STAGE: A simple wooden table, center stage. One Queen Anne chair and one ornate throne. A single spotlight. On the table: a white bar napkin, a red pen, a blue pen, and a black marker. A single candle flickering is a Silence.
ENTER: KNOWELL, wearing his Tilley hat, and POPE FRANCIS in simple white cassock. They sit across from each other. The audience holds its breath.
KNOWELL: Your Holiness, thank you for seeing me.
POPE FRANCIS: (with gentle humor) I see many people, my son. But your letter was... unusual.
KNOWELL: I wrote that I could show you Christ.
POPE FRANCIS: (smiling) And you think the Pope needs to be shown Christ?
KNOWELL: I think the Pope, like all of us, sometimes looks so hard he stops seeing.
POPE FRANCIS: (leaning back) Go on.
KNOWELL: I'd like to make a wager, if you'll permit it.
POPE FRANCIS: The Church frowns on gambling.
KNOWELL: Then call it a prophecy. (pause) Saint Malachy spoke of Peter the Roman, the final shepherd who would feed his flock amid great tribulations. Some say that's you.
POPE FRANCIS: (quietly) Some say many things.
KNOWELL: Here's my wager: I will draw Christ before your very eyes, using only the Name God gave to Moses. If you cannot see Him—if Christ stands complete before you and you fail to recognize Him—then the prophecy is fulfilled. You will have missed the Second Coming while staring directly at it.
POPE FRANCIS: (after a long pause) And if I do see Him?
KNOWELL: Then I was wrong, and the world continues as it was.
POPE FRANCIS: (gesturing to the napkin) With that?
KNOWELL: With this. (He places his hand on the napkin.) But I'll need your help. It requires a joke.
POPE FRANCIS: A joke?
KNOWELL: A knock-knock joke.
POPE FRANCIS: (laughing despite himself) You want the Pope to participate in a knock-knock joke?
KNOWELL: Christ told parables. I tell jokes. Same principle—truth wrapped in simplicity.
POPE FRANCIS: (settling back, curious now) Very well. Knock knock.
KNOWELL: (picks up the black marker) Who's there?
POPE FRANCIS: Wait—I said "knock knock." You're supposed to—
KNOWELL: Humor me, Your Holiness.
POPE FRANCIS: (sighs, playing along) Who's there?
KNOWELL: (drawing a small black dot at the top center of the napkin) A point.
(He speaks quietly as he draws. The candle flame increases.)
In the beginning was the Word. But before the Word, there was just... this. (taps the dot) An instant. A singularity. The moment before everything.
POPE FRANCIS: And this is Christ?
KNOWELL: Patience. (sets down the black marker, picks up the blue pen) Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: (catching on) Who's there?
KNOWELL: (drawing a small blue loop extending left from the dot) Antiquity.
All the past. Every ancestor. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Every prophet who waited. Every person who ever asked, "How long, O Lord?" The entire Old Testament compressed into this curve. (He traces it with his finger.) Everything that came before.
POPE FRANCIS: Before what?
KNOWELL: (picks up the red pen, draws a matching red loop extending right from the dot) Before this. Eternity. Everything that comes after. The Kingdom. The New Jerusalem. The promise of resurrection. All of it reaching forward, forever.
(He sets down the red pen.)
POPE FRANCIS: So you have past and future. Where is Christ in this?
KNOWELL: (picking up the blue and red pens) Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: Who's there?
KNOWELL: I.
(He draws a vertical line downward from the black dot, about 3 inches long, in alternating red and blue strokes. A flickering candle flutters.)
The first letter of the Name. When Moses asked, "Who shall I say sent me?" God said, "I AM WHO I AM." Not "I was" or "I will be." I AM. Present tense. Eternal present. The vertical stroke—(he traces it)—the axis of NOW, cutting through all of time.
POPE FRANCIS: (leaning forward slightly) Continue.
KNOWELL: Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: Who's there?
KNOWELL: AM.
