On Losing Faith

But not Sunday breakfast and dinner.

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Before you begin today’s story, I have to tell you about an executive order under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that has frozen all funds to provide AIDS care and prevention initiatives around the world. According to the Association of Nurses in AIDs Care this will affect 20 million people in developing countries. In a chilling effect, health professionals have had their seminars, speaking engagements, and publications cancelled and subjected to censorship. Please read more about it and the Association’s response and share your concerns with your government representatives.

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And, now, to today’s story….

When one of us is deep into endless snores, the other one moves to a bedroom in the back of the house. It used to be our youngest son’s room. Somehow, it has always been a restful place even in the midst of chaotic teenage crises. The narrow bed looks out on a ramshackle roof-top porch. Opposite the bed is a wall of books. My books, actually, the ones I have gathered over these many years. My husband falls immediately to sleep when he leaves the racket I’m making. I, on the other hand, usually take many anxious minutes staring out the window at the swaying branches of an old tree and wondering what the neighbors across the alley are doing up so late. There are other nights, though, that require a trip across the room to find a book that seems to promise sleep. The other night it was my mom’s leather bound copy of the Saint Joseph Daily Missal.

Over the course of 1,344 pages, including now faded colored illustration of Jesus’s life, the book explains all you need to know about the Catholic celebration of Mass. My mom’s book was published in 1961, and the prayers are in both Latin and English. I always thought there was one set of prayers for Mass with a couple of additions only for funerals and weddings. But every day of the year has it own set of prayers that commemorate different saints. Their stories are in the back of the book and make for riveting reading in the middle of the night, especially the martyrs. Take for instance today’s saints, the African martys, Perpetua and Felicity. The women had just given birth at the time of their arrests. The Romans meted out a particularly cruel torture by taking away their babies. Unable to nurse, they also suffered terrible pain in their breasts. Eventually they were marched into a gladiator arena where they were promptly stabbed to death.

I don’t remember my mom reading from the Missal when the family went to Mass but the pages are well thumbed. Her mom’s funeral card displays Jesus bleeding from a crown of thorns. There’s another card of a ghostly Jesus on a mountain top before a blood red sky. My brother signed it in the back when he was in fifth grade. Mom always wanted him to be a priest so maybe she was planning to pass the book to him.

I don’t remember my mom being particularly religious, either. However, she often said in the years before she died that we would hear a mighty holler if it turns out there isn’t a heaven. No hollering has come so I guess she found heaven.

What I do remember is the splendor of Sundays when they were at their best. The marbled beauty of the church and the opulent smell of incense; the procession of the brocade and silk robed priest led to the altar by boys in white tunics; the solemnity of gathering in the aisle to wait for communion. I got to dress up, especially in my teen years when my attempts at couture fashions were pretty lame. After mass, my parents stood on the church steps for what seemed like hours greeting everyone in the congregation while we raced around the school yard. Finally, at home, we sat together for a special breakfast of eggs, scrapple, sausage, bacon, toast and, occasionally, cinnamon sticky buns. In the afternoon, my dad drove us around Philadelphia to visit museums, or the Navy Yard, or historical sites, or the Memorial Hall built in Fairmount Park for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Then home again, the house soon to be filled with the aroma of Sunday’s heavily-seasoned garlic and herbed-crusted roast beef. Dinner was almost always eaten in great humor, around the dining room table set with the good linen and the good china.

Except for funerals and weddings, I haven’t attended a Mass since I was 18. I was beginning to take my first wobbly steps out into the wider world and the church and its teachings no longer made sense to me. I told my dad I wouldn’t go to Mass anymore. I cried. He hugged me. And that was that for Sundays.

My children aren’t formally baptized. When they were both infants, my mom secretly carried them to the bathroom, mumbled some prayers, and poured water on one and whiskey over the other. Catholic teachings says this may count. I took them to Mass a couple of times on Christmas and Easter, much to the amusement of my heathen husband who I was frequently told was my duty to convert. These few outings, though, seemed to have impressed my oldest son. When he joined the Marines he listed his religion as Catholic. It was stamped on his dog-tags just in case he needed the final rites. This did not comfort his parents.

My sons, though, grew up with all the other Sunday traditions. I cooked a special breakfast and took them to museums and historical sites around New York. Then, in the evening, I brought a garlic and herbed-crusted beef to our plainly dressed dining room table and there we sat in leisure, devouring the feast together.

I’m not sure my mom’s Daily Missal was the reason I fell asleep last night but I awoke with a lingering nostalgia for my childhood Sundays. I even thought about joining our neighbors who were walking to the church up the street for Mass. It is a pretty church, more modern than my family’s parish. But it was freezing out and I discovered that they broadcast their service on YouTube. I stayed in my nightgown and watched on my phone. There’s been important changes since I was a girl. For one, a woman led the prayers. The pastor’s homily was about being careful with the words we choose. Whether you are a child or a president words mattered, he said. The congregants also sang my favorite hymn—Be Thou My Vision—which must be included in my funeral ceremony. As outlined in my will, it must be a party with an impressive buffet and a rousing playlist of decidedly unlikely hymn songs.

My mom’s Daily Missal is on my desk. On March 8 she will be a quarter-century dead and we buried her after a funeral mass (pages 1233-1258). I don’t know if I will place the Missal back on my bookshelf. I don’t see myself reading from it. Then again, I cannot stress enough how amusing all the saints’ stories are.

The memories it evokes, though, are strong. Not the sacred ones but the blessings of my family’s splendid breakfasts and excursions, and the evening feast leisurely eaten in great humor around the dining room table set with the good linen and the good china.