Guilt – A Parable

Detail of Mountain Landscape with Rainbow,
by Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840).
From Wikimedia Commons.

I woke up, not knowing where I was. I was lying down on damp soil, but dampened by something that did not look like rain. I got up with an unbearably heavy heart, which became even heavier when I discovered with horror the origin of that liquid. The ground was wet with my own sweat and tears. Overwhelmed by a sense of being lost and by the unknown nature of my situation, terror gave me the final blow when I looked ahead of me. Before me, there was the unmovable mountain of my past, the fixed peak of my life, inhabited by the shapeless monsters of my misdeeds. A sense of guilt joined the horror, trying to destroy me, infusing into me a feeling of shame and hopelessness which were as vague as intense.

“I will climb the mountain to the top. I will own it! I will win it! I will triumph over it!” I decided. “I can find my way out of this misery by my own strength, I can fix myself with my own hands. This will bring me glory, and it will deliver me from this suffering. Not a cross, but glory!”

I started climbing that heinous height. Initially, it appeared to be easy and satisfactory, and my early progress replaced guilt and shame with self-satisfaction and enthusiasm that contributed to nothing but to increase my suffering when the creatures of the mountain appeared. Each of them was the herald of my past sins. Their shape was as indescribable as my guilt and amorphous as my shame. They battled for the closest place to my inward being, clinging to me, and making themselves as present as possible, because my memory gave them existence and my imagination gave them strength. Their very life depended on talking to me, they gorged on me by describing themselves to me as representatives of the dark actions of my past, gaining their essence from my memory and their existence from my imagination which magnified and distorted their appearance to unreal and otherworldly proportions.

I pressed on as long as I could, but no amount of rationalization and realistic self-talk could defeat any of them. I collapsed on the ground, far from the top of that mountain of aberrations. I must have fainted for a few minutes, and I was awakened by my own blood, copiously flowing from my forehead into my eyes. I was at the bottom of the mountain. The creatures had pushed me there. They were gone, but I could see them laughing at me from above, satisfied after their cruel meal, knowing that the poison of the mountain in me, that already was in me, that has always been in me, would draw me there again. But I was tired, exhausted, wanting to die. I did not make any effort to stand up. I closed my eyes. “All I see around me is nothing but death,” I thought. “I shall leave this land of Thanatos for the realm of Hypnos. If I sleep, everything I will see will be sleep.” With my very last energies, I whispered, “Lord, help me.” I fell asleep, hoping to enter into a never-ending sleep.

I do not know how long I slept. It might have been a long time, but it felt like a few seconds. Something was poking my chest, exactly at the point where my heart is. I opened my eyes, and I saw a man. A shepherd. He was poking me with the bent end of one of those old shepherd staffs. There was nothing beautiful or great about his appearance, and he did not attract me. He kept poking me, but when I looked at him, and when he saw from my eyes that I had no intention to stand up, he struck me in the hand where my wound was. Taken by surprise, I quickly sat up. Contrary to my expectations, my wound stopped bleeding. He was smiling. 

“Why?” I asked.

He bent on his knee, placed his right hand on my shoulder, and said, “Follow me.”

He immediately started climbing the mountain. His command was irresistible, but the paroxysm of indecision assailed me. I knew what I wanted to do, but in another sense, I did not want to do it.

“You want me to follow you there? You want me to follow you to my demise!”

“This is not your demise. Your real demise has been taken care of.” And he kept going.

I did not know what he meant. Everything around me communicated powerful monstrosity and mighty deadness. Contrarily, the Shepherd looked quite common, a man like any other. I started following him, split between debilitating terror and the awareness I was doing the right thing.

He went on, and because he went on, I went on. No creature approached me, but all shrank away in fear, crying out the name of the I AM. As we climbed, the mountain changed its constitution, and olive trees, almond trees, and lilies blossomed across.

We reached the top. As I looked over the horizon, I saw an unimaginable number of mountains among all nations, tribes, and tongues, of all different sizes and shapes, but all covered with the same vegetation of peace. 

“You conquered my mountain,” I said.

He said nothing, but pointed at the sky toward something that in the past I always took for granted, but something that I had forgotten and that filled me with hope. The sun was brightly shining.

“You see how all the mountains are pointing heavenward. The true Sun, the Sun of Righteousness, conquered your mountain. It is his mountain now. He owns you, your past, your present, and your future. He declared them, and you, for what they are, redeemed by His blood. You are a new creature, redeemed by his blood.”

The shepherd pulled some of the lilies, grabbed some soil, and showed it to me. The ground was saturated with blood. I stepped back, scandalized.

“Do not let the foolishness of the cross be a stumbling block for you. It’s the blood of the Lamb that made your mountain to be reborn.”

I looked at the sun, and then at him.

“Are you Him?”

“I am a messenger. I did not conquer anything. The Sun conquered for me as well as for you. That is my mountain.” He said pointing to one direction.

Hope and strength slowly came back to me, and also something that I recognized only after a few minutes, and that I thought I lost forever. Happiness. The happiness of belonging to the End of all things. As I meditated these things, the shepherd pointed at the sun again. Like a stellar explosion, it became bigger and bigger, only to suddenly shrink. It assumed the shape of a son of man, looking like a man in all things, but nonetheless so different. He approached, and everything was burning in flames of judgment. The mysterium tremendum encompassed my whole being, but the shepherd placed his comforting hand on my shoulder. Everything was being set aflame, but all that belonged to Him was being purified. Including myself. The fire of His purging rays enveloped me and the shepherd. Divine security filled us.

Then, an omni-pervading light, followed by the sound of a trumpet that reached the very end of the cosmos. I woke up, in my bed, soaked in sweat, with my mind filled with awe, and my heart filled with unnatural light.

by Marco Barone

Copyright © Marco Barone. All Rights Reserved.