11. June 2026
Before the Cross, There Was Fear
FROM THE INCOMPLETE
There is a moment in The Incomplete when Ben returns to Saint Joseph's Church after leaving Ty behind in the rain. The doors remain closed. The city has fallen silent around him, as though even the rain has forgotten why it came. Yet the church, as it often does in this story, offers another way in.
"Still standing before the locked church doors in the rain, his attention was caught by a faint flicker of light. On the right side of the church, an almost imperceptible reflection from a weak little lamp shimmered on the marble tiles wet with rain. A narrow, twisting path, circling the church and calling to Ben from around the corner, now seemed the only way to get back inside.
Ben noticed that the small, almost invisible lamp illuminated a little figure set into a hollow in the rock.
'This is the first of the fourteen Stations of the Cross,' he said to himself.
He also noticed the inscription beneath the brass image of the bowed Christ. He knew of it before it came to pass. Ben fell into thought, staring at the words beneath the stone carving:
Jesus Condemned to Death."
Perhaps this is what The Incomplete has always been about.
Not death itself, but the moment we become aware of it.
The hour before.
The sentence before the execution.
The diagnosis before the funeral.
The telephone call before the silence.
The instant in which life remains unchanged, and yet nothing will ever be the same again.
We speak easily of resurrection because it comforts us. We speak of miracles because they soften the sharp edges of suffering. Yet the Gospels linger elsewhere first. In a garden. In the darkness beneath olive trees. In the trembling that entered prayer.
"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
(Matthew 26:39)
"My Father, if this cup cannot pass away unless I drink it, your will be done."
(Matthew 26:42)
For me, these may be among the most human words ever spoken in Scripture.
Because Christ did not walk towards death untouched by fear. He did not greet suffering with indifference. He asked whether there might be another way.
As I wrote Ben standing before the First Station, I found myself returning to that prayer again and again:
"Father,
fear troubleth the depths within Me
and encompasseth all that liveth in Me for Thee;
the road leadeth My steps unto Thee,
yet beareth pain even unto the end of My strength,
unto that place where the body knoweth its own boundary.
Father,
Thy will be done."
I do not believe The Incomplete is a story about people searching for answers. It is a story about people who continue walking after discovering that answers may never come. Ben, Kat, Salvatore and all the others carry within themselves something unfinished: grief that was never buried, memories that refuse to loosen their grip, love that survives where reason tells it not to, and fears that wait patiently beneath the surface of ordinary days.
We call ourselves faithful when certainty comes easily. Yet perhaps faith begins elsewhere.
Perhaps it begins at the First Station.
Standing before the bowed Christ. Rainwater glistening on marble. Reading words carved into stone long before we arrived:
Jesus Condemned to Death.
And recognising ourselves not in the promise of what comes afterwards, but in the trembling that came before.
Because perhaps each of us carries something incomplete within us.
Something that fears.
Something that hopes.
Something that still whispers into the silence:
"Father... let this cup pass from me."
And something that, despite everything, continues to take the next step.