Irish Sketch: Hail Mary

Hail Mary

Ann Marie and I go to mass on Christmas Day. We take the bus to the church my sister recommends, in a suburb north of Dublin. The church is huge, grey. Drafty. A couple of grim bundled-up people sit in the pews. Their faces are pinched with cold. Wrinkled fingers working over rosaries. My own fingers itch.

Quietly, I walk to the bank of bravely flickering votive candles. The flames look stunted, trembling. No one else is there. Mary’s face is placid, painted. She looks blank. Like nothing else can be done to her. My gloved hands are clasped; I try to control my shivering. I murmur the Hail Mary, as I tremble with the candle flames.

The Hail Mary is my fail-safe prayer. In the weeks after September 11, I said it ten times a day. I can barely get through “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sins, now and at the hour of our death” without weeping. I think what moves me about those words in particular is the distinction between “now” and the “hour of our death”. The possibility of redemption and absolution exists now. Not just in the afterlife. There is hope. Mary is watching. As my mother says, she is “in our corner”.

I light a candle for the troubled brilliant bipolar guy I am seeing back home. I pray for his healing. This prayer feels like my last hope. Mary is the logical one to go to with such problems. Her pale blank face is “splendidly null”. She judges not. She understands. She’s been through it all.

I join Ann Marie in the pew. It is Christmas Day in Dublin. The mass begins.

I notice immediately that Catholicism in Ireland is different than Catholicism in America. It is grimmer. It is serious business. It doesn’t cloak itself as anything else. It is Catholicism, dammit.

For example, confession in America is a dead issue. No one goes to confession, no one refers to it, it is treated like a semi-embarrassing phase the church went through once upon a time. But in Ireland, the priest begins to exhort the masses (of 25 people), “In this week, of all weeks, you must go to confession. Try to go a couple of times this week.” I can’t remember the last time the priest back home beseeched his congregation to go to confession. I’ve always preferred to go straight to God myself. Or Mary. When I pray to Mary, I feel intensely that someone is on the other end.

“And now we will take up the collection,” the priest informs us.

The collection in church back home is orchestrated so that we don’t have to realize what we are doing. It is performed under cover of music, so the event is blurred. Theatricalized. But in Ireland, the ritual is raw, graceless. Without any music, the only sound in the chilly church is coins clinking. Faith and finance hand in hand. The priest sits up front, waiting, observing.

Later, he says, “And again we will take the collection.”

Two blatant collections! With no veil of song!

I feel embarrassed, and confused as to my embarrassment. Isn’t the collection a valid part of Catholicism? But still. To be so naked about it.

Ann Marie and I fumble through our change purses twice for the thick coins of Eire, adorned with harps.

“My peace I leave unto you…” says the priest. “Grant each other peace.”

She and I embrace, stiffly because of our huge winter coats, which we cannot take off. We turn to the solitary ancient woman behind us, who holds out her knotted blue-cold hands to us, saying with warmth, “God bless ye, girls, God bless ye.”

Facing the pulpit again, Ann and I huddle beside one another, shivering so much our teeth rattle.

The echoes in this holy place are alarming. There’s no hiding here. This is faith unbridled, undisguised. There’s something embarrassing about it. Ann Marie and I are the only people in this church under 30 years old.

I wonder – “It’s Christmas Day in Catholic Ireland. Where are all the people?”