Mass mate

Benvolio didn’t know the man’s name, and Benvolio didn’t know why he’s been bound to a wheelchair all these years. What Benvolio did know was that the rotund, fair-skinned gray-haired man in white short-sleeves barong and black slacks who wore a crucifix round his neck went to church to offer Mass with the help of his caregiver almost daily, if not every day.

Benvolio used to go daily, too, in the small next-to-a-hill city church where the man went; Benvolio remembered when he saw the man being wheeled through the emergency room. Benvolio was well aware that a weekday Mass, often with no Gloria, Second Reading, Apostle’s Creed and Prayers of the Faithful, took no more than half an hour of his time.

In fact, Benvolio found it ultimately prideful to think that Mass took his time at all. A day with Mass, with the Eternal One who created time, was always more orderly and meaningful and happier than any other and therefore didn’t allow for any waste of time.

On such a day, Benvolio could be grateful—no coincidence that the word Eucharist comes from the Greek for “thanksgiving”—not only for things like the morning chirping of sparrows in his terrace, the feather-light noontime blowing of the wind or the evening bursting of the sky in a blaze of orange. He was also appreciative of work nevermind its monotony, commuting nevermind its stresses, people nevermind their eccentricity. So he didn’t dawdle or loiter or backbite strangers in his mind.

Due to the nature of Benvolio’s work, however—he is a journalist, so twists and turns what the world calls news sets the pace of most of his days—he has had to make the effort to remember that the Eucharist he receives on Sundays penetrates and can get him through the week, and that even the Catholic Church commands as a bare minimum the reception of the Eucharist only once a year, at Eastertide.

Anyhow, Benvolio found it helpful that he presented a talk, not once, but twice recently, about the Mystical Body of Christ—the truth that human beings are part of one another, Jesus being their head and they being members of his body. He has not had to worry about missing the Eucharist in the weekday Mass, knowing that Jesus comes to him, to paraphrase Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, in the disguise of every person around him.

Still, Benvolio won’t forget his readings of Church history from which he learned that Pope Saint Pius X early in the 20th century issued a decree permitting daily Communion, teaching that “Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to heaven.” Benvolio desires not only that heaven to which death’s door may open, but that equally important heaven Saint Augustine taught about when he wrote:

“Yet if we believe that God is located in the heavens, meaning in the highest parts of the world, then the birds would be more fortunate than we, since they would live closer to God. Yet it is not written: ‘The Lord is close to those who dwell on the heights or on the mountains,’ but rather: ‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted’ (Psalms 34:18), an expression which refers to humility. Just as the sinner is called ‘Earth,’ so by contrast the just man can be called ‘Heaven.’”

For now, Benvolio is content with Sunday Mass. But he is grateful to God for the life of that just man, the wheelchair bound daily communicant whom he saw again after years. He knows that he is a part of the man in the Mystical Body of Christ and is therefore with him each time he rolls his chair down the aisle to receive the Bread of Life. All the same, Benvolio takes having seen the man again as a patient divine invitation to return soon daily to his Master, at whose feet he first spotted his physically crippled but spiritually unbent Mass mate.