Jesuits in Space

I'm wary of revisiting books from my past. What if I return to a story I loved passionately ten years or a lifetime ago and find the magic gone? What will that mean about how I've changed?

A book blog by another Richmond woman--apparently we are legion--spurred me to ignore the risks and reread The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. "Jesuits in space" is how one review described it, and I was hooked before I even opened the book. The Jesuit teachers and students at my university were an amazing group of guys; we girls used to joke that the admission requirements for the Society of Jesus included looks of at least 8.5 out of 10 and an IQ over 200. Listening to their discussions in philosophy and theology classes blew my just-freed-from-the-nuns mind wide open, and I've never been the same since. The Sparrow had a similar effect when I first read it fifteen years ago. I'm happy to say that last week it again moved my heart and challenged my thinking.



The story: after music is heard emanating from a not-too-distant planet, an expedition funded by the Jesuits sets off to meet the extra-terrestrials. Their trip to the planet Rakhat parallels the expeditions of the seventeenth-century missionaries who traveled the world converting the natives (though these twenty-first century priests are determined to respect the foreign race, not change it). The four Jesuits who man the expedition are joined by four other scientists, two of them women, and it is in the relationships that form among the group and in their lively, candid, caring dialogue that the joy of the book lies for me. These people remind me of my own friends (including several once-and-forever Jesuits), and one of them feels like me. I don't know if every reader would come to love these folks as I did; I hope so, because the experience of meeting yourself or someone you love in print is one of the many joys of reading.

But I'm supposed to be telling the story. The narrative alternates between the expedition itself and its aftermath back on earth forty years later. Father Emilio Sandoz, the only survivor of the trip, is devastated by physical and spiritual horrors suffered on Rakhat. He is under pressure to reveal to his superiors and the world exactly what happened and to defend himself against criminal charges. The truth slowly emerges through both Emilio's reluctant testimony and direct narration of the expedition--one thread moving forward in time, the other looking back. Russell's skill at inter-weaving the parts of the story is remarkable. By letting us know that the outcome is tragic before we are immersed in the action, she softens the worst emotional blows--and be warned, there are plenty here.

At the core of the story is Emilio's personal struggle to find and understand God. An earthy, generous, passionate, funny man, he was rescued by the Jesuits from a cruel and violent youth and came slowly to belief and then to the vows of priesthood, always wrestling with celibacy. Russell de-mystifies her priests; they are spiritually committed but fully human, and they struggle with doubt like the rest of us, maybe more. As the travelers land on Rakhat after their long journey, "it seemed only natural that he should move into the airlock and open the hatch and step out alone, into the sunlight of stars he'd never noticed while on Earth, and fill his lungs with the exhalation of unknown plants and fall to his knees weeping with the joy of it when, after a long courtship, he felt the void fill and believed with all his heart that his love affair with God had been consummated."

Emilio's joyful oneness with God is destroyed by what comes to pass on Rakhat, immersing him in a near-fatal despair. His holocaust is intensely personal, but his question echoes Elie Weisel and every believer who's had to face great pain and loss: how could God allow this to happen? Emilio's struggle, as well as the different conclusions of his non-believer friends--Anne refuses to credit a god for anything good if she can't blame him for the bad--challenges readers to look again at the Big Questions, which for so many of us are never fully answered.

If you're a sci-fi geek who loves Out-There technology and non-stop action in your stories, you probably won't enjoy this book. But if your reading joy comes from seeing the infinite ways humans (and occasionally aliens) can love, help, and hurt each other as they travel through life, you can't do much better than The Sparrow.