Fallen Catholic (continued)

I will take on the Curia in later chapters.  But now it is time to move on to the most magical of all the magic in the Catholic church.

Miracles.

As I said before, most people cringe when I equate miracles to magic.  They believe I should be educated about the semantic difference.  Frankly, there is no difference at all.  As a child I was taught the difference.  And I never questioned it.  Magic was a fake miracle.  Talking to the dead, disappearing, bending metal with your mind,  all that was fake.  Bringing people back from the dead, healing people, making food out of nothing, creating storms, walking on water, that was all real and miraculous.  As I grew older and became more inquisitive, it occurred to me that miracles always happened in the distant past on distant lands, before television or film.  But the nuns at Saints Simon and Jude made it clear to us that if you prayed a perfect prayer and had a perfect heart, you could get a miracle.

So when my pet chameleon died, I was ready for my own personal miracle.  I had cried all morning upon discovering my poor dead lizard.  I did not realize that these animals were cold blooded and could not survive next to my bed on a cold night in a small box.  Thankfully, I did not make this realization until I was much older.  Otherwise my grief would have been compounded by my guilt over the unintentional murder.  

When Sammy died, I remember closing his box and opening it again and again, hoping he would be alive again.  But each time I reopened the lid, I was met with the sight of his shriveled little body and his faded brown skin.  I went to bravely set off to school that morning unable to convince my mother that I needed to stay home and keep vigil.  I thought about it all day long and was on the verge of tears but I was determined not to cry in front of my friends.  I told my friend Steve, whose parents had taken me to the circus with him.  His father bought me the pet, an act my parents found to be needlessly sentimental.  My mother avoided pets of all kinds because of the mess they caused.  So it was clear to me that if I didn’t take care of Sammy, I would never get another lizard or pet of any kind for that matter.  That is probably why it meant so much to me.  

And so, after spending the entire day mulling over my options, I decided to pray for a miracle.  Sister Cornelia Marie had set out some rules for how to ask such a favor.  The circumstances must be dire...life and death.  The need must be great.  The soul must be pure.  The prayer must be perfect.  None of the prerequisites gave me any pause whatsoever.  I had just been to confession and had been in no moral peril for at least 3 days so I was absolutely sure that my soul was pure.  The rest would be obvious to God.

Life and death, check. Urgency, check.

So the only thing left for me to do was to pray the perfect prayer. When I got to Mass that morning I waited until I received Communion and with the host carefully cradled on my tongue I began to pray. I first let Jesus know that my little miracle was a very tiny thing as far as miracles go. So it should be an easy thing for him to do. I also wanted for him to understand that it was absolutely necessary for me to ask for this miracle even though I promised to keep it a secret. I knew if God granted me this miracle all kinds of kids with petty problems would bother Jesus for their own selfish little miracles. So keeping it in the strictest of confidence was part of the quid pro quo. 

All in all, I was very careful to be very reverent and very sincere. God knew me. And he knew that I was completely and utterly faithful in every way. I was completely without doubt about all of the salient points. So as I rode home on the school bus that day, I was seized with excitement over my impending miracle. I was completely convinced that I had offered the perfect prayer. Sammy would be alive and happy and I would have the pall of death lifted from my tender psyche. Glory, glory, glory be to God.   

However, when I arrived at the my bus stop, ran to my house, bounded up the stairs and threw open Sammy’s box, I was met with a revelation.  My reaction was not disappointment.  It was anger.  As I lifted Sammy’s rigid, blackened body, I immediately looked at God with contempt.  If he was so great, how could he reject the perfect prayers of a good kid like me?  A very good, very faithful boy like me.  How could he pitch me aside like that?  

Well one thing was for sure.  I wasn’t going to bother asking why.  If that’s how he wanted to play it, so what?  A lump began to grow in my throat and before long, I was crying and preparing Sammy’s coffin.  

Cathe and Tim attended the funeral and made utter fools of themselves by laughing during the interment.  Joan was too young to understand the mysteries of death.  My friends, Tommy and Bill happened by at the moment I began raking in the dirt.  They insisted that I exhume the corpse for a viewing and I obliged.  Then we all sang a verse of “The Worms Crawl in,” and my suffocating grief suddenly seemed to evaporate.