Wednesday, January 8, 2020 // The Statement
6B
A little faith
I
n the August before my junior year, I scrambled to
rearrange my schedule. I cold-emailed professors,
begging them to let me into their classes and hopping
on the waitlist of any possible course. Then I came across
one called “The Catholic Novel.” The course description
read: “All are welcome: religious, agnostic, atheist, non-
Christian, just reading, Catholic curious, and ‘questioning.’”
I considered myself Catholic-curious, but it came as a
surprise that I could enroll despite being sort-of-Jewish and
maybe-atheist. On the first day of fall classes, I found myself
in English 473 with an assignment to attend Mass three
separate times. I was eager to see what this 2,000-year-old
commotion was all about.
My first Mass visit was in the basement of St. Mary Student
Parish on a Wednesday afternoon. The parish sits on the
corner of William and Thompson, just across the street from
NeoPapalis. I’d passed it a dozen times and never noticed
it before. I locked my bike up, crossed the street nervously
and walked into the dim, air-conditioned building. It was a
sunny day, but the basement was quiet and still.
The second I sat down, a woman breathlessly approached
me. “Would you like to be the reader?” she said.
Maybe I looked like I needed saving. “The what?”
“The reader,” she repeated.
“Oh, thank you, but this is my first time at Mass so I
probably shoul-”
“No, it’s easy. You can do it. You’ll do it. Want to do it?”
I reluctantly agreed. Rapidly and without taking a breath,
she explained my task. I started to feel like a bit of an
impostor, so I jutted in:
“I’m not Catholic.”
“Oh,” she said, clearly caught off guard. “Are you
Christian?”
“No.”
“Hm. Are you Baptized?”
“No.”
“Well, are you Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let me think.” She proceeded to think for no more
than one full second. “That’s fine. Same God. Old Testament.
It’s fine by me. We won’t tell anyone. It’s probably fine. It’s
alright.”
She took me to the lectern to show me the book I’d read
from and finally introduced herself as Rainey. She told me
she’d give me a nod when it was time. I returned to my pew,
more nervous than I ever anticipated being on a Wednesday
afternoon visit to Mass.
A priest walked onto the pulpit. He murmured some hellos
and maybe a prayer — I wasn’t really listening, distracted
by my imminent Church debut. When he finished, Rainey
suddenly turned around. She looked at me and nodded.
A-freaking-men, I thought, here goes nothing.
I walked past the seemingly-endless rows of pews and
stood facing the pulpit like everyone else still in their seats.
Five minutes before, Rainey told me, “When you get to that
part, do not bow to the tabernacle, the crucifix or the Virgin
Mary. Find a place where God rests for you. He cannot rest in
any of these places for you since you are not a Catholic, but he
rests somewhere, just think of him for a moment.”
Remembering Rainey’s instructions, I stood stiff and
clammy-palmed, careful not to bow. I closed my eyes, but
instead of thinking about God, I wondered how long I was
supposed to stand there.
When it seemed like a sufficient amount of time had
passed for thinking about where God rested, I found my
place behind the lectern and peered at the book. All the
rapid instructions Rainey gave me minutes before swirled
in my mind. Read only the black words, she said; I read
only the black words. Pause at this part and raise your
arm; I paused at that part and raised my arm. Everyone
repeated something with me. It went on like this for a few
minutes and then I was finished. I stepped back, closed
my eyes and bowed my head for about as long as seemed
appropriate.
Rainey smiled at me as I returned to my seat.
The Mass continued with a short homily, various
prayers and ample kneeling. I crossed my arms and
did not receive communion like a good non-Catholic.
It all went by as one would expect, but when the priest
asked for anyone to share grievances or prayers, I was
surprised when Rainey piped up, “May all the children
of the Abrahamic religions know that they are loved by
God, our God, one God,” she said. “That they shall feel
and know His love and that they shall know that we are
all united in God’s eyes.”
