I

Filius Irae
The Child of Wrath 

.         The miscarried soul of an ancient child is transformed into an angel of death during the time of Ramses the Great. Forty years after the exodus, Ramses pleads for the help of his half brother Moses to contain the spirit that has ravaged Kemet for nearly forty years. By the time the messengers of the Pharaoh find the Hebrews just north west of the dead sea Moses has already passed on into the arms of his god. The house of Aaron receive the Pharaoh's pleas with gifts of gold and incense.  Their hearts soften to the heartbreak of Egypt's mothers who still bury their first born forty years after enduring the wrath of God's messenger of the first Passover. It is decided that one of the house of Aaron and the only surviving son of the house of Korah shall accompany the messengers back to Pharaoh to pray for the deliverance of the innocent unborn.  With the the staff of Moses,  and God's mercy they bind the angry spirit within the brick that contains it bones and secretly entomb it with the staff of Moses far to the south.  

        Over four thousand years later, the United States is given a minor temple or shrine from the Abu Simel complex.  The gift is in appreciation for the financial and technical support Egypt received to save the entire archeological area when the Aswan Dam was built, flooding the entire temple complex.  Inside this tiny sanctuary screams the soul of the unnamed child miscarried at the brickwork's of the temple of Zoan. Cast into the adamantine brick of God's Wrath, the Malak of Death and Angel of the Biblical Passover is now trapped within an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  

        Father Francis Alonzo, S.J.  was late for his new best friend's baptism.  As a Jesuit Prior, he rarely enjoyed this fundamental task common to a parish but a rare joy to a cloistered scholar like himself. 

©1996 Joseph Brad Kluge 
WGAw 1997