Devout

 

Saturday night Sylvia came to give her confession, as always.  She looked down at her bare ring finger bitterly and sighed as the door to the confessional opened.  A parishioner walked out crossing himself with his hat in his hand.  He proceeded to kneel at the pew as Sylvia rose from hers.  She entered with the relief that came with having the permission to speak in confidence after withholding a great burden.

She recognized the formalities of the Sacrament and paid proper homage with reverence, but when it came time to confess she hissed "I'd like to confess my hate for my husband!  My stupid, drunk half wit of a bastard good for nothing husband!"  Father Pat knew better and he pressed into her. "Hate is kind of murder you know!"

"Is it?" Sneered Sylvia. " Is taking a woman's wedding ring and selling it theft?"

Father Pat was silent.

"And using the family grocery money for booze year in and year out, is that theft too?"

This time he goaded her, "Not necessarily..."

She took the bait easily, "And taking a woman to have and to hold, only to used her body to make children with and then be off with himself in his good time is that a kind of theft? Is that a kind of sin?"

Father Pat stayed the course, a wall of doctrine. "It is...but's it's his to confess himself, not yours."

Sylvia asserted her own view of her husbands behavior, "Well I say it's impetuous for a man to promise one thing to a woman and give her another. She gives her whole self to him only for him to leave her cold in her home and empty in her heart!" 

"Many saints have had difficult husbands. They fortified themselves with prayer and the Eucharist...Saint Monica, Saint Rita..." It would have been cruel had he not known her.

"Stop Saying that! I'm tired of coming in here and you telling me that! He get's drunk...say a hail Mary...Losses another job another ten more.  Call's me a bitch and a cunt, punches walls with holes and we're back at Saint Rita!"

It was a long angry silence.

"I'M NO SAINT RITA!" Her voice rang out in the expansive cathedral.

Father Pat reached through the open part of the screen at the bottom of the confessional where Sylvias hands were resting.  He placed his hands into her own and held them tightly. Her situation made him want to comfort her, tell her she was right, but his vocation forbade him to any course of action that would drive a marriage apart.

Father Pat had seen Sylvia through many Sacraments.  Baptized many of her children.  Prayed beside her while elders in the community passed.  He had gone to her in her times of melancholy after childbirth.  She had chastised him in his moderate homilies and called him higher to his vocation and mended his vestments when needed.  They had broken bread and drank wine in her kitchen and argued salvific doctrine. Though the line of priest and parishioner had never been breached both were well known by the other and neither had abandoned the other to despondency when it came.

"Twenty years as an army Chaplain and I've never seen a fighter like you, Sylvia!"

His comment stung.  She didn't want to be strong. She wanted to weep but didn't know how.  Tears required vulnerability which would destroy the countenance she needed to withstand the journey she was on. But she desperately wanted to fall into Father Pats arms, to cry and be tender, to say she was hurting, to weep, and be small again to be held and loved and be reminded she was dear in spite of it all.  It had never come from Neil, that kind of love, the kind that built and felt good and mended.  His was a coercive kind of bending that always leaned into himself in one tricky way or another and it made her want to cry out, "Dear God does anyone see what this man is doing to me?  Dear God! Is this love?"

She looked through the shadow veil of the confessional and saw her friend, her father. "I'm sorry father.  I shouldn't have angered."

"It's Forgivable."  And it was, he had seen much worse.  Father Pat pulled the rosary from his pocket and rolled the crucifix between his fingers as he measured the advice that the man in him wanted to give versus the advice that a priest ought to give.  "Remember how our lady felt when she watched her son suffer on his cross, my dear?"

Sylvia nodded, she thought of it often.

"She couldn't keep him from harm, living truth like he was.  It's the same for you, for all of us.  I'm afraid lifting out of one kind of pain is only stepping into another kind.  I'm not convinced there is a way out of the condition of suffering we are all in."

She knew that it was the truest thing he could say that would allow him his compassion as both a father and friend, and that was why she loved him.  She looked across to his shadowed frame behind the veil as he gave her the absolution she had asked.  He consoled her with the hope of who she might be in spite of all her aching and anger.  He prayed over her aloud and silently, to himself he prayed that she might one day cry. "Dear lord", he prayed, "Give this dear girl the circumstance to cry.  Given her the honor of sadness and deliver her from the anguish of anger." 

He crossed her and with that, Sylvia rose and walked out of the confessional but before she could kneel at the pew for her penance she heard a voice "Been near twenty minutes, Sylv, you must have done something really bad this time!"

Sylvia rolled her eyes, she knew that voice.  Joseph Lavery was a regular like herself in the weekly confessional.

"Here to confess your scruples again Joe?  You take up so much of fathers time you ought to be paying part of his  salary!"

He stood at the door, "Well, don't be listening in from out here you old church mouse!"

"About forgetting to return bank pens and enjoying a few too many?  Don't flatter yourself!" she pulled her rosary from her pocket.

"Ha!"  Father Pat bellowed from inside the confessional but before Joseph Lavery entered for his own confession, he smiled at Sylvia, "Pray for me Sylv..."

"All the way to heaven, Joe...."

And with that she knelt and did her penance and he gave his confession and Father Pat absolved them both.