Secret Sacrilege
I'm Bernard the Buffalo, and this is my home.
Please let me know if you find the following the least bit rational:
To enter into our dreary college, that is to get admission, we poor chaps are forced to strain our purses and pay hefty sums of hard cash. And I’m not talking about the fees. What we had to pay was something quite different [...]
(I must apologize for the pointless nature of this post. I had to write something.)
I am one devious dog. Seriously, I don’t know anyone with a more criminal mind than me. I’m the kind of person so lazy that submitting a book in college becomes a great big deal. Y’know, all it took was for [...]
(This post deals with that little thing that most Christians must endure: Mass. For those who don’t know what Mass is, it is what’s happening in a church when you pass by it and see a lot of people in there, and hear the drone of the priest’s voice. Then, many of you try to[...]
I don’t know what it is, but there is just something between priests and sermons. I’m not referring to the fact that these priests are trained to give sermons, I’m referring to the other fact that I can find no sign whatsoever telling me that these guys know a single blasted thing about giving sermons.[...]
Am in a position now where I know the names of some of the people I’ve gotten to know: Luiza: You got to know her in my last mail. Tall, pretty and with long black hair, she is Mexican. La Pe?a: Big Mexican, his real name is ?scar, but everyone knows him by his surname, which is[...]
I have a deep seated secret.
Wait, let’s start a bit earlier than that. This is the time of the year when little Catholic children of 7-8 years of age receive their First Holy Communion. Yep, it’s when they receive Jesus for the fist time ever, in the form of a thin wafer dipped in wine.
Wait, let’s start a lot earlier than that, somewhere around 1,960 yeas ago, when Jesus was still doing that thing He did. A day before He was crucified (I don’t claim to be an expert on Catholic customs, so don’t expect any accurate information from me), there was something called The Last Supper. At that supper, Jesus distributed bread and wine to His disciples, which represented His body and blood, respectively. Now this was actually the very first mass, and it sure was short. How it has come to be an insanely elastic event that exceeds an hour so bloody often is unclear to me, but that’s beside the point. So from then on, this act of distributing bread and wine has been continued till today, and that’s when this First Holy Communion comes in the picture. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that people could receive the body and blood of Christ only after achieving a certain age, an age when they have acquired enough reasoning ability. This, it seems, happens when a person is around 8 years old, and so that’s when the auspicious event takes place. Not before that. So this event when a person receives Jesus for the first time ever, is called the First Holy Communion.
So back to my deep seated secret. Obviously, I too had my First Holy Communion when I was 7 or 8. At least, that’s what most people assumed. You see, my First Holy Communion was actually my Second Holy Communion. My real First Holy Communion - which technically wasn’t really that Holy, if you know what I mean - took place around two years before it was supposed to. There was this custom that every now and then, people would decide to celebrate mass in someone’s house instead of the church, and at that point, these people picked the house I was staying in. So it happened: the priest arrived, the people arrived, and Mass was celebrated. Then it was time for Communion. Since we were in a house with only a few people, the priest decided to go to each person and feed him/her the wafer individually. As I was standing right at the front, he came to me too, and said, “Body of Christ”, just as he had said to the others. And just like the others did, I replied ‘Amen’ and consumed it with a little more relish than I should have. This was a completely new experience for me, and I was terribly proud of the fact that I got through it without any help at all. But then, people started to scream. “But-but-but”, a shrill voice screeched, “he hasn’t received communion yet!”
“What d’you mean, he hasn’t received? I just gave it to him!” replied the priest.
“No, I mean he hasn’t ‘received’ First Holy Communion yet!”
“Oh…” was all the priest could say. He then looked at me, just hoping that I hadn’t swallowed it yet. But seeing me licking my lips tastefully, he knew he had bungled up.
“Oh…” he said again.
By then, there was quite a scene. People gathered around me, demanding an explanation for my sacrilegious act. Absolutely basking in the sudden attention I was getting, I smiled sweetly and said, “I didn’t know.”
That, they figured, was satisfactory. Never mind, they said, make like it never happened.
But God works in mysterious ways, so mysterious that He sometimes tries to outdo Himself, if you ask me. Knowing this, I got no solace whatsoever from the half-arsed advice I was given then. I mean, what if this ended up with me going to hell? How about when the Devil sticks a pitchfork where the sun don’t shine, was I supposed to make like that never happened?
So before you go to bed, you know whose miserable, sorry soul you need to pray for.
THE END. I hope you enjoyed that. If you'd like to read more, there's plenty available in the archives