As a playwriting Catholic, I’m full of ideas about the Faith and drama. So, thinking that my thinking might be of use to EWTN, I once wrote a letter basically inviting myself down there for a visit. Guardian Angel! Pride alert! Get out that pie recipe!
Airline fare schedules being what they are, I had to arrive in Birmingham on Saturday for my Monday appointment. That gave me the opportunity to attend Sunday Mass at Our Lady of the Angels chapel — something of a Roman Catholic Graceland visit for an EWTN fan.
I went to bed that night, reminded of Hilaire Belloc, who wrote of a “. . . pleasing sensation of order and accomplishment which attaches to a day one has opened by Mass.” Shortly thereafter, the first in an all-night series of piercing train whistles went by not far from my motel. Hilaire gave way to memories of Roy Acuff, who sang “She came down from Birmingham on the Wabash Cannonball.” I spent most of that night waiting for a jittery Morpheus to finish his warm milk and get to work on me.
Any day that starts with a train whistle rousting you out of bed, early enough to cancel a pre-dawn wake-up call, stands little chance of having order and accomplishment attached to it. Still, I stumbled my red-eyed way to the chapel, where I arrived to the sweet sound of sung morning prayer.
Then, a largely Latin Mass began. I started to act the way many people must have before vernacular Masses. Looking for visual clues as to where we were at given times, I was feeling indignant that there weren’t subtitles. I also started forgetting that I’m not a bishop and don’t have any say in the matter. Right about then, my guardian angel started spraying whipped cream on the Pride pie-in-the-face. A few generations ago, he was assigned to a vaudevillian. Handy training, considering my shuffle off to Buffalo at Communion.
Most communicants at EWTN’s Masses genuflect before receiving. Genuflection being an entering/exiting practice in my upbringing, the concept occupied me all the way to the altar. Should I do it? We don’t do it where I come from. I don’t even remember my mother mentioning doing it in “the old days.” What benefit could there possibly be in altering my altar approach?
I was occupied to the point of neglecting both to pray, and to notice that the priest was distributing Communion under both species, using the dipping method. Reaching the altar, I decided against genuflecting, and stuck my hands out like I do every other Sunday.
Remember, I wasn’t expecting the good father to drop the soaking host into my hand. I still didn’t know it was even damp. So, when an acolyte pushed a paten down over my hands, I figured it was he who had gotten confused. We stood looking at each other the way people do at a 4-way stop.
Turning to see the host heading for my mouth, I promptly stuck out my tongue like a reprimanded altar boy. Only upon tasting it did I realize I had been standing there requesting a handful of blood.
You know, the tongue method is tough when you haven’t done it since grammar school. I had completely forgotten how far mine needs to extend. I also got halfway back to my seat before realizing I had forgotten to say “Amen.” I knelt down in the pew, sad and sorry. Yielding to Pride had caused me to miss out on what probably would have been a new and profound experience of the Eucharist. What looked like another host in the distance turned out to be the Pride pie-in-the-face heading straight, and deservedly, toward me.
I did, however, discover an important aspect of apologetics that day: Learning to defend the faith sometimes means learning to defend it from yourself.
(This article can also be found at envoymagazine.com)
