Defend me, O God, and plead my cause

against a godless nation.

From deceitful and cunning men

rescue me, O God.

The cassock is long and black: long to cover all, and black to remind the priest that he is not his own man. Had Father had it his way, he would have started wearing the cassock long before, hard upon the heels of entering seminary, but that was not the way things were done for some decades now, and it was a hard-won privilege of ordination to be able to immerse himself in the all-encompassing garb of the clerical state.

Black was the colour of the Middle Ages that said a priest was not a worldly man, that he was not spending money on the reds and blues and golds of the nobility, and though the third Christian millennium had not retained the association of black with poverty, it did put the presbyteral image into a sombre light.

An appropriate light. As a priest, Father was cut off from the rest of society in several painfully tangible ways. The cassock covered a full body of clothing, it also seemed to cover a multitude of sin. The black of mourning, the black of society-rejecting Goths, the black of the priest matched the unfamiliar cut of his cassock, a dress where men wore trousers, a medieval memory where men were futuristic. In the midst of a deceitful and cunning people, a godless nation, it marked Father out as someone different. It did not defend the priest, as it had his predecessors, from the wrath of the common man, but singled him out as someone different. And yet, despite making him a target, it was a source of strength, a shield in times of battle.

Thirty-three buttons lined some traditional cassocks, and sometimes Father would undo them all, rather than slipping out of the top few, so that he could enjoy the following morning the ritual pleasure of buttoning them back up. One button for every year Christ walked this earth; a sum reminder of the crucifixion. Father was not inclined to be over-dramatic, but as he slowly straightened, button thirteen following button twelve, he thought of himself, alone, singled out, different, as suffering a slow crucifixion of his own.

Since you, O God, are my stronghold

why have you rejected me?

Why do I go mourning

oppressed by the foe.

There had been times, in seminary, when Father had thought it cruel and unusual that the Canadians fathers-that-be did not approve of seminarians in cassocks, as it robbed him of a much-wanted support in times of weakness. There was something about the stiff white collar proud against his throat, and the stately black fascia, hanging like a scabbard at his side that was a reminder of the noble loneliness of his path, a physical discouragement against sin when temptation against chastity struck him.

The devil knew, of course, that his sexuality was a weak spot, as it was all humanity since the Fall. The temptations of the flesh, soft and curving, sweet and swinging, a package of all the delectable, irresistible fruits of humanity’s apparent goodness, were omnipresent in those worldly times. Some days they brushed too close and he fell completely, impaled as it were on his own sword, felt to all his soul as though he had been violently kicked in the crotch. The cassock was no sure-fire defence against the undiscipline of the eyes and mind, but it could still rouse that wayward organ, the brain, to action, the black flag of no quarter flapping with all the might of the seraphic wings against the black sails of Satan.

The cassock fully buttoned, and the broad fascia tightened over his waist—above the beltline, as custom dictated, Father pulled on his alb, the white robe covering the black cassock completely. The alb was the garb of Christ, the tunic of the ancients, and it was the white garment of Baptism. Someday, in paradise, Father hoped it would not be a lie, that he would shine like Moses and Elijah, wrapped in light. For now, however, the alb was a symbol of what he was only in part: a saint graced with Heaven.

Some days this was easier to believe than others. Some days, though the vestments were a stronghold against his own failings and sins, and against the critical gaze of both friend and foe, they were also lies. Oppressed by the devil, Father too easily believed he was rejected by God, justly cast aside for his sins. He was not, as the alb proclaimed, a reborn man. He was not a man of prayer. He was not a man of kindness, meekness, humility, or gentleness. He was a stubborn man, a proud man, a lazy man. Even when the cassock could still some of the physical inclinations to sin, it could not spur him to live holier. The alb, when he reflected on its starched whiteness, could. Ordinary cloth, wool and polyester woven together, it was a humble material, ruder than his mother’s curtains or the most faded of his spring jackets, but its virtue was not in its substance, but in the shape and colour that had been imposed on it from the outside.

O send forth your light and your truth;

let these be my guide.

Let them bring me to your holy mountain

to the place where you dwell.

Some days it was a spiritual battle just to get out of bed, put on a smiling face when he walked into the public domain of the church, and greet Mrs. Swanson who—again—had something for him to bless. Father teetered on the edge of charity at times, knowing that if he drove her away, irate that she was more superstitious than spiritual, he would be lost to her—yet another promising young priest proven to be too liberal and compromising; not like those charming young Legionaries. Simultaneously, there was Ms. Shewticki, a divorcée coming to Communion every Sunday, whom he’d never seen at Confession, and doubted any other priest had. Somewhere between the two of them—neither of whom he particularly liked, as Father admitted, head bowed somewhere between his knees to his Confessor—he had to wear the mantle of leadership in the parish. The stole representing the sacerdotal authority of the priest lay lightly in his hands, four inches broad and tasselled golden, but was a crushing weight on his shoulders as he slept, burdening him down with the spiritual responsibility to see his scattered and ignorant flock through the Pearly Gates before nightfall.

The nape of the stole brushed his lips, held up for a loving kiss and brief, fervent, and instinctual prayer. Head bowed as though to the King of Kings, he raised it over his neck, and then straightened, commissioned for command on the field of battle. It was the dusk of Now and Not-Yet, a time of fuzzy half-light, and Father could sometimes only faintly descry the Way, the Truth, and the Life that would lead him, and those he led, to their final home in Heaven, and on the nights of deepest, existential doubt, he feared not that he was wrong about the road there, but about whether he had the wisdom to guide anyone down the paths of righteousness. What right did he, of all men, have to stand in the Person of Christ? He, who preferred the company of atheists and agnostics that were not his concern to the service of the people entrusted to his care; he, who could not keep his schedule free enough to attend the C.W.L. supper, but could somehow squeeze in a beer with his nihilist college acquaintance—he was no sure guide, he knew. If his flock followed him closely, they might all end up in the mire about either side of the straight and narrow path.

And I will come to the altar of God,

the God of my joy.

My redeemer, I will thank you on the harp.

O God, my God.

Finally, the chasuble was pulled over Father’s head, and straightened before the mirror, followed by a cursory brush of his disturbed hair back to an approximation of where it belonged. Like the poncho it resembled, the chasuble covered all, and it steeled Father’s occasionally doubting spirit. Reserved only for the Eucharistic celebration, the man in the chasuble who paused briefly to pray, then strode out of the sacristy, was not the mere man who had walked in earlier. It was not the self-doubting sinner, who prayed too little for his people, too little for those who asked, and too little for himself. It was not the weak, lazy man who wrote homilies a little too quickly because he spent a little too much time on the Internet. It was not the man who Mrs. Swanson thought said too little in his homilies about the evils of abortion, nor the man Ms. Shewticki resented for bringing it up at all. He was not his own, but led where God and the bishop would take him. Hidden under the chasuble, his skills and his failings subsumed into the role he had been ordained for, he was not Father, he was an alter Christus—another Christ. It was not Father who lived, but Christ who lived in him.

And he went up the aisle to the altar, to praise the God who gave joy to his life, the God whose love made all things worthwhile. For this God, the God praised for four thousand years as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was ever worthy of praise, ever supporting him when he fell, ever tugging him higher whenever he would stretch his hands to the sky. For this God all things were possible, and for this God, Father would try all things, even those which seemed impossible. For this God, for this Christ, he would dwell alone, he would serve the poor and the ignorant, he would wake in the middle of the night, and tend the dying as a mother wakes to tend her child. For this God, he would even dare to suffer death, death on a Cross.

Why are you cast down, my soul,

Why groan within me?

Hope in God; I will praise him still,

My saviour and my God.