The Best of the Blest
Convention holds that children have a skewed sense of what is important, that they should get their priorities straight, although the exact “priorities” crucial to a nine-year-old are never sufficiently determined. When Arlene Henry was young, she used to feel sorry for the month of February. It bothered her that the second month of the year had been short-changed on its allotment of days. Even in a leap year February was still shy of one or two days of the fatter months.
Perhaps as compensation for those measly 28 (or 29) days, February had a disproportionate portion of holidays: Lincoln’s Birthday on the 12th, Washington’s on the 22nd as bookends for the biggie: St. Valentine’s Day, on which flurries of red construction paper hearts cut by blunt-ended scissors festooned the windows of the classroom, the center of which held a decorated box to accept tiny envelopes containing even smaller greeting cards “mailed” to and from “everyone” in the class, highlighted by a party featuring cupcakes with pink frosting and little pastel-colored candies with the same taste and shale-like texture as Necco Wafers, all heart-shaped and bearing affectionate messages such as “You're a cutie” and “Be mine.” The fervent prayers of little supplicants included a plea that Ash Wednesday would not, please God, pre-date Valentine’s Day – with the disturbing prospect of Lent and its forty-day ban on the consumption of treats. An early Lent also carried the significance of Easter falling in March, where in Arlene’s part of the world it would be more likely bring a blustery blizzard than the balmy breezes and green grass of Spring. (Irving Berlin, after all, did not dream of a white Easter.)
Such was the unfortunate series of dates slated by a mean calendar of a year at the end of Arlene’s first decade, but just as in more compassionate years, two important commemorations came which annually arrive as soon as February’s page is flipped. The second day was known as Groundhog’s Day: within the secular circle the prints of ancient Pagan toes could still be found, along with the centerpiece of a prognosticating burrowing mammal propped up as a harbinger of hope for an early Spring. Ecclesiastics declared the same day as “Candlemas,” which
as the name implied involved the ceremony in which all the candles to be used in the year’s rites would be blessed and stamped with an official imprimatur.
These same sanctioned candles were used the very next day, the Feast Day of Saint Blaise, the patron of throats. As was her custom, Mrs. Henry would bring her daughter to the ceremony each February 3 to have her throat blessed, for though Arlene was an otherwise healthy child, she had been susceptible to a series of nuisance sore throats, strep infections, and even during one scary patch, an acute case of scarlet fever, which had flung the entire Henry household into a most inconvenient quarantine. If there were ever a candidate for the miraculous intercession and spiritual succor of the blessed St. Blaise, it would be Arlene. And so she knelt on the plush red padding in front of the altar, as Father Mooney stood with two lengthy white tapers held in the shape of an “X” with Arlene’s chronically-ailing neck in the middle. The priest mumbled some incantations in Latin, respectfully removed the crossed waxen swords, and then from a shallow golden dish held by a youthful acolyte scooped up a Vaseline-like gob of holy ointment and with his index finger and thumb drew another “X” on the tiny depression on Arlene’s neck. In a pantomime by Father’s vertical palm, The Sign of the Cross formed the finale. Perhaps at some sacred moment of the ritual, from Arlene’s upper respiratory systems legions of microscopic streptococci were summarily cast out like demons, for in her mother’s mind, no sympathetic magic in some Caribbean Eden could ever be as powerful as the mighty St. Blaise. Such was the form of preventative medicine that Mrs. Henry had placed her belief, the unshakeable faith that Our Lord’s saintly representative would undoubtedly succeed where Penicillin had failed.
Had there been a prophesying animal akin to the groundhog who could predict Arlene’s adult future, he would have counseled her mother to leave Arlene’s throat alone, since the very ailments that had caused her to invoke St. Blaise eventually produced in Arlene’s voice a sultry huskiness that provided her with credibility as a jazz singer. She would also grow up to be quite the pianist, which may or may not have been due to the grace of another saintly benefactress, St. Cecilia.
Indeed, music struck up as if on cue, for right after the ceremony, the church organist had begun her weekly practice, at the moment a rendition of “Dies Irae” the perennial top ten hit of the High Mass each Sunday. As Arlene stood right outside the vestibule, she liked listening theold composition structured almost like a love ballad she'd hear on the radio; if anything, the medieval hymn was more interesting than the chitchat her mother was carrying on with Father Mooney, who nonetheless made a point of conversing with Arlene. “Are you being good for your mother, Arlene?” he said.
“Yes, Father, I try to.”
“And are you keeping up with your studies in Sister Constance’s class?” Again, an affirmative answer. “And you will go to Confession every week, won't you?”
“Oh, yes she will!” Mrs. Henry assured the elderly priest, and then added with a laugh, “I make sure of that.”
