It’s You
written by: Ellie Ness
His homily began, as the Christmas Eve one usually did, with the flight, the manger, and swaddling. The congregation smiled in comfortable familiarity, thinking that they knew what was coming next, but they were wrong.
The priest moved on to expand about what The Word made flesh actually meant. Ignoring children who had been allowed to stay up late for the carol service, he started to talk about suckling milk, filled nappies, and screaming with pain during teething. Expanding on his theme, he took us through the ages and stages of man, not sparing the blushes of the spinsters of the parish.
As he stepped away, pale and bowed, he suddenly looked up, skimming his gaze over the congregation. In the sea of appalled faces, he saw me. Our eyes locked and he blazed with sudden recognition, and I was crushed, unable to breathe…
I shouldn’t have gone. I should have argued with my mother more before mass to prevent what came after.
It was enough that he would come to do the school assemblies, and there were other churches I could have chosen, but I knew that there should have been safety hidden in the swell of the congregation – that I should have been able to remain hidden from him.
Not that I was the one with something to hide. I had taken no vows.
He should have stopped there, but the turn, when it came, was obvious to everyone.
He stretched taller and, with a fervour seldom seen in his usual sermons, spoke about love in all its forms: the love of the Almighty for frail humans; the love of Mary for her boy; the love of a step-father for his adopted son and the love, decades later, of a different Mary washing the feet of the Son of Man. Knowing that he was veering wildly off script for an after-Midnight Mass, he continued to reflect the love of the congregation for one another – husbands and wives, siblings, neighbours, parents and children. He spoke about community acts of love, of caring for children in the classroom or the sick in the hospital. He reminded everyone that life was swiftly fleeting and that death awaits us all.
Expectant, the congregation listened for The Word being wrapped up with guarantees of eternal life, but at this point, he removed his outer robe and his collar and said this would be his final sermon as he was leaving the Church.
My face burned, and I hoped he would spare me for a few days more before his reasons became clear, but no, our announcement became his to tell – en masse at Mass.
“I am leaving my post in this parish as I can no longer continue with this life of celibacy. I have fallen in love and intend to pursue a normal life with Gwen, and I hope you will forgive us.”
The silence was broken by everyone twisting and straining to look around to seek me out. My mother, who had been sitting next to me, was aghast, and she gripped my hand until livid, while whispering, “Straight to hell, Gwen, straight to hell.”
Decades later, I recall, in slow motion, he came down from the pulpit and stretched out his hand towards me and, rising in answer while my mother tried to drag me back down onto the polished pew bench, I stretched out my hand and took his while a dissonance of background noise tried to break through my reverie. The dawning realisation was as surprising as it was thrilling when I understood, finally, that it was applause- applause from my pupils and their families, applause from my friends and colleagues, applause from our community, who had been swept away by the honesty of the moment.
- It’s You - December 19, 2025
- Reunion - November 8, 2025
- Doughnuts Had Failed to De-escalate the Situation - July 23, 2025