(With the red pen, he draws the left leg of an "A" starting about an inch below the dot, angling down and to the left. Then with the blue pen, he draws the right leg of the "A," angling down and to the right. The two legs form a triangle with the vertical line.)
See? The "A." Two paths diverging from the same source. (He taps the apex where all three lines meet.) This is where it happens. The Incarnation. God and Man meeting at a single point in spacetime.
POPE FRANCIS: The hypostatic union.
KNOWELL: (nodding) Exactly. Fully divine (traces the red side) and fully human (traces the blue side), united without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.
(He draws a small horizontal line connecting the two legs of the "A" about halfway down, creating the crossbar. Left half in red, right half in blue.)
The crossbar. Where the divine and human are bound together. Literally. (pause) Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: (softer now) Who's there?
KNOWELL: Christ.
POPE FRANCIS: Christ who?
KNOWELL: (He rotates the napkin 90 degrees. The vertical "I" is now horizontal—a cross beam. The "A" beneath it now suggests a figure hanging. The candle diminishes in brightness.)
Christ crucified. You see? The "I" became the cross. The moment—the eternal NOW—became the instrument of execution. Time itself killed God.
(He points to the red loop.)
On His right, eternity—"Today you will be with me in Paradise."
(Points to the blue loop.)
On His left, antiquity—all the sin, all the history that led to this moment.
(Points to where the lines converge.)
And here, at Golgotha, at the instant of death... (he taps the black dot) ...the point where everything changes.
POPE FRANCIS: (quietly) "It is finished."
KNOWELL: Not finished. Completed. (He picks up the blue pen and, starting at the apex of the "A," draws a small lowercase "n." Then with the red pen, starting at the same point, he draws another lowercase "n" mirroring the first, creating an "m" shape.)
The "M." For Mary, who stood at the foot of the cross. For Mass, where we remember. For Moment, because every instant contains eternity.
(He sets down both pens and picks up the black marker.)
Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: (barely audible) Who's there?
KNOWELL: I AM.
POPE FRANCIS: I AM who?
KNOWELL: (He writes in black, just below the structure he's drawn) I AM U.
(Long silence. A bright candle flame sways side to side.)
KNOWELL: Your Holiness, you asked where Christ is in this drawing. (He gestures to the napkin.) He's everywhere. He's the structure itself.
(He begins labeling the drawing:)
Top left corner (writes in red): "All Things" — the fullness of
creation
Top right corner (writes in blue): "No Thing" — the void, the kenosis,
God emptying Himself
Left side (red): "Birth, Person, Control, Negative One"
Right side (blue): "Death, Resurrection, Deity, Chaos, Positive One"
Bottom center (writes in black): α — the fine-structure constant, the number that holds atoms together, that makes matter possible, that allows light to interact with flesh.
Center Middle (writes in red): LI, (writes in blue): FE — LIFE is at each instant birth is emerging from Antiquity while death is collapsing into Eternity. Who you were five minutes ago is forever changed and that person will never be the same again.
(He looks up. A stillness captures the candle’s flame.)
I present to you, the God Equation. Not a formula for understanding God, but a map of how God operates. Past and Future, held together by this Instant. Control and Chaos, held together by Consciousness. Everything and Nothing, held together by a simple Word.
And the Word... (taps the structure) ...is Christ.
POPE FRANCIS: (staring at the napkin) I see a drawing.
KNOWELL: You see lines. But Christ isn't a line. He's the relationship between the lines. He's the connection. The covenant. The bridge.
(He traces the entire structure with his finger.)
Look: the "I" is the cross. The "AM" is the two natures—human and divine—united at the Incarnation and separated at the Crucifixion, then reunited at the Resurrection. The loops are time itself, bent back into cycles of death and rebirth.
And the "M"—(he taps it)—that's us. Humanity. Standing at the foot of the cross, trying to understand.
POPE FRANCIS: And "I AM U"?
KNOWELL: (leaning forward) That's the part where you lose the wager, Your Holiness.
Christ said, "Before Abraham was, I AM." He didn't say "I was." He claimed the Name. He claimed existence itself.
