Page 70 of Priest (Priest 1)
“Who do you think won?” she murmured.
I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her into me, kissing the top of her head. “Do you even have to ask? It’s you, little lamb.” She nestled into me, and I rocked her back and forth, my precious one, my sweet woman. “It’s always you.”
The autumn night pressed against the outside of the car as we drove home, and I kept my eyes on Poppy’s profile, which was lit by the lights on the dash and silhouetted against the velvet night outside.
What had happened in the club…it had been dirty and cathartic and galvanizing, although I couldn’t articulate to myself exactly why. The answer hovered just out of reach, shimmered beyond a veil that I could only graze with the fingertips of my thoughts, and as we passed out of the city and into the countryside, I stopped trying and just let myself take in the majesty that was my Esther, my queen.
I wanted her to be my bride.
I wanted her to be my bride.
The thought came with the clarity of cold steel, certain and true and no longer something I felt in the moment of sex and God, but something I felt sober and calm. I loved Poppy. I wanted to marry her.
And then the veil finally fluttered down and I understood. I understood what God had been trying to tell me these past two months. I understood why the Church was called the Bride of Christ, I understood why Song of Songs was in the Bible, I understood why Revelation likened the salvation of the world to a wedding feast.
Why had I ever felt like the choice was between Poppy and God? It had never been that way, it had never been one or the other, because God dwelled in sex and marriage just as much as He dwelled in celibacy and service, and there could be just as much holiness in a life as a husband and a father as there was in a life as a priest. Was Aaron not married? King David? Saint Peter?
Why had I convinced myself that the only way a man could be useful to God was in the clergy?
Poppy was humming along with the radio now, a sound barely audible over the dull roar of the Fiat on the highway, and I closed my eyes and listened to the sound as I prayed.
Is this Your will for me? Am I giving in to lust? Or am I finally realizing Your plan for my life?
I kept my mind quiet and my body still, waiting for the guilt to rush in or for the booming voice from Heaven to tell me I was damned. But there was nothing but silence. Not the empty silence I’d felt before all this, like God had abandoned me, but a peaceful silence, free of guilt and shame, the quiet that one had when one was truly with God. It was the feeling I’d had in front of the tabernacle, in the sanctuary with Poppy, on the altar as I’d finally claimed her for my own.
And as we were in her bed later, my face between her thighs, it was 29th chapter of Jeremiah that finally surfaced as the answer to my prayers.
Take wives and have sons and daughters…for surely I have plans for you, plans for your happiness and not for your harm, to give you a future full of hope…
I didn’t tell Poppy about my epiphany. Instead, after making her come time after time, I left for my own bed, wanting to sleep alone with this new knowledge, this new certainty.
And when I woke up early that morning to prepare for Mass, that certainty was still there, glowing clear and weightless in my chest, and I made my decision.
This Mass would be the last Mass I ever said.
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell…and if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than have two eyes and to be thrown into hell…”
I looked up at my congregation standing before me, at the sanctuary that was full because of me, because of three years of unceasing toil and labor. I looked back down to the lectionary and continued reading the Gospel selection for today.
“Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you re-season it? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.” I took a breath. “The Gospel of the Lord.”
“Praise be to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” the congregation recited and then sat down. I caught sight of Poppy sitting near the back, wearing a fitted dress of mint green linen, bisected by a wide leather belt. The sun came through the windows perfectly to frame her, as if God were reminding me of my decision, of why I was doing this.
I let myself stare for one beat longer, at my lamb in those shimmering, tessellated beams of light, and then I leaned forward to kiss the text I had just read, murmuring the quiet prayer I was supposed to pray at this point and then another silent one asking for courage.
I closed the lectionary gently, revealing my phone with my homily notes. I’d reluctantly written the kind of homily you’d expect with this gospel reading, about the nature of sacrificing ourselves to avoid sin, about the importance of self-denial and discipline. About keeping ourselves holy for the work of the Lord.
Hypocrisy had haunted me as I’d typed every word, hypocrisy and shame, and as I stared at the notes now, I could barely remember the agony that man had been in, torn between two choices that were ultimately false. The way forward was now clear. All I had to do was take the first step.
I flipped my phone over so that the screen faced down and raised my eyes to the people who trusted me, who cared for me, the people who made up the living body of Christ.
“I spent the week writing a homily about this passage. And then when I woke up this morning, I decided to throw the whole thing in the trash.” I paused. “Figuratively speaking, I mean. Since it’s on my phone, and even I’m not holy enough to give up my iPhone.”
The people chuckled, and the sound filled me with courage.
“This passage has been used by many clergy as a platform for condemnation, the ultimate declaration by Jesus that we are to abandon any and all temptations lest we lose our chance of salvation. And my old homily was not far away from this idea. That self-denial and the constant shunning of temptation is the path to heaven, our way to the small and narrow gate.”
I glanced down at my hands resting on top of the lectern, at the lectionary in front of me.
