The Home I Know: Sanctity
Chapter 4
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According to stories passed down to me, my parents prepared me for my Baptism by adorning my one-year-old body in a long, white dress and placed an elastic headband around my still bald head. The priest invited my family to stand on the steps near the altar beside a transparent bowl filled with water that rested on a small table. One of my parents held me over the glass, while the man touched my head with one hand. His other hand poured holy water over my skin: one, two, three times. The Catholic congregation watched and clapped as I — the already famous baby in the church community — had survived long enough to be formally baptized.
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Every Sunday my parents awoke my brothers and me, quickly dressed us in suitable church clothing, buckled us into car seats, and set off for the parish down the street. Always a few minutes late, we parked and hustled toward the Catholic Church. Just behind the large, brown wooden doors, the water awaited me in small bowls that were attached to the inside wall, so I could bless my body and make it holy. I prayed:
In the name of:
The Father, as I raised the fingers of my right hand to my head;
The Son, my hand found the middle of my chest;
And the Holy, then traveled to my left shoulder;
Spirit, and finally finished at my right.
These words honored the Holy Trinity. The church floor, first carpeted in velvety maroon then stripped into a hard, tiled floor, held a number of oiled wooden pews organized neatly into long linear rows. To the left and right rested confessionals. Just above those, the 14 Stations of the Cross — framed pictures that told the story of the last moments of Jesus — hung on the walls. His body suspended nearly naked from a wooden cross on top of blue mosaic tiles, while an altar and tabernacle rested underneath his feet, right behind the priest.
Quickly, my family rushed down the aisle until we reached the very front row. The pew was always empty, as if it had been reserved just for us. We shuffled in, sat down, and listened to the priest perform the liturgy. At six, I was too short to see above the low wooden railing that formed a wall of sorts between the altar and me. So my father lifted my body up until my feet could find the narrow, flat, wooden ledge of the pew. Suddenly, I could view the magic of the ritual before me, while parishioners and the priest read stories from the pulpit that began to shape my understanding of reality. The first reading came from the Old Testament.
The tale began of a God who created earth, then out of the dirt breathed life into a man named Adam and a woman — born of his rib — called Eve, in a garden: Eden, or “Paradise.” Adam and Eve were free to do as they pleased within the garden, as well as to subdue the land, the plants, and the animals. The creator God gave them but one restriction: do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But due to the persuasion of a cunning snake, Eve ate one of the apples of the tree anyway. In consequence, God banished the couple from paradise, set angels to guard the gates of the garden, and introduced pain and suffering into the bodies and brains of the first human beings. “Sin” came to be the word for mistakes like this that caused breaks in the relationship with God, the land, and each other.
The second reading and Gospel both came from the New Testament. Jesus the Christ arrived and lived to teach others how to return to paradise. According to the stories, he gathered his family and friends for their last communion before his death. Together they broke bread and drank wine to celebrate their faith in a time and place of pain. Now, every Sunday the Catholic community continues to gather to break bread and drink wine after it has been transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. So together believers can remember the sacrifice of His life that saved humanity from their sins — from that very first time Eve ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in Eden.
I watched longingly as the parishioners lined up to accept the Body and Blood of Christ into their own bodies and blood. I yearned to feel the sensation of Christ in my own body: to taste the bread on my tongue, and touch my lips to the wine. To know what salvation felt like in this broken body of mine. But I was still too young.
Before I could receive my First Holy Communion at the age of seven, I had to complete the Sacrament of Reconciliation. My body needed to be cleansed of sin in order to hold the purity of Christ. Shyness filled me as I entered the small box in the corner of the church that sat just below the Stations of the Cross. It felt cowardly to choose to kneel and hide behind the priest, so in an act of uncomfortable courage, I walked past the minister and sat in the chair right across from him. He greeted me, and I tried to begin stating my list of sins, but quickly felt confused. I remained silent.
“Have you honored your father and mother like the fifth commandment requires?” The priest inquired.
“I’ve tried,” I replied.
The morning the day finally came to celebrate my First Holy Communion, I jumped out of bed in excitement. My mother pulled my gown out of the closet and over my head then helped me to put on socks and white Mary Jane shoes. She completed my look by pulling my straight, brown hair half back, then brushing my bangs down to cover my high forehead, and pinning a crown with a small veil to the top. I looked just like a child bride.
Together, my father, mother, brothers, and I rushed to church, parked, and strolled down to an aisle big enough to seat everyone in my extended family who wanted to attend the celebration: my father’s three sisters and brother and their children, my mother’s two sisters and brother and their children, my paternal grandparents: Pops and Joan; as well as my maternal grandparents: Jay and Magdalene. The liturgy continued as it always did: the priest processed down the aisle, congregation members read a few verses from the bible, and the minister spoke to the stories’ meanings. Then together we prayed for members of our community.
Anticipation began to tickle my body, as parishioners walked the bowls of bread and cups of wine to the altar. With the aid of a few servers, the priest received the gifts and began the prayers of transubstantiation. I watched eagerly as the holy man in robes organized the Body into a number of bowls, while a parishioner poured the Blood into long stemmed glasses. Then the Eucharistic Ministers all swarmed the altar, grabbed a bowl or a cup, and took to their places around the front of the church.
The congregation began lining up, but this time the children who had prepared to receive their first Eucharist led the way. My peers and I walked down the aisle in our suits and dresses. I felt nervous to experience this Sacrament that I had yearned so many years to receive as I approached the priest. Then my turn finally came. I faced the man before me and held out my hands, one gently placed atop the other.
