"A wicked sense of humor." I believe that would have been the character summary of any rejection letter I would receive, if ever I chose to apply in any acceptable seminary nowadays.
This long-dormant quirk has been resurrected in today's training, in an exercise I will refer to as the "confessional." Truly, a lot of truth came out today, and shed new light on all of us, binding us all closer together in ways I could not have imagined was possible. The truth, as always, sets us free. Too much freedom, I later discover, is not a good thing.
I will only break the vow of secrecy only to mention a discovery of a "water curse," which jolted a reflex response that made my fellow trainees sit up and say, "Father!" I later confide in my offendee that I myself was a victim of a water curse, having nearly drowned in a family reunion at a water park a long time ago. I occasionally kick the edge of the water when we go to the beach. I distinctly remember finding it amusing, how my entire family surrounded me, and was the reason I found myself in the deep end at the worst time. My friend (the offendee) says she forgives me, but I could never forgive myself for that immature glib. Though she mocks death by swimming, and I mock death through other means, the fact remains that a Royal Priest should know better to "be slow to speak," among other things. God still refuses to kill me, though. Probably too predictable. God almost always wants to surprise us. God does compensate by making me forget to wait for my friend to return my notes in lieu of the exams tomorrow. God adds poverty and a storm on top of that. The encores of God are spectacular, really. Like a three-ring circus.
Another friend later suggested I should stop deceiving myself and stop being a priest. I think to myself, "I can serve God, dammit!" No sooner do the words pop in my mind that I check myself and ask conspiratorially, "Can you, really?" I think back to the days when a prophet would eat bread cooked over his dung-fuelled flame. Or when a giant fish would swallow a deserter and spit him out a few days later. Or when Jesus spoke in riddles and drove the merchants out of the temple with a whip. Or just this morning, when Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales said his request to pray for rain, the Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam, caused the current storm season. Not to mention this evening, where I just finished a loan transaction to rescue me from poverty, while sipping Mountain Dew in the rain - on my way home.
I smile sadly and think of the REAL Divine Comedy - that God and Heaven have a wicked sense of humor, and that it's the prerequisite quality of the citizens of Heaven... and at least one Royal Priest.
