I took a razorblade and carved three crosses into my chest out of sheer gratitude. I didn’t tell anyone.

After graduating from the seminary, I stayed away from home a while longer, but then the priest died. He had recommended me as his successor, and so I came back to commence my service to the parish. People mistrusted me. They put their heads together and whispered. They smiled about me, this young, thin, peculiar man who stood ­outside the church door on Sundays and greeted every one of them with a handshake. But He had chosen me, and when I preached, He spoke through me. And His messages were not only those of joy and deliverance. There were also messages about the terrors of love, the travails of patience, and the sacrifice of devotion, and often I would stand at the altar, seized with burning zeal, crying: Your pain will pass, because you are in God, and God is in you!

There was a thought in me. An idea that had ignited in my heart, that carried me through the days and kept me awake at night. I wanted to show people the way. I wanted to purify and strengthen them, and I wanted them to follow me. And I knew – I knew! – that I would have the strength to do it.

One morning, in the summer of the year when no rain fell and the houses were grey with dust from the fields, I went to the church to cast myself before the altar. All night I had walked around town, wrestling with feelings that kept surging up within me, feelings of doubt and of the futility of all my endeavours. I had walked the silent streets beneath the moon with nothing in my ears but the echo of my own footsteps, and I had said to Him: My Father, stand by me, do not let me despair when confronted with gloom, guide my feet, strengthen my hands, quicken my spirit and drive the fear from my heart, guide me, my Father, that I may guide the people out of the thicket of ignorance and the thorns of falsehood along the path to the one true light.

So I walked through the night until day finally dawned and the town rose up out of the darkness. I saw the last creatures of the night stagger out of the Golden Moon and head in different directions. I saw the florist unload from her car the bouquets of fresh peonies, carnations and hyacinths that she had picked up at the wholesale market, and take them into her shop. And I saw two old women sitting on a bench, watching a pigeon peck up crumbs at their feet.

Behind the town hall a skinny boy was balancing on the kerb and pulling a dog along behind him. He kept yanking violently at the lead, and the dog whimpered, trying in vain to brace itself against the ground. Come on, said the boy, or I’ll give you what for. He had a high, childish voice, trembling with tension and annoyance. The dog gave a brief, choked cough, then lay flat on its stomach and abandoned all resistance as the boy dragged it on through the gutter. I planted myself in his way. Stop, I said. The boy looked at me. He was angry, but I could see the fear and distress behind his anger. Don’t be afraid, I said; all living things are equal before God, we are His creatures, we are all one in His lap.