Offerings — III.2

This section is basically an opener, introducing us to an important character, his situation and his interior life. So there isn’t much “story” here yet, but there are still some important things I want you to evaluate which will be noted at the end.

Fr. Matt realized that he had been standing motionless over the sacrarium for several minutes now, gazing into its drain as he listened to Fr. Adrian’s impassioned words out in the sanctuary:

“Perhaps some of you have come here tonight with a very clear idea of what you want to ask of the Lord: maybe a physical ailment or a specific trauma from your past has left you feeling trapped, broken… helpless.”

On its face, the sacrarium looked much like the handwashing station of any commercial kitchen: a stainless steel basin, maybe eighteen inches square, with a no-frills faucet at its head. Its peculiarity was unseen, for instead of draining through a J-bend grease trap and into the municipal waste system, its metal throat went straight down into the soil underneath the sacristy. Only three things ever went down the drain — the water used to rinse sacred vessels after Mass, and any spare traces that water contained of Christ’s sacramental Body and Blood.

Because of this, it often occurred to Fr. Matt when he stood over that sink that he was gazing into a kind of replica of Jesus’ tomb. He supposed many would find the idea morbid; for him it felt consoling. To think that no part of his Savior’s sacrifice was wasted, and that its unconsumed remains would merely sleep in that satellite tomb until the Resurrection was fully consummated at the end of time.

“But I imagine others of you aren’t so sure why you’re here,” Fr. Adrian continued outside. “You know something in you is broken, but you can’t identify what it is… let alone figure out how to fix it. Whichever group you’re in, let me tell you decisively: fixing yourself is not your job.”

With his next words, Fr. Matt could picture the dramatic gesture Fr. Adrian surely made to the massive oak crucifix hanging over the altar behind him:

“It’s his.”

Fr. Matt scoffed despite himself; not so much at the words themselves, but their delivery. Fr. Adrian was young, charismatic and given to a certain amount of theatrics. He belonged to the neighboring diocese, but had been brought to St. Thomas for the week at the behest of its likewise young and fiery parochial vicar, Fr. Rudy Vollega. The two rookie priests had been at Bishop Broderick Seminary together, and although Rudy had a couple pastoral years already under his belt while Adrian was only just ordained, the latter had already achieved significant celebrity for a parish priest.

By all accounts but his own, Fr. Adrian had a gift for healing; one that was apparently separate from his priesthood as it had manifested long before he received orders. In his presence, soccer moms and teenagers and grizzled plumbers alike had spoken in tongues, been “slain in the spirit,” and apparently seen all manner of physical and spiritual maladies evaporate.

Fr. Matt, for his part, was skeptical. He certainly believed such miracles were possible. In fact he had witnessed more than a few himself, and knew them to be more common than most people imagined. But they also tended to propagate cults of personality, and that made him nervous.

“If you do nothing else this evening,” Fr. Adrian went on, “I want you to take a moment to prayerfully consider this idea…”

Fr. Matt rinsed and wrung out the purificators as he listened, hanging them up to dry on the rack mounted next to the sacrarium.

“Not only can Jesus heal you of whatever troubles you, but he wants to. He wants it desperately.”

Fr. Matt placed the patens and chalices, two of each, into their respective cabinets, then began removing his vestments.

“You need only let him do so!”

Fr. Matt struggled for a moment to undo the knot in his cincture — his fingers were cold and stiff. The evening outside was unseasonably cool and the thermostat had not been instructed to compensate.

“And if you are already willing to do so, then simply listen,” Fr. Adrian concluded. “Listen for his invitation, because it is definitely there.”

Fr. Matt hung up his chasuble and began to head from the sacristy to the sanctuary. Perhaps he would join Fr. Vollega for this post-missal charismatic service, perhaps not. He hadn’t made up his mind, and momentarily procrastinated by adjusting the thermostat installed next to the door.

