After Confessions by John McAndrew

 

AFTER CONFESSIONS

(excerpt from a work in progress)

Afternoon confessions were finished and I walked into the rectory courtyard relieved of the mostly petty burdens of pious sinners. Confession is good for the soul, but most of what we heard on any given Saturday afternoon were the mundane dramas of household living and how relationships tear us apart and bring us together again. I honestly never remembered what people said in the confessional, so as I returned, I was relieved. I didn’t have the evening mass, and was planning to grab a bite to eat and work on Sunday’s homily. 

Entering the patio door, I noticed a movement inside and though it was probably the cat. As I stepped inside, I thought I saw a figure back in the bedroom and yelled out, “Hey!”

From the bedroom door a slightly disheveled, bespectacled man emerged clutching some of my magazines and some other papers and he started to speak to me.

 “Hi. Oh, you must be John. I was noticing…” He seemed to be trying to normalize his presence in my rectory casita bedroom by using my name (which he had obviously seen on a magazine) to ask a question about something, but this was not right…

We never know how we might respond when fear hijacks the brain and nervous system, but in that instant I knew that this situation was wrong wrong wrong. Unthinking, reacting, I started shouting at the intruder, escalating my fear with profanity and moving threateningly towards him, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”, shouting at the top of my voice, “Put my stuff down- that’s not yours. What the fuck are you doing in here?”

I was making as much noise as possible, raging, and at that moment, this guy had no idea what I might do next. As I shouted and spouted my unhinged fear, this would-be burglar actually backed into a corner as I threatened him with my voice of command. I moved towards a cordless phone handset, announcing to him that I was calling the police.

And that’s the moment that he finished sizing me up (scared, loudmouth, priest- I can take him) and I watched in slo-mo fascination and complete lack of understanding as he moved quickly out of the corner, dropped what he had in his hands, and smashed his fist into my face, sending my glasses flying and setting in slow-motion a fantasia of chaos and uproar.

(I found out later that this rectory had been burglarized before and I’d guess that this fella figured it was a pretty soft target and he’d probably find some petty cash. I had nothing of real value in my room.)

A dozen years earlier, as a newly-ordained priest, I had professed the Vow of Nonviolence and tried, with some limited success, to live nonviolently, as the life and witness of Jesus Christ attested to. I’m not a fighter- my last physical fight was in the 6^th grade and I lost quickly and ignobly. 

I know I didn’t throw a punch in this incident, just did my best to curl into defensive postures. The physical shock of the attack amped up my adrenal shouting and screaming and a choreography of chaos took over the sitting room, knocking over a lamp, shattering a light bulb, knocking over a table, plants, and books, then rolled back into the bedroom where my attacker picked up a wooden chair WWE-style and cracked it over my head and shoulder. I may have torn his pant leg in my desperate attempt at defense.

It just kept going, getting weirder and messier, and I just kept shouting and screaming, hoping that one of the other priests- or someone, anyone- would arrive to bring this insanity to an end. All the shouting and noise seemed just to enrage the thief, and as we rolled back into the sitting room, he grabbed whatever he could lay hands on to hit me with, including a non-functional monstrance which I had displayed on a shelf as an objet d’art. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Catholic eucharistic devotions, you may never have seen a monstrance (from L. monstrans- to show), a sacred vessel used to display the consecrated Host for prayer and adoration. This particular monstrance had been retired from liturgical use because of a missing door clasp. It was similar to most I had seen, a two-foot-high stock with a central round glass display window surrounded by a gold-plated corona of metal flares spiking out in a sunburst fashion from the center- a beautiful artifact. I just hadn’t ever considered it’s use as a weapon.

My burglar foe, however, saw its usefulness and cracked me over the head a couple of times until the monstrance broke. Now blood was spewing out on the walls and I felt its warmth down my face and neck. Nothing like a head-wound for a real blood-fest.

And still I kept yelling. 

Finally, the attacker got me down on the floor, grabbed my neck from behind, and I couldn’t shout anymore. Everything got quiet, even as I squirmed and flailed. He rearranged his dominance, tightened the chokehold, and … I couldn’t breathe.

I’d like to tell you that my thoughts turned to prayer, or that some pious awareness filled me with light and peace. Instead, I found myself with myself. “Huh. Can’t breathe. Hm- so I guess this is how it goes. This is how it ends.” Bemused consciousness. “Huh…”

Though I consider myself a spiritual seeker and trained for and lived a priestly life for many years, I’ve never had any great moments of revelation or direct spiritual experience (though I have a friend who told me that one time, he heard God cough). In this moment of extremis, however, God spoke to me. I knew it was God because I was called by name and I’m not usually in the habit of using my own name when I’m talking to myself.

Bloodied, windpipe constricted by a headlock, beaten, and without a single good idea, I heard God say, “John, quit fighting.”

I immediately recognized the wisdom of this suggestion. For many years, I’d been aware that my desire to have things my way didn’t work very well for me or the people I worked with. The idea of placing the outcome into the hands of a loving God seemed like a good idea. But I kept fighting, determined to get the outcome I desired.

Quit fighting. Yes, I understood. Stop. Surrender. Another surrender, yielding to reality again. Quit fighting- the spiritual lesson of my life.

So I stopped struggling and went limp. Instantly, the dude was up off of me, out the door, and out the back gate. I think all he really wanted at the end was for me to just shut up. 

The aftermath looked pretty dramatic to the parishioners driving in for the Saturday evening mass, as EMTs carried my bloodied body to the ambulance on a spine board with my head blocked in place. At the hospital, six staples directed into my skull stanched the blood. Though I was concussed and nicely beat up, I was able to go home that evening.

I was assigned to the 9:30 Sunday mass, and I knew I should honor that commitment though I was barely able to speak because of the trauma to my neck and windpipe. I whispered my way through the liturgy after explaining that I’d walked into a burglary and there was no serious injury.

Which was not quite true. As the swelling subsided and I was able to speak more normally, I feared that my singing voice had been permanently damaged. Though not a professional singer, music and song had always been a central part of my identity. 

Later that year I set out on a pilgrimage/ sabbatical that would take me through the southwest United States and help me find that I still had a voice, but it was changed. 

John P. McAndrew