priest, still practicing his faith in a time of
religious persecution in Mexico. Many other Catholic priests during this time
were forced to marry and abandon their faith but he decided to avoid this and
go into hiding. This priest, however, is not your typical one, he suffers from
alcoholism; his weakness is whiskey. He has additionally fathered an
illegitimate child. Now on the move to avoid being caught, he tries to preserve
the Catholic faith as he is the only priest left in hiding.
Much of the story’s message lies in
the broken character of the “whiskey priest” and his difficult journey through
Mexico. Greene makes him very human, hence relatable, with his flaws, yet still
gives him the inherent divine connection to God as a religious person.
“I have
been drunk-I don’t know how many times; there isn’t a duty I haven’t neglected;
I have been guilty of pride, lack of charity…”
Through this quote, the readers
can see the priest’s disgust with his actions, revealing his humanity. Clearly
he regrets much of what he has done. He fails to see, however, all the grace he
has left in his journey with the people has helped.
“He thought: If I hadn’t
been so useless, useless….The eight hard hopeless years seemed to him to be
only a caricature of service: a few communions, a few confessions, and an
endless bad example. He thought: If I had only one soul to offer, so that I could
say, Look what I’ve done….People had died for him, they had deserved a saint,
and a tinge of bitterness spread across his mind for their sake that God hadn’t
though fit to send them one. Padre Jose and me, he thought, Padre Jose and me,
and he took a drink again from the brandy flask. He thought of the cold faces
of the saints rejecting him.”
As the Father is contemplating his oncoming death
in his prison cell, he thinks back at all his failures and feels as if humanity
deserved more than he could give. He fails to recognize and observe all that he
had done to preserve the faith during such difficult times, such as all the
masses he has says, the confessions he has listened to, and the numerous other
people he has helped, and the fact alone that he persevered through it all and didn't give up despite the mistakes he made. The phrase “All sinners think they’re saints and all
saints think they’re sinners” directly applies to the priest. Only through terrible
suffering does he learn and feel the true meaning of grace and innocence.
“That
was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins-impatience, an
unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity-cut you off from grace more
completely than the worse sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no
love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt…” (139)
Through the description of
corruption and suffering in the world, Greene finds ways to identify the grace
buried within. Suffering is often thought of as an inherent evil, but Greene
finds a way to see the potential for good underneath. He cleverly provides an insight into why suffering exists in the world.
“When
you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity-that
was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the
corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was
impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.” (131)
The reader
can see that although suffering wears a person, God is always there with them,
helping them through it.
In the scene with the Indian women seeking
help for her almost-dead child, Greene portrays the despair the priest feels in
seeing suffering and wondering where God, is.
“Faith, one was told, could move
mountains, and here was faith-faith in the spittle that healed the blind man
and the voice that raised the dead. […] when none came, it was as if God had
missed an opportunity, […] Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the
innocent with more life?” (155)
While
the son’s death is tragic, the priest was able to lead the women to a burial
ground where she could feel closure with her son’s death.
Through numerous other quotes, Greene comments
on how people lose sight of the beauty of life, as they are distracted with
corruption and suffering. For example,
“They won’t say it’s a miracle, because
that’s a word they don’t like. Then it happens again and again perhaps-because
God’s about on earth-and they say: these aren’t miracles, it is simply that we
have enlarged our conception of what life is. Now we know you can be alive
without pulse, breath, heart-beats. And they invent a new word to describe that
state of life, and they say science has disproved a miracle.” (201)
This
comment on miracles sheds light on things humans take for granted and often don’t
see the good/grace in.
As you read Brideshead Revisited, there may be some confusing terms or strange references.
version, by contrast, is wonderful.