Sunday Morning: Some Things You Never Forget

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
Early in the Morning Our Song Shall Rise To Thee
Holy, Holy, Holy!  Merciful and Mighty,
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

There I was heading the procession, my hands firmly grasping the long base of the polished brass cross which I held steadily aloft, balancing against the swaying of gravity’s pull, me, the fourteen year old crucifer, as I was called, first item in the opening act so to speak followed by the choir, singing their hearts out, and then the priest.  It was an Episcopal service, and rather low church.  I did not discover that Episcopalians did incense and genuflecting until I went to a service at the famed Church of the Advent at the base of Beacon Hill (“you couldn’t get a Catholic service this grand”).

When the two prominent men of the church congregation had moved amongst us with polished brass collection plates, they took up their positions at the back of the church facing down the aisle to the altar, and I was a-tingle waiting for the sounds as the organ cued us and we all stood and broke into the Doxology and they marched down briskly to deposit the plates with the priest.

Praise God From Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost

Sometimes I was the altar boy, and stood close to the act, and shivered as the priest knelt at the altar preparing the Eucharist.  Despite being a committed atheist to this day  I will not join in and take a bit of bread in one of these modern churches where anyone in the pews is invited up to share in the celebration of communion.  It is not to be confused with Thursday Evening Church Supper.  Not me, something deep within still recoils at the magic of the transubstantiation, the miraculous change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  The priest was at the altar saying “And in the night in which He was betrayed, He took bread; and when He had given thanks, He brake it,”—I can hear it to this day that crack of the dry brittle communion wafer as he broke it with his hands, the sound all alone and resounding in the willed and eager silence of the church and its congregation—“and gave it to His disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my Body which is given for you.”  But was it supposed to be "thee"? Yes, I think so, and I have just gone through to capitalize the references to this particular deity as i am sure is the way It Is Supposed To Be. (God, how I love ritual!)

And finally when I had been alternately thrilled, terrified, and deeply bored, the priest released us all saying:

“May the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

There was a transformation usually on those Sunday mornings, a surrender, however briefly, of my natural anxiety, and "the peace of god" meant something to me, enough so that intoning those words even now in my atheistical dotage is soothing, but I wonder if the more powerful contribution to my sense of being at peace did not derive from the relatively large dose of sacramental wine administered to me by the priest when it was time for the celebrants themselves to take the communion at the end.  It filled my body unused to alcohol at that age with a warmth that evolved into a glow that finally gave me serenity.  At the time it seemed a miraculous transformation effected by the wine and the wafer, and that is how I remember it.