Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes. Jan David Blais
form a cross? It may be a sign,” she said soberly. “I’ve heard for a boy this may be the sign of a vocation.”
I grimaced. The nuns were always dropping hints and sometimes one of the priests would promote the idea, but however my life spun itself out, being a priest would be no part of it. I was surprised my mother even mentioned it, she had such a dim view of priests, most of them. Seeing my reaction, she smiled. “It would be below your potential, but there is the will of God to consider. There’s always room for a good priest – if nothing else, you’d raise the average.”
Jim was in his freshman year at La Salle and already a big shot. He started his first jayvee game at tackle and late in the game with the team way ahead the coach put him in at fullback to see what he could do. Needless to say, he scored, in fact he scored twice, one on a long run he said winded him so bad he barely made it to the end zone. Jim smoked a lot more than my parents knew, which I thought was dumb for an athlete. By mid-season they’d moved him up to the varsity and he even got his picture in the paper a couple of times. The Frosh Phenom, they were calling him, a shoo-in for All-State next year.
By now I had a better but still maddeningly approximate idea what “fuck” meant. You must realize, we had no opportunity to observe the female body and even pictures were hard to come by. One day I lined up with my nickel to inspect this picture book a couple of eighth graders were showing around, when Sister Philomena swooped in and confiscated the book and all the proceeds. Luckily she didn’t notice who was in line exposing himself to the occasion of sin. Word was, there was a medical book in the downtown library I needed to take a look at. I’d already checked out our book about the natives I mentioned before, but those grass skirts covered what I was told were the most interesting parts.
My father was no help at all. He said I was still too young to understand. But my body was acting in ways I suspected had something to do with that mysterious activity called fuck. I told him about waking up with my thing hard which really worried me. I must have some disease nobody will talk about because it’s so terrible. He said don’t worry, all it means you need to take a leak. When I woke up in that condition I made a special point of visiting the bathroom but it didn’t help. Finally somebody had pity on me and filled me in. Of all people, my brother.
“Why didn’t you ask me before?” He sounded hurt. “I’d of told you.”
Armed with this startling new information, I began looking at girls differently, especially Margaret. I started paying more attention to new features she was developing, though those baggy uniforms were no help. My sister was changing too, but no way I would think about her that way. Every month she and my mother disappeared in the bathroom, something about her not feeling well. Not long after, Jim showed me how to jerk off, and this exciting new activity opened expanses of pleasure and remorse. Now I understood what the priests were driving at when they said keep your hands out of your pockets. I never believed those stories about going blind, or acne which I had in spades anyway, but mortal sin and eternal damnation got your attention. If Lent lasted the whole year it still wouldn’t be enough to atone for my decadence. I had this mental picture of the devil catching my guardian angel and throttling him.
Jim said I took everything too seriously. I didn’t think so. The whole point of life is to make yourself a better person in the sight of God, which means doing what He commands and avoiding what he forbids, even when it seems impossible. Here, as with everything, I struggled while Jim just bopped along, going his own way.
OF COURSE I WAS AN ALTAR BOY. Maybe it was my looking like some kind of jayvee priest that pushed my mother over the edge with that vocation stuff. The job had a lot of variety. Low Mass, High Mass, Solemn High Mass, saints’ days, feast days, different color altar cloths and vestments for weddings and funerals, Month’s Mind, Novenas, Stations of the Cross. Weekday seven o’clock Mass was my favorite, compared to the Eight or on Sunday the Eleven. Getting out of bed in the dark was a struggle, then the twenty-minute walk to church, but I loved it. I usually arrived after old Mr. Drury who unlocked the doors and turned on the lights and heat. Mrs. Drury would be laying out the vestments in the sacristy, filling the cruets with water and wine and arranging flowers on the altar, picking out the wilted ones. The servers’ changing room was used for storing equipment, heavy candleholders we dragged out for funerals and during Lent, the kneelers (prie-Dieu in the French Church) for weddings, extra racks of blue and red votive lights, plaster statue of St. Francis with the bird’s head missing. I wondered how that happened, probably a plaster cat.
The Seven was quiet and peaceful. It attracted the faithful Irish and Italian ladies, bulky or frail in their black cloth coats, hats and tie-shoes, plus a handful of men going to work or getting home from the night shift, sometimes a policeman or fireman in uniform. That early in the day you felt especially close to God, because He knew what you went through to get there. When everything was ready, the priest and servers assembled at the sanctuary door then strode to the center of the altar. Briefly dropping to his right knee, the priest rose while we stayed on our knees for the prayers at the foot of the altar.
In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen. That one you know.
Introibo ad altare Dei. I will go in to the altar of God.
Ad Deum Qui laetificat juventutem meam. To God, the joy of my youth.
I didn’t understand much Latin until I studied it later, but comprehension wasn’t the idea. What mattered was accurate, timely recitation. We were encouraged to use prayer cards, laminated five-by-sevens with prompts for the novice or the forgetful. Understood or not, the stately cadences resonating in the expanse of the church conjured up their own images, creating an overwhelming sense of piety and proportion.
The opening prayer didn’t fit, for I was not having that joyful a time, in fact, my relationship with God was troubled. Later, as it became even more complex, those tender years looked good by comparison. In a world bent on its own destruction, the steadiness of the liturgy, the progression of the Church Year from birth through death to renewal, was a sanctuary of security and sanity. Sadly, even that would change.
Our movements were orchestrated, no room for mistake or invention. We practiced until we could do them in our sleep. Short of stumbling over the Latin, nothing infuriated Father Donnelly like being out of position or missing a step. As I said, Father Donnelly was a thunderstorm – one minute he’d explode, the next he was okay. With Father Maloney we were always on guard, he was so gloomy and hardly ever spoke to you. It got to the point you thought more about not messing up than what the Mass was supposed to be about. Sundays, after reading the gospel in Latin, the priest approached the pulpit for the sermon. If it was Father Donnelly, you could count on hearing about the new roof the church needed and how the price of heating oil is going up. Since those days I’ve encountered many ornate pulpits, even gold-plated constructions resembling space capsules in those early Japanese science fiction films, but St. Teresa’s was simple, a plain wood lectern atop a short circular staircase.
Though my family were long-time parishioners our name didn’t appear on the list sent around each year showing how much everybody gave. A few years earlier a box of envelopes arrived in the mail with our name on them for depositing in the Sunday collection. My mother sent the box back with a crisp letter. Of course my parents always put something in the basket, and I suppose they were generous enough, but to her it was nobody’s business what we gave or anybody else either. That was between the person and God. It’s a fine pastor, she maintained, who embarrasses the poor and encourages the rest to boast. If you want to report something for us, she said in her letter, just put down zero. Instead we were deleted.
The heart of Mass is the consecration. The priest washes his hands, says some more prayers, then the bells are rung. Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! Now, the most solemn moment of all, changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Here I have to tell you about Father Maloney. He would roar through the Mass at breakneck speed, but when he reached this part he slowed to a crawl, almost a stop. His hands shook as he held the host. Hic...est...enim ...Corpus ...meum. For this is my Body.
I do not exaggerate when I say it took him at least a minute to get through those five words. Watching him start and stop, start and stop, I wondered if he was overcome