Arnold’s head had fallen to his chest. Father David decided he’d better bring things round to their snappy conclusion.
“So when Jesus says he has come that they may have life, he is talking about us. We are his sheep, we who accept his love and walk in his ways. We are the ones called to abundant life in Christ. This is his gift. Thanks be to God.”
He looked out over his little flock. A deathly silence had descended upon the room, a silence borne less of rapt attention than of sound slumber. He cleared his throat loudly and moved on to the communion part of the service.
He took hold of the bread and wine which had been blessed and reserved for this purpose at last Sunday’s service. “The gifts of God for the people of God,” he said, and he elevated the chalice and paten. Not expecting any response, he said it himself: “Thanks be to God!”
He stepped forward and began moving around the circle of worshippers, pressing a wafer onto open palms, reminding the communicants to raise the bread to their mouths and eat it. When he got to Sylvia, she looked up at him blankly. “The Body of Christ,” he said. Her hands could not rise from the armrests; so he placed a wafer on her lower lip, hoping she would be able to do the rest herself.
He picked up the tiny chalice and went around the circle again, offering the wine to each one in turn, raising the chalice to parched lips, repeating the words, “The Blood of Christ.” Each time he wiped the rim with a small linen purificator, though in terms of hygiene this seemed a futile gesture, some communicants losing more to the chalice in drool than they were receiving in wine.
When he got to Sylvia, the wafer he had given her was still protruding from her mouth, stuck now to her top lip. He reached to remove it, but her lips were dry and it would not pull away. He did not want to rip it off like an adhesive bandage, so he simply offered her the chalice, reasoning that the wafer, softened by the wine, would come loose. She could then take it in along with the wine. He had reasoned correctly. The wafer was freed from her lip. But now it came to rest in the chalice, floating on the surface of the wine.
There were still several more communicants. He couldn’t very well offer them a chalice with someone else’s wafer floating in front of their eyes. So he tipped the chalice slightly, stranding the wafer on one side, dipped his finger in and brought it out, placing it on his own tongue. It stuck to the roof of his mouth like a wad of paper as he completed the circuit, offering the chalice to each of the remaining communicants.
Returning to the table, he said the final blessing, thanked everyone for coming, and began packing up the communion kit. This meant consuming whatever wine remained in the chalice, including, of course, whatever else had been added to it in the course of communion. Unlike some of his less assiduous colleagues, he would not simply dump out the wine, perhaps pouring it down the sink. This was no way to deal with the blood of Christ! It was consecrated to be consumed, not mingled with the dish water. The only dignified solution was to pour it directly into the ground; but he didn’t have that option here. So he raised the chalice to his lips and, closing his eyes, drank down its contents.
As he was packing up, Sylvia spoke up. “Is it my birthday?” she asked.
Father David looked up. “Why, yes it is, Sylvia.”
“How old am I?” she asked, squinting up at him.
Father David looked at the volunteer by the door, who shrugged. “I don’t know, Sylvia,” he said. “I don’t know.” He looked down at her for a moment. “But you take care.”
He made his way out of the room, striding swiftly down the dark hallway, past the nursing station, down the long row of wheelchairs and searching eyes, toward the light radiating from the front doors. Emerging into the bright sunlight, he shielded his eyes as he searched for the place where he had parked the car. He reached it, got in, placed the communion kit on the passenger seat, and let out a deep sigh. As he turned the key the acrid taste of Sylvia’s communion wafer lingered on his tongue.
. . .
Father David’s next appointment was clericus. Most of his Anglican colleagues in the deanery were able to refer to this monthly meeting of the clergy without resorting to Latin. In fact, most simply called it a “deanery meeting.” But for Father David, clericus — the Latin term for clergy — was a reminder of the long and dignified tradition to which they belonged: they were priests in the church of God, a high calling indeed. Using the Latin helped raise their sights, he thought, or it ought to have, if only the rest of them would look beyond whatever new and passing fad was supposed to save the church this week.
Since moving to the suburbs, Father David had been disappointed to discover that, even though his clergy neighbours were now no more than ten minutes away in any direction, he felt more alone here than ever he had in his relatively isolated country parish. The truth was, he rarely saw his neighbours; and when he did, he usually regretted it.
It was like that old joke he had heard a thousand times at church gatherings. “Clergy are like manure,” some jolly speaker would chortle into a microphone, anticipating the room’s riotous approval of this naughty little irreverence; “spread out, they can do a little good.” Har, har, har. But brought together in one place, Father David conceded now — in a heap, as it were — well, it was sometimes just about enough to make him gag.
It felt to him as if his colleagues here were all locked in some sort of race with one another, perhaps a three-legged race, some of them improbably bound together through theological disposition, others through ecclesiastical rank. Jockeying for position, they bumped up against one another, each cleric reporting that he or she was “encouraged” by developments in their parish, or “hopeful” about some new innovative program.
On the surface, it appeared that no one could be doing better, that each parish was healthy and growing — an interpretation easily contradicted by the statistics. What was worse, they spoke earnestly of being “brothers and sisters.” If that were true, Father David thought, it was only according to the worst and most dysfunctional associations one might have with the word “family.”
This month’s meeting was being held at St. Mark’s, a neighbouring parish, whose rector, Barbara, was also the regional dean. When Father David arrived, a handwritten notice taped to the door informed him that the meeting would take place in the youth room downstairs. This was not a good sign.
There was a perfectly good board room off the church hall, Father David knew. It was well lit and functional, and they could sit like professionals around a table. The youth room, by contrast, was a dark tomb in the basement, lit indirectly through one high barred window. The view through that window, the only visual relief offered by the room, disclosed the cracked concrete walls of a window well and whatever dry leaves and candy wrappers had fallen there, rising up on windy days to swirl about frantically, if pathetically, round and round in the enclosed space.
Throughout the room, on various end tables and coffee tables, were scattered low-lit occasional lamps, including one glowing red lava lamp that was always in motion, appearing to Father David to be radioactive. The chairs and couches were mismatched rec room cast-offs, brown corduroy and blue velour predominating, most resting squarely on the floor, their legs having been removed. The carpet was orange shag. Father David frowned. This meant it would be a “Caring and Sharing” day.
Father David had arrived early, as was his custom. Barbara was just inside the door of the youth room, checking on the coffee pot. “Hi, David,” she said, turning and taking him in at a glance, as if scanning for surface cracks. “How are you?”
She did everything so intensely. She was one tough cookie, a former nurse whose main contribution to that profession