Communion

By Erin Staley

Jesus is crying in the stained-glass window. His rose-coloured cheeks are streaked with

rain that hums over the domed room of the church, drowning out the hymns. It’s only the third station of the cross and he shouldn’t be crying yet, but with one hand stopping himself from collapsing on the ground, and the other latched onto the wood pressing against his back, he has nothing to wipe them away with. The rest of the sequenced images trail behind like a smear of deflated apostles, wrapping around the walls of the church, their colours diluted by the lack of sun. It’s not only Christ whose divinity is compromised for congenial imagery. Across from where I sit, and off to the side of the altar, a five-foot tall painting of the Virgin Mary looms over the conglomeration of votive candles. Only a third of them are lit, slowly melting into their glass encasements, while the rest stand cold.

The priest echoes out the first few bars of the Gloria and the organ belches from the

balcony. My mother’s elbow digs into my side, and I turn to face the altar. The left half of our

pew flows into the aisle as my mother scrunches her eyes at me. I cup my hands and slump out

after her, kicking up the kneeler behind me. 

The croon of the organ flings itself over the congregation and dampens the voices of the

choir. A little girl stumbles beside me in the aisle. Her father marches behind her with a hand

pressed between her shoulder blades, urging her forward. She crosses her arms over her chest

like she is preparing for her funeral. There must be some connection there, I think. Maybe we are

never considered alive until we feel the soft cardboard of Jesus’ flesh dissolve on our tongue. We

are pure in that moment—the closest to God we can get before we croak, and our bodies are

stuffed into the earth. When my First Communion came around, it certainly felt that way. It was

our own Second Coming, but we were Lazarus emerging from our tomb of infancy and

becoming real people in the eyes of the Lord. 

We spent weeks learning how to sing and dance to Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and I had

been placed front and center, so I made sure the invisible gate I knocked on clanged extra hard,

and that my lungs became inflamed from singing so loud. 

Once we’d learned the words to the song and my second-grade teacher, Mrs. McConell,

had decided our choreography wasn’t too miserable to watch, she had us line up in pairs and

traipse the length of the classroom with our hands layered, one over the other, ready to receive

the blessed Eucharist. The experience was nearly euphoric. Accepting the offering of cubed stale

bread on my tongue that Mrs. McConell kept in a plastic sandwich bag meant being able to do

the same things I saw the adults doing every week. 

That day in church had been a celebration. We got to wear white frilly dresses, receive

gifts—I got my first rosary—and we went out for lunch to the Italian restaurant everyone in town

flocked to for special occasions. But after a month or so had passed, Communion had lost its

spark, its excitement. At the end of the day, it was only stale bread. 

The week following our Communion, we were asked to talk about it in school. Mrs.

McConell leaned against her desk and led a conversation on how we should feel closer to Christ

and asked us whether or not he spoke to us during the sacrament, or how we planned to be

devoted lambs of God. She used to always wear a gold cross around her neck, and it hung limply

over her freckled chest as she walked around the room, nodding appreciatively at students who

had undergone a reawakening during the second verse of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and

pursing her lips in disappointment at students whose only form of divine intervention that day

had been the plate of spaghetti and meatballs they’d gobbled down afterwards. 

Finally, she reached my desk. Leaning down so that the gold cross swung like a

pendulum in front of my eyes, she asked, “And what did you think of Communion?” 

I paused, thinking hard. I wanted her to be impressed with me, so I said the opposite of

what I thought. “Jesus tastes really good.”

The rest of the class erupted into laughter and Mrs. McConell peered down at me as if I

had just slapped her. Her cheeks blazed.

“Well, it’s not really Christ you're eating,” she sputtered. “You're eating the bread he has

blessed.”

This was puzzling to me. My whole life, I had been told it was the body of Christ, and

now that I was finally proud to participate in holy cannibalism, it was revealed that it had all

been a lie. 

My confusion must have been palpable because Mrs. McConell addressed the class

further. “When we talk about consuming the body of Christ, we are referring to when Jesus

blessed the bread and wine at the Last Supper. He told the apostles that the bread was his body,

and the wine was his blood. This is why the priest quotes this section of the Bible before we go

up for Communion.” 

This made even less sense. If Jesus said it was his body, why was Mrs. McConell

disagreeing with God? But when she looked at me, the condescension prominent on her brow, I

smiled and said I understood.

Even now, I am not sure I do.

I am almost to the front of the church now. The deacon blesses the girl next to me,

placing his hand over her forehead before she steps aside, lingering beside the Virgin Mary as

she waits for her father. In front of me, the priest dangles the Eucharist over my head, the faint

engraving of the cross facing out, before placing it in my cupped hands. I whisper my amen

before stepping to the side. Above the altar, a statue of Jesus hangs in anguish, red paint dripping

from the thorns on his head. His entire body shines as though he’s been dipped in epoxy. Maybe

he has. Maybe that’s the secret behind his radiance. I press three fingers together and cross

myself before turning back.