Chowing Down on Jesus

I should have torn the wings off that butterfly before I ate it. It's hard to maintain a flinty survival attitude toward weaker prey when it's tickling your soft palate with its desperate flailing about. Biting into the thorax (and thus quickly extinguishing its brief existence) required only enough nerve to withstand the taste and texture; the wings, on the other hand, stuck to the roof of my mouth and proved nearly impossible to swallow.

When I was seven years old, I received my First Communion at St. James Catholic Church in Redondo Beach, California. Daily for two weeks prior to the big day, we trudged out of our school rooms, across Pacific Coast Highway and Vincent Street, and into the airy church to rehearse our movements. Into and out of the pews we marched, up the center aisle two-by-two to the communion rails, then peeled off like members of a marching band to assume the right- and left-most positions at the rail, upon which we kneeled, hands folded, and awaited the priest's administration of the sacrament.

Nowadays, communion consists of lay people handing you a chunk of bread or a communion wafer which you pop into your mouth at your leisure. Then you have the option of taking a slug of wine out of a communal (retch) chalice. Presumably, the fact that the wine has transubstantiated into the blood of Christ ensures the total annihilation of bacteria, virus, or cootie. Fortunately for me, I stopped receiving communion long before the modernization of the sacrament. No, when I was training for communion and for years afterward, the administration of the body of Christ (only the priest got blood) was reserved for priests and they were the only ones entitled to touch the small round wafers. Every Catholic kid of a certain age knows the story of the woman who removed the wafer from her mouth and put it in a linen kerchief in her purse, only to find later that the kerchief was soaked in blood. Evidently Jesus could still be mortally injured (on top of having been crucified) by contact with profane hands. So only priests were allowed to touch the hosts. You would be kneeling at the rail, hands always folded, and the priest would walk up to you with a fancy chalice full of hosts and say "The body of Christ," to which you would respond "Amen" and then lean your head back and open your mouth (optionally sticking out your tongue and closing your eyes) so that the priest could feed you the divine disc. You weren't supposed to chew it; Jesus would melt in your mouth! If the priest dropped the host, or if you somehow fumbled getting it into your mouth, an altar boy stood next to the priest holding a fancy metal tray (platen) under your chin. I never saw the platen actually used for its purpose, but it was insurance against the host hitting the floor and creating a bloody puddle, I suppose. The platen, being blessed, was okay for contact.

On the Big Day, we filed into the church as rehearsed, and waited restlessly for the Mass to unfold its tedious mysteries until Communion time came. This was it! We knew just what to do. March up the aisle, kneel at the rail, fold the hands, reply "Amen", and above all DO NOT TOUCH THAT HOST. I don't remember much about the procession up the aisle or what it felt like kneeling at the rail or whether I closed my eyes or stuck my tongue out. No, all I remember is that as soon as that dry, cardboard-like wafer entered my mouth it attached itself to the roof of my mouth and would not budge. No amount of mental pleading or desperate pushing with my tongue (I figured my tongue was okay) would peel it off my hard palate. I began to panic. I had to get up from the rail and start my walk back to my pew...what should I do? Oh my God, what if it stayed stuck to the roof of my mouth until it turned into blood like the lady with the handkerchief? I would be drooling a mouthful of blood! I would get my white shirt all bloody, with my parents and Sister Rosalia watching! I needed to pee, and I had a decision to make: Whose wrath would be worse, my parents' for bloodying my shirt, or God's (and Sister Rosalia's) for sticking my finger in my mouth to detach the damned thing from the roof of my mouth? Ah, but I was young enough to let my instincts take over (I was still learning how to overthink but not yet a professional at it.) I stuck my index fingernail right in there and popped the host off my palate and commenced to chew it up, thus completing my sacrilege. At that very moment I found myself looking at the scowling face of Sister Rosalia. I kept walking, though, past my beaming parents (I imagine they were beaming; I have no recollection of their expressions in that moment; they were probably trying not to laugh at my predicament) and into the bathroom where I checked my mouth for blood which, to my profound relief, was not to be seen.