There were fifty or so people scattered throughout the pews, in addition to Rudy and the ad-hoc team of prayer leaders he had assembled for the occasion. Matt tried to be inconspicuous as he emerged from the door behind the altar, aware that many eyes would be trained on him regardless. He had a reputation — one he had not purposefully cultivated, nor tried to circumvent — for being tight-lipped and hard to read when it came to parish politics. And an event like this was most definitely political, eliciting snide comparisons to televangelists and snake-handlers from some of the more traditionally-minded parishioners.

Having already given his own fiat to the whole thing, Matt knew his attendance would be seen by some as outright endorsement. But his absence would make that permission seem begrudging, which would be taken as a very different kind of statement. Still conflicted, he decided to buy himself some time and headed to the back of the church for an unnecessary trip to the bathroom.

Fr. Adrian seemed to finally be wrapping up his introduction. “At this time I’d like to invite our worship team forward. And I invite the rest of you to use their music as a prayer, an opportunity… a doorway.” Reyna and Joel, college-aged siblings whose parents frequently volunteered them for such things, stood and made their way to a couple of microphones waiting up front.

“If you feel moved to sing along, please do so,” Fr. Adrian encouraged. “If you feel moved to stand, to kneel, to raise your hands, whatever — please do so. Let’s not be shy or judgy here, as the Spirit moving among us certainly won’t be.”

There was an appreciative chuckle in response. Fr. Matt wondered if there would be any tacit judgment for those who elected to just sit quietly. He stepped out into the vestibule as Joel strummed out the first milky chord of the evening.

He paused as the door swung shut behind him — the space sounded somehow different. Within seconds he placed it, and felt that well-worn flare of masculine annoyance at petty malfunctions. The holy water font was stopped up somehow, the uniform stream that normally ran down from along its lip now choked back to an irregular trickle. He grunted and detoured towards it.

The bathroom door swung open as he did so, and Matt glanced back to find a warm, sun-leathered face beaming at him. Matt smiled and waved in response.

“Padre! How goes it?”

It was Dave Goebbs, one of Fr. Matt’s more eccentric parishioners. And one of his favorites — not that Matt had any great love for eccentricity per se. There were a couple of odder birds whose quirks he found grating rather than endearing. What set Dave apart was his unusual mix of meekness and goofiness. Having apparently been a stand-up comedian in a past life, he now worked construction and never complained about anyone or anything. He was also very open — at least with the pastor — about his bipolar disorder, messy divorce and two suicide attempts.

“Well, I was doing good until I stepped out here,” Matt replied with what he hoped was good-natured crustiness. “Seems the dunk tank is all messed up.”

“Oh-oh.” Dave sidled over and peered into the font. “Huh. You mean how the water isn’t flowing?”

“Yup.” Matt snorted and shook his head. “I dunno, probably a mineral deposit or something. No idea where the filters are in these things.”

“Hmmm.” Dave clucked his tongue. “Makes sense I guess. Funny to think about, though — mechanical maintenance on a sacramental.”

Fr. Matt laughed; true enough, this was an irony that had never occurred to him. Dave grinned, then suddenly lowered his eyebrows in a conspiratorial look.

“Either that… or gremlins,” he said in a stage whisper. “I dunno if gremlins can even get into a church, but we sure get them on work sites all the time.”

Matt laughed again. “Well, not an emergency in any case. No one’s scheduled to go into it any time soon.” Or any time at all, for that matter. Immersive Baptism was still a bit hippie for most dioceses, including Spokane. Fr. Matt had never even witnessed let alone performed one himself.

He gestured back at the sanctuary. “You here for Fr. Adrian?”

Dave nodded enthusiastically. “You know it. I know some people think it’s a bit kooky, and I get that. But for me…” He spread out his hands. “I’m a raw nerve. I’ll take as much of the Spirit-juice as I can get.”

Matt nodded, at least in appreciation if not understanding. If anyone could sell the fantastical and miraculous, it was Dave.

“How ‘bout you?” Dave asked. Matt clenched up a bit but willed the reflex away.

“I’m debating. Concelebrated the Mass beforehand, but haven’t touched my homily for this weekend either.” This was technically true; and as it was Friday night, the pressure to go back to the rectory and spend the rest of the evening in his study was legitimate. On the other hand, the Heineken in the fridge and semi-concealed copy of The Stand in his bedroom were just as likely to consume his time.

