Piety

    The ring of the alarm was almost welcome. I had gone to sleep looking forward to the hardship of the walk, savoring the immense discomfort of the cold. Now the alarm brought me back from sleep and I lay for a short while in the warm bed before reaching over to turn if off. The dark of the room enveloped me and the flashlight's dim light did little to dispel it. As I dressed and collected my things I heard the beginning of the soft rain falling on the tin roof. Now the discomfort of mud would be joined to the cold.

    As I left the house I heard my parents stirring in their room. Soon my father would be up and about, making the small pot of black coffee and sitting by the stove smoking the day's first hand-rolled Bugler cigarette. My father would serve my mother a cup of the coffee while she propped herself in the soft bed and then he would walk around the house several times whistling some Anglo-Saxon tune whose origins were lost in the Appalachian hills. This morning, however, the father would delay his walk, for the rain was coming down steadily; it was not a true drizzle yet, but I could see the drops getting larger in the flashlight's beam. The umbrella came out of my backpack and now I walked carefully, flashlight in one hand and umbrella in the other, picking places in the dirt lane which seemed most promising. It was difficult going, and soon I felt my feet slipping in the warm interior of the too-large shoes which my brother-in-law had brought me from the city. I knew that once I reached the town I would have fine calluses on both feet. The thought of the calluses lifted my spirit.

    The walk to town and to mass took approximately an hour and a half. It was a dirt road which joined the Macadamized highway about a quarter mile west of the town. The junction of lane and road marked the town's corporate limits, and the sidewalk started there. Reaching the sidewalk meant arrival at a certain station of civilization, for I was now leaving the country lane and walking on the product of modern life. The lane was bordered by woods and fields, and the only inhabitants along the lane were three black families who lived precariously in run-down houses. On these pre-dawn walks I never saw the houses' inhabitants, but each house was home to a number of obscure dogs which sensed my coming well before I could see the houses and whose barking made me mildly apprehensive.

    While I walked I whistled, and when I reached the sidewalk my whistle became more complex and certainly louder. Soon the classmates who lived along the approach to the town had identified me as the early morning whistler. Now at Sunday mass townspeople would point me out as the boy who walked to mass through the lane and who whistled while he walked.

    I loved the walk. I loved to arrive in the dark town and sit in the dark church waiting for the old women to come in. They would see me there, sitting on the second row from the altar rail, intent and alert, focusing on the Blessed Sacrament, praying. I loved it when the priest clicked the light on in the sacristy and began chatting with the altar boy, loved to watch the altar boy groggily recite the Latin responses and groggily perform his office. "Confiteor Dei" would begin the priest, and the altar boy would drone on in hot pursuit. "Dominus vobiscum," the priest would say; "Et cum spiritu tuo," would come the response. The priest was all business and never bothered to deliver a homily, or even a short comment on the Scriptures, or even a word of exhortation to me and the old women huddled in the cold church. I was inwardly convinced that the priest presided at the sacrifice by obligation and that the priest had long lost his true intention to perform the rites, to offer the sacred sacrifices. The mass lasted such a short time and this troubled me. I was also troubled by the way in which the priest distributed the sacred Host to me and the old women, doing it out of rote learning, and not at all reflecting in his motions the significance of the action. If, indeed, I thought, this was the Real Presence, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ Our Savior, then it was high scandal for the priest, the old women, and for me, to conduct ourselves in such a casual way. The richest understanding of the Eucharist which my young mind could attain was this: the priest was acting out a formation which had been handed down from the Middle Ages and did what he did and did it in the way he did out of obligation to others and not out of true spiritual devotion. Much my reflection was consumed by the thought that I, too, was engaged in mechanical and empty gestures.

    When the short mass ended, it was not yet dawn, and I had discovered that the schoolhouse was conveniently unlocked and that it was possible and permissible for me to enter the classroom, put on the lights, and sit at my desk and begin the day's schoolwork. Now, once again, I was the first to arrive, and it was delightful to have a black-robed sister see me at my desk, doing my lessons. At the beginning the sisters had questioned me about why I was there, why I was so early, but now they knew. I had walked all the way to mass. Praise God! 

    Riding home on the school bus gave me another forum. It was soon obvious that I was getting to school on foot, and my motives soon were discovered. I was walking to school to go to mass. This gave me double pleasure, for I so enjoyed riding the yellow school bus that my sacrifice took on a wholeness which brought me intense satisfaction. Not only was I experiencing the sacrifice of walking the lane to mass, but I was offering up the pleasure and comfort of the early morning school bus ride.

    I had been walking to mass each weekday morning since the start of the year. It had been a Christmas resolution. I had not wavered. The experience had lifted me. I had become a sharer of the secret of early morning. When the weather was clear, I would often stop to marvel at the stars. On moonlit mornings I would pause to see the clouds' patterns, filled with the consciousness that this particular configuration, this moment, had been set apart by God for me alone to experience and that it would never come again. In those moments I would think of myself as a cloud and I would be seized by the sensation of drifting swiftly and with great freedom.