“I had taken the first steps on my pilgrimage, a pilgrimage that was only just beginning…Kyrie eleison.”

The Quick and the Dead

“He will come in glory to judge the living and the dead,” reads the Nicene Creed, or as we used to say, “the quick and the dead.”

The words resonated with me more than usual, following a series of losses over the past couple of years. First, my mother, then my father, and lastly my German Shepherd, Rex, my heart dog, passed away.

The quick and the dead. What could I do with those words? Surely a basis for a story – or a series of stories – lay within that short phrase. As I mulled it over, the “quick” became Jonathan Quick, a bereaved composer, and the “dead” became Meredith de’Ath (spelled like “death” but pronounced “Deeth”), his recently deceased fiancée. 

I have long enjoyed reading and writing ghost stories. So Meredith became a ghost, though not a haunting revenant, but returned by the grace of God to guide the faltering Jonathan to perform various works of mercy and restore him to faith. Hence, the title of the first of what has become a series of stories, “Kyrie”. Lord, have mercy.

Both Jonathan and Meredith are on pilgrimage – a pilgrimage to heaven. Jonathan in this life, Meredith completing her pilgrimage in the next – returning from purgatory, perhaps.

“Kyrie” takes place in England because I am English and enjoy writing stories set in my homeland, sometimes using locations that I have visited as background.

We, too, are on pilgrimage, and “Kyrie” illustrates the unexpected twists and turns our pilgrimages may take and how we might be surprised by the mysterious and unfathomable mercy and grace of God. 

Copyright 2026 by Andrew M. Seddon

Edited by Paula V. Babadi

Photo credit: Trek_Jason, Pixabay

Read “Kyrie,” and other short stories by the Catholic Writers Guild in Pilgrim Tales: a Catholic Writers Guild Short Story Anthology, available now on Amazon in print and e-book.

E-book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G5VZ7WV8

Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G5WZF1PV