The Grace That Keeps This World by Tom Bailey

Author:Tom Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307338112
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2005-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Father Anthony

I lit the taper and stepped out of the sacristy, turning to click the door closed behind me. Five souls huddled together in my little church who’d braved the cold and the early morning dark to receive at the 6:00 A.M. Sunday mass. A fire blazed in the hearth. In the old days the fireplace flickered the only heat we had in this building and my parishioners had to wear their coats and scarves and gloves throughout the mass. Years ago we raised the nearly three thousand dollars we paid for a new boiler heating system. Nowadays, the fire serves more for ambience. The ancient smoke smell of charred wood, incense, and cold has long since seeped into the floorboards and cathedral rafters—traditional Adirondack pine beams forty feet long—a good smell, I think. Above the altar, a hand-carved and -painted wooden Jesus hangs nailed to the cross. In the alcove opposite the fireplace stands a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary draped in a light blue, hooded cowl, her long hands pressed together before her in prayer. Saint Pius’s is nothing fancy, for sure, but it fits Lost Lake. I’m glad to be able to leave the front doors unlocked night and day.

For the mass at matins, I wore a white robe, circled about the waist by a simple, red and gold hand-embroidered sash given to me by the children of Haiti, where I volunteer at a mission for a month each spring. Carrying the lit, silver taper across my chest, I paused to bow before the cross and stepped up to light both candles. Outside the wind buffeted the stained-glass panes, the sconces that line along the walls shining up at the shivering lead-drawn tableaus of the Stations of the Cross.

Such a good and well-lit little church notwithstanding, I’d come to this North Country with absolutely no intention of staying. I’d taken my ordination orders as a setback that I did not plan to suffer for long. I accepted Saint Pius’s as a mere stepping-stone: a means to a more egotistical, self-aggrandizing end. As a young priest fresh out of seminary, I had my sights set on Rome. Albany at the very least! I was full up with ambition. But, twenty-two years later, here I remained in Lost Lake, in the exact same place where my vows had determined I’d begin, among my parishioners, my friends, where I’ve chosen to stay.

I turned and stepped down from the altar, smiling good morning at Gary Hazen as I snuffed the taper, and walked over to fix it back in its place against the wall. He’d once told me at one of our postmass breakfasts at the Lake View that the reason he always sat in the first pew right up front was that he liked to witness the mystery for himself. He waited for the moment when the chimes rang, the incense wafted, and the wafers and wine became Christ, His Body and Blood. Set, as he liked to say,

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