Being back in the neighborhood where I grew up is slightly unsettling. Wave after wave of memories keep coming at me like sneaky sneaky ninjas. It’s as though I’m reliving my childhood as a 21-year old. Do you have any idea how weird that is?
For the first time since I was a kid, I attended mass in the small parish church where I have vivid memories of me squirming through the never-ending sermons by the priest who was later rumored to be keeping a mistress and stealing money from the church. God has horrible PR. When I hit puberty a few years later, I went to mass for the sole purpose of seeing the boy I had a deadly crush on. When the boy called me up on the phone and said “I love you”, I had all but died of happiness. Funny how ten years later, my reaction to an “I love you” would change drastically–perhaps a sardonic laugh and something really mean like, “Please, tell me something I haven’t heard yet.”
Another memory that came back as I squirmed in my seat throughout the never-ending sermon by the new parish priest is the memory of my first communion, which I shall now proceed to narrate. You see, it’s not the kind of first communion organized by the parish community or by my grade school, where we were taught to parrot the appropriate responses for the mass while simultaneously rehearsing church songs for hours on end. This was the memory of my Self-Proclaimed, Self-Organized First Communion.
As a child, I could never understand why I was “too young” to line up for communion with all the grown-ups. I think my mother tried to give me a theological explanation as to why I couldn’t receive the body of Christ at the age of six, but I still didn’t get it. As I tried to sit still in my best Sunday dress, my thoughts would often wander to that mysterious white disk. I imagined that it tasted like the white, menthol Stork candy I often bought in the nearby sari-sari store. My mouth then watered at the thought of the candy, and I grew furious that I was being denied this treat, this sweet reward, after suffering throughout that horrible sermon in my itchy dress, just because I was “too young”.
At one particular mass, I finally decided that no silly law from the Vatican and the pope himself can stop me. Today will be the day I get to know what Communion tastes like. Making sure that I was far from my mother’s eagle eye vision, I turned to my yaya and announced my intentions. I expected her to stop me and drag me over to my mother so that I may receive the appropriate punishment. To my surprise, she said, “Do you know what you’re supposed to say when the priest gives you the host?”
I shook my head and eagerly waited for her to teach me the ways of communion host-eating.
“When the priest says, ‘The body of Christ”, you hold out your hand and say ‘Amen.’”
In one minute my yaya was able to accomplish what days and days of First Communion rehearsals were all about. I thanked her and squirmed my way out of the pew. My heart was pounding as I lined up for communion along with the legal parishoners. I was well aware that I was about to commit a Sin, but my curiosity was stronger than the fear inspired by images of the hell so vividly described by my grade school religion teachers. As I neared the front of the line, I licked my lips in eager anticipation. Amen, amen, I kept practicing in my head so that the priest wouldn’t suspect that I was only in grade one, a full year away from my actual First Communion. I didn’t even want to think of the kind of trouble I would be in should my actual age get exposed.
After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally in front of the priest. He seemed a lot taller than I thought he would be.
“The body of Christ,” he said. And like a sweet, dutiful, little Catholic girl who has already received her first Communion, I held out my hands and said “Amen.” He placed the host in my little palm and I eagerly put it in my mouth.
I was so shocked and disappointed to find out that the first communion host tasted a lot like paper. Hell, even my notebook paper tasted better than the communion host.
I have faint memories of my yaya informing my mother about what I had just done and being screamed at when I got back home. But the utter letdown of having tasted the tastelessness of the communion wafer was stronger than any punishment my mom could ever inflict on me. Little did I know that this experience would serve the first of my many, many disappointments regarding Catholicism and religion in general.
Twisted as this might sound, I actually find myself quite cute for having absolutely no sense of the sacred and the profane at such a young age. <3
Maybe it’ll be a blog, but in audio form, or perhaps I’ll read out some of the things I’ve written before. I’m not entirely sure.
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