Thursday, April 4, 2019

Nightmare of faith


A terrible dream I had last night. 


I dreamed I was at Mass. I wasn’t my usual self in pews with my family but I was….something. A deacon maybe? An acolyte? I was dressed in something liturgical, but I was not a celebrant. It was not unlike a Chrism Mass where many vested priests are in the pews. Many others were vested like me. I got the idea we were the same, but what we were wasn’t clear.

At Communion, somehow the line got jostled up and I ended up struggling to get to the front.  I got there and the priest picked up the host, said "Body of Christ.” As I began to stick out my tongue he crushed it, sprinkling the crumbs of the Lord all over my chest as I quickly struggled to catch them all and prevent their falling.

I yelled, "Why would you do this?" In an effeminate voice full of contempt he said, “Oops, I shouldn’t have done that,” and went on distributing. Sometimes he handed it out ok, others he tossed the Host. The other priest distributing next to him laughed with him, perhaps uncomfortably, but he did nothing.

In leaned back, using my body to catch all I could and tried to consume it all. There were far more crumbs than one host should produce. For each fragment I saved, two fell. I tried to get to the ground to cover and retrieve what fell but the mass of people in this chaotic communion pressed me on as I cried out. No one seemed to care.

I escaped to a rectory to try and at least save what may remain on my clothes, but my concern was met with apathy and my vestments were stripped off and taken away. Somehow I saw they were tossed in a laundry pile with no special care.

I was left standing nearly naked. No one saw me. No one cared about the abuse of our Lord that took place. No one did anything. And I just stood there.
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There's some obvious symbolism in this. I need to process it more. My faith, weak though it may be, is in Christ and not in dreams. Still, this was a painful nightmare.

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