Chapter 12: The Mass

The church was packed to the brim. By the time the service had started it was already eight o'clock. There was something magical in the somber atmosphere that was settling in under the arched marble vaults, that domineered three stories high above our heads. You do try, I suppose, to find peace of mind and easiness when moving around, doing your stuff, but it's so hard to find any equilibrium when you're so often pecked at by the thought that the kids in this town learn in an abandoned barn, while the parish, built on tax-payers money, stands aloft on a five-hectare surrounding, adorned with real gold and silver polish on all its four sides. This thought was even more strongly fueled by the scars of the impoverished lives I read on the faces of young mothers (some of them teenagers), who were sat in the pews, holding their toddlers close to the chest and nodding their heads, not only to silence the young ones, but also as a sort of calming mantra for their own bodies and soul.

Audrey squeezed in between two rows of pews, at the back, and in a normal church that might have attracted the attention of those already seated, but not in St Joseph's, which had an aura of an Italian opera house, with pews on both the ground floor and another upper level (the balcony), plus elegant booths on both sides of the nave. All in all, you could cram about eight hundred people in here, but, tonight, there must have been over one thousand. The altar boys were still, diligently bringing in extra chairs for the congregation. And if, God-forbid, a fire had engulfed the church with all these people inside and only one exit door, I doubt the divine words of Father Mitchell would've been sufficient to save many of the faithful brethren.

Audrey led me to a trio of seats, close to a replica mural of what I could only believe was 'The Adoration Of St Virgin Mary', which actually impressed me to the bits. It had a very modern air about it and was an welcomed deviation from some of the Byzantines and copies of Rembrandts you normally see on the interior walls of Methodist churches. I looked at the silver plates, nailed to the upper rail of the chair, and they read 'M. Galloway'. This is Audrey's last name and I believe M stands for Michael, her adoptive father. I had heard you can get your name carved on a plate at this church, but I never thought it was for real, and, especially, not like booking a table at a restaurant, in one name only. This was kind of creepy and kind of cute the same time. Creepy like 'you have been nailed like Jesus to a fucking piece of wood and you'd better stay faithful for the rest of your life', and cute like 'oh, look, you've got your own chair with your name on it:=)'.

'Still up for it?' Audrey asked, as she took her seat.

'Yes.' Too late to back away from this, anyway. But the truth was that, for some reason, I welcomed this quiet time, only to be able to ease off the pressure of entertaining Audrey or checking whether she was alright all the time. And, just out of sheer curiosity, the last time I had been to the church was five years ago, when Ella wanted to listen to Christmas Carols at St Peter's, New York. This time, at least, I was able to sit down.

I looked around, took all this in and thought that this was the last thing I imagined I would be doing today when I went to bed last night. Hell, it would have been the least fathomable thing I'd imagined doing at one point this afternoon, when I was stranded on a two-square meter rock, one hundred feet above the ground, thinking 'this is it'. Now I was sat, with all the locals, like the entire world had ended, and we'd all gathered to decide what to do next and, strangely this made me feel more relaxed than I had imagined. Maybe because I felt I mattered; if only for short periods of time; until Father Mitchell started talking; when I realized it was all about him.

'I know why you are all here', started the preacher, and I was thinking he would, just for the sake for laugh, say 'because I arranged this to happen' but, no! He said: 'You are all here because you are unable to sleep, work or raise your families, or feel that you are able to do anything with your lives that matters. And you cannot quite put your finger on what's that thing that troubles your mind and causes such havoc in your lives. I'll tell you what it is: it is feeling lost. It is being unable to find the light and open your heart to the word of God. And for all that everybody tells you that "God lives within you and is capable of working miracles through you and guiding you to eternal life", well, let me tell those who say this to you: It is all bullshit!. It is all bullshit, with a big, fat 'B'. Our Lord is not able to work any miracles through you, or give you that fancy car you've always wanted or help you give the education to your kids, that you want, not for the life of Ten Holy Marys and five Hallelujahs! At least, not as long as you don't respect the values and sharings carved with golden scribblings on the stones Moses brought to his people or of those written in the book of our King Solomon. Now, it has been brought to my attention that occasional acts of larceny have been occurring in our community. And just to speak in broad public terms, only because I see so many new faces in here tonight who may not be accustomed to our vocabulary, larceny is what we call in religious term theft. Now, the last time I checked, we were taking great pride in being a close and respected community where sacrilege was not part of our current vocabulary. But that was the last time I checked... and I see now, I was wrong. Now, it may happen that, as I walk down the street, eating an ice-cream cone or going around doing my chores, or buying the Palo Alto Daily Post from across the road at Diego Loja's convenience store, it may happen that I see a piece of machinery lying about Jeremy Price's garage and think to myself '"hey, that's actually quite a good piece of machinery. It's sitting about in the main yard of the auto service and it's not being used by anyone, so I might just as well take it home and put it to some good use for my old Buick, 1987 model. I mean, it's not guarded or anything. Jeremy Price is not here because I see the padlock to the front door, so he doesn't need it. He must have thrown it away. There was no more place in the garbage dumpster so he just left it there for someone to make good use of, or sell it for a nickel or two at the wrecking yard". Well, let me tell you something! The garbage dumpster was not full. Jeremy Price didn't just chuck it away, because there was no more space for that piece of machinery, and the reason it was locked is because it was a Sunday morning, and Jeremy Price, a good man of Lord as he is, was here, sat in the fifth row, following my readings from Exodus 20:15, which, by the way, is a sermon about theft! Now, I'm looking at Barney Dingles here and I see he's not following, at all. Good to see ya', Barney! How long has it been? Now, that's the image of a man who respects himself. He comes to church only when meteorites fall out of the sky!', and the priest chuckled. 'And Barney is not the only one, am I right?' And the priest took a deep look around the room. 'I am right. Of course I'm right. Well, Barney, you should know better than that! Now, don't lower your head young man, for my words are nothing compared to the wrath of God, or of that Jeremy Price, for that matter. I look at you and I have looked at you all these years, while you were mucking about, wasting your time, and I see a man who is lost and cannot find faith anymore. And I don't care what your mama thinks! I've known your mama for thirty-five years, and if she had any love for God, she would stay away from this conversation between a pastor and his devotee, for all the love I have for her, this is not about her and she should stay away and not intervene. You hear that, mama? I don't care about you now. I don't care about any of you, for that matter. I told Priscilla the other day: Priscilla, we'll sell the house; we sell everything and we go preach to the bunch of lepers that we read about in the paper, the other day, who are waiting... who are waiting to die, out there in the valleys of Eastern Kentucky. And I betya I would go and find more love for Jesus there than I would ever find in this town, for all the money in the world, that is. Because it's not worth it here. Now, let me tell everyone to make it clear. I love Barney and I love his family, but he's a grown man and he should know better...we don't go about stealing things from other people. You hear me, Barney? I love ya. More than you will ever know. I know your mama loves you but I love you, too. In a different way. Now, what Barney did here is a product of misjudgment. And misjudgment is something that we all experience at certain moments of our lives. Now, I don't want you to go to Barney and reprimand him for what he's done. This is my job and the job of God, to mess with him. It is my job to make Barney feel shame in public and that is his punishment for stealing a piece of property which is not his. And, after I have finished with him, that would have been all, and I don't wanna hear anymore about this, or about any repercussions against Barney Dingles. Is that clear? Good. Amen to that. Let's get to the matters at hand, now.

