Sunday, April 8, 2012

The Transubstantiation




Growing up in my family of 6 kids we liked to play a lot of make believe. The best was pretending to be an authority figure of some sort. A parent, a teacher, a cop or robber, and of course, as we went to mass every Sunday and had a healthy fear of the lord, a priest. One day in the living room my sisters and I used potato chips and pretended to be priests and churchgoers. 


(Perfectly normal, right?)


Well, my mom yelled at us.

Apparently we were making a mockery of something really special. I thought we were being good Catholics. The shock that we were doing something wrong was immense. So much so that I still remember it 25 years later. The desire to pretend to be a priest may have waned as I grew older, but the guilt grew stronger, affecting every aspect of my life.


For example, for years now I have worked every Easter Brunch as a dutiful employee of various restaurants. Today I am only modestly employed and don’t work. Because of this modest employment, I also can’t travel to be with my family. The guilt is great. I wasn't able to get out of bed today. That is, until this great idea came to be. How better to assuage this Catholic guilt than with a Jello shot that would disappoint my family?




I present, the Transubtantiation. It’s just water and gelatin, but with a little faith, our favorite party god can turn it into wine. Let us pray.

The Transubstantiation:
Gelatin
Water
Faith

13 comments:

  1. Hahaha! Oh my god. Good old religious guilt and disappointment. Glad I'm not the only one feelin' it.

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  2. I'm sure you don't actually care, but...what you were doing was wonderful and you shouldn't have been yelled at. It's a shame when people use religion to guilt each other, that's not what it's about it.

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  3. My four brothers and sisters and I did the same thing using Necco wafers (just the white ones, of course.) The oldest boy (priests had to be male, of course) put on one of our dad's suits backwards, to simulate the priest's robe. We never got in trouble for it. I think my folks figured any way they could get us interested in church was okay by them!

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  4. Laughing as I read your post & the comments. Good to know my 3 sisters, 2 brothers & I were not alone in playing church. We would hold up potato chips and say the words on the Per Ipsem ourselves. I don't know what those chips were supposed to turn in to as we nuns wearing our pinned on white bath towels to simulate their habits. We mocked the way one priest spoke the words too. Through Hiiiiiiiiim (Heeeem), In Hiiiiiiim, With Heeeeeeeem, all power and glory honor is yours now and forever through the Holy Spirit for
    now and forever. To this day, all one of us has to do is hear those words and we burst into uncontrollable giggles. Funerals, weddings, baptisms, it doesn't matter.

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