I’ve been thinking a lot about Catholicism lately. I think it’s because, in times of tumult, we revert back to our childhood. Memories start coming back to us, things we haven’t thought of in years. Old comforts, old demons. And earlier this month, I found myself standing next to a man on his deathbed. It was an upsetting sight. I didn’t really know how to process it, preferred not to process it at all. I just stood there, trying to keep my facial expression appropriately somber, and out of nowhere, my brain started spontaneously reciting the Hail Mary prayer. It seemed appropriate, for some reason. I have no special reverence for Catholic iconography. I’ve grown fond of the symbolism, but I doubt I’ll ever reach the point where I can believe that, by reciting a predetermined set of words, one can actually get in contact with the Virgin Mary. Still, my mind started reciting this prayer completely of its own accord, and for a single moment I was a child praying before bedtime, recalling the words from rote memorization without once stopping to consider what they actually meant. Then something changed. I considered the absurdity of my empty recitation. I stopped to think, and for the first time in my life, I actually comprehended the prayer's meaning.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Here we have the stuff that seems to stain all prayers—a proclamation of faith and devotion, a summary of the agreed-upon lore. When reciting this section in my head,1 the thought actually occurred to me: does this prayer mean anything at all? But then I continued:
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
This part really packs a punch. I wonder how many lives would be different if the Church had shortened the prayer to just these last few lines, dispensing with the fluff. How many people would have actually understood what they were praying for? This one sentence has everything you need in prayer. A plea for help, an acknowledgement of one's own nature, a higher power to have faith in. It’s a humble ask, an urgent one: I know I’m fucked up and you’re divine, and I know that, no matter how hard I try, I’ll still keep making mistakes, but please help me. The prayer brings up our greatest fear: dying. Perhaps this is why it came into my head as I was standing next to a dying man. I reckon that when one is dying they need this prayer the most, and the guy was basically dead already—it wasn’t like he could pray for himself. That's when the thought occurred to me that it didn’t matter if it was the Virgin Mary I was talking to or anyone else. The cry is the same whether it’s directed towards a saint or a deity or the unforgiving universe itself. Life is scary and uncertain, and I am so small. Save me, save the people I care about. Save all of us.
I then wondered if all Christian prayers are this true, when stripped of their iconography. I know the Serenity Prayer is a saving grace for addicts of all faiths, with its simple instructions:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Is this not the recipe for happiness on Earth? The ability to let go of things that are out of your control, but to maintain your autonomy, doing everything in your power to shape your life to be what you want it to be? The prayer is airtight. If adhered to, it works. I guess that’s the point of rote memorization. To be able to remind oneself, in times when it’s easy to forget, the ideal way to live.
Now let’s take another one:
Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
No wonder this is the quintessential Christian prayer. It encompasses everything that needs to be said, basically. It begs for strength, like the serenity prayer. Like the Hail Mary, it encapsulates our powerlessness, and the idea that, if we take it on faith that everything will be okay, it actually will be, even if we have no idea how. And all of these prayers acknowledge that we are, by our very nature, sinners. The Serenity prayer is a reminder to avoid sin, the Hail Mary is a reminder that we all sin, and the Our Father is a mixture of the two, with a little extra bit thrown in about our own power to forgive, which is a quality of the divine. Isn’t this fantastic? If we didn’t have the good in us, if we were merely sinners, would we ever acknowledge our sin? Of course not. We'd just go on sinning. But instead we think about it, endlessly, and we create prayers to guide us. We’re all little “sons of God”—half-God, half-demon creatures who wrestle with our own evil and still, ultimately, strive to be good.
Why does our status as ‘sinners’ factor so heavily into Catholicism, anyway? Perhaps it’s because it’s a truth that haunts us all. If we wish to be ‘good’ people, our sins disturb us. We feel remorse for the hurt we’ve caused in the past. Still, I feel like there’s something unique to Catholicism that makes it unfairly harsh on sinners. You may have heard the term “Catholic guilt”: the idea that the Catholic religion causes people to feel guilty for things that they cannot control. I’ve always found it appalling. The way they treat sex, in particular, seems extremely oppressive. If we’re innately sexual creatures, then why should we be made to feel guilty and evil for our natural urges. Why should we feel guilty for our thoughts at all? Isn’t it our actions that count? Where do we draw the line, though? For that matter, why feel guilty for any sin? It’s inevitable, after all.
Morality is strange. When we’re exposed to ugliness and death and change and sadness, the compulsion to do wrong is awakened within us. We do not intentionally set out to hurt others. When it happens, we're so wrapped up in ourselves that we fail to realize or care. We lash out. We say things we don’t mean. We temporarily scorn the people we purport to love. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too harsh on ourselves for acting on these urges—after all, there’s not a human being in this world that is not a sinner. But our cultural aversion to “guilt” has taken its toll on us as well. We should feel guilty if we do something wrong. We should repent. We should atone. Intense self-loathing might be a misinterpretation of the traditional Christian mythology, but ruthlessness is certainly a misstep, too. Whenever I get into these long debates with my own mind, I tend to conclude that the key to nearly everything is a matter learning to tow the line. And that’s what these prayers teach us to do: to live neatly in our chaotic home wedged between Heaven and Hell, to act gently but know our strength, to have faith, but not so much that it dulls our power.
It's funny—I'd been taught to pray the way a child learns to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance is actually only one sentence? I didn't until I started working in schools as an adult. I barely even realized that I'd been "pledging allegiance" to my country. It meant nothing. And now, hearing children spout this thing is ridiculous. They put on this fake high voice, stress random syllables, drag out words. And their expressions are completely blank.
That's how I felt when reciting the first half of the Hail Mary—like a little kid with her hands on her heart trying to keep my voice in line with all the others.. First of all, the words I stressed were meaningless. I'd been taught as a child to say this:
"And blessed is the fruit, (pause) of thy womb Jesus."
Why would anyone recite it this way? Shouldn't "and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" be one cohesive statement, with the name "Jesus" at the end packing all of the punch?
"And blessed is the fruit of thy womb: Jesus."
This would make sense. After all, the statement is praising Jesus. I guess it just doesn't have that schoolchildren-chanting-in-unison twang to it. Still, the way I'd been reciting it, I seemed to be worshipping some type of divine cornucopia.