Last Act of the Apostle
The hermit had lived alone for decades but had never known loneliness until now. The feeling climbed like an adder from his diaphragm to his gullet. It inflamed his throat and desiccated his tongue. The flaps of his hood blew in the faint breeze. He wept and fell to his knees in front of his stone hovel on that barren island off the coast of Malta where Paul of Tarsus was reputed to have been shipwrecked on his way to Rome.
The year was 412 A.D.
The hermit’s cell was so cramped that when he slept in it he had to curl up, like Diogenes the Cynic in his barrel. He gazed through the slanting rain at a similar hovel that stood on the far side of an isthmus which linked the island’s smaller northern section to its rockier southern one. The island sometimes became two when the mild waves of the Mediterranean closed over the isthmus. Often the hermit created a map of his home in the sand with the tip of his staff, drawing a lemniscate shape and contemplating it for hours on end.
“He left because of what I said,” the old man muttered
Long ago the hermit had forsaken his Isaurian name because it was pagan. But he had never assumed a Christian one to replace it. He was known to the locals simply as “the old one on Paul’s island.” He recalled his companion’s name, however, because the young man, who had occupied the hovel across the way, had been named after the Apostle to the Gentiles and had arrived in a storm less than a year ago, sculling a small boat to the shore for dear life. The sand on the beach received his leaky vessel.
“I was ordained in Milan,” Paul said by way of introduction. “I boarded a ship from Genoa bound for Alexandria. I had hoped to join an eremitic order in the desert. But our ship was assailed by a fierce storm. The superstitious mariners believed I had caused it, and so they let me down into this boat with enough food to last a few days.”
“You are on the island where Holy Paul was shipwrecked,” the hermit replied. “You share his name and were brought here for a reason. You do not need to travel to Egypt. You can erect a cell over there—on the other side of the island. I shall not disturb you in your devotions.”
“I accept your invitation,” Paul replied.
The hermit explained his way of life to the young man. “I wade into the sea and catch fish trapped in the shallows. I am known throughout Malta because I carve crosses onto flat stones I find here. I pray over these and they become endowed with miraculous properties. I leave them in a basket on the southernmost tip of the island. People come ashore and give me food and wine in exchange for them.”
Together they built a second cell. With the young man’s boat they were able to catch fish farther out from the shore. They had no codices or scrolls between them, but the hermit was fluent in Greek and had committed to memory all of Gospels and Pauline letters. He elucidated in heavily accented Latin the meanings of the Greek words for the young man’s edification.
“It was a miracle you came here,” the hermit said one evening as they shared the warmth of a low fire in the center of the isthmus.
“How so?” Paul asked.
“I had never understood the meaning of charitas—love. You have taught me that the word is related to friendship. Sharing the empty hours with you after so many years of solitude has given me great pleasure. It is as though the scales have fallen from my eyes.”
When he said this, Paul stared at him searchingly. The thunder rumbled overhead and a wind swept over the isle’s crags. Paul rose as the rain began to fall. Without a word, the young man turned his back on the hermit and, with head bowed, returned to his hovel.
The old hermit withdrew into his own; and, as the raindrops rolled down his long gray beard, he watched the smoke rise from the doused fire that only moments ago the two of them had convivially shared.
A fierce squall roared like a demon through the night. The next day, the hermit could not find the young man’s boat on the sandy shore. When the isthmus was traversable again, the hermit crossed it. But his friend was gone.
The hermit waited a week, but Paul did not return. The old man believed his companion had been possessed by the spirit of Holy Paul and had been sent as an admonition. This last act of the apostle had broken the hermit’s heart. He went to a cliff at the base of which whirlpools formed. Binding his legs together with a rope, he fastened a boulder to his feet and rolled it over the ledge. He was dragged down into a submarine cave beneath the haunted island.
The next morning the young man piloted the boat back to the sandy shore.
On the night of the storm he had seen his boat drifting out to sea. In a panic he plunged into the waves and swam to it, climbing aboard and guiding it to a cove along the Maltese coast. Local fishermen recognized him as a holy man and agreed to mend his boat and safeguard it for him. They conducted him to town, where he related his story to the local bishop. When Paul asked about the hermit who lived on the island, the bishop admitted that he did not know the man’s name, but he believed that he had originally been from Tarsus.
For a week the young man rested in the town before returning with a boat laden with food and two barrels of fresh water. But when he came ashore the old man was nowhere to be found, which only confirmed Paul’s suspicions. There had been something beatific in the hermit’s eyes on the night he confessed to his protégé that it was only by spending time with him that he had learned the meaning of charity: That was no man I met on the island. It was the spirit of the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Stunning. I really loved this story.
Great story and brilliantly executed. 👏