The Thorny Grace of It by Brian Doyle

Author:Brian Doyle [Doyle, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LCO010000, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, REL012040, RELIGION / Christian Life/Inspirational, REL113000, RELIGION / Essays
ISBN: 9780829439069
Publisher: Loyola Press
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

the brilliantine coattails of lust

I remember walking home from grade school with my sister and brother on the day that my class had started discussion of the Sacrament of First Confession, and Proper Respect and Reverence for the Sacrament by Which Our Souls are Cleansed. It had been a day of capital letters like that, and stern and severe expectations, and I was sore afraid and weary.

Once home I performed the usual rituals of eating everything I could get my hands on before my many brothers did, and wrestling with one brother, and threatening assault and mayhem on the youngest for sheer entertainment, before our sister, who would later become a nun in a monastery, told us, not for the first time either, that if we did not stop threatening the youngest she would snap our fingers like twigs, which she was fully capable of doing, being one of those wiry strong young women with a jab like you wouldn’t believe. Then it was time for dinner.

After dinner I did my homework, and then I set to the particular project assigned to us by Sister Marie for that night: choose one older sister or brother who has been cleansed by the Sacrament of First Confession, and open discussion of the implications of the same for you, writing at least one page of notes on your conversation, which will be Reviewed Tomorrow in Class, and for this assignment there are no excuses on this green earth that will get you out of it, not hungry dogs nor the deaths of remote aunts, not bad weather nor awful illness. If you are not in class tomorrow with your assignment in hand, written in such a manner that I can actually read it, you will not proceed with Preparation for the Sacrament of First Confession, and God help the boy or girl in my class who does not so proceed. It would be better that you were saddled by a millstone and thrown into the stormy sea.

My sister was busy thrashing a brother, so I approached my oldest brother, who not only had survived the Sacrament of First Confession, but had been Confirmed in Christ, and was now in Catholic High School, and doing so well academically that there was a chance, a whisper of a chance to be sure but oh how alluring that whisper was, that he might, if all went well and prayers were answered and our father robbed a series of banks, be accepted by, and subsequently enroll at, the University of Notre Dame, where the Madonna lived when She came to America. My oldest brother, usually not especially helpful with homework assignments, given that he had to study a thousand hours a day to have a chance at Notre Dame, was this evening for some reason in a cheerful mood, and he readily assented to assist me in this demanding task. He suggested, with as much solicitous kindness as I can ever remember from those years, that he

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