Undercover Work

The life of an undercover agent is mystifying.

I will probably never hear more from the latest assignee. But there are two goods that followed, like a kind of payment for services rendered on the mission, since I chose to accept it (without realizing until six weeks ago that it was a mission for a soul).

Last August I was seeking a home loan and was about settled on the tried-and-true hometown bank. But I drove down a road for the first time and saw a home loan company sign and pulled in. It was very early in the morning, and a young man shy of forty, greeted me. We talked in his office, and I could tell by his name (was it that?) that he is Catholic. So I addressed this hunch, and sure enough, he is. He is a husband and a father of four young children.

He offered a loan deal too good to be true, and the hometown banker advised to take that loan if I could get one that good. So I did. I also purchased for Frank and his family various religious items and sacramentals to go with their saint names and for the wife and mother, something of Mary.

The closing came and went. My first payment notice came, and there were major problems. I tried to deal with the corporate offices for a month, to no avail; and I received no return calls or e-mails from my Catholic friend Frank.

Finally, in utter frustration, I drove to Frank's office and had a chat. I remained over two hours in his office, visibly distressed, and he began to make some calls, sensing I wasn't leaving until something was done.

For six weeks Frank worked on the loan to lesser and greater degrees. It became greater degrees when I had a nightmare early one Friday morning, about two weeks into his efforts (and with no return calls or e-mails, as I wanted communication as to if he was doing anything at all). I drove to his office to retrieve some paperwork I'd inadvertently left, and Frank was there. I told him I'd had quite a nightmare but did not mention the subject.

The subject of the nightmare was Frank. In the dream, he sat there as I asked him questions. He was very honest and rather deadened, as if not caring about anything but finally telling the truth. He was even flippant. Then I made a declaration that surprised me, and it constituted the clincher to making the dream become a nightmare. "You are damning yourself, and it is my prayers and sufferings that will keep your soul from being cast into the EVERLASTING FLAMES!"

It was so emphatic and unlike me to make such a forceful declaration to someone I did not know that well, and the reality of a soul being cast into the everlasting flames (even those words are none that I'd typically use), somehow had me awaken with a horror and fright.

For another couple of weeks, I got no where with Frank and any progress he supposedly was making on the loan. I finally got in touch with his boss, and I also had the documents gone over by the marvelous hometown banker, in his great kindness and decency. God worked the timing, as timing is His alone.

Yes, I had to threaten legal action. I had to threaten the corporate ethics hotline number, and I even, without Frank knowing, had decided that I would pay about $5500 in a loss to refinance the loan with the hometown bank, as it didn't seem that Frank was going to undo the problems, some of which and maybe a bulk, came through his disinterested ennui and oversights on the loan.

My financial advisor was frazzled from my e-mails and calls of distress. Finally I told him of the dream and that taking a loss might be the less painful of any ransom for a soul that I've ever done. It sure seemed easier than the three years spent in anguish and suffering for one of the assignee's souls.

By much prayer and votive candles, praying much for Frank, the loan problems were resolved, finally. I had told my financial advisor that I was going to tell Frank the nightmare, but that was when I was really fed up with Frank. When we closed on the corrected loan, Frank seemed so at ease that I decided to not bring it up. Maybe it was just a bad dream, after all--one of frustration.

A week later, though, the thought of Frank and his other loans, had me continuing in prayer for him. I e-mailed him and said so. He e-mailed back and said he really needed the prayers. I decided to unload the nightmare, for whatever reason then possessed me to do so with such forthrightness.

Revealing that nightmare was taking a lunge out on a thin limb. I made myself vulnerable. But if felt good to have it off the mind and out of the heart.

That afternoon, Friday, I went to adoration. Suffering started to come, and it increased to the point that I wasn't sure I could get home but knew I must try before the pain might be unmanageable. It had all to do with Frank. I went to confession, and not my regular confessor, so even that was a risk. But I had to unload the situation. The confessor asked if I'd heard back from the man. I had not. I hadn't thought of that, as it didn't come to mind that the dream was anything but dead-on.

I got home by the grace of the Sacrament of Penance, and before I crawled into the bed awaiting my suffering body, I checked the e-mail.

Frank had written. He wrote that all I'd said hit it on the head. I had even gone so far as to tell him what he needed to do to make attempts to amendment, to save his soul from the "everlasting flames." Yes, I had some nerve--and it was not my nerve. Frank proceeded to unload the distress of his soul, saying it had felt for some time that it was being ripped from his body. And more.

This news from Frank put me into a kind of shock. It was Twilight Zone theme song time. I called two priests who are very holy and asked them to pray for Frank's soul and also that I handle it all with equanimity of spirit.

Whoa! What struck me all the more, once again, as they situations always do, is just how real God is, and just how dangerously we live our lives, placing our souls in jeopardy more often than most of us could possibly imagine.

When I realized that the dream was a dead-hit, I stunned myself with the reality that the messages God gives to my soul are extremely serious, also.

Everything became very serious concerning the spiritual life of the soul.

I e-mailed Frank after the weekend, and I have not heard back. I may never hear more from or of Frank. In fact, he was going to speak to his priest the next day and go to Mass (and I said confession, also). But who knows if Frank did, or if he told his priest the circumstances, and if the priest disapproved the means and message? Or, if Frank is now very embarrassed and even fearful that I know more than what I saw? For, I did not want to see or know any details, although I knew Frank was in danger of some huge temptation coming, for which he could easily fall in addition to his current state of soul--enough, either of these, to damn himself and his soul be cast into the everlasting flames.

This is the way it goes for an undercover agent for souls assigned by God. Once the assignment is done, and the message delivered and prayers and sufferings offered, the agent must exist as if that experience might never have occurred, and not speak of it, of course, to anyone except maybe the spiritual father or the confessor. Then it is for the agent to take stock in his or her own soul, have a little furlough, and be ready for whatever is next.

I told my confessor that it is like being the Coal Miner's daughter: of being given a stick of dynamite and taken into the cave of someone's soul, of then at some point being told to light the fuse, and blast away. Then, take a pick and hammer and chip any residual chunks, and relay any communications, and then leave the mine without further ado or after-knowledge.

This job is done, for better or worse. The agent did the best she knew how, awkwardly and not always seeing the clues but eventually getting the fuse lit.

By the grace of God, she lit that fuse. By the grace of God, may Frank follow through and not be cast into the everlasting flames.