I glanced at Audrey and she passed her fingers through my fingers. And my heart trembled.

'It so happens that at times of trouble, when the world is divided and we cannot get adjusted one with another, that God Almighty sends us a reminder of His strength and power and the things that matter and of those that don't. He did so when he sent the great Deluge over Noah's Ark and when he split the oceans for Moses and his people. And now, He's doing it again, sending a rock from outer space to remind us that there are greater, more important things in life than the small speckles of arguments and fights we take so much joy from in our petty lives. It also happens that at night, when the moon finally wins the battle over the mighty Sun, it's the time when the greatest adjustments in the history of mankind take place; the time when we get closer to God through our evening prayer; the time Jesus was born in a shed, in Bethlehem; or the time when He had His last supper with his disciples. It is a moment of introversion and pondering, which is why I thought this is a better time for this sermon than our usual morning time. And while I do not think meteorites are a sign of the end of times, like I heard some of our members yelling these past few days, I do think they are a reminder that we need to get closer to God and His truth before the end of times really loom upon us, and that this quest is at its most urgent, more than going about and prolonging a life of sin and self-indulgence. I look around and I see that we need to adjust a few things fast and quickly. Well, for one thing, I don't how many of the noble gathering tonight know the word of Jesus and the Bible. Not many, based on the amount of idiocies I hear around me when I go about my things in town. Speaking of the birth of Jesus, I was asked by Jim Coleridge the other day what the names of the Three Kings in the Bible were. If good ole' Jim had bothered to honor us with his presence more often he would have known that the three kings are Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior. But he did something good Jim Coleridge, I tell ya. He did dare ask if there was something he didn't know the answer to, which is more I can say about the amount of silent sheep who come to church to nod off, because, "why not"? They might as well do that here than in the comfort of their beds. It's as good a place as any. Well, coming all the way down here to nod off doesn't count as coming to church.'

I was surprised Father Mitchell didn't stop and look up when he said this, because somebody in the congregation shouted something, which to me resembled something like Hail! or Heil!. I turned to Audrey and she was startled as well. 'I don't know who it was,' she told me, and we both looked around and, with us, several other heads. It'd came from the upper level of the nave and was distinctively perky and acute, while being frail at the same time, almost like the cry of a child or a young woman. It was brief, happened only once and no harm had been done, but I would have wanted Mitchell to react it to it, if only for the sake of him throwing a fit again.

Mitchell went and babbled on for another few more minutes, but he was starting to lose his touch because I can't think of anything of note to write down here, after his opening words. The whole thing felt like going to watch a much-anticipated blockbuster at a movie theatre, which had a great opening but then lost steam half-way through and nothing else interesting took place or led to anything, for that matter. He opened the Bible and read passages from The Book of Revelations, which he thought was fitting for recognizing signs of the apocalypse, and reinstated, one more time, that we were not going to die because the meteors had hit Northern California, but we would be finding ourselves in Hell if we didn't start bringing the church closer to our hearts. One hour later, I could get why people dozed off during his sermons. He was so deeply preoccupied with his tone of voice and diction that he didn't once look up in all the time he read from the book. My mind was starting to veer towards Audrey again and what had happened earlier and I looked at her and asked her if she was okay.

'I'm sorry, I know it's boring for you. You don't have to listen to the priest. I don't. I just like to be here and listen to myself for a while.', she said to me. I winked and assured her it was ok. But wondered why she was so disconnected to everything that was happening in front of her eyes.