A Child of the Cloth by James E. Probetts

man’. I felt a great sense of guilt because, like the rest of the four thousand six hundred people in the auditorium, I stayed as silent as the citizens of Jerusalem. Then, the high priest Caiaphas and his temple servants shout, ‘Crucify him!’ and the cry ‘Crucify’ is taken up by the multitude, who shout louder and louder, ‘Crucify!’, ‘Crucify!’. Pontius Pilate ceremoniously breaks his staff and casts the broken staff at the feet of Caiaphas and says to him with anger in every word, ‘Take him and “crucify” him’. Arthur must have sensed the emotion in me at the trial of our Lord as he gently took hold of my hand.
    â€œAfter the trial of our Lord we were presented with scenes of gratuitous violence, acted out with great realism, as Jesus staggered across the stage, bowed low beneath the weight of the cross and the lash, the two miscreants also to be crucified, being mercilessly beaten by the Roman soldiers. There was complete silence in the auditorium as the two miscreants were nailed to their crosses. The Roman soldiers roughly took hold of Jesus and forced a crown of sharp thorns on his head, laid him on the cross and then hammered the cruel nails into his flesh. At that moment there was a great flash of lightning that lit up the auditorium, instantly followed by an enormous clap of thunder. Because of the unique design of the theatre the stage is completely open to the elements, the effect created an emotionally charged atmosphere in the auditorium. I felt an emotional shudder go right through Arthur; he held my hand more tightly as we watched the enactment of Christ’s death by Crucifixion. I saw in Arthur’s face a look I had never seen before, a questioning look; he did not release his tight grip of my hand until Magdalena, with great emotion in her voice, turned and faced a totally silent auditorium and declared, ‘I know my saviour lives,’ and then the full chorus sang, ‘Hallelujah he has risen’.
    â€œArthur and I have spoken often about that moment in the Passion Play and the Resurrection. It was not his moment of conversion to Christianity but he did admit that he felt a great sense relief at the moment of our Lord’s Resurrection. The belief in the Resurrection, being so fundamental to Christianity, Arthur’s reaction gave me great comfort. He once explained his thoughts on the possibility of a heaven and an afterlife. He said he had reduced the argument in his mind to a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. He had been comfortable with ‘no’ for most of his adult life but on contemplating our final demise and knowing my absolute belief in heaven and the resurrection, made him question his argument many times. He said he had one recurring and extremely disturbing dream of a vision of Heaven, it being a vast maze of unmarked, seemingly endless roads with large signs saying, ‘No entry to non-Christians’ and him walking past the end of each road, looking down, not knowing whether I was at the end of one waiting for him.”
    She told me they had been married for just over a year and said she had never been happier in her life, and had found complete forgiveness in her heart for her mother and prayed that her mother was at peace in heaven.
    She told me that she expected this would be her last visit to Wimbledon Village. She and Arthur had come up from Tisbury to make arrangements for the sale of the house and its contents. They had visited her solicitor and asked him to make all the necessary arrangements for sale of the house and its contents, explaining to him that they had no wish to come back to Wimbledon or to be involved in the sale of the house and had asked him if he could kindly deal with everything for them. She related to me how it was a strange, but not an unpleasant feeling, walking through Wimbledon Village arm in arm with Arthur. Firstly to the solicitors and then to fulfill a