An antihero for our times

When we can’t bake a casserole for a starving family in Gaza, when we can’t give shelter to children whose homes are bombed, when thoughts and prayers seem inadequate, how can we respond meaningfully to violence in the world? I’m not speaking about understanding such violence because it’s inexplicable. I’m referring to that deep need we feel to meet evil with good. Perhaps the solution lies not so much in what we can DO, but in how we should BE.    
 
This concept is explored in a novel called “Through Whom the Light Shines” (2024) by Catholic author Ben Galeski. Previously Galeski - who hails from Brooks, Alberta - wrote “The Good Heart” (2023) about the same protagonist, a prairie boy named Joe Benson. The first book was about Joe’s experiences during WWI. This sequel takes place twenty-five years later, and it reads equally well as a stand-alone novel for those who haven’t read the earlier book

After the First World War, a chastened Joe returns to his family’s homestead, desiring to live a quiet life. Decades later, and now ordained in the Diocese of Calgary, Fr. Joe is an itinerant priest in rural Southern Alberta. In 1939, he willingly leaves this peaceful life for the chaos of the Second World War, feeling a call to comfort soldiers on the front lines. But there’s a deeper mission from God which Fr. Joe senses but cannot identify.
 
Galeski does an excellent job of describing the terror of battle and the anger and helplessness felt by victims of violence. However, Fr. Joe’s reactions are completely different from those of his comrades. So, when they are ordered to retreat to safety, Fr. Joe refuses to leave. He responds only to the movement of the Holy Spirit within him, with quiet, inexplicable confidence. At every stage of his increasingly fraught  journey into the heart of occupied territory, Fr. Joe follows his interior compass, no matter how problematic the resulting decisions turn out to be.
 
Galeski contrasts Fr. Joe’s behaviour with that of a young German soldier who has rejected the faith of his family in order to follow Nazi doctrine. These chapters contain graphic details of concentration camp atrocities. The book also contains chilling references to demons, which presumably are included to allude to the general atmosphere of evil which permeated the Third Reich. When Fr. Joe and the German soldier-cum-guard eventually meet, the priest recognizes what his mission was all along. Their confrontation, though harsh, is surprisingly moving, and the consequences far-reaching.
 
In Fr. Joe Benson, Galeski presents an antihero, a person who does not kill, does not hate, seeks neither glory nor vengeance, and refuses to despair. A person who faces violence, not passively, but peacefully. It’s an example worth noting.

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Written by Alice Matisz for Faithfully. 
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“Through Whom the Light Shines” are available from Justin Press (www.justinpress.ca) or by emailing the author at [email protected].