Paul Theroux - My Secret History

The church was more than half-full. I had never seen so many people at a funeral; I had never recognized so many. No one was crying — that was strange; but I heard faint screws of sound, a kind of mewing and soft coughing that was almost as sad as silence.

As we circled the casket — priests and acolytes, Chicky and the thurifer, Father Skerrit with the holy water bucket, the Pastor with the sprinkler — I glanced towards the back of the church and saw Tina sitting by herself. She was sitting, I guessed, because she was not used to kneeling. She wore a blue sweater, and a white handkerchief was pinned to the top of her head. Now I was glad I had banged Chicky’s head in the sacristy.

We went back for the consecration — Father Skerrit did the bells — and then the Pastor waved us to the side pews and walked slowly — still playing his pious role — to the pulpit for his sermon.

In that moment of silence — no litany, no music — I heard some nose-blowing and some sobbing. I was certain they were the women Father Furty had taken out on his boat. Although they had seemed very plain and matronly on the boat, at the funeral, dressed in black, with veils and white faces, they looked almost beautiful to me, the way Father Feeney’s nuns had seemed. Their crying was not loud, there were no shrieks; it was all a soft agony of mourning, and in its muffled way it seemed to me the worst grief.

The Pastor hooked his hands onto the front of the pulpit and hung on and leaned back, staring hard at the congregation. His severe eyes seemed to still the sobbing. Then it struck me that I had modeled God on the Pastor — God’s glare, and God’s scowling face, and even his paleness and his white upswept hair; and both God and the Pastor had narrow Irish mouths that they held slightly open to show doubt or scorn or self-importance.

His silence silenced the congregation, but I knew it was a gimmick. As an altar boy, I had seen all the priests giving sermons — from Father Flynn, who trembled and forgot what he had just said, to the Pastor, who glared like God. Father Furty always opened with a little joke, and he often based his sermons on common expressions, like “throwing the bull” or “down in the dumps.”

The Pastor began today with a sudden shout and I could see people jump and straighten up, and a man in the first pew snapped his hymnbook shut. Usually, during sermons, people read the miracles in the back pages of the Novena book, to kill time. My ironing board caught fire … My son fell out the window … On a recent trip to New York City … Riding my bike on a busy street … My riveting machine exploded throwing heavy chunks of metal in every direction. I could easily have lost an eye or even my life. Miraculously, I was not hurt — not even a scratch. I owe this to the intercession of the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary. I had attended the Novena for nine Mondays in a row and asked especially for protection at work …

No one was reading the miracles now.

“We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves,” the Pastor said in a quoting voice — a sort of halting falsetto. “For even Christ pleased not himself. But, as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.”

He let this sink in. “Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,” he said, and then, “What does ‘strong’ mean? It means strong in faith.” And what did weak mean? It meant weak in body and soul. And what did infirmities mean? Infirmities meant giving in to occasions of sin. And what did we mean by “written”? And why did we say reproaches?

I remembered Father Furty saying, “Questions, questions! ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Do you really mean it?’ Questions like that are a crime against humanity … ‘Why’ is a crime …”

“And not to please ourselves!” the Pastor declaimed.

He repeated this, and defined simple words and made them so complicated they were hard for me to understand, and he went on asking why. The people listened intently because the Pastor’s voice — it was another of his sermon gimmicks — was loud and then soft: shouts and whispers to keep their attention.

I listened. I had never really listened to a sermon before, but when had a sermon ever mattered so much?

He seemed to be saying that Father Furty was weak and that he, the Pastor, was strong. And we were strong, too! It was our duty to pray for the weak, to help save their souls. It was what Christ did — gave himself to other people and propped them up and helped them enter Heaven. He had done more than that — he had died for the sins of the world. Christ took that burden upon himself, and therefore we should follow his example and take this burden upon ourselves — Father Furty! In so many words, that was it.

“And not to please ourselves!” he kept saying. And this refrain meant it wasn’t pleasure — no fun, no enjoyment, not even any conscious satisfaction. It was suffering. He said: Pray. He said: Forgive. He said: Do penance.

And all this because Father Furty was a sinner. The Pastor didn’t use that word — he said “weak” and “almost lost” and “struggling”—but it was clear that he meant that Father Furty was a sad case. Because the poor man had needed help when he was alive (what help? That small dark room in Holy Name House?), now that he was dead the help had to continue, for alive or dead the weak were still weak and needed prayer.

Every time he said dead I died.

The idea was that Father Furty was in Purgatory, but we had to do the work to get him out.

I saw from this sermon how much the Pastor disliked him, and how he had turned poor Father Furty into a test of faith. But none of this really bothered him, for the emotion that was clearest in what he said was relief. Father Furty had been a problem as a live and lively man, but now that he was a soul in Purgatory — and not in Heaven or Hell — he was less of a problem.

Father Furty’s sermons were so different. “He went to the dogs,” he used to say. “Let me tell you what happens when you go to the dogs. Think of it — the dogs!”

I laughed when he said that, thinking of a pair of cocker spaniels my uncle owned. Father Furty laughed too. It was a good sermon. The message was: Don’t give up — Keep the faith — You’re not as bad as you think you are!

“On your knees,” the Pastor was saying. There was a sort of terror, like a black flame, hovering over the congregation. Father Furty had been a problem. He was better off dead — death in fact had come just in time. He was lucky to be dead, because he had been a failure, and now it was up to us to get him out of Purgatory and into the sight of God.

It was awful, it was horrible, I wanted to cry; but if I had the Pastor would have bawled me out from the pulpit.

There was a little more about penance, and then as suddenly as he had begun, the Pastor blessed himself—“ And the Father, and the Son, and …”—and the sermon was over.

Eetay mee-sigh est .

Dayo grah-see-ahs .

I picked up my candlestick and as we filed slowly in front of the altar, and as the casket was rolled away, I realized that my mind was made up: I wanted to be a priest. It must have been God’s will, for how else could the thought have been planted there? I was glad that Tina had been at the funeral, because now it would be easier to explain my decision.

“Hey, Parent,” Chicky said in the sacristy.

His voice was gentle and friendly: it was his way of showing there were no hard feelings.

“Hey, that’s your third funeral.”

I had not thought of it as a funeral. It had been something much gloomier, more intense and final and private than anything I had ever known. I gave Chicky a blank look. I had lost my voice.