The Couple Who Prays Together
Zorah watched Icaro’s lips twitch as he took her extended hand.
“Icaro Lucchesi. It’s nice to meet you, Zorah. Welcome to Catania. I would be honored to show you around our city.”
“Thank you!” she tried not to giggle when he pressed his lips to the back of her hand in a flirtatious manner. “Are all Sicilian men as suave as you?”
“No. Some are apes with very little manners but,” he put his hand to cup his mouth as if sharing a secret, “those are usually the ones born and raised in the city. Most of us farm boys were taught how to woo a beautiful woman by being gentlemen.”
At Zorah’s arched brow, he shrugged.
“We were taught. Not all of us understood the lessons until we were men.”
“Well, I’m an American and I’ve never been out of my hometown. I’m finding it very overwhelming. Where should we start?”
“I think,” he pointed to the cathedral, “we should both go to church and say a prayer.”
“You want to pray?”
“I do. A beautiful woman has just walked up to me, introduced herself and asked me to show her around town. I think this warrants a prayer of gratitude and maybe a couple prayers for guidance.”
She met his eyes and smiled, “I think I need to say a prayer as well.”
“What do you think you need to pray for? A woman as gorgeous as you must have the world at her feet,” he flirted boldly as they approached the stairs of the church.
“I think I need to pray for compassion and mercy.” At the surprise on Icaro’s face she swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ve been so angry and indignant over the things which have happened to me over the last couple of weeks, I’m forgetting one of the biggest teachings of the bible. Forgiveness and sympathy. This morning, I watched people who should be furious with me for doing something stupid, worry about my safety to the point they were running through where I’m staying and sending men on jet skis to try to catch a potential threat. Someone told me last night I haven’t been trying and I can’t stop thinking that in my anger, I might be missing the bigger picture.”
“You could very well be right to be angry though.”
“The most basic prayer every Catholic has ever learned from the time they can speak, has the line forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, right in the middle of it. How can I ask for forgiveness of my own sins when I’m holding so tightly onto my own self-righteousness?”
“There are some sins too big to forgive, Zorah.”
“Perhaps but maybe it’s why I need to pray on it.” Giving him a straightforward look, she continued, “would you be interested in praying with me, Icaro?”
He seemed startled by her question, “I’ve not prayed with another person since I was a small boy, and my mother heard my bedtime prayers.” When she seemed disappointed, he squeezed her fingers, “maybe it might do me well to change it up a bit.”
Entering the cathedral, Zorah’s eyes were wide with wonder. “Oh wow.” Zorah saw the look on Icaro’s face and snorted, “you aren’t even trying to hide your irritation.”
“I’m sorry, Zorah. It frustrates me is all.”
“How so,” she turned to face him, trying to ignore the opulent art and architecture surrounding her.
“Recently the world was faced with chaos. It was families like mine who were in the villages, towns, and smaller cities, providing food and helping with a hunger crisis when people were too sick to support their families. It was people like my mother, risking her life to enter the homes of sick and dying people to pray and offer help. I cannot speak specifically to what was happening in this church or parish, because it is not one I am very familiar with other than it’s pretty and it’s in the town square, but while people were sick, unable to work, unable to get meagre supplies like bread and milk and eggs, golden chalices and fancy artwork sit here. Why is the church so rich when the people who need them most are so poor?”
“Icaro, you’re extraordinarily rich. Is this not hypocritical?”
“Twenty-five percent of every penny I personally make is donated to a charity in or near my home both here and back in New York.”
His words made her footsteps falter. “What?”
“My personal wealth,” he reiterated his statement, “has twenty-five percent taken and given to my community. When I was small, my grandparents talked to me about paying tithes to the church. We always supported the church in our community because it was important to us but then when I was a teenager, I found out the church of our parish needs to send a good portion of their funds to their administrators. The church is a business. We started doing things a bit differently. Instead of giving large chunks of change for renovations, we make donations of time, materials, and equipment. We make sure the church has enough to operate. We make sure the priest is taken care of. However, the money which I was donating, I felt strongly wasn’t doing God’s work by making fat the superior priests, bishops and so on. I give my money to those who really need it.”
“I’m so confused,” Zorah sat down at the edge of a pew and stared up at him. “Are you telling me a quarter of your money, your personal money, gets donated?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a billionaire, Icaro. Sidonia told me that Vodingo said you were.”
“Yes, I am. More money than I will ever spend in a lifetime or a hundred of them, really.”
“Huh.”
“Have you seen any of my family, friends or community looking thin, Zorah? Of the ones you met?”
“No.”
“We take care of our own. I make donations to charities all over Europe but mostly my money stays in Sicily or in Rome.”
“Whoever heard of a benefactor mobster?” she questioned quietly.
He smirked, “the best way to make sure you have the support of a community is to support the community. If I need to move a batch of product, I could do it in broad daylight and nobody would see a thing, Zorah.”
“You pay them off.”
“We support each other. We take care of each other. Like family.”
“La Famiglia,” she whispered the words to herself.
He held his hand out, “I’m ruining this experience for you. Come on. Let’s go light a candle, say our prayers, ogle the artwork and maybe chat with the priest.”
“I have a better idea,” she whispered as a thought occurred to her. She started walking back out of the church.
“Where are we going?”
“Didn’t you say there was an open-air Roman theatre around here?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go there. Like I did the day on the balcony, Icaro. I don’t need four fancy walls, and a fresco painted ceiling to feel close to God. Let’s go find our peace in the outdoors.”
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