They walked
through the woods pretending they picked up raspberries, and actually staring
at the trees and the sky between the tree crowns.
- A priest
in one parish – it was a parish in a small town in a forest -
said Monsignor Paul - a pine forest, to be precise...
- Does it matter? - sneered master Adalbert.
- It does, because
they had various ecclesiastical paraphernalia of their own manufacturing,
that is, made from pine timber, and among these there was a great cross made
from freshly planed logs. A gift to the church from a local circle of
men-teetotalers.
- Well, the
teetotalers planed the cross themselves, but inexpertly - continued Monsignor
Paul - They just let the cross drip with resin. They surely did not dry the
logs properly. Well, and on a Good Friday last year there was such a scene, that when the rector presided over the procession and carried this large cross
through the church, at some point he wanted to put it up at the front of the altar,
and he could not do that because his left hand was glued to the cross, so to
say, for good.
- A beautiful
symbol - said delighted father Hyacinth.
- Well, the
rector initially did not know what to do, so he decided, very wisely, not to jerk.
He thought - I know, because he told me this himself – 'if I jerk forcefully,
then I can start blooding, and old ladies would think I got stigmata' - this he thought
to himself, not quite modestly, because, frankly, no one would have thought that
he had gotten stigmata.
- They should
have sent an altar boy for a solvent - said practical master Adalbert.
- No, in
the end he came across another idea. Namely, he decided to finish the whole
service holding the cross in his left hand, and then, referring to the Ritual of
1631, not to make a depositio hostiae,
but a depositio crucis. So he just lay
down on the floor with the cross by the Holy Sepulchre.
- And what did
the people say? – asked father Hyacinth.
- Well,
they did not notice - said Monsignor Paul – only one old lady said that this priest
was probably too pious, to lie so long on the floor.
- But they let
him free in the end - asked master Adalbert.
- Yes -
Monsignor Paul winced - apparently the hot breath of his prayers dissolved resin,
or something of this sort. As they say, triumph of spirit over matter.