By Philip Quirke
Sister Anthony, gently firm, prepared us
for Holy Communion, and spoke of Paradise
as our destiny. To receive the sacred host
was to return to Eden. It was God’s gift of love,
‘so let us be sorry for our sins, children, and be kind’.
At seven years we grasped a little of what she said.
Communion suit, white rosette with golden chalice.
A strange feeling comes with the communion wafer
placed on my tongue, palms touch in prayer, eyes closed,
as Fr Berney moves along the altar rails, corpus Christi
in the solemn hush of the convent Sodality room.
Then the obligatory tour of the Aunts.
***
Sister Anthony did not tell us, for our innocence,
that things go sour. She must have known
we would leave this garden of paradise,
or put out for hubris, before an eventual return.
Years later I read the whole story,
the garden, snake, the temptation and the fall.
To the man and the woman God said ‘Don’t’, but they did.
It’s hard not to taste fruit which seemed desirable.
They learned the knowledge of good and evil.
When shame emerged they sewed fig leaves,
and God supplied skins to cover their nakedness,
an outreach like an apology in pity for them.
No easy return: a flaming sword guards the gate.
Much of their story is our story: choice, and mistakes.
Pilgrims now, we trudge forward, not without joy,
but we have to dig, sweat, feel pain in childbearing.
It is the small gestures of love and pity like God’s
to Adam and Eve, which will soften the exile.
***
Many decades on from first communion,
I know the sweet and sour of our human condition.
I still have life and love to receive and give,
continue to push on, to enjoy the garden of the world,
even through long grass where snakes lurk,
where thorny weeds are cleared and new seeds planted.
I have discovered over and over, betimes with surprise,
that our loving, even when it stumbles,
can become a return to Eden, a taste of innocence,
where we can be vulnerable, naked and not ashamed.
Sister Anthony, in her wisdom, told us the story
we could bear. We learn the rest ourselves.
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