“Something seems to bother you, Bishop”, Christ smiled at the man. “One would think a man such as yourself would run out of bothers in a place like this”, he pointed at their surroundings. It was a green meadow in the astral Earth, where Jesus made it a point to break bread with Christians every day, and answer their questions, for they had many. It was different than what the Buddhists did in the apple orchard, but no less useful.
“I think I had my priorities wrong for so long, I’m not sure if I can get my head straight any more, my Lord”, Augustine sighed. “Christianity seemed to be about choice of You, and the correct teaching of the Church. In order to make the correct choice, one had to cast aside worldly things, wrong things, things that would seduce one away from God. I’ve read your words, and they seemed to approve of this interpretation – let the dead bury their dead, and you who want eternal life should follow me”.
“I had a wife, you know. It wasn’t formalised, the word we used for her was ‘concubine’, but I lived with her for almost fourteen years. We even had a son together; we called him our gift from God, Adeodatus. She was of lower status, so it was out of the question to elevate our relationship to official marriage, and even my mother, who was very Christian and who actually played a huge part in my conversion to Christianity, encouraged me to send her away and marry someone of proper status”.
“I loved her greatly. She was my dearest friend and companion, but since everyone around me encouraged me to treat this relationship as something frivolous and unimportant, I never assigned it with the significance it ought to have had. They had me send her away, and I did. I saw your example, as the Church presented it, and thought I don’t need a wife, that I should dedicate my life to God alone. So, I lost my wife, and soon my son died, and I think my true life died there, with them, and what was left was the vacuous word juggling and arguing about orthodoxy, the way fools would argue about wrappings while they throw away the content of the package. Now I see that not only did you have a wife, but she was with you until the end, she was with your mother under the cross, she was the one who saw you rise from the dead, and she is with you now as a fellow person of God, and the Church discarded her the same way in which I discarded my own wife. It all looks like the same fatal flaw, where we rejected the will of the living God in order to accept words and rituals bereft of meaning, deluding ourselves by thinking how we renounced the worldly things for those of eternity. Can I ever put this right?”
“The Church really messed this one up by counterfeiting Magdalena out of my life”, Jesus nodded in dismay. “Your wife is not a worldly thing. She is your opportunity to share God with someone in deep intimacy. To send your wife away because you want to dedicate yourself to God is like performing human sacrifice for the sake of nonviolence. It is as counterproductive as it is moronic and evil, and you are right to be ashamed of yourself for it, for it was a terrible thing to do”.
“However, it’s actually more complicated than that. You see, you were an angel, and she was a less developed soul. I mention you being an angel not as praise, but as a warning, for angels are usually conceited, self-righteous, dismissive of the lives of others and more focused on ‘important’ things in life, such as their career, or a higher calling, rather than the people in their lives. It is a paradox that demons tend to be more loving and caring in their earthly lives, as they don’t care so much about the abstract things, as they do about the immediate ones. Zina is a good example of this; she was a demon, and she threw herself into loving her worldly family with incredible passion. Hypatia, on the other hand, was an angel, and you can see this in her life, where her career was paramount, and her relationships with people were superficial at best. She was, however, a very kind and caring person to others, very much like you were, when they didn’t stand in the way of your illustrious career”, Jesus grinned. “The reason why I am mentioning this is because you were simply not in a good place in your spiritual life, where you could really appreciate the deep spiritual importance of your wife, and your environment merely encouraged you in your natural proclivities. She, on the other hand, was not ready for the really deep spiritual place you are thinking of now. It was not the right time for either of you. Yes, you sinned against her when she did nothing wrong and everything right, but even if you hadn’t, the difference between you was too great for you to have been able to establish the kind of a spiritual bond of joint godhood that I have with Magdalena, or what Hypatia has with the Angel of Death, or what Zina has with Buddha. We were all quite close to our companions in spiritual status. Magdalena was incredibly close to being a Goddess in our earthly life, and became one minutes after her death. Hypatia became a Goddess essentially seconds after seeing Azrael, and he was at an almost identical state of spiritual growth as her, so they achieved apotheosis together. Your wife would have needed to take a few more spiritual steps in order to match you, and you, yourself, are ready to understand the significance of it only now”.
“And you should understand that she was and is your true wife, Bishop. It was no accident that you felt such friendship and closeness with her in life, and she can be replaced by no other”, Christ nodded solemnly.
“Where is she now, my Lord?”, Augustine said in anguish. “What has happened with her since we parted so inauspiciously?”
“She vowed to remain forever loyal to you and to take no other man, and she did exactly that, in that life as well as those that followed. She was a consecrated virgin, a Christian nun, in three lives that followed. Her last life ended just recently, and I talked to her yesterday. She was a person of great esteem in the Church, almost matching your own reputation and status, as is proper. Would you like me to introduce you to each other?”, Lord Yeshua smiled.
“I would like that very much, even though I am very much ashamed of myself and I feel unworthy. It will be a great penance for me to see her chastise me, and I will bear it with humility as I fully deserve it”, Augustine nodded, with an expression of a man whose sins came to bear fruit.
“Then so shall it be”, Christ nodded, and made a hand motion. An angelic woman appeared from the shimmer in space. “May I introduce you to abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Abbess, may I introduce you to Bishop Augustine of Hippo”, he nodded.
The woman was a deep indigo-violet super-angel of the highest order, and Augustine was deeply impressed by her depth and stature. And yet, there was an air of profound familiarity around her.
“Goldy? Is that really you?”, she closed the space between them, and he could see her tears welling up. “I am so sorry to have been such an ass to you”, his own tears streaked his face. “You are known as Hildegard now, am I right?”
She just embraced him wordlessly and they wept together, as Christ shimmered out to give them privacy.