The Exorcist

by William Peter Blatty

vocation. From these he had fled into love, but now the love had grown cold, and in the night he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost and gently crying wind.

More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil and much of it resulted from doubt, from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not finally reveal Himself? Not speak?

He wondered why love had waited for this distance, waited for the moment when he need not touch, when the limits of contact and human surrender had dwindled to the size of a printed Mass card tucked in his wallet: In Memoriam … He knew.

At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like the faint, distant cry of someone in distress, and for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.

MY BROTHER HURTS. I SHARE HIS PAIN. I MEET GOD IN HIM.

Once Karras met God in this sight. Long ago. Like a lover forsaken, he still kept the rendezvous.