The Bible, Jesus, and Me By Jaye Lewis
I grew up in the old Roman Catholic church, where services
were called “The Mass,” and every word was written in a dead language, called Latin. This was not your everyday Latin. It was not classical. It was Church Latin, so different in
pronunciation from the language that Caesar spoke, that if Caesar were raised
from the dead in 1958, he wouldn’t have understood a word.
I don’t remember a single word in the Mass ever being spoken
in English, except for the reading of the Gospel from the New Testament, and,
of course, the sonorous sermon. Some of
those sermons were so long, and so uninspiring, that they made me long to
return to the readings in Latin.
I went to an Irish Catholic school in seventh and eighth
grade. It was an old parish, really
old. Most of the congregation was
getting older by the second, and they died a lot. Sister Rosa Anne was the principal. She didn’t like me much, or if she did, she
hid it well. I had red-hair and a rosy
complexion, which would glow like Rudolph’s nose when I was embarrassed, which
was most of the time.
Sister volunteered the seventh and eight grade,
approximately thirty-five of us boys and girls, to sing the Requiem Mass for
the Dead. For two years we sang Requiems
approximately three times a week. Our
family moved around a lot, so I was always the new kid, but it was never so
obvious as it was in this school.
From the time we first arrived, I didn’t know what the heck
we were doing. It was a good six months
before I understood that there were different bodies in those coffins. I thought we were singing the same Mass, for
the same person, again and again, week after week. It seemed pretty strange to me, and I began
to take a quick sniff each time we entered the church, because I was pretty
sure that after all those months that poor man was about to start stinking. I found out what was really going on when I
finally asked the most important question, “Are they ever going to bury that
man?!”
Sister Rosa seemed to find it necessary, for our own good,
that we be decidedly uncomfortable. So, every day after recess, when we were
the most sweaty and stinky, she would order us to kneel backwards in our
desks. These were the desks that were
lined in rows, with seats that raised and lowered on hinges. My desk would be the back of someone else’s
seat, and my seat would be the front of someone else’s desk.
Great care had to be taken so that I would not fold myself
up in my own seat. I was a regular
klutz, and usually the center of much amusement on the part of my classmates,
all under the disapproving eye of Sister Rosa.
I grew to dread those moments, as we recited the entire Rosary, while
sweat dripped down my side, and I flipped my seat open and closed upon myself.
Another pastime right after the noon hour was the reading from “Holy Scripture.” One never referred to it as the Bible. Sister would choose one person to read from
“Holy Scripture.” Since half the class
couldn’t make it through a fifteen minute reading in less than an hour and a
half, I was usually elected. I received
frequent unwanted attention from class members for always being singled out.
The readings for the week before Easter were particularly
long, so naturally I was chosen to get us through them in a brief amount of time. The reading for Holy Thursday was entitled Christ’s Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem
So, I began reading with a solemn voice, and I did just fine
until I came to the first catastrophic line.
“Go into the village…ye shall find an ASS….”
WHAT? Did I just read
that
word in Holy Scripture? My face turned
beet red, and the class began to titter.
We were a bunch of twelve year olds, for crying out loud. And this was a Catholic school where one
didn’t use those words. Heck, kids in
public schools didn’t use that word, not in class, in front of the teacher!
I managed to squeak through that line, glad to have it over
with. My face was beet red and hot, but
I was giggle free. I read on, without a
pause, until I came to the next stumble.
“Behold, thy King cometh unto
thee, meek, and sitting upon an ASS, and a colt the foal of an ASS.”
The class became engulfed in snickers. My voice began to shake. This was terrible language in Catholic
school. What were they thinking?!! I tried valiantly to continue, my voice
breaking as I came to the end of the line.
“the disciples went, and brought the ASS…”
All of a sudden a laugh bubble broke in my chest. My hesitation, brought a stiff rebuke from
Sister Rosa, “Enough, now, continue!”
She made me repeat that scripture again and again, until I fell to the
floor.
My shoulders began to shake, and my head bobbed, as I
thought of that forbidden word. In the
1950’s south, this was unforgivable, and at that moment it was hilariously
funny. Sister finally said the one thing that must never be said to an
embarrassed twelve year old.
“It’s not funny!
Don’t laugh!”
Well, it was all over.
I began to laugh so hard, I couldn’t stand up. I laughed until I cried, and I may have wet
my pants. At that point Sister lost
complete control of the class, and the class lost control of itself, including
me. At twelve years old, I almost had
a heart attack!
Sister finally left the room in a huff. What was she thinking? A room full of twelve year olds. Had she forgotten what it was like to be
innocent and twelve? I’m certain that in
the present society of twelve year olds, this incident would never take
place. I’m sure that the sophisticates
of today would be able to repeat the “ass” word without a blink, but we were
innocent then. We’d heard a lot of dirty
words, even then, but we would never have repeated them. It was hilarious and unforgettable, and I
never was able to read that passage without engulfing in laughter.
The result of this twelve year old encounter with the
greatest book ever written, and the greatest life ever lived, was that it peaked
my interest. It was a time that Roman
Catholicism was considered the “Mother
Church
It was certainly the beginning for me of a great love affair
with the Word of God. It’s amazing how
God works these things. He woke me out
of a sound sleep, with uncontrolled laughter, and he brought me into a life of
constant thirst for His Word. Even now,
I feel a tremble, wondering what new thing will I learn today from Him. And, yes, sometimes God still makes me laugh
with new expectation.
With love,
Jaye Lewis
