What I was like receiving the sacraments

Trying to be nice here and share some pleasant memories, and also think of questions and distortions that many might have about my point of view and experiences.

It is not at all difficult to be the "someone" (I've explained that before but basically when I say the "someone" I mean how I was born with total knowledge and context as witness to the reality of the one God, the content of the events in the Bible, and also the Qur'an) and still be a child and young adult.

For example, when I first had to start going to Confession (the sacrament of Penance & Reconciliation), unlike other children, I had nothing to confess. But I also am a born diplomat and was not ready to get into it with the nuns over a period of years how unlike other children, I didn't even have the little boo boo sins to confess. So I confessed things like lying, when what I meant was I'd say to someone "It's hot today," while one could argue that it was warm and not hot. So I'd think of a few instances where opinion could be held in speech but where I was not lying, but I could honestly "give that to the priest to work with" (they didn't ask too many questions about context or I'd have had a dilemma). So I managed to find things to "confess" that sounded "typical kid," but so I'd not be lying in the confessional either. So that's what Confession was like for me. I liked praying the prayers given as penance, but I could also appreciate wanting to get a priest who was one who gave out "light and easy" penances! :-)

My First Holy Communion was great. My father was still alive and he wore a wonderful suit and I had the whole communion dress, veil, gloves, white missal and purse, and I loved them. There are photos of me and my dad taken by my brother, and they are treasured because like I said, my dad did not live throughout my childhood and my Communion was one of our last big family events before he died. So I could enjoy all the aspects of Holy Communion because not only of my faith but my assurity of knowledge. Yet, I could still have the angst of a child, especially because I can witness to the sanctity of the sacrament itself. For example, in those days you could not touch the host with your hand, so the nuns spent plenty of time warning us that it would stick to the tops of our mouths and not to panic! But we could not touch inside our mouths to loosen the host. So the nuns got all of us pretty anxious! And sure enough, the first time I received, it stuck to the top of my mouth, and also my friend who was next to me. We panicked and got all weepy! The nun in front of us in the pew told us, just keep rubbing with our tongue and not to panic and that it would dissolve, and it did. So this is another example of how I could be "the someone" and also have a very human reaction in not wanting to mess up the rules! Gosh when I think how irreverential so many are today, I wonder how far adrift and negative everyone has become. It is sad. But anyway, it was a fine day even though I got teased for the crying. It was a very sunny and beautiful spring day in upstate New York, back when we had long and snowy winters.

One thing that made me and two other children very sad was that we could not receive our first Holy Communion, and also our Confirmation, which I am about to reminisce about, with the rest of the Catholics in our school class and age group. Three of us had to be "a year behind" because of arbitrary decision that December 1 birthdays were the cutoff point. So those of us with birthdays right before December were made to wait a year with the "little kids." We all found that to be terribly mortifying that we were held back from our class just because we had October and November birthdays. So I was not with my classmates when I had religious instruction for my first Holy Communion or Confirmation. In a small town and with kids you grew up with and attended class together with year after year, that was really shattering and the first real pain that I received that was unjust and unfair. I still remember sitting in religious instruction classes with kids I didn't know at all because they were a year behind me, and me and the two others just suffered through it.

By the way, in fairness, it was not the Church that caused the problem, it was the school system that let kids into kindergarten and then assigned subsequent grades based on the December 1 date. So I was in a grade where my best friend was just about a year older than me. The Church does its sacraments by age of eligibility. So one must be seven years old to receive one's first Holy Communion and go to Confession. That is because seven is the age where children are deemed in the church to be old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Thus children become "responsible for any sins that they commit" at the age of seven. That is why the Church assembles classes according to age, and not by school grade. And that makes perfect sense in doctrine even though it hurt to go through. So I have little tolerance for people today who rail against doctrine because of "hurt feelings" and it not being "fair." It IS fair and it IS correct; that is why it is Church doctrine. So suck it up and be obedient to the Church doctrine, as I was as a child, even when it hurt me a LOT.

In classes for Confirmation you get to choose your "saint name," called your "confirmation name." It becomes one of your middle names. Well, for boys that was great. But back in the early 1960's in a poor town girls had no access to books and so forth giving them choices of names. You basically got to choose between Mary and Catherine. I'm not exaggerating. Even Anne was not discussed as a possibility. So the girls basically chose one or the other and I went with Catherine. Cultists like to get all in a tizzy about that, looking for "a reason" that I "chose Catherine" (you know, past lives and all that). Well, bumble f's, in my class I still remember sitting in my usual seat (far right row about five seats back) and hearing, "Which will it be? Mary or Catherine?" LOL! There was no leafing through the missal being "inspired" by one saint or the other, or by other women. If a girl had said, "How about Anastasia" the nun would have undoubtedly beat her senseless! It is NOT how things were done back then. So there was absolutely no significance to my choosing Catherine.

I didn't mind, though, because I was honoring a saint by that name that I knew of very well. That was Catherine Laboure, to whom the Virgin Mary appeared and gave to her the Miraculous Medal. The Miraculous Medal had been revealed given to St. Catherine in 1830, and so by the 1960's I had already seen many miracles that resulted from this virtue. The Miraculous Medal was carried by many soldiers (including my dad) in World War II, and it also helped many conversions of dire sinners. So she was the Catherine that I had in mind.

Years later, of course, in a cynical and strange world, people got obsessed with Catherine of the wheel (since the method of torture is more interesting to humans nowadays than the context of the faith). And so some people I know "wanted me to have chosen Catherine of the wheel" so they could glom onto her torture and work that into my story, in their delusion. Others love Catherine of Sienna because she was a "mystic" and had these long rapturous "conversations" with Jesus, and so that camp "wanted me to have chosen Catherine of Sienna" so that they could, well, you get my drift. It shows how little anyone knows me. The saint I chose was the one that was a virgin who lived a quiet and holy life, only a century before, living to the age of 70 or so, but with one distinction. That is, the Virgin Mary appeared to her and gave her one of the greatest gifts for modern believers, one that had demonstrated its virtue for nearly a hundred years by the time I had to "choose" my Confirmation name. And that's as simple as that. She was a great lady by the way. I wish people would follow her example more than look for gory deaths or rapturous visions. She had to go against some strong personalities to get people in the Church to believe her, and then to get the medal worked and given to the world. She was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1947 by the way, just about twenty years before my Confirmation. So she was very much of my real world and my priorities are always the here and now.

In Confirmation a Catholic is viewed as being an adult (age 13). It is one's Catholic bar mitzvah or bar mitzpah in a way. Again, it is another example of how the Catholic Church is the true church running straight and true from its roots in the Old Covenant to modern times. A Catholic child of 13 is viewed as being "an adult in the faith" and also a "soldier of Christ." That means there is knowledge that one can speak one's own mind about the faith, is responsible for one's own sin and also must be prepared to suffer or die for the faith. The highlight of it is the ceremony presided over by the Bishop, where each new "soldier of Christ" steps before the Bishop to get the symbolic slap on the face. Wow, were we excited about that! The slap symbolizes that each child is now a defender of the faith, and thus might face persecution and suffering. Of course the Bishop doesn't haul off and clout each kid, ha! But being kids, it gave us something to worry about. No one wanted to look like a wimp. Boys worried about that and girls worried about it hurting. So I worried about it hurting. So we lined up and approached him and just as the nuns promised, it was barely more than an open handed touch to the cheek, no slap at all really! But it was great performance anxiety for all of us young soldiers of Christ!

I hope you enjoyed my musings and reminiscing.