As she spoke, I looked around at all the heads bent in
prayer. Instead of making me feel like some kind of strange
religious voyeur stealthily observing Catholic rituals,
Rainey’s words reminded me I was just another person at
church on a warm Wednesday afternoon. I laced my fingers
together, bowed my head and closed my eyes like everyone
else — if someone had come into the chapel at that moment,
they wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
For my second Mass, I was at St. Mary again: same
basement, different day, different priest. When I went up
during communion at my previous Mass visit, I had looked
down into the hands of the other priest, but I looked this one
directly in the face. My crossed arms interrupted the flow of
his communion. Ready to present the Eucharist, he tripped
over his words as he noticed my closed-off body. He looked
me in the eyes, leveled his face with mine, put his hand on my
shoulder and said in a kind voice, “May peace be with you all
your days.” It was a comfort I never knew I was missing — like
the comfort I’d experienced after Rainey’s prayer. I felt a sense
of belonging and peace, even in the basement of an unfamiliar
building with little light and few faces I had seen before.
On another Sunday morning at Mass, a priest at St.
Thomas the Apostle Church looked over my head to the line
of communion-takers behind me, made a Sign of the Cross
with the wafer, then waved me aside. It felt like hundreds
of pairs of eyes bored into me as I walked back to my seat,
seeing me for what I was: an outsider, a fake, unable to take
communion.
Soon after, the priest and altar servers left the chapel in a
procession carrying the crucifix down the aisle, with their
green, gold, white and black robes drifting behind them. I
watched them pass by as the organ played in the background.
Once the fanfare ended, the woman who had been sitting
next to me with her granddaughter turned to me. “I hope
your day is full,” she said, then left.
I smiled. It almost seemed like she knew how I was
feeling. Something inside me stirred quietly again, then
settled. I walked out of the church alongside those who now
felt a little less like strangers and into the cold, gray morning.
Maybe God was trying to tell me something on these
occasions: That there is mutual friendship or love to be
shared with Him, or that there is a universal vision of
grace, and Catholicism is the center of it. Maybe He was
trying to show me that there are infinite ways to be good to
other people. I cannot fully know His intentions — or know
whether I believe He exists at all — but I was received with
what felt like love by someone at each Mass I attended.
And if any laws are regularly broken in life, they are those
of human solidarity, social charity and love — laws on
which Christianity is built. It was good to see these virtues
actually in practice during my three Mass visits — good to be
reminded they exist at all.
I don’t plan to start praying every night, confess my sins or
convert to Catholicism, but I may return to Mass even after
those three required visits. And if my return is not for the
grace of Christ, then it will be for the wide and open ceilings
of the churches and the way hymns filter through their
stained-glass windows like rays of light through water.
And religious beliefs aside, those three Masses and the
people I encountered at them made me pause and reflect.
I was an outsider; I never knew the prayers, I didn’t know
when to kneel or stand up and I never made the Sign of the
Cross. But I was not treated as a stranger, or an intruder or
even a visitor — just as another person at a church trying
to make sense of why we are here on this earth. At a time
in my life where I feel the constant pressure to compete
with thousands of strangers who are smarter than me,
more qualified than me or more driven than me, going to
those churches and experiencing something so unfamiliar
came as a relief I hadn’t expected. Not one of us is any less
worthy than another of the love, kindness and friendship
we encounter in this life. Mass reminded me of this — it
reminded me that whatever it is we are doing on this earth,
we cannot forget that we are doing it together, that we are
beings bound together by history, time and even by which
pew we decide to sit in when we go to church.
Whatever is up there, around us or below, there is
something to be said for quietly sitting beside another person
for a while, for taking a stranger’s hand and wishing them
peace for the day and for singing, standing and kneeling as
one. Even if our prayers are not heard by God, I think it’s
alright — we can be sure they are heard by those around us.
There is comfort in being side-by-side as we bend towards
heaven.
BY ELLIE KATZ, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL