The Lance, Part 6

The Conclusion

Image Credit: Creative Commons

This is part of a series. You can see part 5 here, or click here to start from the beginning.

Delores sat in the Sacred Heart Parish parking lot, the car still running, wrestling with herself.

She hadn’t planned on coming here.

She hadn’t planned on going anywhere, really. She just knew that she needed to get into the car and drive, get out of that house and away from herself for a bit. Somehow she’d gone on automatic pilot and found herself at the small daily mass chapel at Sacred Heart. It was usually unlocked, and almost always quiet. She’d gone there all the time to pray or just to sit as a senior in high school and as a young adult home from college. It was while sitting there in the warm quiet that she’d first thought she heard the call to religious life.

She’d sat in the car and stared at the door for a long moment before shutting off the engine. The memories here almost choked her with shame.

Had that been real? Or had it all been overwrought imagination fueled by enthusiastically taught theology classes and too much coffee? Had the past few years been just a waste of time?

At last she took a deep breath and opened the car door. She’d never left things half done, and she supposed she ought to at least visit one last time and say good bye. One way or another, nearly every person or project she’d ever cared about was lost, and everything was about to change. She was pretty sure belief in God - a prayer life, a ‘relationship’, whatever it was you wanted to call it- would be something she had lost now, too.

If she’d ever really had it to begin with.

Dolores pushed down the feelings, went in, and sat down stupidly, her hands resting on her grey sweatpanted lap. It was dim in the small chapel; the only light came in purple, blue, and red blobs from the simple geometric patterns in the stained glass windows and the red lamp flickering softly by the Tabernacle. A worn carpet that had once been dark red covered the floor, and she rested on a worn wooden pew that squeaked indignantly when she sat down on it.

She used to feel a sort of peace here, a quiet that went deeper than just an absence of sound.

She didn’t feel that way now. She felt alone, in a room that was merely full of a lack of noise, like a closet or an empty bedroom.

And she felt angry.

She spoke out loud.

“I asked for fish, and you handed me a snake. I asked for bread, and you handed me a stone. You duped me, and I let myself be duped.”

She scoffed. Was she seriously sitting here quoting psalms?

“Who am I kidding? I’m pissed. I went to that man for help, to try and save my vocation, and instead I’ve lost everything. I’m no longer a sister, I’m not sure I’m a Catholic any more…” a few tears came and her voice broke, “I’m not even a virgin any more. No one in my old life wants me. I though you did, but evidently not…”

She stood up, walked towards the back of the chapel, and began to pace back and forth.

“All I do is cause pain now. To the sisters I served with, to those who USED to be my superiors, to my mother…” She stopped and gave a little moan. “Oh, my poor mother. She was finally retired, was finally in a secure place, and now she’s got to take care of me all by herself again, and we have no idea how we’re going to be able to care for this baby!”

Her voice was growing louder.

“Where were you?! Where ARE you?! Were you EVER there? My whole life, I’ve been told to offer it up, offer it up.”

She turned and faced the tabernacle. She was shouting and sobbing now.

“I don’t have anything to offer up anymore! You’ve taken it all! I don’t even have my habit any more, I’m wearing freakin’ GARFIELD THE CAT!!”

She collapsed onto her knees, on to the floor. She was sobbing in earnest now, tears and snot running down her face and dripping off her chin. Her whole body heaved as she tried to catch her breath.

“Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” she muttered in between sobs.

There was quiet again. Delores closed her eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths, trying to calm down.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the crucifix hanging above the altar.

It was an older fashioned one, and the artist had either leaned as hard as he could into depicting the Passion as realistically as possible, or had ended up with extra red paint and decided to use it. Blood streamed from Christ’s forehead, dripped from his shoulders, ran down his arms, stained his knees, and ran down his side.

Delores had never looked at it too closely; she had always focused on the tabernacle when she prayed here before. She was looking at it now.

Her eyes felt drawn to his side, and as she looked at the blood and water streaming there, she felt a small flutter. Her hand rested on her stomach; this was the first time she’d felt her baby move.

“He’s up there.” She thought.

Then she realized, “I’m up there.”

Alone. Abandoned. Embarrassed. Betrayed. Stripped, made vulnerable, bearing the consequences of sins committed by another. Held before all the faithful as a scandal and a warning.

And bringing forth life.

Her vocation, her desire to “be united to Christ in all things” wasn’t gone. In some ways, it had just begun.

Finis.

---

And thus ends The Lance.

If you’re interested in learning more about the subject of clerical abuse, you can read a bit of the non fiction I’ve written about it here (it’s probably better done, in all seriousness). I also really recommend checking out the Sisters of the Little Way and the work that they’re doing.