“The Body of Christ,” he said, while he held up the wafer in front of my eyes.
“Amen,” I replied.
He slipped Jesus’s Body into my hands. Slowly, I pulled the bread up to my mouth and placed it on my tongue, quickly noticing that it tasted just like cardboard. I felt nothing but the same old discomfort of belonging to my burdened body. So I returned home, still seeking a sense of salvation.
I laid on the soft sofa in the family room and watched 2D drawn images of princes and princesses. Most of their narratives included a great love story, a “happily-ever-after” ending. In the sacred moments of solitude in between my activities, I laid in the secret garden of my bedroom and daydreamed about a future love who would come to save me. I imagined the time Peter Pan might show up at my window to take me to Neverland, or Prince Charming might wake me with a kiss and invite me to live in his promised paradise.
As soon as my body began to experience the stirrings of sexual curiosity, my family sent two other girl cousins my age and me to an Opus Dei Catholic Girl’s sleep away camp. My paternal grandparents belonged to the small organization within the Catholic Church, so felt it necessary for our upbringing as girls to be introduced to Opus Dei’s community and values. We were to follow the perfect examples of our parents: remain virgins until our wedding days, give our lives away to our husbands, then bear children. A few of the marriages in my family had ended with sad and stigmatized divorces, but for the most part, everyone stayed together.
At the conservative Catholic camp, my cousins and I participated in a number of activities including a talk on chastity. The girls gathered and took their seats in the large room, while the camp counselor at the front spoke to the importance of female virginity to maintain our purity before marriage. The speaker held up a small plastic rectangle designed after a debit card that committed each girl who signed it to Abstinence ‘Til Marriage (ATM). The counselors invited us to place the cards in our wallets and carry them until our wedding day. Then we were to give them to our husbands with our virginal bodies. Inspired by the message of these mentors and the creativity of this cause, I quickly signed one and placed that plastic card in my velcro wallet, then slipped it into my back pocket.
As I grew older, I couldn’t help but notice that my brothers never received any education on chastity. That the priests that performed the Sacraments could only be men. That perfectionism in the Catholic Church translated to strong gender roles that assigned each follower’s future: men were leaders, women were followers; men were husbands or priests, women were wives or nuns; men could be called fathers, while women could be called mothers or sisters.
Everyone had a role, a box, and were expected to participate without question or critique. Critical thinking was always discouraged. Women, like Eve, were blamed for any revelry. I could be one of two things: a wife and a mother, or a bride of Christ. This didn’t sit quite right with me, so by the time Confirmation came at 14, I felt deeply that I needed more time. The choice to commit to the Catholic Church for life felt far too big a decision to make as a teenager. As if once I was blessed by the hands of a man with a white collar around his neck, I could never take it back.
I cuddled with my mother, as we often did, on the couch or in her bed or mine. I studied her so closely in our embrace, especially how differently we looked. Her skin was brown and consistent, mine pale and freckled. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders, while mine, auburn and straight, rested on my chest. Crows’ feet crowded around her eyes, fine lines surrounded her lips, while deep crevices carved within the skin between her breasts.
“Mom, I don’t want to get confirmed. I’m not ready,” I communicated hesitantly.
“The Sacrament will give you the grace you need. You’ll be ready then,” she insisted.
I knew I would not win this fight, so I threw myself into preparations. I had to choose a saint whose name would be added to my name in between my middle and last. This holy figure would accompany me throughout my life’s journey. In this decision, I had complete autonomy. So I bought a book that described the various female Saints: their names to from where they came, their stories to what made them particularly holy.
In my studies, I learned of the heroines of my Catholic community. I loved knowing that this abundance of ancestors accompanied me in my life and offered more souls who I could turn to in times of strife for spiritual accompaniment and care. Intimacy grew between those Saints and me, as I learned their histories and what prayers specifically I could bring to them for their intercessions.
Every once in a while on Saturdays, my father and I rode to The Galley Cafe. We biked to the Back Bay, speeding down the hillside, while the wind whipped past our faces. Eventually, we arrived at the breakfast place tucked away near the Marina and ate pancakes, eggs, and sausages. He sipped coffee, while I drank OJ.
On the way, he told me the story of a certain saint whose father tried to offer her body to the King at the age of 13 for marriage. She felt called to chastity in a commitment to Christ, so refused to be the property of the patriarch. As a consequence, the monarch sentenced her to death. Her name was Philomena, “Daughter of the light.” She is the patron saint of children.1 Besides, adding a “P” to my initials would make them “AMPM”, which went so well with my birthday, 7/11. Clearly, God’s plan for me was to work in a Kwik-E-Mart.
I took her name, prepared for the ceremony, walked down the long church aisle once again with all of my peers, felt the heat of the hands of the man hovering over my head to bless me, then committed my adulthood to the Catholic church at 14 because my mother made me.
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In high school, my mother started a Life Teen program at the local parish, which focused on faith development for teenagers. The priest celebrated mass on Sundays in the evenings with musical accompaniment written by Christian and Catholic pop artists. Worship included hand signs and dancing and fun. After the liturgy, my friends and I gathered in a group led by a youth minister. We played games, ate snacks, and found communion in each other’s company. My confidence grew as this community centered me, and I bonded with adult mentors outside of my family: the youth minister my mother hired to run the program and other young adult volunteers.
I turned 18. Before I packed up my car to move to college, I visited the church down the street to say goodbye to my youth minister and his team that had become my faith family. My mentor wrapped his arms around my shoulders, then pulled away and asked me out on a date. My mind went blank. Not knowing what to say, I simply walked away.
“St. Philomena - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online.”