The Book of Love Read online

  When she was fortunate enough to doze for several consecutive hours, she was plagued by dreams—some surreal and symbolic, others vivid and literal. In the most disturbing of these recurring dreams she encountered Jesus Christ, and he spoke cryptically of her promise to search for a secret book written in his own divine hand, something he referred to as “the Book of Love.” In her waking hours, Maureen was tormented by these dreamtime experiences; the Book of Love had thus far proved completely elusive. There were no traceable historical references to such a document other than a handful of vague legends that emerged in France in the Middle Ages, before disappearing completely. She had no idea where to begin her quest to fulfill this promise and find such a phantom. She wasn’t even sure what it was. And to date, her Lord was not forthcoming with any clues that would assist her in this search.

  Maureen prayed fervently every night that she would not fail in the mission given to her, and that she would somehow be guided to find the starting point for such a strange journey. The supernatural events of her life over the past few years were all the proof she needed that such divinely inspired magic existed all around her. She would just need to be patient in her faith, and wait.

  Tonight, her prayers would be answered as the first clue surfaced in the bizarre and surreal world of her dreaming.

  The mist of evening fell gray and heavy on the ancient ruins. Maureen walked through them slowly, thick with the dream and the fog. She was in a monastery of great antiquity, or what was left of it after centuries of desolation. A crumbling wall to her right was once a majestic masterpiece of architecture; it now held the shell of what had been a stained glass window, the Gothic style that is cut into stone as a rose with six petals. The last of the light filtered through tree branches before reaching the skeleton of the ruined window and illuminating the space where Maureen stood. She continued on to where soaring Gothic arches remained, connected to nothing as the walls they once upheld had long ago been reduced to rubble. They were disconnected remnants of a faded and former glory. Once the hallmark of an exquisite and majestic nave, the arches were left now, spare and alone, like haunted doorways to the past.

  The last vestiges of light appeared to follow her through this threshold as she emerged into the wreckage of an ancient courtyard. The iridescent beams illuminated a porous stone sculpture of the madonna and child set into the niche of a cobbled wall.

  Moving to the sculpture, Maureen ran her fingers gently, curiously, over the cool stone face of the lovely little madonna, who was no more than a child herself in this portrayal. Tradition indicated that the Virgin was a young teenager when she conceived, so perhaps this childlike image was not so unusual. And yet this madonna, with her enigmatic little smile, appeared more like an eight-or nine-year-old girl holding a baby. And the infant was also carved in an unusual way. He appeared to be squirming out of the girl’s hands and smiling with the mischief of it all. The sculpture looked more like that of an elder sister attempting to contain her baby brother than that of a mother and her child. Maureen was considering this strange portrayal when the statue spoke to her in the sweet voice of a young girl.

  “I am not who you think I am.”

  In the hallucinogenic and imaginary world of the dream state, it is not unusual for a statue to speak, or even to giggle, as this one did now. Maureen responded, “Then who are you?”

  The little girl giggled again—or was it the baby? It was impossible to tell as the sounds were blending together now with the low drone of a church bell tolling through the abbey.

  “You will know me soon enough,” the child said. “I have much to teach you.”

  Maureen looked at the statue closely, and then at the stone wall of the niche, then at the ruined arches, trying to take in the details of the abbey. “Where are we?”

  The child did not answer. Maureen continued to move through the grounds, stepping carefully through overgrowth and around the large hunks of ruined stone. The moon was rising now, full and bright in the darkening sky. She caught the lunar beams glittering in what appeared to be a pool of water just ahead. Enticed, she moved toward it, through the space in a ruined wall and across the crumbling stone threshold to where the water awaited her. It was a well, or a cistern, wide enough for several men to bathe in at once. Leaning over to gaze at her shimmering reflection in the water, Maureen was struck by the feeling of fathomless depth. This well was sacred and ran deep into the earth.

  The little girl spoke again. “In your reflection, you will find what you seek.”

  Maureen’s reflection shifted, and for a brief moment she saw another image, not her own. She reached in to touch the water, and as she did so, the copper ring on her right hand slipped off and fell down into the well.

  Maureen screamed.

  The ring was her most prized possession. It was an ancient relic from Jerusalem that had been given to her during her search for Mary Magdalene. The size and shape of a penny, it was engraved with an ancient stellar pattern of nine stars set in a circle around a central sun. The pattern was worn by the earliest Christians to remind them that they were not separate from God, and to correlate with the line in the Lord’s Prayer “on earth as it is in heaven.” The ring was a material symbol of Maureen’s newfound faith. That it had fallen irretrievably into the black depth of the water was as heartbreaking as it was shocking.

  Kneeling down at the stone edge of the well, Maureen searched, desperate to see if she could catch a glimpse of the ring somewhere within. It was hopeless. She had been right about the depth—it was utterly fathomless. Rising slowly to her feet in resignation, she caught a sudden glimmer of something flashing in the water. Splash! An enormous fish, a type of trout glittering with golden scales, leaped from the water in the well, then back into the depths. Maureen waited to see if the remarkable fish would return. Another splash split the water, and the trout leaped in the air again, this time seeming to move in slow motion. Protruding from the fish’s mouth was her copper ring.

