Circa 1980: Cassandra is a 12-year-old prodigy: a prophetess who holds a small group of friends in awe of her prophecies and bible recitations. Her younger brother, Jason, tags along, troubled by her prediction that he is destined for the priesthood. The two suffer under an abusively alcoholic father, a unstable mother and a bitter, atheistic aunt. The children are traumatized in a godless and abusive environment. Cassandra pays the ultimate price when she is raped by her brutish father. But she never loses faith. She instead offers her suffering for Jason, in hope of his future vocation. Jason is berated for his Catholic faith--a faith nurtured only by his grampa, Big Frank, an Italian Catholic immigrant who pays for the children's private education. This tragic legacy of abuse culminates in a harrowing car crash that leaves both of the parents dead. Jason and Cassandra, now liberated from the bonds of their oppressive family, grow older and further apart.
Circa 2000: Jason, now an adult and on the verge of his ordination into the priesthood, feels that he has lost his faith. The terrible memory of his sister's rape is burned into his soul. Cassandra, now diagnosed with a chemical bi-polar disorder in her brain, winds up in a rehabilitation center with severe wounds through her palms--a suicide attempt or authentic stigmata? Cassandra is fixated on the Church and the sacraments. She steals and consumes sacramental wine. Jason goes to his sister, yet he is reluctant to deal with this crisis when he is so close to taking his vows. Instead of an explanation, Cassandra offers Jason more visions and prophecies. She urges Jason to listen to God, quoting the story of the prophet Samuel, the listening servant. She also prophesies that she will again be raped, this time by two boys to whom she clandestinely offers the Blessed Sacrament.
But Jason paradoxically feels hatred toward his sister. She is the living reminder of a dysfunctional and hurtful past. He projects a hatred onto her that was never expressed toward his father. Jason is well aware of these feelings and concludes that he is unfit for the priesthood--yet he continues his pursuit of the vocation in the vain belief that he can master his own faith. Jason asks the advice of a childhood friend, Ft. Andrew, who had entered the priesthood before him. Ft. Andrew tells Jason to seek psychological help from within the Church. But Jason instead seeks this help in the secular world.
Meanwhile, Cassandra seeks out the wine in the hospital chapel, consuming every drop she can find. Her doctor informs Jason that she will be restricted from Mass and confined to her room. As Jason informs her of this fact in her padded cell, she is already silently planning her escape.
Jason awakes from a nightmare in which he sees the image of Cassandra's bleeding palms and the rape he had witnessed as a boy. He breaks down sobbing and begs Christ to show him the way out of his emotional bondage. He ends his prayer with the verse from 1 Samuel: "...your servant is listening."
Finally, the day of Jason's vocational sacrament arrives: the Rite of Holy Orders--his ordination ceremony, during which the Archbishop imposes hands and anoints him priest. Suddenly, Jason receives the call that forever changes his life. His sister is in an intensive care unit recovering from a brutal rape that occurred the day before. He is devastated. On his way to the hospital, images of his lost childhood flash before him.
Cassandra relates another vision to Jason as he kneels beside her hospital bed. And this time he listens intently to every word. She tells him to take heart that he will enter the priesthood some day. She tells him that Christ wants us to love those we feel like despising. Jason's epiphany is the realization that HE was being counseled all along. Cassandra, in her own tortured and cryptic way, was urging him back to his faith, back to the ability to love her again.
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