I heard every heart beating
Tag Archives: Mass
Priestly styles of serving communion
F snaps it, presses the host with his forefinger into your waiting palm.
JMJ pinches its outermost edge, then releases it to drift,
this manna, this angel wafer in the wind.
The priest at St. Mary’s pulls it back, cards to his chest.
He stares skeptically until you’ve said your “Amen.”
Before that a cat
A moth at Mass, big as a bat
flitted past the host.
Before that a cat
came in.
You can’t do that,
I said.
It was hot that day
in the world,
but cool as usual
here in the cloister.
Box at Mass
I am the box
lid open
not big enough for God
so flat now
wide as a box can be
At Mass
I make a tent with my hands
and bow before the fire within.
I put my forehead to the dust.
Smoke rises through the eye of God
and a tear forms, a lens on the eye.
Laetare
I don’t like the stupid part
of being a disciple –
how you have to learn
the same lessons again and again,
fight the same fights,
and offer the same apologies
thirty years in a row.
I’m sick to death
of thinking I get it –
feeling contrite at Mass,
all that wet-eyed resolve
and the light shining on
just the right window
at just the right time –
until you’re again coughing, after,
over your coffee, sputtering
your justifications and wondering
secretly if God Himself is not choking,
ready finally to keep His promise
and spit you from His mouth!
American Catholicism
Filioque redux
The spirit proceeding
from this father and son
is kindly, too,
for I’ve promised him
KFC
after the Mass.
