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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 120: Brown 325
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 121
That Sunday Derek and Vashti went with Pierre to the Cathedral. Derek had never been inside a Catholic church before, and the art and architecture was somewhat overwhelming.
As they stepped into the vestibule, Pierre dipped his fingers in a small bowl of water on a ledge along the side, and splashed it on himself.
“What’s that?” Derek asked.
“It’s holy water--water blessed by a priest. It confers a blessing on the worshiper. Help yourself if you wish.”
Derek wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea, although he couldn’t say why.
They continued, and as they reached the last row of seats, what Derek was taught to call a pew, Pierre abruptly stopped, went down on one knee, and gestured with one hand in front of himself. Then he stood again.
“What was that?” Derek asked again.
“What?”
“That kneeling thing.”
“You don’t genuflect when you enter a church?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
Pierre looked puzzled, but explained. “It’s a way of showing respect or reverence to God and Christ and the Church. You touch one knee to the floor, and usually you also make the sign of the cross over your chest.”
Derek shrugged, and touched one knee to the floor; Vashti did the same. Pierre then slid them into a pew near the rear and settled next to them on the aisle seat.
“So, what now?” Derek whispered.
“The priest will enter with the censer, and process to the front. There’s a lot of standing, sitting, and kneeling, but just do what everyone else does and you’ll be fine.”
It happened much as Pierre said. At one point their guide pulled down a long kneeling pad that had been folded up under the pew in front of them. Derek didn’t understand a word of what was being said, but from his linguistic background he guessed it was Latin. Vashti seemed to be attentive enough that he guessed she must know enough Latin to make sense of it; apparently Rome had been on the map during the height of the Persian Empire.
There was a reading from the Bible and a somewhat lengthy sermon from it, which was in English. Then some men came around poking something that looked like a fine fish net on a long pole down the pews, and people were putting money in it--the collection, he deduced. Pierre put something in the basket, but waved them away before they could reach Derek and Vashti.
Then he said, “I’ll be right back,” and left them in the pew while he moved up the center aisle to stand in line up front.
Derek puzzled at this, but then it struck him: bread and wine, whatever they called it here. He remembered that Catholics were very exclusive about this, that if you weren’t Catholic they wouldn’t share it with you.
More separatism, he thought; but this was something he was not going to be able to fix. He would have to travel to Rome, and even then they probably wouldn’t listen to him.
He began to notice the other differences. The choir sang, but the congregation only chanted in Latin in response to the priest also chanting in Latin. There were no hymnals, and the service book that explained what you should do was also in Latin. It seemed that to become Catholic you had to learn quite a lot, and most of it Latin.
The priest said one last thing in Latin, and then there was a recessional as he walked back through the center aisle and vanished somewhere in the rear of the church.
“That’s it,” Pierre said. “What do you think?”
“I’m afraid I understood very little of it,” Derek said.
“I found a lot of it fascinating--very orchestrated,” Vashti said. “The agnus dei, the part about the lamb of God, was particularly moving. And the credo part was quite informative.”
He supposed it must be, if you understood it.
“I’m glad you could appreciate it,” Pierre said. “Most people who haven’t grown up with it don’t understand it at all.”
“That’s probably because no one has spoken Latin in maybe a thousand years, outside of church, court, and medical school,” Derek suggested.
Pierre nodded. “There is that,” he said. “I think, though, the concern is that if you try to translate it you’ll lose the true meaning.”
Derek nodded. He spoke enough languages to recognize that it was easy to lose meaning in translation. “So, what happens now?” he asked.
“Now?”
“At Maurice’s church they had a picnic; at Lei’s they served dinner. The people who came to church then spent time getting to know each other.”
“Really? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” He seemed to think for a moment. “But then, why would we want to do that? I mean, there are a lot of people in the church who are part of my community, and come to parties and invite us to parties, and then there are a lot of people who just aren’t our kind of people.”
“That,” Derek said, “I think is the point. Part of the message of the King is that we’re all the kind of people who need to come together, to love and support each other, even if we’re not from the same social circles, or race, or history. I don’t know that you need to have a fellowship meal after church, but in what way are you united with these other people if you don’t even know them?”
Pierre looked a bit puzzled, possibly distressed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, and led the way silently out of the church.
“Lunch tomorrow?” he said, and it was obviously rhetorical; they still had the regular gig at the restaurant.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #512: Versers Work. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
