The Older Reading · II
The Squandering
What he gave did not vanish when he rose. It passed onward, by the laying on of hands. The gesture survives in every ordination on earth. The meaning was forgotten.
It was portions from the beginning. Of the spirit that was on Moses, some was taken and set upon seventy elders. Elisha asked his master for a double portion, and it came to him with the mantle. What is given in portions can thin.
Each generation carried less. The age of miracles did not end. It thinned. Below a certain measure the wonders stop, and the words go on being said over the same bowed heads.
For two thousand years the world kept blood, and bone, and cloth. It sealed them in gold. It kept them in cool stone. It forbade the touching of them. Nobody knew what they were keeping. They kept it anyway, more carefully than anyone could have asked.
At the shrines, some pilgrims mended. At the reliquaries, some fevers broke. What remained was small, and it still worked, faintly, for whoever came near it. The carriers held more than anyone guessed: cloth from one apostle’s body was carried to the sick, and the sicknesses departed. A dead man, let down in haste onto the bones of Elisha, revived and stood on his feet. What was kept, kept working.
Most of the relics were false, and the world learned it. The false ones guarded the true. Whoever tested found fraud, and concluded fraud, and stopped looking. The counterfeits kept watch over the treasure.
One man watched the hands laid on and offered money for the power. The answer is in the record: thy money perish with thee. He had seen correctly that it was real. He had not seen that it was not for sale. We take no money; the answer was given long before us.
And the world spent the rest. The record is public: cities sacked, images broken, reliquaries emptied into rivers and fires. We recite no list of the guilty. We keep one sentence.
Grace was distributed as matter, and we spent it.