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The sermon for Aug. 04, 2002 is: a secret pentecost 5:35 p.m. When I was seven my father gave me his Book of Common Prayer that had been given to him in seminary, as a study aid for my First Communion interview. Daily he quizzed me on my Latin. In nomine Patrii, et Filii..., he'd say expectantly; and I wouldn't fail him, piping in with my fluting soprano, et Spiritu Sancti. In addition, he trained me on the prayers of St Francis of Assisi and the Ode of the Venerable Bede. When I was seventeen and my father six years dead, I broke into the church and carved two-horned stars into the pews. I opened the chausible and took out the unconsecrated hosts, and I prayed, lord, make me an instrument of Thy piss. When I was twenty-seven I tried to hang myself, like Judas on his tree. When I was seven, I not only passed my First Communion interview with flying colours, but I was made a sacristan as well. I carried the Book, which was bound in copper plates, and it seemed to tremble and quiver like veritable lightning in my little hands. I held another copper platelet, like an electrode or a knife, beneath the parishioners' mouths as they took Christ in mentally and dentally, being careful not to let any crumbs of Christ fall onto the ground. When I was seventeen, my grandfather died, as nearly every male in my family had done yearly since my father's pioneering pop when I was eleven. At the second or third day of the viewing of the body, the deacon of the church pushed me into the ground and snarled, Did anyone ever teach you how to genuflect, boy? Show some respect to our Lord! He pushed me to a pew and bade me give obeisance. I fumbled around with my hands like a virgin boy with his first brassiere. Jesus Christ, moron! the deacon said, exasperated. He kicked my feet into position and grabbed my right hand. In nomine Patrii, my fist to my forehead, et Filii, my fist to my heart, et Spiritu Sancti, my fist to my mouth. The deacon said, He died for you, idiot. He died for you and this is how you repay him. When I was seven, Father Yakubik took the sacristans to a day at the community pool. I remember sitting puzzled and confused in the lockers with Ricardo and Steven, because we hadn't thought of bringing spare underwear. Father Yakubik pulled off his swimming trunks. He was a wild matte of hair, and his penis bobbed in all that lushness like a doorstop, a tough cookie. We're all men here, Father Yakubik said, and grabbed Steven and pulled his underwear off. Steven was a shocking white, and his tiny child's penis looked like an afterthought, an imperfection in the mould. And then Father Yakubik grabbed me. When I was twenty-seven I was working for something called nonviolent peacemaking and conflict resolution. It was a nonprofit company that was run by a man with a masters in Divinity from Harvard, as well as a doctorate in clinical psychology and public practice. He had worked with Carl Rogers, Daniel Ellsberg, Joan Baez, and a lot of other hippie anti-nuclear whale-lubbers, and when I was twenty years old and fresh out of college why he seemed something revolutionary. I worked for that revolution for seven years. He encouraged me to read the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Rev. Luther King, Friedrich Bonhoeffer. He also encouraged me to study the martyrs. He asked me to volunteer a portion of my workday; then he asked me to volunteer my weekends. He asked me to get him marijuana, just to relax him, and then he asked me to get hashish, morphine, oxycodone, oxycontin, marinol, fentanyl, dilaudid, heroin. He started screaming at his newlywed wife because she wanted to keep her finances separate. How can we save the world if you won't sacrifice?! he shouted at her. He screamed at me whenever I made a mistake. How can we do effective peacemaking if you can't do the simplest thing? he screamed at me. At the end I was working 100 hours a week (1pm-11pm on weekdays, coming back at 1am-3am; 1-5pm on Saturday, 1am-6am on Sunday) and getting paid for 25 hours of it. I was shoplifting groceries, clothes and books. My boss kept telling me to think of Christ's disdain for money, and to think of his sacrifice. He quoted Russian Orthodoxy. No man can believe himself worthy unless he sacrifices himself, yea even his life, to the glory of God, said St. Seraphim. He quoted The Way of the Pilgrim, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me, a sinner. To drive the importance of sacrifice home to me, my boss began penalising me $20 for ever type-O I made, every time I came late, every time I was found sleeping in the office. One day he said, Did you ever think maybe your dad didn't die of random causes? Did you think maybe if you were more conscientious, your father would stil be here? That night I tried to hang myself. When I was seven, my father told me that I should go to confession. He drew a picture of my heart in felt-tip ink. That's your heart, he said. Slowly, he began to fill the heart with black ink. That's your heart filling with sin, he said. Here's a new word for you, John: sacrilege. Say it. Sacrilege. Every time that you sin, my father said, your heart becomes blacker and blacker. If you don't go to confession, your heart will become heavy and rotten with corruption, and you will go to hell. When I was seven, my father said, The devil rides a horse inside your heart. He tapped the black heart he had drawn, tap tap, tap tap, echoing the devil's hoofbeats. Whenever you sin, the devil on his horse starts riding towards you; and the more that you sin, the faster his horse gallops, until finally the devil arrives, and he will take you away. When I was seventeen, I took an exacto blade and carved on my chest, HERE. When I was twenty-seven, I took an exacto blade and carved on my arm, I AM. Here I am, devil. Take me from this sacrilegious world and drown me in the dark Hell of my heart, faraway from all these people of conviction and belief, faraway from the claws of god.
 
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