It was St. Blaise Day, when Catholics go to church to get their throats blessed. St. Blaise (San Blas in Mexico, Saint-Blaise in Canada) is the patron saint of throat illnesses—every thing from the odd fish bone to spasmodic dysphonia, which afflicts R.F.Okay., Jr., our new well being czar. Within the Irish Catholic Church of my pre-Vatican II childhood, St. Blaise Day meant lining up within the heart aisle and having Father Séamus P. Ó Cionnaith maintain a pair of crossed beeswax tapers at your neck. You realize who else can be a very good patron saint of throat illnesses? Dr. Heimlich Maneuver.
Simply since you are now not a practising Catholic doesn’t imply you possibly can’t go to church and get your throat blessed, proper? In the event you’re determined? I used to be determined. On Election Night time, I prostrated myself in entrance of the TV, to no impact. I went on a strict information quick, damaged solely after the Inauguration, when issues bought so dangerous—what with the perverse Cupboard appointments and the hacking of upright residents’ Social Safety accounts, together with the knowledge that it was solely going to worsen—that I contemplated a return to the Church. Consulting the web, I discovered a twelve-o’clock Mass with throat blessing at St. Brigid’s in Alphabet Metropolis.
Many issues conspire to maintain a retiree from getting out of the home within the late morning. I couldn’t discover my sneakers or my watch; I needed to cost my listening to aids; I had smoked a wee little bit of weed, which might be what impressed me to get my throat blessed within the first place however was now hindering me in that effort. I dithered over whether or not or to not take my Buddhist prayer beads. Would they assist me mix in, or arouse suspicion?
On the road, three dachshunds in pink down jackets had been sniffing round in a tree pit. Their proprietor prevented eye contact. An indication in entrance of a chapel learn, ambiguously:
The place did they put up the common trespassing hours? Additionally, no matter occurred to the idea of sanctuary? The Little Free Library within the park was naked of books. I ended in a botanica, pondering I’d discover consolation in a fear stone (I’d determined in opposition to the beads), and got here away with a crystal ziggurat the dimensions of a vial of eye drops. It felt good in my hand, and I favored the way in which it caught the sunshine, plus it was the one stone with a price ticket on it, and I didn’t really feel like haggling.
I beat on over to Avenue B and the Church of St. Brigid, which was constructed by the Irish in New York in gratitude for the passing of the potato famine. Outdoors was a statue of St. Brigid with a heifer. Works attributed to her embrace altering water into beer and performing a miraculous late-term abortion on a nun. Brigid bought demoted by the Pope again in 1969, as a result of there was not adequate proof of her existence. You realize who else suffers from inadequate proof of existence? Trace: It’s not St. Patrick.
My short-term reminiscence is frankly in tatters, so I could have misremembered the hour—or, for that matter, the yr—of the St. Blaise Day Mass and throat blessing. After I arrived at St. Brigid’s, the doorways had been closed, and there was nobody round, not even a man sneaking a cigarette out entrance through the sermon. Both I used to be late or the Mass has gotten shorter. I attempted the doorways, however they had been locked.
Had I actually anticipated, after fifty-plus years of religious hedonism, that I might be welcomed again into the Church in response to my whim? Properly, sure. Wasn’t there one thing about infinite mercy? Then once more, if I used to be afraid of present process a critical conversion—which I used to be, slightly—I used to be saved. ♦
