Priests With Hands

You can tell a priest
by watching his hands, the way his fingers curl a bit,
yet leave the hand open for us to grasp and hold onto,
tightly. The same hands bless and consecrate bread
and wine waiting for them on altar's table.

Sundays I like
to go back to church to watch those hands arrange
godparents around the font, hover over infants, pour
water, wipe oil, brush like a kiss a last caress on tiny
head. Care-filled hands smile that great, priestly smile
when he hands baby back as a Catholic forever and
ever. Amen. Grown-ups around the font beam back
their smiles as radiant as the monstrance when held
high in those same hands at Benediction.

The hands of a priest
are quiet, though, in the dim light of the confessional,
folded in his lap, patient, waiting for my sins to end,
so as to be raised in absolution's forgiveness with that
blessing of all blessings, "I absolve you. Go, in peace."
And all is well again by the Sacrament of the shriven.
My soul is clean, for a while.

Priest creates God
as Eucharist, his hands holding bread as Jesus did
the night before he died, "This is my body," then
lifting chalice, "This is my blood." We all remember
"Do this in memory of me." Imitators offer the presence
of a real absence. Priest's hands bring down a promise,
a real presence, "I shall be with you for all time." We
walk in reverence to that awe-filled moment when his
hands place the wafer in our hands, and he says,
"The Body of Christ."

Our wedding
when we married each other before him would not
have been so, without his hands, warm, open, loving,
wavering over rings to be blessed, waiting in silent
prayer for vows to be spoken, blessing a bond bonding
lovers, then reaching for the ceiling high over the altar
with great joy. "And now, you may kiss the bride."

Words those hands
will rarely hear spoken to him, for his hands are not
his alone. They are ours, to be held in trust until
we need them one last time to help us take that one
last step to God. Hands of priests are fewer now, as
parishes get quashed in clusters by desperate bishops.
The supply of hands dwindles down, celibate males
grow older and older and younger ones no longer
appear magically in numbers needed to be there for
us, a sacramental people.

We are frightened
that the hands we knew were always there will not
always be there to bless and caress and baptize
and absolve and marry and wave us on as we cross
over. They won't be there to consecrate our eucharist,
the still point of our souls. Not even to wave with love
as we drive on by.

We pray for vocations,
for Episcopalian ministers to convert, for Rome to
relent and invite back into ministry thousands and
thousands and thousands of priests who married,
incurring by that very sacrament unrelenting rancour
of a papal martinet. Popes had elevated celibacy of
priests far loftier than sacraments, more important
than salvation of souls, made priests inconsequential
for the Lord's exhortation given his disciples, "Go
forth and teach all nations."

Stubborn Rome,
lost in the panoply of wealth and art and medieval
stuff, riveted in lust for power, cliqued as curial
cardinals, now refuses to provide priestly services for
the people of God, pontificates empty reason after
empty reason, emptying church of sacrament and people,
that celibates might clutch power unto themselves until
power itself is transfigured into power of nothing over
nobody. And church is gone.

It was not always so,
not in the very beginning when there were no priests
or bishops, just elders with hands, who later became
presbyters. Married priests with families lived their
day-in day-out love of woman with man, their children
calling "Daddy" shared their hands with God's people
calling them "Father." Their hands rose in blessings at
their own tables and in the postures of rites dispensing
sacraments freely, lovingly, for one thousand years.

Until a pope
decreed that priests could no longer marry and had to
become eunuchs. Might as well have cut off their hands
which bless and caress, for such popes destroyed the
priesthood on which the church depends for its mission
in life. It took a while. The second one thousand years
reeled under the harsh and swelling absolute power of
papal primacy, inquisition on inquisition, decree on
decree, unending official teachings to smother the heart
of being Catholic right out of all of us.

We need priests with hands.
If Rome will not bring them to us, we shall find our own
and bring them to ourselves and ourselves to them, to be
church once again, held together, welcomed with love,
lifted up, gently steered, patted on the back, beckoned
onward, caressed, consoled, counseled, comforted,
consecrated, guided, blessed, baptized, absolved, married,
befriended, assisted in dying on our final way to God,
by the hands of a priest.