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POETRY

Real Presence

Sometimes I wish that Mass had better special effects.

When we were kids and Father lifted up the Host,
a pair of kneeling altar boys off to the side,
or hidden somewhere, back behind a screen,
would shake their jingling chapel bells
as if to say, “Wake up! It’s happening right now
and you don’t want to miss it.
Jesus is in the building.”

One time, over midnight cards in college,
a friend admitted shyly that he’d never seen the crouching altar boys
and so he thought for years that at the point of Consecration
bread just rang itself.

I’d like that.

These days I go to Mass about two dozen times a month,
and every time I tell myself, today I’ll pay attention,
this time I’ll keep my focus at the point of Consecration,
and yet, at least three days in five,
somewhere between Lift Up Your Hearts and
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven,
instead of moving with the Eucharistic prayers,
my thoughts have floated off to grocery lists,
or that time forty years ago when I forgot to call my Dad on Father’s Day,
And did I ever tell him I was sorry?
When I come back we’re shaking hands around the pew and wishing one another Peace.
I’ve missed it once again.

Now, if I ran the Universe, when it was time for Consecration,
(“The Little Bang,” I think we ought to call it),
there’d be a flash of light,
perhaps a puff of frankincense,
emerging out of nowhere just above the altar,
or maybe, only maybe,
a Tesla bolt of crackling laboratory lightning
sizzling down from Crucifix to Chalice,
just like in the Bride of Frankenstein.

OK, that last might be a little much, but
what I’m looking for is some acknowledgement from nature
that the ordinary laws of time and space
have just been set aside.

God has to feel it when it happens.
He most of all.
And when the Host is lifted up
that very spot becomes the Center of the Universe
because that’s where God is looking.

Just think about it. Jesus felt the power flow
when that long-bleeding woman stretched her fingers to his cloak.
He turned to look and asked
“Who touched my clothes?”

How surely must He turn, acknowledging our plea
to come and transform bread and wine
into Himself,
and through them,
transform us.

That’s why I go to Mass.
I want to be there in the room when transubstantiation happens.
I want to be alert when Jesus comes into the world.

Please ring those chapel bells, and ring them loud.
I need to be awake.

“Real Presence,” read by Chris Carstens.

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Chris Carstens is a retired psychologist, now living in Dallas, TX. He and his wife share nine grandchildren, scattered across the country. His current poetry grows out of scripture study and prayer.

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