The Sign of the Lamb

I tried to go to Mass.

I’ve failed at this several times since Christmas. The panic attacks came back just as the Christmas season ended. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that.

A little over a year ago, I wasn’t sure whether I believed in God anymore at all. Now I’m pretty certain that I do. That is not special. The demon in today’s gospel believed in God, and knew exactly who Jesus was. His theology was perfect, but it didn’t do him any good. Knowledge is not important. Something else is necessary.

People tell me that those who are driven out of the Church have no faith in Jesus and that I’m not a Christian anyway. I certainly don’t feel like a Christian. But if I’m not a Christian, I have no explanation for why I went and parked the car facing the church, after I dropped Adrienne and Michael off for Mass, and stayed there for an hour.

My original plan had been to go downtown to the big fancy church and sit in the adoration chapel for an hour, during the vigil Mass on Saturday. Then I could at least be present in the building during a liturgy. But one thing led to another and I couldn’t.  I knew I would have a massive panic attack and spoil my whole week if I went into the church, but I just wanted to feel close to Him.  I decided that I’d park in the parking lot with the front of Serendipity facing the altar, and not look at my phone except to check the time for an hour, at the Sunday evening Mass at the little church across town.

I stared at the closest stained glass window, which glowed brighter and brighter as the sun went down for the evening liturgy. It’s the one near the altar, the image of a dead lamb tied up and burning.

My heart swelled with that terrible feeling that I was missing my Sunday obligation and would be damned. Doubly, trebly, a thousand times damned because I had missed so many Masses due to the panic attacks lately. A million times damned because I can’t possibly go to confession because of the flashbacks. Damned once again for good measure because I tiptoed up and received Holy Communion a few times last year when am not worthy and hadn’t been to confession. I was becoming that most contemptible being, a lapsed Catholic who shows up at Easter and Christmas. Worse, I was someone who knew the truth about the Catholic Church: she’s not the mother she claims to be. She’s an institution and a bureaucracy run by the worst possible men, and she has destroyed countless people, and I am living in a corner of the Church whose sins have been particularly heinous. The whole world would be a more innocent place if Mike Scanlan hadn’t come out here to found his cult and turn a dying college into a moneymaker.

But I still believe in Christ, and I’ve still found Christ in Catholic sacraments.

The dissonance of this is burning me alive.

I flicked the windshield wipers so I could look at the burning lamb more clearly.

I had the silly idea that if I prayed, I’d not be heard. As if the reception wasn’t good enough out in the parking lot. I asked Archangel Michael to go in for me and see if there were any crumbs falling from the table, anything to make this hunger go away. I have always loved Archangel Michael, even though traditionalists and Charismatics appropriate them. I have always had the ghost of a hope that since they’re not a human being, they might not be irritated by me as human beings are.

I spoke to the Father, just in case he could hear me, and asked Him once again why He created an autistic and chronically ill person that nobody loves, and sent her to Appalachia on a fool’s errand to become a saint, knowing that she would lose her faith like this.

I spoke to the Son and asked Him to remember when I was so desperately in love with Him, when I wished I could be a nun but knew I’d never be healthy enough and thought that meant He didn’t love me, when I showed up at daily Mass seven to ten times a week and cried in the chapel afterwards.

I spoke the Spirit and told her that I was still so afraid of her that I didn’t know what to say, but if she was sweet, please be sweet to me.

No sign was given but the sign of the Lamb, burning, on the stained glass window.

Only the Father Who created Heaven and Earth, knowing that angels would fall and the earth would follow, and created human beings in His image even though He knew that image would be blasphemed by what we did to one another.

Only the Son Who descended and made His dwelling among us, deliberately seeking the least and the lowest, speaking truth to power even though He knew what that would cost, obedient unto death on a cross so that no one could ever say they had been where God had not.

Only the Holy Spirit who still comes like the dewfall to this corner of Northern Appalachia, where so much unspeakable evil has been committed with her as an excuse.

Only the blood that flows from Calvary and the water from the right side of the Temple, out of the Church, down the hillside to the shale cliffs and into the wine-dark Ohio, up the hillside to the where the valley gives way to the Midwest, north to the Great Lakes and south to the Gulf, all over the world, flooding from the foundations to the firmament, even though we will go on abusing one another as if the blood and water are not there.

Only the countless multitude who kneel in the Church, and the greater multitude outside who cannot come in because the Church has murdered them, so we wait in the dark and find that the Lord is here with us.

Only the wild, vain, utterly psychotic hope that in the perfect justice of God, all shall be made well. That the mighty shall be cast down and the broken exalted to take their place. That every valley shall be exalted, that every mountain shall be made low, that the rivers will turn back on their course, that the dry bones will rise up and the tombs will open, and all flesh will see it together. All shall be well and all shall be well and all shall be well. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

I was, and am, still terrified and in pain. But I felt something else as well.

The rain was falling stronger as Michael and Adrienne came out of church and found me.

It was dark, but it was also bright.