Necessary Sins by Elizabeth Bell

Author:Elizabeth Bell [Bell, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781733167604
Publisher: Claire-Voie Books
Published: 2019-08-07T06:00:00+00:00

Joseph was honored that Miss Conley and Mr. Stratford had asked him to celebrate their wedding Mass. Still, he wished they’d not chosen late morning. Usually the Eucharistic fast seemed a small discomfort. Today, he’d suffered keenly each empty hour since midnight, for sleep had eluded him. The cicadas outside his window had irritated him inexplicably. Never before had they sounded like an alarm.

He resented each layer of vestments, when the summer air already hung thick and heavy around him. In such heat, without the aid even of water, he feared he was approaching delirium. These past eighteen months of his Priesthood, he’d performed this sacrifice hundreds of times, yet he felt suddenly unsteady, as if he were trying to stand upright in an earthquake.

Joseph looked to the bride, to remind himself how important it was that he not falter: this was a day she would always remember. But he found no encouraging smile; Miss Conley’s veil obscured her face.

Joseph forced himself to concentrate on Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “Let women be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord…”

Miss Conley knelt before him with her bridegroom. Joseph instructed them to join their right hands. The vows were not part of his Missal; Joseph must recall them from the notes he had scribbled in the margins, notes that had smeared. “Now, repeat after me, please: ‘I, Joseph Lazare, take thee, Teresa Conley—’”

Only when a tide of sniggers rippled through the witnesses did Joseph realize what he’d said. He sucked in a mortified breath and dropped his eyes to the floor, where the pooled satin of Miss Conley’s gown nearly reached his feet. No couple would ever ask him to say their wedding Mass again.

When Joseph managed to speak, his dry throat half-strangled the words: “You say your own name, of course, Mr. Stratford.”

“I, Edward Stratford,” the bridegroom obliged with a grin.

“Take thee, Teresa Conley, for my lawful wife…” Joseph prompted.

“Take thee, Teresa Conley, for my lawful wife…”

After the exchange of vows, Joseph made the Sign of the Cross over the wedding ring and sprinkled it with holy water. He returned to Latin: “O Lord, bless this ring…that she who is to wear it may render to her husband unbroken fidelity…”

Mr. Stratford slipped the ring onto his bride’s left hand.

Joseph prayed: “O God, Thou hast consecrated the Marriage union, making it a Sacrament so sublime that the nuptial bond has become an image of the mystical union of Christ with the Church.” Joseph turned to the bride and smiled, hoping she could see him through her veil. “O God, mayest Thou regard Thy handmaid with bounteous kindness. … May she be fruitful in offspring… Plighted to one husband, may she fly from forbidden intimacies, fortifying by stern discipline the weakness of her sex…”

“Amen,” the bride and the others responded.

In spite of his exhaustion, Joseph did not sleep that night either.

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