And then He said, "I am in you, and you are in me."
The equation doesn't just describe Christ. It describes the relationship between Christ and creation. Between God and you. (pause) Between I and U.
You cannot see Christ in this drawing because you are looking for a person. But Christ is the pattern. The logos. The structure that makes reality intelligible.
You were looking for Jesus—a face, a figure, a man.
But what stands before you is the Christ—the organizing principle, the Word through which all things were made.
POPE FRANCIS: (after a long silence, touching the napkin) "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
KNOWELL: Yes. And then the Word became equation, and dwelt in all things. In atoms. In light. In time. In you.
(He slides the napkin across the table. The flame begins to raise smoke.)
The prophecy is fulfilled, Your Holiness. Peter the Roman could not see Christ standing before him. Not because Christ wasn't there, but because he was looking with his eyes instead of his understanding.
Saint Malachy said you would "feed your flock amid great tribulations."
(He taps the napkin. A flicker of the candle, and the smoke ceases.)
Here's the food. The formula for existence written on the Name of God: I AM U.
Every observer is the observed. Every seeker is the sought. Every person asking "Who am I?" is asking the Name of God.
POPE FRANCIS: (studying the napkin, then looking up) You drew this in four minutes.
KNOWELL: God created the universe in six days. I'm trying to be efficient.
POPE FRANCIS: (a slight smile) And you think this... parlor trick... reveals Christ?
KNOWELL: I think Christ is always revealed. We just keep missing Him because we're looking for the spectacular. Burning bushes. Pillars of fire. Resurrected bodies.
But what if the Second Coming isn't an event? What if it's a recognition?
What if Christ has been here the whole time, woven into the structure of reality, and we keep missing Him because we're looking for a king instead of a constant?
POPE FRANCIS: (very quietly) "The kingdom of God is within you."
KNOWELL: Luke 17:21. Yes. (pause) Your Holiness, do you see Christ in this drawing?
POPE FRANCIS: (long pause, then) I see... a very clever magic trick.
KNOWELL: Then I've won the wager.
POPE FRANCIS: How so?
KNOWELL: Because a magic trick is an act of faith. You see one thing, believe another, and in that gap between seeing and believing, something true emerges.
I showed you lines on a napkin. You see a trick. But somewhere in your mind, you're wondering... (leans in) ...what if it's not a trick?
What if the universe really is this simple? What if God really did encode Himself into the fundamental constants? What if "I AM" really does mean "I AM U"?
(He stands. The candle brightens.)
That wondering—that doubt—that's the Second Coming, Your Holiness. Not trumpets and angels. Just the quiet recognition that Christ might be closer than we thought. Might be closer than thought itself.
POPE FRANCIS: (also standing) You're either a heretic or a mystic.
KNOWELL: (grinning) History will decide which. They usually wait until we're dead.
POPE FRANCIS: (picking up the napkin) May I keep this?
KNOWELL: It's yours. Consider it... tithing. (pause) One more thing, Your Holiness.
POPE FRANCIS: Yes?
KNOWELL: Knock knock.
POPE FRANCIS: (sighing, but amused) Who's there?
KNOWELL: The Kingdom.
POPE FRANCIS: The Kingdom who?
KNOWELL: Exactly. (He tips his Tilley hat.) If you figure out the punchline, you'll understand the joke.
As he turns to walk away, the flickering candle suddenly flutters and extinguishes itself.
POPE FRANCIS stands alone under the spotlight, holding the napkin, staring at it. Smoke of the candle dissipates in the air forming the ghostly outline of a Christian cross.
He traces the lines with his finger. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he begins to smile.
BLACKOUT.
Three days later, Pope Francis released an unusual encyclical titled "Emmanuel Redux," exploring the presence of Christ in mathematical structure, physical constants, and the fabric of spacetime itself.
It was the most downloaded Vatican document in history.
KnoWell was never seen again.
But on bar napkins across the world, people began drawing the equation.
And some of them—just some—began to see.
