He laughed, so hard to shake off the last of the solemnity from our earlier talk.
“An awkward moment?” he repeated, holding his chin. “Oh, I have those. Maybe not one… but i have two on top of my head.”
He began,
“The Mass began beautifully,” he said, smiling like he was watching it happen all over again. “Everything was perfect until it was almost time for Communion.”
He leaned in, lowering his voice as if what he was about to say required discretion. Then i reminded myself that this is a space for such stories.
“I had just consecrated the large host, assuming foolishly that there were reserved Sacraments in the tabernacle. I opened the tabernacle humbly. Expecting to find what I always found” Then he went silent, he let the weight of the memory sink like it probably did on that Sunday. I could see his pain and remorse in his eyes. Then he whispered ” I found nothing. No sacraments in tabernacle”.
He shock his head slowly
The faithful were already in line, hands extended, hearts ready.”
Jesus Christ, he’d thought. I knew exactly what he meant. You see, as a Catholic, I could picture it perfectly. That queue of trusting souls, the priest’s dawning horror, the single host suddenly so heavy.
“What did you do?” I asked
He looked almost guilty, almost pained. “It was… regrettable. The Christians must have thought, ‘This priest is mad.” He laughed.
He’d been away from the parish for a week, he explained. He returned on a Saturday night, exhausted, rushed from bed to bathroom to the altar without a moment’s pause. He hadn’t known that the sisters had held Bible services all week and had taken the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle.
We fell silent for a moment, both mourning that liturgical mishap. Then he chuckled again.
“I could have returned earlier that Saturday,” he admitted, “but… I blame football.”
We laughed together, and I promised we’d revisit how his hobbies had shaped his vocation but first, I needed to know: How did he get out of it?
“Did you… try to multiply it? You know, loaves and fishes style” I joked.
He laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes.
“Oh, I did,” he said, grinning. “I blessed them and said, ‘You have received by intention.’”
I lost it. The image was too sacred and too ridiculous to hold.
He had to explain everything after Mass, of course. Awkward? Profoundly. Human? Absolutely.
We all grin and then a little silence and he continues.
“Then there was the other time,” he continued, his voice low like he was about to tell something illegal or secretive. “I went to celebrate Mass with… a stomach upset.”
He described dread creeping in as the readings began. A priest isn’t supposed to leave until Mass ends, but his body had other plans.
Oh my God, what do I do? I couldn’t hold it any longer.
“I had to think fast,” he said with a little spark in his eye.
He called the two altar boys who were with him at the alter, instructed them to light candles and follow him, and processed out as if going to retrieve something from the sacristy .
“Thank God we were in the parish- lavatories next to the sacristy, he signed” The moment they reached the sacristy, he told the boys to wait, tore off his robes, and ran.
“Unfortunately,” he whispered, “my stomach wasn’t clearing. I could hear the Christians singing the Psalms. Then the second reading. Then…”
He didn’t finish, he didn’t have to. Any Catholic knows what comes next: The Gospel, which only the priest can proclaim.
My God!
Just as the Gospel acclamation began, his stomach settled; by what he called “God’s grace.” He vested again at lightning speed and processed back in with the boys, pretending to carry the Sacrament he’d never actually left to retrieve.
We were both crying with laughter by then.
“That,” he said, catching his breath, “is when the sacred robes met the human form at its best—and most desperate.”
He grew quiet again, but the lightness remained. The man across from me was no longer just a confessor, a keeper of burdens. He was also a man who forgot the hosts, a man who faked a procession to run to the bathroom, a man who ripped over his own robs probably more times than he would admit, a man who’d raced against his own gut to keep up the holy illusion.
“You see,” he said softly, “we spend so much time talking about the weight of the collar. But sometimes… the holiest thing is the humanity it can’t quite hide.”
Having mentioned holiness, that was the opening of another doorway into where we think a priest’s holiness really begins. The vows.
Do you think a priest’s holiness begins with the vows?
Watch out for the next story, we are going there?
The witness continues………
