Page 107 of Theo of Golden

“And this third, a talkative chap it seems, asked them what they were discussing so intently.

“ ’Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Don’t you watch the news?’ ”

“And so, they told Him, this poor uninformed fellow. You can almost feel their impatience, their astonishment at His ignorance. Maybe He asked for details, for clarification. Maybe He expressed incredulity and amazement.

“ ‘You don’t say! Really?’

“Maybe His brow was furrowed too. Maybe not. Maybe He smiled, squinted His eyes, and looked up. We don’t know. But what we do know is that He took over the conversation, just hijacked it right out from under them. And He told them a long story, one they thought they knew already, one they thought they had already figured out and clearly understood.

“He told them the story that many of us think we know, one that we think we’ve all figured out. The wonderful story that, for many of us, has lost any element of wonder. The text tells us that Jesus ‘opened the scriptures’ and brought to life all those words about the everlasting God, about a world made good and beautiful but now horribly ruined, about a rescue that none could possibly have imagined. He told them that story in a way that reawakened wonder in those two fellow travelers.

“From all indications, to their credit, they listened attentively and without interruption. They were so captivated that, when they finally reached their destination and should have been saying farewell, they asked Him to stay with them longer, which He did. And at some point, those two pilgrims realized that their mysterious walking partner was no ordinary man. He could tell them the story because He wrote the story.

“Because He was the story.

“We are told that ‘their eyes were opened.’

“And this is what the pair subsequently recalled when they spoke of their seven-mile walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

“ ‘Our hearts burned within us.’ Their hearts burned within them.”

Father Lundy allowed the phrase to linger in silence for a few seconds before he resumed.

“We all walk roads of various descriptions in life. The long and winding road. The road to ruin. Easy Street. The road less traveled.

“Along the way, there are questions, there is news, there are concerns and fears and uncertainties that furrow our brows, trouble our souls, and break our hearts. Death terrifies many of us.

“But God, in His sublime goodness, has always sent others, mysterious others, to walk with us — prophets, preachers, friends, teachers, artists, storytellers, wives and husbands, children, songbirds and rivers, even hardship and loss — to help us see clearly. They are ones who make our hearts burn within us, who call us out of our indifference, our lethargy, our death and defeat. They call us to be fully alive, or at least more alive than we were before we met them.

“And so… Theo.

“For a year, he was in our midst and now, looking back, can’t we say that, when we were with him, our hearts burned within us, our souls stood on tiptoe, our eyes recognized something good and true, and our minds could believe, if not fully, then ever so slightly, that love and heaven and forgiveness are the most real things that we can know in this world?

“I think we are only beginning to understand and appreciate what a unique man Theo was. Can you call to mind anyone who quite so beautifully integrated the concrete and the spiritual? Who lived with such a winsome commitment to the seen and the unseen, the ultimate and the proximate, the wide grace and the narrow way?

“Theo was a playful man in the best sense of that word. But it seems more and more certain to me that his lightheartedness was deadly serious and steeped in purpose. It was one more way in which he spoke to us the language of another place. His every kindness was a signpost, meant no doubt for the present but pointing to the up ahead, aiming at the still to come.

“Like you, I wonder why Theo chose our city. But we can trust that, had he wanted us to know, he would have told us. By all accounts, he wanted refuge. From what or whom? For how long or why, we don’t know. We might never know. But how fortunate we are that he chose us, that out of the whole world available to him — and apparently the whole world was — he settled among us, moved into our neighborhood, adopted us as his children, and made us the objects of his affection and the beneficiaries of his thoughtfulness.

“Theo could have come to us with great fanfare. He could have flaunted his importance and impressed us with his great wealth and long list of accomplishments. Instead, he came with anonymous handwritten letters and no last name. Instead, he came, as did His Lord, not to be served but to serve.

“And if you wonder why, if you are mystified that he was so ruthlessly good, let me tell you and you and you…”

Father Lundy looked at the front section, taking time to linger on the face of each one in Theo’s inner circle.

“He… loved… you.

“And so, I say to you, my friends and neighbors, followers of Christ and those not, if you would honor the memory of Gamez Theophilus Zilavez, then do good, bestow kindness, strive for beauty, seek and find the river that leads to life everlasting, and draw from the fountain that never runs dry.

“Like Theo did.

“For heaven’s sake.

“Amen.”

CHAPTER 61

Weariness — from personal grief, from unwelcome attention, from concern for others, from work, and from age — was etched across the face of James Ponder in the days following Theo’s death.