“Pssh. I’ve never heard you give a bad homily,” Dave scoffed with the air of a drinking buddy. “You should stick around.”

Fr. Matt cocked his head in mime pondering, but in fact felt a decision form. Dave’s presence was reassuring, and might have been a nudge from the ever-subtle but never-silent third party so often in the back of Matt’s mind

“Ok,” he agreed. “But I can only stay an hour. Doesn’t matter if someone starts prophesying or levitating or whatever.”

“Ah, Padre,” Dave said, still in bad-influence mode. “That’s when things get interesting.”

“Don’t tempt me to change my mind.”

“Of course, Padre.” Dave made a half-bow and gestured at the door. “My apologies.”

The two men went back into the sanctuary. Ignoring his own preference, Matt went all the way down the side aisle and joined Fr. Rudy in the front, who greeted him with a friendly nod and went back to gazing at the tabernacle. Fr. Matt followed suit.

Like so many churches in the area, St. Thomas was laid out in an annoying semicircle shape that evoked a corporate amphitheater more than a church. But throughout all the overeager renovations of the 70s, the tabernacle had somehow remained where it belonged — elevated on a dais against the back wall, right behind the altar. Upon his assignment here, Matt was relieved to at least be spared that battle.

“You call me across the water,” Reyna crooned. She had a nice voice, but kept inflicting it with a poppy lilt that, to Matt’s mind, felt out of place in a church. He tried to ignore the dissonance between the sugary music and the medieval imagery adorning the tabernacle.

“You hold out Your hand and say…”

Across the heavy brass doors, surrounded by curling filigree, was a chunky bas-relief rendering of a pelican, wings flared out and neck curled downward.

“Come to Me and be fed… come to Me and be whole.”

Surrounding the pelican in the foreground were the upturned beaks and folded wings of four baby pelicans. Matt had often wondered why there were four; although many numbers had symbolic significance throughout scripture, four was underrepresented. He had never bothered to research it.

“Come to Me and find… everlasting life.”

The big pelican’s head was downturned so that its beak could pierce its own breast, releasing four gilt drops of blood to the expectant chicks below.

Reyna stepped back from the mic. Joel transitioned from strumming to picking, and the music subsided from a wash to a gentle trickle. Matt kept gazing at the tabernacle — at the pelican impaling itself — and felt that ugly itching sensation curling up behind his eyes again. It occurred to him that the real reason he’d been hesitant to stay was not the service’s cloying tones or its political ramifications. Rather, it was the simple fact that Matt did not like praying. Whenever his mind was allowed silence and reflection, it began to chew on itself like a dog afflicted with mange.

Decades of reading, spiritual direction and other catechesis had of course taught him this mental restlessness was natural, and that overcoming it was foundational to the spiritual life. He himself had offered that counsel to others many times. Yet no matter how many times he tried to push through it, to quiet the buzzing and chittering and instead fill his mind with some transcendent object… it never got any easier.

Saints, counselors and other clergy would talk about the problem as if it were merely one of distractibility — of resisting the childish urge to chase after every butterfly that flitted through one’s thoughts, or the more grown-up one to fret over work, finances, family and so on. But that was seldom Matt’s experience. It was not transitory wisps of anxiety or idle wondering, but something more pervasive: a feeling like his mind was full of ants or sand, a flaking rust that ground between every gear and joint.

Sometimes these irritants corresponded to real stressors in the life of a pastor. But just as often they were a shapeless mass, signifying nothing in particular and instead just being there while God apparently was not. As Matt regarded the drops of blood and heard the guitar trickle, he likewise felt those disparate little somethings begin to stir and tickle in the cracks of his brain.

A fever-dream image flashed in his mind’s eye, one that kept coming to him recently. A face, shadowy and poorly rendered in his imagination, with no clear features except a lazy half-lidded gaze and Cheshire Cat grin. This too had no obvious source and communicated nothing specific. It didn’t even provoke much of a feeling in Matt, except maybe peevish bewilderment.