  Maureen gasped as the fish turned in her direction. He released the ring and sent it sailing toward her. Holding out her hand, she felt the ring drop safely in her open palm. She closed her hand tightly around it and clutched it to her heart, grateful that it had been retrieved by the magical fish, which subsequently retreated into the depths of the well. The water went still, and once again, the magic was gone.

  Returning the ring to her right hand, Maureen carefully peered into the well one final time to see if there were any more miracles to be had in this strange monastery. The water was quite still, and then the tiniest ripple broke the surface. A wave of golden light began to suffuse the well and the area surrounding it. As she looked into the water, an image began to take shape. The scene was a beautiful valley, lush and green with trees and flowers. She watched as a rain of golden drops fell from the sky, gilding everything in the vision. Soon the valley was flowing with rivers of gold, and the trees were covered with it. Everything glittered all around her with the rich warm light of liquid ore.

  In the distance she heard the girlish voice, the same that had emanated from the impish little madonna.

  “Do you seek the Book of Love? Then welcome to the Vale of Gold. Here you will find what you seek.”

  The sweet giggle was heard once again, as the vision faded, returning Maureen once and for all to the darkened ruins of a mysterious abbey in the moonlight. It was the last thing she heard before the alarm went off in the twenty-first century, returning her to a predawn New York City.

  Early morning network television is not for the faint of heart.

  The tap on Maureen’s hotel suite door at precisely 4:00 a.m. was the hair and makeup artist who had been hired to prepare her for an interview on one of the popular national morning shows. Thankfully, the woman was sympathetic to Maureen’s sleeplessness and had the presence of mind to alert room service to the need for coffee before making her way upstairs.

  Maureen Paschal was in New York on the heels of her international best-se
lling novel, The Truth Against the World: The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Based on her own life experiences, the book merged Maureen’s personal journey of discovery with the often shocking revelations of Mary Magdalene’s life as the most beloved disciple of Jesus. Although she was an accomplished journalist and successful nonfiction author, Maureen had elected to write this book as fiction, which in itself was the subject of controversy. The press was relentlessly skeptical, even mocking. Why, if this story was based in fact, did she decide to write it as fiction?

  Maureen’s answer to this perpetual question, while honest, was unsatisfying to the ravenous international press. She answered the same questions on talk shows the world over, explained as patiently as her increasingly frayed nerves would allow that she had to protect her sources for reasons of their safety, and her own. When she recounted how her own life had been endangered during the search for this ancient treasure, she was widely ridiculed and accused of exaggerating, even lying, for the sake of publicity.

  In the press whirlwind that followed The Truth Against the World, all semblance of peace and privacy in her life had evaporated. Maureen was exposed to every kind of public scrutiny—the good, the bad, and the truly awful. She received both commendations for her courage and death threats for her blasphemy, with just about every other reaction in between.

  Nevertheless, The Truth Against the World had captured the popular imagination. While critics and the press found attacking Maureen made sensational copy, a growing worldwide readership was responding to the achingly human story of the life of Jesus as told from the perspective of Mary Magdalene. Maureen was unapologetic in insisting that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were legally husband and wife, that they had children, and that they ministered together—and that none of these things in any way diminished the divinity of Jesus. The values of love, faith, forgiveness, and community were the cornerstones of Jesus’ teachings, and yet the attacks against her book in the name of religion dismissed or overlooked her real message in order to focus on its controversial messenger. During her research, Maureen had almost been killed by those who wished this gospel’s message to remain secret, so she needed no one to assure her of its authenticity.

  Still, Maureen was happy that her book was proving to be popular with men and women the world over who felt they had been let down by traditional religious institutions that were more focused on politics, power, economics, and even war than they were on true spirituality.

  Maureen was satisfied with the book and with the story as she had told it, and she was certainly fulfilled by the flood of supportive mail that she received from around the globe. Each letter she received from a reader who emphasized that “Mary Magdalene brought me back to Jesus” fortified her and increased her own faith. Yet she struggled daily with the responsibility of communicating the true story of Mary Magdalene as she had discovered it in a way that would do justice to the material, to reach still more people who remained skeptical. This was the reason for her appearance on television this morning.

  While the press junket around her book had been something of a circus, Maureen had higher hopes for this morning’s interview. The producers had done due diligence, interviewing her extensively in advance, asking truly intelligent questions, and even sending a camera crew to her home in Los Angeles for background information. If nothing else, she believed that this time there was at least a chance that the questions asked of her would be fair and informed.

  She was not disappointed. The interview was conducted by one of the show’s anchors, a national personality known for her intelligence and poise. She could be tough, but she was fair. And she had done her own homework, which impressed Maureen.

  The setup for the piece showed photographs of Maureen around the world, doing research on the life of Mary Magdalene. Here she was on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, here she was climbing the peak of Montségur in southwestern France. These images created the lead-in to the first question.

