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This classic 1940 novel might look like the story of a Mexican priest fleeing for his life from military revolutionaries (and it is). But it's also an extended meditation on the Eucharist.

And not just the Eucharist, actually — but also compassion and sin, confession, and repentance. It's well worth the read just for the draw of the plot and characters, but the fresh insight into such larger theological topics is really what has made me recommend this to so many friends lately.

Not that I recommend belabored "theological" novels, that shoehorn in all sorts of high-falutin' terminology and exposition. What I like about The Power and the Glory is that it may seem to be a book about a bad priest, a fallen priest, a priest who doesn't believe in what he believes anymore. (That's certainly how Penguin's back-cover marketing pitches the product.) I imagine this whiff of apostasy attracts some readers, since we moderns so love a crisis of faith (as long as it isn't our own).

But in fact, I think the story reveals the priest to be among the best of priests. When he seems not to believe — and he does testify that he doubts whether he's much of a believer — it's actually that he holds too high a view of the holy mysteries of faith to handle them as glibly as some of his fellows.

For instance, the priest reflects to himself that "he was a man who was supposed to save souls. It had seemed quite simple once.... It was as easy as saving money: now it was a mystery. He was aware of his own desperate inadequacy" (82). Whatever the priest may think, his second view of saving souls — the mystery of it — is a truer faith.

Likewise, even though the priest seems to think of it as unbelief, Greene shows that he understands the greatness of God's love: "It would be enough to scare us — God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around" (200).

Throughout the book, we receive privileged glimpses such as these into the wisdom of this man. I hope that I have fully appreciated not only the wisdom, but the genuine anguish of his humility. Otherwise, I'd be just a theological voyeur.

Fortunately, Greene has written a story that helps my compassion grow by watching the priest's. He will turn aside, even miles out of his way, indeed backtracking into jeopardy, to administer the sacrament of holy communion to anyone who asks. And this is where this book has given me a sound schooling in the nature of the Eucharist.

I too take the Lord's Supper seriously, but not nearly as seriously as Greene's priest. Not until reading this novel did I fully understand what a precious but also terrible burden might it be to administer the elements of a Catholic Eucharist. Because transubstantiation is a living doctrine to him, Greene's priest is gripped by the responsibility of bringing God to communicants — of literally putting God into their mouths.

In one remote village, it doesn't even matter that the Mass is interrupted before the communicants can receive the elements; they don't care. As he pronounces hoc est enim Corpus Meum ("this is my Body"), "He could hear the sigh of breaths released: God was here in the body for the first time in six years" (71). The priest's awareness of the awful mystery of his special ordination to bring this miracle about is what keeps him going, even though that very awe keeps him in an anguish of conviction for his sins. As the last priest left in the region, alone surviving the political purge that pursues him every hour, he alone can bring the holy Presence to believers.

Greene, too, has brought something holy and surprising into our presence.

Considered in this review: Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1990).

first published Aug 26, 2005