“Stop looking at me,” he said aloud — not really meaning to, in such a bare whisper that it was little more than his lips moving. The face kept appearing to him, all the more as he attempted to replace it with… what?

Christ crucified. Always set before your eyes Christ crucified.

Accordingly, Matt looked up at the crucifix — and the Beavis-and-Butthead leer promptly superimposed itself on the corpus’s downturned face.

Trickle trickle trickle… Fr. Adrian was speaking again, a reverential coo inviting those who felt so moved to come forward for the laying on of hands. Matt closed his eyes; the guitar moved back into a strum and he wondered what could possibly be wrong with the Baptismal font. What was stopping it up? What was so difficult about just letting water flow?

The unwritten homily, which had never fully left his thoughts, came to the foreground again. The Gospel for Sunday was that of the sinful woman who wept over Jesus’ feet and anointed them with her hair. Matt had no idea what to say about it.

We are all that sinful woman.

We are all that Pharisee.

We should all be weeping like her.

We should all be like her.

We are all that Pharisee.

A loop of cliches. The face leered behind his eyelids again like a camera flash. He could not form a conceptual thread in his brain from which to weave a homily; only slight variations on that basic aphorism. We are all sinners…

Yeah, real original, Matt.

“Listen, Matt, this could be serious.” Bishop Dunbar’s words echoed in his memory out of nowhere, and a jolt of anxiety rang through him as he remembered where they led. Meanwhile, up by the altar, sweet old Rose Duchamp stood with Fr. Adrian’s hands on her hair. The priest muttered, immobile and eyes closed; the widow stood with a relaxed smile that eased her otherwise cartoonish wrinkles. Matt envied her as the bishop intruded in his thoughts:

“I’m not aware of any formal complaints as of yet… but the chancery got a call the other day from someone at the NCR who wanted a comment from my office on, well…”

Matt’s insides had curdled at that pause.

“They wanted a comment on Monsignor Kestler. Apparently this reporter has spoken to someone who is… alleging misconduct on his part.”

Matt felt a cool wash of relief when the name mentioned was not his own. As for the name that had been said, it was more inconvenient than anything.

“Gerry?” Matt had said. “What the — who’s saying this? And what exactly are the accusations?”

“I don’t know,” the bishop replied, his face gray and tired. “She didn’t name her source. The reporter, I mean. As for the allegations, well… she didn’t give specifics there either. But I’m guessing it’s sexual in nature.”

Matt growled. “Sounds like she’s just throwing out a line to see if anything bites.”

“Maybe,” Dunbar replied with a shrug. “Nothing you can do about it right now, in any case. But I wanted to give you the heads-up.”

“Appreciate it,” Matt had said, feeling just the opposite.

He was snapped back to the present by the sight of Rose Duchamp beginning to tilt backward. Her beatific expression slackened into unconsciousness as she left Fr. Adrian’s hands hovering in empty air. Mercifully, another pair of hands caught her from behind and lowered her to the floor, to join the two other attendees already lying at other points along the semicircular steps.

Matt worried how Rose would get back up from the floor; she must have been in her eighties and had the bearing of a paper doll. But that was not his problem, at least not at the moment. He sat back and closed his eyes, willing himself to keep physically and mentally still, at least for the moment. But his interior castle was full of insects.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened…”

“Fuck off!” a voice exclaimed in his thoughts. Matt realized the voice was his own and his eyes flew open. Dave now stood in front of Fr. Adrian, his head bowed and eyes closed as if the hands on his scalp were pressing their lids down.

Fr. Matt decided enough was enough; his subconscious had produced blasphemy and he would not give it another opportunity. He stood up from the pew, returned Fr. Rudy’s earlier nod and made his way back to the sacristy, taking care to keep his steps calm and deliberate.

As he ascended the three steps on the far left side of the bema, a surprised masculine grunt rang out in the otherwise whispery stillness. Swiveling around, Matt saw that Dave had raised his head; Fr. Adrian’s hands now cradled the air on either side of it. Dave’s eyes were wide open and locked on the young priest’s face, which was out of Matt’s sight.