  “Maureen, you write about an alleged lost gospel of Mary Magdalene that was discovered in the south of France, and the cultures in France that believe Mary Magdalene settled there following the crucifixion. Yet you have been attacked by highly regarded biblical scholars here in America who insist that there is no evidence of any of this. They insist that there is no proof that Mary Magdalene was ever even in France. How do you respond to them?”

  Maureen was grateful for the question. Newspapers and magazines always gave scholars the last word. Virtually every article written about her closed with some academic somewhere discrediting her with customary scholarly disdain, saying that there was no proof and that all these legends surrounding Mary Magdalene had less substance than most fairy tales. Maureen decided to pull no punches while she had the opportunity finally to answer her critics on national television.

  “If scholars are looking for the evidence in their ivory towers, conveniently written in English and accessible through their air-conditioned libraries, then they certainly won’t find it. The kind of proof that I seek is more organic, human, and real. It comes from the people and the cultures who live these stories, who incorporate them into their lives every day. To say that these traditions don’t exist or don’t matter is dangerous—perhaps even xenophobic and racist.”

  “Whoa!” The anchor reeled in her chair. “Don’t you think those are pretty harsh words?”

  “No, I think they’re necessary. There were entire cultures in the south of France and areas of Italy that were eradicated for believing exactly what is in my book. They believed that they were descended from Jesus and Mary, and they practiced a beautifully pure form of Christianity that they claimed came directly from Jesus himself, brought to them by Mary Magdalene following the crucifixion.”

  “You’re talking about the Cathars.”

  “Yes. Cathar comes from the Greek word for ‘purity,’ as these people were the purest Christians to live in the Western world. And in the only crusade ever declared against other Christians, the Catholic Church of the thirteenth century massacred the Cathar people en masse. The Inquisition was founded to destroy the Cathars. These people had to be eliminated because they didn’t just know the truth, they were the truth. And make no mistake, it was ethnic cleansing. Genocide. Harsh words? Of course they are. But butchering an entire people is harsh, and we can’t hide behind words that try to justify it anymore. The word crusade carries a connotation that it was somehow acceptable to murder people in the name of God. So let’s stop calling it that and call it what it was. Mass murder. A holocaust.”

  “So when you hear modern scholars say that these people don’t exist or that the traditions of their culture don’t matter—”

  “It breaks my heart to think that such evil has the last word. Of course there’s very little physical proof left of Mary Magdalene’s presence. Over eight hundred thousand people were slaughtered to ensure that there would be no physical proof left to find. Ever. And the worst of the massacres took place on July twenty-second in 1209 and a year later in 1210. That’s Mary Magdalene’s feast day, and it’s not a coincidence. Inquisition documents from that time indicated that it was ‘just retribution for these people who believed that the whore was married to Jesus.’”

  “Which brings me to the question on everybody’s lips. You claim that the story you tell about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene comes from a lost gospel you recently discovered in the south of France. Yet you refuse to divulge your sources or tell any more about this mysterious document. What are we to make of this? Your harshest critics say that you have invented the entire story. Why should we believe you when you don’t come forth with more proof that this gospel even exists?”

  This question was tough but important, and Maureen had to answer it with great care. What she could not yet reveal to the world was the rest of the story: that the gospel had been taken to Rome by her own cousin, Father Peter Healy. Father Peter and a Vatican committee were now working to authenticate the gospel. Until the Church ruled officially on the pr
iceless manuscript, which could take years given its explosive content and the ramifications for Christianity, Maureen had agreed not to divulge any of the facts surrounding its discovery. In return, she had been allowed to tell her version of Mary Magdalene’s story without fear of reprisals—if and only if she phrased it as fiction for the time being. It was a compromise she had had to make, but one that cost her dearly. She felt real sisterhood with Cassandra, the prophetess of Greek legend: doomed to know and tell the truth, yet equally doomed never to be believed.

  Maureen took a breath and answered the question to the best of her ability.

  “I have to protect the people who aided in the discovery. And there is a lot more information to be revealed, so I can’t risk those sources at any cost if I want to continue to have access to them. Because I can’t disclose the sources behind my information, I had to write this book as fiction. I am hoping that the story will speak for itself. My job as a storyteller is to awaken audiences to the idea of alternate possibilities to one of humanity’s greatest stories. This is why I call it the greatest story never told. And certainly, I believe it to be the truth with all my heart. But let people read it and judge it on its own merits. Let readers decide if it feels like the truth to them.”

  “We’ll leave it at that—let the reader decide.” The lovely blond anchor was holding up a copy of the book. “The Truth Against the World indeed. Thank you, Maureen Paschal, for joining us. A fascinating subject to be sure, but I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

  It is the great dichotomy of television that it takes many hours to prepare for a segment that lasts three or four minutes. Still, Maureen was satisfied that she had made her points succinctly and forcefully and was grateful to both the producers and the anchor for their fair and intelligent treatment of the subject.

  Now it was all of 7:15 a.m. and Maureen was dressed, made-up, and coiffed to the nines—and wanted nothing more than to go back to bed.