I cried at my wedding. After we exchanged the vows, I sat down next to Bill on the altar and the tears started. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those dainty women criers who can get a bit misty and then dab neatly at the mascara under their eyes. No. When I cry, my face scrunches up, my nose runs and my shoulders shake.
A wedding guest told me she thought something might be really wrong, like I didn’t want to marry Bill after all. But that wasn’t it. Sitting next to my brand-new husband, the enormity of the sacrament hit me. I had just promised to live my entire life with this one person — a promise so big the church made the promise into a sacrament.
Within the vows I recognized the sub-promises — promises about parenthood, good times, bad times, health and sickness. Within the vows I heard the whisper that God would be with us in all those times; that God had led us to this moment, and would be in all the moments that would follow. I wept — both overwhelmed with the hugeness of what we were undertaking and overwhelmed that God was part of it.
The word sacrament is defined as a visible sign of God’s grace. I’ve noticed that in the years since our wedding, I cry more easily when either I receive a sacrament or witness someone else receiving one. I don’t really like crying in public, and I wish my tears weren’t so quick to come, but I have come to view my reaction to sacraments as natural.
In the presence of God’s grace, I cry. I liken it to my fall allergies. In the presence of ragweed, I sneeze. It’s really not that different. The crying and the sneezing are a physical reaction to something I know is real; something I can feel is real, but something I cannot see.
Recently, our family went to reconciliation. As I told the priest my sins, I began to cry. Jamie, who was in my arms, looked alarmed.
“Don’t be afraid of that man,” she said, wrapping her arms more tightly around my neck as we walked back to the pew when I was done.
I was wiping away my tears as I sat down next to 11-year-old Jacob. Jacob has often seen me cry in church and wasn’t too surprised, but he did glance around to see who else was looking.
“Mom, people are going to think you robbed a bank or something,” he whispered.
It wasn’t the place to explain to Jacob that I wasn’t crying because my sins were so bad — I really don’t have time for the real glamorous or complicated sins — but rather because in the moment of reconciliation, I feel the grace of God.
I cry at baptisms — those of our children and those of children of friends and family. Nowhere but baptism would anyone talk to new parents of their child’s eventual death, but baptism does. Baptism reaches past adorable sleepers and ingenious baby gadgets to a place where we are reminded of the inherent dignity of human life. God’s grace in baptism is the affirmation of the child as a profound gift — the child as God’s instrument.
Thankfully, I don’t cry at every Eucharist, just at select ones.
The times I can remember crying at the Eucharist are times I’ve gone to church without the kids. Looking back at those moments, often my tears were tears of thanks — thanks for the strength that the Eucharist provides. And maybe a little bit of thanks to be in church without small children.
I’ve never been to an ordination, and even though I was 17 when I was confirmed, I don’t think I realized the significance of the sacrament enough to cry.
Jamie received the anointing of the sick once, and I cried at that, but it might have been as much due to worry for her health as it was awe of the sacrament.
I told a friend once of my embarrassment over all these sacramental tears. She, too, is quick to cry, and I was thinking that perhaps together we could think of a way to stop our public weeping, or at least contain it. But she gently redirected my thoughts.
“In the face of God, we can’t help but cry,” she said. “Be thankful for your tears. Be thankful that the grace is real. When you stop crying, that’s when you need to wonder what is wrong.”
(Scobey-Polacheck and her husband Bill have two sons, Jacob and Liam, and a daughter, Jamie. They belong to SS. Peter and Paul and St. Monica parishes. Scobey-Polacheck welcomes dialog regarding her column. E-mail her at <ascobey@hotmail.com>.) |
