"Judge not, lest ye be judged." These words have rarely, if ever, crossed the mind of Aberlene County judge Evan Spencer. From a middle-class background, he graduated law school, married into wealth, and now has his eye on a Supreme Court seat. All seems to be going well for Judge Spencer until he receives a package from an old college friend he hasn't heard from in years containing a cryptic note and a small stone. But in trying to track down his old friend, Spencer learns of the man's suicidal leap from a twenty-story building.   Evan Spencer now has control of an object whose power is beyond anything he could possibly imagine---an object whose very existence has been kept under wraps by the Vatican for decades. Throughout history, this stone has stricken its holders with visions of their sinful lives, and as if the mental anguish isn't enough, it also inflicts them with stigmatic wounds.   Enlisting the help of Reverend Angelo Grasso, a seventy-two-year-old expert on the history of stigmatic cases, Spencer must uncover the secrets behind this strange stone, or watch his family, career, and possibly his life be destroyed.