Light of Christ

We were late to the Easter Vigil.

Adrienne had informed me in the midafternoon that she didn’t have a button-down blouse that fit anymore, and after we got home from buying one she informed me that she hadn’t showered yet, which meat Michael’s and my showers got shuffled, and then Adrienne couldn’t find socks. Next thing I knew we were piling into the borrowed jalopy we’re driving for a few days until Serendipity is fixed at the same time that sensible people would be arriving at the church to get a good seat. The sun was already down and the sky was fading from yellow to green to navy as I hit the gas.

There was nowhere to park for a whole block outside the church when we pulled into the 8:30 Easter vigil at 8:32. It took us a few more minutes to run towards the front of the church and the Easter fire, so I was surprised when we sprinted up to the back of the well-dressed crowd just as the bishop’s loud tenor voice opened with a joke and then said “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He was late too, a lucky coincidence.

I could not see the fire at all through the crowd, but I heard him say “Christ yesterday, today, and tomorrow” twice, blessing two Paschal candles, because Steubenville officially has two cathedrals: the one here, which has been shuttered for years, and the one in Marietta. We use this little church on the nice side of town for the bishop’s liturgies, the cathedral downtown being a derelict.

We hadn’t had time to get candles from the foyer, so we stood emptyhanded like the foolish virgins in the parable when they started passing around the Easter light. But then a  man saw us and handed me his candle.

Light of Christ! 

Thanks be to God! 

The candle guttered in the wind. Again, I thought of a Bible verse: “a bruised reed He shall not break, and a smoldering wick He shall not quench.” Which was nearly comical, because in another moment my light had been extinguished.

Light of Christ! 

Thanks be to God!

Back in the church, we grabbed two more candles as we passed through the foyer. Somebody re-lighted my candle which dripped rivers of wax into the little plastic cup. Next thing I knew we were in the church itself– not the foyer where I’ve been lately. I didn’t feel ready to try sitting through a liturgy in the church. I don’t feel like a Christian right now.

Light of Christ! 

Thanks be to God! 

They did all the readings and psalms, not just the bare bones set they’d done a year ago, and they kept the church dark except for our candles until the Gloria. That’s how you’re supposed to have an Easter vigil. I like it. It reminds me of the beautiful church I used to go to in Columbus, before I came to Steubenville to study philosophy at Franciscan University and ruined my life. I believe in meticulous liturgies. Much better meticulous than the kitschy crawly aesthetic of the Charismatic Renewal. Still, it was unnerving.

The psalms were beautifully sung.

The bells rung at the Gloria in just the right way.

The Alleluia was sublime.

The homily was fine.

I scrolled on my phone with one hand, that increasingly pathetic stub of a candle guttering in the other. I was scrolling to keep from having a panic attack.

It was during the litany of saints that I started to slip. I’m scared of saints lately. I’m afraid they’ll treat me the way other Christians do: with revulsion. Why wouldn’t the very best Christians in paradise think of me in a way superlative to the way the struggling Christians on Earth have thought of me? Why would I expect anything else? The cantor called out the names of saints and a picture of the saint appeared in my mind, looking disgusted.

“Holy Mary, mother of God!” and Mary the Mother of God looked at me as if I were a cancer on the Church. “Pray for us!”

“Saint John Vianney!” and the Cure of Ars looked as though he wanted me to stand downwind. “Pray for us!”

“Saint Teresa of Jesus!” and Teresa of Jesus looked as though the sight of me made her want a bath. “Pray for us!”

During the Vidi Aquam I got sick.

During the Eucharistic prayer, I left my burnt out candle in the pew and went to the foyer to hyperventilate.

I’ve mentioned before that there are two kinds of panic attack: the kind that makes it hard to breathe and the kind that makes you feel a creeping, agonizing dread. I usually don’t have both at once, but just then I did.

And then it was time for Holy Communion, and I couldn’t tell you exactly why I got in line. I didn’t want to go. I was screaming inside like a toddler having a meltdown. But somehow I went.

I chewed and swallowed the Risen Lord, and instead of coming back to the pew I went back to they foyer to try not to get sick.

Next thing I knew I was in that odd room again, the storage room where they used to hang the display of old crucifixes. This night it was crowded with Easter baskets for the staff and the choir. There was also a new, rather high, wooden table stuffed in the back. I leaned on the table without thinking, without looking at anything, trying hard to dissociate, trying not to cough up the Eucharist.

That was how I nearly bonked my head against a big wax candle studded with red squares.

“Can I be of any assistance?” asked a kindly usher.

“No thank you,” I panted. “It’s just a panic attack.”

“Then I’ll say a prayer for you!”

“Thanks.”

I realized I’d been bracing myself on the tabled that had been used as the altar for the Tabernacle on Thursday night, when we paraded Jesus out of the church in preparation for Good Friday. The other Paschal Candle, the one that was meant for the Cathedral in Marietta, had been set on top of it.

The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the Lord has this been done, and it is marvelous in our sight. 

Light of Christ! 

Thanks be to God! 

The Paschal Candle and I waited together, forgotten by everybody but the usher, until the choir belted out the final hymn.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.