When he had finished, Father David rose and took the communion kit into the sacristy for cleaning. As he ran the tap to get the water hot, he could hear it echoing out in the empty church. The water in the sacristy took forever to warm up; so leaving it to run, he wandered out into the sanctuary to survey his small domain.
Holy Cross was an A-frame building, the sharply slanting ceilings exposing red pine, shellacked to a glossy finish. It had been built in the early sixties, when church attendance was already beginning to wain across the land, but when people were still confident and hopeful, their memories fresh with scenes of crowded pews and overflowing Sunday schools, scenes that had characterized churches all across North America in the heady post-war years. The first swells of the baby-boom generation had raised great expectations.
It was not an unattractive church, but in the late nineties it certainly felt dated. And Father David had no particular fondness for the populist influences from which this architecture had arisen. He was a stone and vaulted ceiling man, himself, a proponent of classic architecture that gave expression to a God who was somewhat remote, and certainly larger than life. The God of the sixties, it seemed to him, had crash-landed on earth. Jesus came right down off the cross, doffing his robes and crown in exchange for jeans and a T-shirt, and became everyone’s personal buddy “Oh, Jesus, I just want to thank you,” people had prayed in the small breakout groups at the evangelistic conferences Father David had attended as a teen. “I just want to praise you, Jesus.…”
He had never understood, personally, why it was that they just had to thank him, that they just had to praise his name. If they thought that in their heartfelt extemporaneous outbursts they were spurning liturgical prayer, they were wrong. They were merely reinventing it, but badly. If you are going to use a formula to guide your prayers, why not use a formula created by faithful scholars from a former age more devout and learned than our own? In the light of such ditties as “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning,” is it not somehow more dignified — for both God and us — to sing “Thou whose almighty word, chaos and darkness heard … let there be light”?
He didn’t understand it at all. When he and Beverley had pioneered the requisite “contemporary” services back in his rural parish of St. Jude’s, they had drawn on Catholic resources, songs that quoted scripture and reflected actual theology. Sure, the songs had a swing to them, especially as Beverley led them with gusto on her guitar. But they also had meaning and depth: they were part of the tradition rather than a departure from it.
As he stood alone in the sanctuary now, looking out over the rows of empty pews, an overwhelming sadness began weighing upon him. He really didn’t fit in the new emerging church. He knew this. It tolerated him, with his priestly collar and his old-fashioned views, but that was about all. Even his own congregation. They called him “Father” because he asked them to. They tried to enter into the spirit of his high mass at Christmas and Easter, though inevitably every year someone complained of an allergic reaction to the incense. They accepted his theologically complex sermons and his scholarly Bible studies, believing him to be a bright and competent priest, but failing themselves to have even the faintest idea what he was talking about.
The sad truth was that, after seven years here, Father David’s congregation still had no appreciation of the things he stood for. Which meant that some day, when finally he moved on, a new priest would come along for whom the Eucharist was not central, someone in a green clergy shirt, who would throw the gates open wide to rock music in the choir stalls, dancers in the sanctuary, and pablum in the pulpit. And the people would accept it all without so much as a whimper. They would see it as “refreshing,” as “contemporary — really appealing to the young people.”
Facing down his own forty-fifth birthday, which was approaching in the spring, Father David couldn’t help wondering if he wasn’t well on his way to becoming a walking anachronism — in plain terms, a joke.
The hot water was still running in the sacristy, a steamy mist now escaping through the door. But Father David was rivetted to his place at the chancel step as he considered this startling new image of himself, a pathetic middle-aged priestly figure fading into irrelevancy. He surveyed the stained glass windows that lined the nave, fourteen coloured depictions of the Stations of the Cross, seven on either side of the church, each a memorial to someone who had died, someone who was otherwise completely forgotten by this new generation of worshippers, just as he himself would soon be.
There, closest to the rear doors, was Pilate condemning Jesus to death. The artist had depicted Jesus with a bloody and tortured body, the result of the beatings of the soldiers, but his face was strong, impassive, unrelenting. That same face recurred in each window. Jesus was suffering blows and indignities to his body, but his spirit was strong, resolute, or so Father David had conceived it in his own mind.
Only in the window depicting the crucifixion itself did the artist fail, he thought. There, Jesus’ face grew contorted, pained, calling out to his Father in heaven. It was Father David’s least favourite window, though he knew Jesus’ pain must have been real. But perhaps the artist had given in too much to the idea of Jesus being like us. Where was his unearthly strength in this depiction? Where was his faith? Sure, he had uttered those terrifying words — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But we hear these words through the victory of the resurrection. All was not lost. It was in the process of being won!
But Father David was not able to pull himself up by these thoughts. He gazed now upon the tortured face of Jesus on the cross, and heard himself whisper aloud something he had never fully considered before: “But to him … in that moment … everything was lost!”
Father David stood still, confounded by this strange and unsettling new thought. What did it mean? Was it true? There, on the cross, was everything really lost?
When the sound of running water returned to his ears, Father David did not know how long he had been standing there. He could not recall his last thought. He turned and saw steam now pouring from the sacristy in great clouds. He had to will his legs to move.
Father David went through the motions of cleaning the communion set. He had written in his daily planner “article for newsletter” as his intended task for the rest of the afternoon. But something had now intervened, and he felt too heavy, too tired, to apply his mind to an inspiring piece that was supposed to be both theologically instructive and spiritually uplifting. Who would read it anyway? Who would care? He wanted just to lie down. So he did something he almost never did in the middle of the day. He went home.
. . .
As he approached the rectory Father David recognized a car in the driveway. It belonged to Jill, an old friend of Beverley’s from the convent days. She often came over in the afternoons to visit with Beverley, sometimes staying on for supper. Father David liked Jill. She battled depression, he knew, and Beverley was a support to her. But she also had a wicked sense of humour. So her presence often signalled some refreshingly irreverent conversation among the three adults around the table after the meal.
It seemed, however, as he entered the house, that no one was home. He called out. A sudden stirring upstairs indicated that someone was there. He could hear floorboards creaking above his head, and footfalls on the carpet.
He went into the kitchen to start the kettle for a cup of tea. Jill rushed down the stairs and swept past him. “Hi, David,” she called out, not looking in. “I gotta go.”
Father David walked to the door. Jill was pulling on her boots. Her hair was tussled and she appeared flushed.
“Is everything all right?” Father David asked.
“Yes, fine,” she said. “But I have to go,” and bolted out the door.
Father David returned to the kitchen in search of the teapot. It was never in the same place twice, Beverley being less concerned than he with order. He found it in the cupboard where they kept the drinking