2002 CONFESSIONS
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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

OCTOBER 2002 CONFESSIONS

THE MAGIC NECKLACE

I would like to be able to tell the happy story of how I was finally dragged kicking and screaming out of my little Catholic womb and forced to witness to another soul, only to find myself filled with the Spirit of truth. One of the handymen who is working on my house -- a man whose talk reveals that his grandmother, at least, was Catholic -- asked me about my scapular.

I guess it's hard not to notice the thing; my scapular is a big honker, with a picture of St. Thérèse of Lisieux on the front square and Our Lady's Scapular Promise ("Whosoever dies wearing this Scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.") on the back. The back square is particularly visible, as it is forever poking out from above the back of my T-shirt. "What," I wondered as a chiropractor began fiddling with my crimped neck recently, "is this lady thinking? Surely, she's reading the thing." God forgive me, I took it off, half because I didn't want it to be in her way, half because I didn't want to try to explain it -- or worse, not be given a chance to explain it. Scapulars, to me, are like plenary indulgences -- not the sort of thing you want to lead with when you're preaching to the unconverted. Much more than, say, Marian devotion, they seem like quirky little Catholic things, easy to shrug off as the indefensible superstitions of a backward religion.

This, of course, is pride, presuming to know the effect of something on another person's soul. As I said, God forgive me. I paid for it later; as I left her office, she reminded me not to forget my scapular. She knew what it was all along, and if so, didn't she also know why I had taken it off? I bought the scapular at a traveling Catholic book sale that had stopped at our parish, but only after returning my original scapular purchase -- a tasteful little number with no more adornment than the cross of the crusaders. As I drove away that first time, I started to worry that Therese, who I am forever pestering with petitions, would be disappointed that I eschewed her image because it was too big. "You're asking me for all these things, and yet you're embarrassed of me?" Shame of that kind is such a pathetic sin; I knew I had to go for the big honker if I was ever to raise my voice to her again. Therese, being perfected in charity, would of course forgive my failing, but my own childish self was another story.

Yes, it would be nice to relate such a story, but alas. I knew I had to say something; the man asked, after all. I was in a bad way; I had stepped outside to avoid losing my temper with my children. But I tried to recover. I resolved to try my best to sound like my friend when she related to my pagan mother-in-law, with heartbreaking sincerity, the story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. When she told it, it was all there, recounted in tones as matter-of-fact as a vacation slideshow, right down to the roses out of place and out of season. Hearing it so told was touching and made me deeply uncomfortable -- why? The apparition has been confirmed. The story, even if gussied up with pious accretions, must be true at its core. Why should I be antsy around declarations of a faith that I tell myself I would die for? Why should the concrete stories of saints, the very things that reassure me in moments of doubt, seem so ridiculous when placed before unbelievers?

So here was my chance to lay it out there, straight and true. But when I spoke, I found myself distancing myself from the thing: "Well, the story goes...." As if it were just a story. Imagine: "The story goes that Jesus Christ died, then rose from the dead, and promises a similar fate to all who will take up their cross and follow Him." (That story is easier to tell, because everyone's heard it before.) And in my timidity, I ended up giving an incomplete account, so that the scapular came off sounding like exactly what I didn't want it to sound like -- a magic necklace that would protect you from hell.

The man gave me a funny look -- what was I, a young man, doing worrying about death? "You been driving too fast lately?" he asked. "No, but you never know when the Lord's gonna take you."

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