Dave said nothing and simply held that expression of childish shock; Matt wondered if some freak medical event had coincided with his would-be healing. But after a moment his eyes and mouth closed, and his face had mercifully resolved into peaceful sleep like the others by the time his body drifted back and was guided to the floor.

Matt felt a powerful urge to run over to Fr. Adrian, grab him by his ear and haul him away from the altar.

“Listen you little punk, I gave you and your boy-band bullshit the benefit of the doubt, but these are my people you’re fucking with and I sure as hell–”

Matt choked off the interior tirade, praying that his face hadn’t betrayed any of it, and resumed his course toward the sacristy.

As he entered he was surprised to find the room wasn’t empty. Deacon Keith was hunched over the sacrarium and jolted upright as the pastor entered.

“Oh!” He was flustered. “Hey Father… hey.”

“Hi Keith,” Matt replied, not bothering to hide his puzzlement. “Everything ok?”

“Oh um… sure. Well, I came in to make sure things were set for the wedding tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Matt said, his tone expectant. He knew Keith to be trustworthy but a bit high-strung, and was unsure whether he should be worried about whatever the deacon was worried about.

“And, um…” Keith gestured at the sacrarium. “Have you seen this?”

Matt crossed over to him and looked down into the steel basin again. The bottom was bone-dry, and words were scrawled there in what appeared to be permanent marker:

Matt recoiled. The medium suggested teenage vandalism, but the words themselves — and their neat, almost pretty penmanship — didn’t fit that explanation. He felt things grind and stick in his brain again.

“Wow. Um –” He scrunched his eyes shut, let them burn a little, then opened them again. “What on earth does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Keith answered. Matt could feel the man’s dismayed and hopeful gaze almost boring into the side of his head, but did not meet it. Instead he stepped back and glanced around the sacristy.

“Was anyone here when you got in? Has anyone been here, that you know of?”

Keith shook his head. “There was only Mass this morning, right? And then this.” He cocked his head out to the sanctuary, indicating the silent… whatever that was going on there. Fr. Matt pictured the closed eyes, the prone bodies, the murmuring.

“Well,” he said, “Mel is out there — you know, the seminarian who’s with us for the summer.”

The deacon nodded. “Yes, I’ve met him.”

Matt nodded back. “Why don’t you go out and recruit him — be low-key about it, I don’t want to turn this into a crime scene — and, uh, see if you two can’t figure out a way to scrub this off.” He took a few apologetic steps toward the back door, his pastoral guilt fighting with an urgent need for escape. “I really gotta get back to the rectory, I’m afraid, but there should be some Comet or Goo-Gone or something in the supply closet.”

Keith nodded, eyes wide and eager for a solution. Fr. Matt wanted a Heineken in the worst way and felt for no particular reason like his skin was crawling off him.

“Don’t spend more than fifteen minutes on it,” he concluded, arriving at the back door. “If you can’t get it off, just shoot me a text and I’ll take care of it first thing in the morning.”

“Of course, Father,” Keith affirmed, still nodding.

Matt stepped out of the sacristy, unspeakably grateful for the freshness of June evenings.

****

Thanks for reading! If you feel up to going the extra mile, now it’s time to flash back to high-school lit classes and answer some questions. Any and all thoughts you have in response to the following would be super appreciated — DM me on Insta or Twitter (@sensoremotor for both) or shoot me an email at powersjf@gmail.com.

First and foremost, does the relative lack of action in this section make it boring?

• Are there particular sections that drag or seem irrelevant?
• How is the dialogue?
• Is it realistic?
• Do the characters’ “lines” indicate something of their personality, motivations, etc? Or are they just conveying information?
• Does Matt’s “internal dialogue” make sense?

How is the prose?

• Does it give you a clear mental picture of the setting and action?
• Do you ever get confused about where things are spatially?
• Does it get bogged down with unnecessary detail?
• Does it call attention to itself (e.g. w stylistic flourishes or weird word choices)?

How would you describe your emotional reaction to this scene?

• Pay attention to how it actually makes you feel, not how you think the author wants you to feel.