The liturgical style of Father Petroski couldn’t be more different from mine. But you know, I kind of like his spirit. From the memoirs of Paul Wilkes, In Due Season: A Catholic Life, which we’re reading in the refectory. –awr
Father Petroski whisked in twenty minutes past the assigned time, a stoneware chalice, loaf of Italian bread, and bottle of Chianti cradled in his arms, a stole flung over his shoulder. Ten minutes later, Mass—and my return to Catholicism—began.
At the Gospel reading, Father Petroski left the table that served as an altar and walked out among the folding chairs, reading the parable of the Good Samaritan.
A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and bead him and went off, leaving him half dead. A priest—“One of my crowd,” he interjected, “pious, the righteous, we with the blessed hands, we the really good ones, got it?”—happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place—“Levites, they were the temple folks, the regular churchgoers, tending the altar, making sure all the rituals were just perfect, just perfect,” he repeated, bitter irony in his voice—and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler—“this poor schmuck, this foreigner,” his voice was rising now, “despised by all the righteous ones, all the church-goers, looked down on by all the weekly attendees just like you good little Catholic boys and girls”—who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds, and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day, he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, “Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.”
He walked back briskly back toward the altar. The staccato beat of his loafers against the hardwood floor echoed over the hushed gathering. Reaching the front, he slammed the lectionary onto the table, rattling the bottle and chalice. He wheeled around. “Here we sit, week after week, singing ‘Weave, weave, weave the sunshine out of the falling rain,’ or ‘Day by day, day by day, oh Dear lord three things I pray.” Each Sunday we walk out of here feeling soooo good, soooo holy, and you know what that adds up to, cats and kittens? That adds up to nothing! Nothing, zero, nothing! There’s a poor lady rotting up on Seventh Avenue a couple blocks from our little comfort zone. ‘Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus, meek and mild.’ Crap, total crap! We’re going to hug and kiss at the sign of peace, and who’s going to climb the stairs to hug and kiss the woman with shit running down her legs?”
His eyes, rheumy for obvious lack of sleep, searched the still rafters for an answer. There was not a sound. All was silence. My hand was frozen over the notebook.
At the Consecration, Father Petroski extended the loaf of Italian bread in his outstretched right hand and slowly, mesmerizingly, almost tauntingly, passed it in an arc that encompassed everyone in the gym. He did the same with the chalice. The Mass moved on. Although I knew its trajectory, to hear the words in English that were no more than small print italic under the Latin I never mastered in my ill-fated altar boy days was to hear them for the first time. “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us…. This is my Body, given for you…. Do this in remembrance of me.” Then, the impossible barrier that I knew so well: “O, Lord I am not worthy to receive you,” followed by the ladder to vault a soul over it, regardless of the height, words that had never quite registered before: “but only say the word and I shall be healed.”
A line was forming to take the bread and wine, to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Before I knew what was happening, I was standing. I set notepad and pen on the folding metal chair behind me.
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