In a Place like This: Reflections of a Country Priest
The ceiling in my boyhood church captivates me. Brown-wood rafters, solid as soldiers in formation, salute the God of Trees and Forests.
My father kneels next to me. I feel his nudge and glance at his face His eyes, gray as fieldstone, dart toward the prayer book in my hand. I shrug and return to puzzling over terms like Corpus meum. My thoughts, however, remain focused on timber: the firewood stacked on the porch, the worn floor of the corn crib, the massive beam in the stable where I slopped calves that morning.
The ding of the sanctus bell pulls my gaze towards the altar where, within its intricate wooden niche, the Savior’s head droops beneath a gibbet of beveled planks. Thorns long and purple as those of honey locusts pierce his scalp.
I wince. The bell rings again. The priest lifts the Host above his head and, for a brief moment, the Sacrament hovers beneath an arc of Christ’s protruding ribs. Above this grotto of flesh, a concave chest.
My brother, tall and tired, slouches next to the aisle. He coughs. I catch a whiff of his scent and, for a moment, he and I brace our legs on a flatbed wagon. Shirtless, chests heaving, we stack bales of hay beneath the summer sun.
Calix sanguinis mei. The bell rings yet again. I glance at my father’s hands folded in a fierce grip, hands that pull calves from wombs of milk-fevered cow, then swiping aside the film of scarlet blood before bending to scoop saliva from the newborn’s mouth.
In a world as raw and holy as this, how could I not become a priest?
***
I enter seminary at a young age. Eventually ordained, but not drained of backwoods sap, I receive a back-country assignment where, soon, I rent a barn and pasture. A dutiful shepherd, I tend my ecclesial flock with diligence. But I break colts in my spare time.
Each afternoon, around three o’clock, I find myself poised like a centurion at the center of the training pen. I snap the whip and note the rippling muscles of a colt trotting the perimeter: his eyes alert, his tail afloat, hooves scraping a trodden path sound like the drag of the cross on a Roman road.
Words spoken to Job hang in the humid air: “Were you present when I created the horse?”
The colt stops, chest heaving, like that of my brother on the long-ago flatbed.
Beneath the sweat-wet hide, ribs curve and billow. The colt lowers his once-proud head. Beyond the neck and the tangled mane, a plank nailed to a gnarled post extends its arms.
In a vigorous place like this, how can I not bend the knee?
***
I cup the Host in my hand. Like my brother hefting a heavy bale, I lift its weight above my shoulders. In the rafters of the church, a sparrow huddles in the angle of a mortise joint. Feathers ruffle. A pulse, like a frightened heart, emanates from within the Bread.
I lower the Sacrament, genuflect and reach for the chalice. Through cool, curved metal, I imagine the flow of warm blood. Not the shimmer of wine shimmering against a gloss of gold, but thick and sticky and seeping soaking into brown earth mixed with manure.
Thus begins my communion of slain saints: friends and parishioners gored by bulls, crushed by tractors, sliced by shredders. Gasping for air beside pits of toxic waste.
Rare occurrences? Yes, but five times as frequent as the deaths of firefighters who are rightly acknowledge as heroes. Farmers, who provide our food, experience dismissal, disparagement and, increasingly, find themselves counted among the wicked.
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies…
Unless muscles strain, prayers prayed and offerings made, life is shallow and fields lie fallow. I take a deep breath. Lord, visit this plain of anguish and pain! I break the Bread.
Take and eat.
I peer into the chalice.
My blood poured out for you.
At this altar hallowed by love-unto-death, how can I not be consumed?
Fr. Jim Schmitmeyer is a priest of the Diocese of Amarillo. He is the author of numerous books and articles on homiletics and rural ministry.
He blogs at Priesthood from the Inside Out under the pen name, “Fr. Luke.”