The Light in the Ruins

Chapter 1

The Letter

Pastor Jonathan Klug arrived on time at Berger’s Restaurant, knowing he would have to wait for his friend, Father Anthony Cacciaguida, who was always late for appointments. As he entered, he breathed in a pleasant blend of coffee and sizzling hamburgers, an aroma encountered in hole-in-the-wall restaurants all over America. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the lunch rush had ended more than an hour before, so only a few customers sat at the tables. Since transmissions occurred for only a few hours a day in the morning and the evening, the two aging televisions hanging on the wall were turned off. Music popular in the early twenty-second century filled the air. Its quality reflected those bleak times, cacophony prevailing over euphony and despair over hope.

Despite his poverty, the pastor was such a good tipper that the waitress bypassed the distracted hostess and immediately escorted him to a booth, placing a two-page menu in front of him. It was short compared with its distant predecessors, which boggled the mind with page upon page of selections.

“We need one for Father Anthony, Maxie.”

“Of course,” replied the waitress, who did not need to be reminded. She produced another menu and put it on the table opposite Jonathan.

Proud of herself for knowing what beverage he preferred, Maxie soon returned with unsweetened iced tea and lemon with enough ice in the glass for two. She knew Jonathan enjoyed chewing the ice, a habit his mother had failed to break when he was a child.

“Thanks, Maxie,” Jonathan said. “I’ll order when Father Anthony arrives.” He looked up at her smiling face. Knowing the routine by now, she said, “Okay, pastor.”

Jonathan had been a regular at Berger’s since he and his wife and their two children had moved from a church in western Pennsylvania to Felderheim two years earlier. Felderheim was not far from his hometown. Considering the crisis of the times, he readily accepted a call near the home of his youth where his mother, a brother, and a sister still lived.

Felderheim was founded by German colonists, who established prosperous farms and businesses throughout the area. Their German became the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, their style of cooking developed into a blend of German and American, and their Old World traditions were transformed or lost through the generations. Central Pennsylvania’s hardworking and frugal people had once reaped prosperity from their labors, but the good times were now only a memory. The stream of life in Felderheim was one of thousands of tributaries flowing into the wide river of American culture. In Felderheim as in all of America, the young had gone to war, the dead had been mourned and remembered on plaques and monuments, and the people had suffered during depressions and other national misfortunes. The knowledge and the skill of the town’s inhabitants had contributed to the nation’s greatness. Life consisted of church, family, hard work, good food, and the problems and tragedies endemic to the human race.

Momentous events, deeply affecting life in Felderheim, had been unfolding for more than a century. After decades of social and natural disaster, America and the rest of the world were plunging into a dark age, with civilization in retreat across the globe. Under siege by hostile forces since the twentieth century, the American family continued to weaken and was heading toward extinction. The drug culture had caused a disastrous blight across the land. In the late twenty-first century, a pandemic of a virulent tropical disease, originating in Southeast Asia, reaped grim harvests. Research for a cure was retarded by chaotic conditions and the resulting decline in funding from government and private sources. American cities, towns, and farms experienced a precipitous drop in population. Deteriorating infrastructure, mounting crime, and widespread hunger contributed to the misery. Prosperity was a faint childhood memory of the oldest generation. Terrorism continued to wreak havoc in many parts of the world. Natural disasters—including a tidal wave that had hit the East Coast a few years earlier and devastating earthquakes in the West—left America as enfeebled as the rest of the world.

At the center of the social and cultural upheaval was a loss of faith in God among a significant portion of the population. Many felt a void of meaning that resulted not from a carefully considered atheism but from their decision to keep God from interfering with their busy lives or disturbing their harried thoughts. Many felt the emptiness without acknowledging its cause. They looked for fulfillment in the wrong things. Nihilism, with its lack of a transcendent vision, had gained ascendancy in society. This trend was an invitation to the abyss—that vast chasm of meaninglessness and nothingness.

Many social critics, theologians, philosophers, and ethicists had attempted to explain this growing attraction to nihilism and atheism and to offer solutions, but whether they provided good or bad advice, they were largely ignored. America was hurtling into a deep cultural and spiritual darkness.

A multitude of destructive natural events and cultural trends came to critical mass and exploded, leaving fallout that would endure for centuries. All of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of human civilization could not stop this juggernaut. This development, forecast by doomsayers eventually honored as prophets, created a far different world from that of the mid- twentieth century when the seeds of decline were planted.

The pastor had much on his mind as he sat in the booth sipping tea and crunching ice. He set his glasses on the table and rubbed his eyes, which had a calming effect on him, and put the glasses back on. He took a letter, discolored by age, out of his suit coat pocket, opened it with great care, and placed it on the table. Bent over it with elbows on the table and hands on the sides of his head, he reread it with keen attention, as if he were not already familiar with the contents.

Jonathan had discovered a beautiful wooden box with a Chi Rho affixed to the lid. Inside was the letter, written almost one hundred years before, shortly after the present Via Crucis Church was completed in 2007. The congregation he served was established in 1757, meeting in three buildings on its present site after moving from the old church building at Mount Henry.

Out of curiosity Jonathan had decided to investigate a room in the church that few visited. He crossed from the church sanctuary, where he had been doing a few chores in preparation for Sunday services, to the adjacent education building, joined to the sanctuary by a beautiful archway. The overcroft, located above a small room on the second floor, could be reached through a ceiling hatch. Jonathan pulled a rope to open the hatch door and climbed the ladder attached to it. The room was full of old furniture, books, and boxes of items left there over the years. He discovered artifacts that revealed some of the history of Via Crucis. The objects could have formed the core of a small museum. Fascinated by his finds, some of which had been stored there for nearly a century, he lost track of how much time he was spending in the cramped space.