As the priest and her mother continued talking, Arlene amused herself by skipping up and down the brick steps in front of the church’s main entrance. Though the curbs of the adjacent street and edges of the sidewalks were a disgraceful mess of gray and soot-besmirched stale snow, the steps of St. Hilarius were immaculate, having been in a timely manner cleared of all occasions of slippery sin by the assiduous sexton. A good thing --for Arlene’s mother was probably unaware of any heavenly sentries who'd post a guard against juvenile leg fractures.
Three times more that week Arlene found herself in the nave of St. Hilarius. On Saturday she had received the Holy Sacrament of Confession and on Sunday fulfilled her obligation ofattending Mass, and finally, fatefully, the following Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. Sister Constance gathered up all the wayward sheep in her classroom, bade them bundle up and herded them out the door of the school and up half a block to the Church. They more or less made an orderly procession into the rows of pews reserved for the Fourth Grade. At selected intervals during the rite, Sister would make a clicking sound with a small metal device in her hand: one click and the children would sit en masse; two clicks and the congregation would stand, three, and they'd all kneel. The effectiveness of Sister’s clicker, allied with her famously stern stare, was an implement of discipline that even the most by-the-book faction of the Military would envy.
The members of each class of St. Hilarius’s School would reverently pace to the altar, where each young forehead would be marked with the yearly reminder that “dust thou art and to dust thou shall return, the cross of ashes (burned from the blessed fronds of the Palm Sunday of the previous year.) Then each supplicant would bless himself and return to his pew, there to wait for the second act of the rite – Confession.
Beginning with Grade Eight and descending down through the ranks, Arlene watched each student disappear into one side of a wooden box-like structure under the stained glass window depicting one of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Cross. When one person left the confessional, a green light above the sliding door would come on as a signal for the next one in to enter. As Arlene’s turn at bat loomed closer and closer, a wave of shaky anxiety, and even a little nausea, began to sweep over her; the imminence of her Moment of Truth had sparked a real spiritual crisis.
Feverishly she silently rattled off a quick Our Father for guidance, because she knew not what to do. She mentally recapped every action and thought of the past couple of days to see if she could salvage anything that smacked of a sin, any corporeal or spiritual transgression suitable for confessing. The soul’s scavenger hunt came up empty: she had done nothing wrong in word, thought, or deed, no sin of commission nor omission that hadn't already been covered by her last Confession. Finally, Arlene tiptoed over to Sister Constance, and whispered, “Sister, I'm in trouble” – an unfortunate turn of phrase, that had it emanated from a slightly older girl, would have sent threatening alarms regarding the purity of the Sixth and Ninth commandments until Arlene explained, “My mother took me to confession just this past Saturday. I don't have anything to confess!”
Above the stiff white cardboard bib of her habit, Sister’s face assumed her trademark glare, though Arlene thought there might have been the bare traces of a twinkle in her eye. “What? No sins to confess? Then we ought to take down that statue of Our Blessed Mother and put you up there instead! Go back to your pew and examine your conscience.”
By the time the last of the Sixth Graders had received their personal absolutions and had made their way to the altar to say their penance, Arlene had conjured a way out of this mess – - she would make something up. The context of a fictional sin carried a bonus, the added weight of sacrilege, for she would be telling a lie in Confession! If nothing else, committing this sin against the Eighth–and possibly the First -- Commandment would supply Arlene with material for next Saturday’s confession.
She entered the confessional and knelt down in the darkness. Arlene could see Father’s shadowy profile behind the frosted window, but since his head seemed turned sideways, she knew she wasn't “on” quite yet. She would have to listen hard for the cue, the sound of the window sliding open, else she'd be audibly baring her soul to a translucent screen.
Finally, it was show time. In a voice just a half-octave above a whisper, Arlene recited, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five days since my last confession. . .”
“Pardon me? Five days did you say?”
“Yes, Father. These are my sins. I have made fun of the Monsignor on the playground.”
“Anything else?”
“No, Father.”
“All right, for your penance, say a good Act of Contrition and –“ the schoolyard rumors apparently true about “no love lost” between Fr. Mooney and the Monsignor –“one Hail Mary.”
As penances go, she had gotten off cheap, but the guilt inherent in possibly blaspheming the Holy Spirit could prove costly. Then again, Arlene may have been unwillingly thrust into an unavoidable case of situational ethics with -- once again -- her priorities scattered in disarray. More sanguinely secure was Arlene’s father. Whenever he was harshly chastised by his wife for daring to chomp on a ham sandwich on a Friday, Mr. Henry would always reply, “God doesn't care what goes in the mouth but what comes out.” Although it is true that one’s lip or tongue or throat (be it blessed or unblessed) could be the instruments of evil, there are times, perhaps, when there is no greater blessing than to have something to say.
All Rights Reserved.
