“The glory of God is man fully alive” (St. Irenaeus). But which man? Even the miserable one, the lost one, the unworthy one?

I reread The Power and the Glory, perhaps Graham Greene's greatest novel, recommended as one of the books to read over the summer, and I was really struck by how the author leads us into this scandal: Christian salvation occurs in the heart of human contradiction. Not in an idea, not in ethical coherence, not in moral perfection–as one might expect from a protagonist presented as an example to follow–but in a weak, inconsistent, sinful man who, precisely for that reason, becomes an instrument of God's mercy.

Greene wrote The Power and the Glory in 1940 following a trip to Mexico in 1938. Initially, the novel shocked and scandalized certain circles in the Catholic Church. But in the 1950s, then-Pro-Secretary of State Giovanni Battista Montini, who would later become Pope Paul VI, rehabilitated the book in a letter addressed to the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). After becoming pope, Montini wanted to meet Greene himself in 1965, as if to bear witness to the breath of fresh air that the Second Vatican Council was bringing to the life of the Church.

The novel’s protagonist is a priest on the run in Mexico in the 1930s, during a fierce anti-Catholic persecution. The priest has no name: he is simply referred to as “the priest” or, at times, disparagingly as “the whisky priest” because of his alcoholism. Greene's choice is very significant. The absence of a name emphasizes the character’s universality. He is not an ideal ‘character,’ but a man like many others, a priest full of limitations–anyone can find trust and perhaps peace in their own miseries by closely observing this profoundly humiliated figure in his pettiness and moral fragility. Yet, in him, Grace manifests itself mysteriously but powerfully.

He is the last priest left in a state where celebrating Mass has become a crime. But this priest is no hero: he is a frightened man, an alcoholic, who had a daughter. He is someone who can no longer truly believe in the value of his ministry. Yet he is the one God chooses to continue reaching out to souls. This priest is not worthy, but he is a beggar, and for this very reason he becomes, without knowing it, a living sacrament.

At the novel’s climax, when everything seems to have collapsed and the priest has almost reached the border and therefore salvation, he decides to turn back to confess a dying man—a murderer, no less—even though he knows it could be a trap. He does not do it out of heroism, but out of fidelity to something greater than himself, which draws him in. It is the experience of “You seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced” (Jer 20:7).

Greene tells us something terrible and disconcerting, yet we immediately recognize it as true: God does not necessarily need the pure to save. He needs those who are available. Even if they are fragile. Even if they are wretched. Even if they are incapable of heroic virtue. But the reader must not be deceived: the novel’s deep realism makes it clear that this is not a justification of one’s limitations, much less of evil or sin. On the contrary, the “whisky priest” goes through his human journey burdened by the torment of his own evil and pettiness. A torment that is only overcome at the end by the humble recognition of God’s definitive embrace of mercy (“Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis”). Glory, therefore, is not the result of moral effort, nor does it coincide with worldly power. Paradoxically, it is the inconceivable humility of God who descends into the mud so we are not left alone. In fact, the very title of the novel, The Power and the Glory, echoes this paradox: God's power is revealed in human weakness, and His glory passes through the cracks of human misery. As Fr. Giussani would say: it is not ethical consistency that triggers God's presence in human life, but man's openness–often painful–to the need for salvation.

Christ “is right here, in my attitude and disposition as a human being, in my way, that is, as one who expects, awaits something. He has joined me. He has proposed Himself to my original needs” (L. Giussani, The Journey to Truth is an Experience, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006, p. 54). This novel shows us that God does not disappoint that expectation, even when it comes in the form of failure.

In this sense, The Power and the Glory is one of the most Catholic novels of the 20th century, precisely because it rejects all idealization. It tells us that Christ did not come to reward the good, but to save the lost. It is a story that teaches us not to fear our wretchedness, because it is precisely there that grace can work–provided we ask for it like those who know they cannot produce it themselves. As Giussani said, “the true protagonist of the story is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ.”

It is a novel to read in silence, allowing oneself to be affected by the realism of the colors, the sweltering temperatures, the crackle of cockroaches, the sweat of the destitutes locked up in a grim, overcrowded cell, and even the smells of a country devastated by the inhumanity of an ideology that claims to be human without real human beings. It is a novel to be offered as a companion to anyone who feels ‘wrong’. Because the glory of God is truly the living man, even–and perhaps especially–when his life is a cry of need.

Let me end with a few more words on the figure of his tormentor. The lieutenant is a tragic figure: he is driven by a real need for justice, truth, and order, and yet, in the name of this, he persecutes the last priest to death. Still, he cannot suppress within himself a longing for something more human, more deeply true. He is somewhat reminiscent of Javert in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.

When, towards the end of the novel, he decides to go and find another priest (who has renounced his faith and remarried to avoid execution) for the condemned man, it is not simply an act of pity. It is a sign that he himself has been touched, revealing a deep crack in the ideological armor that kept him rigid and faceless. The law is not enough, his own principles are not enough. He needs a man, a credible witness, a presence that embodies the forgiveness that he, paradoxically, cannot conceive. Having caught his prey after so much effort and at the cost of innocent lives, he realizes that he has encountered a man who did not defend himself, who–despite his wretchedness–testified to a Presence greater than himself, a meaning capable of embracing pain, guilt, even death. The lieutenant sought justice, but in the priest's face, he glimpsed another justice: one that saves, not punishes. And in that moment, as in every true Christian encounter, he could only glimpse that mercy is greater than the law.

But even more poignant is what happens in the heart of the “whisky priest”. As he approaches death, his thoughts turn to his daughter, born from a ‘sinful’ relationship, yet to him she is the concrete face of love. He realizes he loves her more than the others, and this hurts him, makes him feel unworthy and unjust. But it is precisely in that very human , partial love that a greater desire is born in him–a greater love for everyone, to the point of total self-giving.

Greene is not afraid to show that carnality, even when born from sin, is not foreign to the path toward truth, if it is touched by grace. The priest's holiness does not arise from moralism, but from fully embracing the mission entrusted to him, from which, mysteriously, a possibility of goodness for all springs forth. It is from the flesh–from that love for his daughter that he cannot deny that universal compassion is generated.

Thus, sin, when recognized and offered, becomes the wound that lets in a new light. This is what is most striking about this novel: truth does not appear as an idea, but as pierced flesh that loves. And when we encounter it, even the fiercest persecutor is moved, even the most inconsistent sinner becomes a saint.

Ultimately, The Power and the Glory is a long journey into the heart of man, in which grace works silently until a gesture, a face, a love breaks down the defenses and makes redemption possible. It is a Christian novel not because it speaks of the Church, but because it shows, with realism and tenderness, that Christ triumphs within the wounded flesh of man, where all seemed lost.

The ending of the novel is only apparently tragic. In the desperate desolation in which Christ seems to be definitively defeated, the final scene announces a message of hope and paradoxical triumph: even when the Enemy seems to have won and the hatred of the world seems to have eradicated Christ from the land of the living, the Church–unstoppable like a thirst-quenching rain irrigating the ground parched by the summer heat–arrives indestructible, indelible, once again reaching out to those abandoned by despair to bring back the light of the Risen One. For no man, anywhere in the world, will ever be forgotten by the love of the Father.