HUMOUR
FOR
WINTER

The Canon

Canon Murphy presided over the funeral Mass of a fellow canon. It was an awesome, if chaotic, sight. The spectacle of a bishop and a multitude of priests, crammed together like bees in a hive behind the altar, made a lasting impression on the faithful. Never have so few stood in so little for so long. One of the priests had forgotten his vestments. As he was only five-foot-one, an old, frilly white alb was found for him. He looked like a cross between an altar boy and Tom Thumb.

The first problem was caused by the microphone. It seemed to have taken on a life of its own and emitted various crackling sounds at the most solemn moments. Such was the disturbance that one of the priests turned it off. This brought hazards of its own. The celebrants had to rely on vocal projection. While this was fine for the bishop, it was less so for Monsignor Rodgers who always spoke as if he was suffering from a bout of tonsillitis. Those priests whose vocal ranges were somewhere in between seemed to think that they were obliged to break the sound barrier by shouting, rather than reciting, their modest contribution to the liturgical celebration.

The second problem was that everybody assumed that somebody else was organising the ceremony, so that nobody knew who was doing what or what was supposed to be happening. A priest would stand up to intone some prayer and just as abruptly sit down on discovering that at least one other colleague had beaten him to it. There were protracted pauses as everybody looked to the bishop to see what would happen.

Of course, there was the choir. For reasons best known to himself, the late canon had taken a particular aversion to the choir, with the result that they were normally only to be heard on Midnight Mass and Christmas Day. In the light of the musical talent which was evident on those occasions, the canon’s decision to employ their services so sparingly looked more and more judicious. Neither the organ nor the organist were in the first flush of youth nor even in the second. The combination of two idiosyncratic performances made for interesting – if not elegant – listening. The choir predictably lived down to expectations. Even by their own standards, they were abysmal. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the assembled clergy seemed to have formed a rival choral group, apparently singing the same hymns at a different speed to a different arrangement and musical notation.

The last straw was the prayers of the faithful, which Monsignor Rodgers had arranged beforehand. Gerry ‘The Hop’ McCarthy, the canon’s right-hand man in the parish, had been asked to say one of the prayers as a recognition of his loyal service and friendship to our late pastor. In a trembling voice he mumbled something indistinguishable – even to those in the front row. He gained confidence though with each word – only to make an embarrassing faux pas just when his voice was clearly audible – by praying for the canon’s ‘immorality’ rather than ‘immortality’.

Love Hurts

One day Fr. Dan’s car broke down on the way to a wedding ceremony and he was an hour late on arrival. The wedding party was beginning to panic when he arrived, his face taut with worry; he was so embarrassed seeing the distress in everybody’s expressions that he never forgot the incident. The groom was a teacher. His name was Tomás and he was a tall, fair, amiable and placid fellow, seldom roused to anger, even when he had the most cheeky and disruptive pupils in his care like Ciaran, who was short, dark and sly, and of course the red-haired Peadar, who was one of the laziest lads he had ever encountered.

The wedding took place on a glorious summer afternoon, with fluffy white clouds flecking an impossibly blue sky, trees whispering softly in a gentle breeze, and the lazy sound of bees humming among the hedgerows. Cows lowed contentedly in the distance, and the air was rich with the scent of ripe corn and scythed grass.

There had been a fierce heatwave earlier that year, followed by torrential rains that had devastated farmland all over the country. Fortune had smiled on this area, though: its crops had survived the treacherous weather, and the harvest was expected to be excellent. It was already evident that the local farmers would not go short of bread that winter, and the fat sheep and cattle dotting the surrounding hills indicated they would not be short of meat, either.

But the father of the bride saw none of this plenty: his mind was on another matter entirely. His only daughter was a slim, elegant woman who took considerable pride in her appearance. She loved clothes, and spent a lot of her father’s money ensuring she was never less than perfectly attired, from her always fashionable hat to her stylish designer-brand shoes. Her weakness for finery exasperated her father, who was always reminding her that while he was not a poor farmer, he was not exactly wealthy, either, and that he had a duty to her seven brothers to use the profits from the family farm more wisely than frittering them away on extravagancies. His face went white with anger when he thought of all the money his daughter had cost him. The one bright note on his horizon was that from now on Tomás would have to foot his daughter’s bills. Her trusting husband would get an introduction into ‘for richer or poor poorer’ much sooner than he ever could have envisaged.

Twenty years later, Fr. Dan met Tomás at a function in a local hotel for a fundraiser for the St Vincent de Paul. There was a rainy spirit in the air, too; spiteful little droplets carried in a bitter wind that stung where they hit.

As soon as he got inside the door after seeing an elderly woman staggering in, puffing like a pair of bellows, he greeted the organiser and mumbled, ‘I am sorry for being late,’ in the automatic way that suggested these were words uttered on far too regular a basis.

He could not help but overhear snippets of conversation as he wove though the tables. As he slumped gratefully into a chair in the corner of the reception room in the hotel and secretly wished he was at home in front of the fire watching Match of the Day his sharp expression softened as he saw Tomás for the first time in years. He beckoned the teacher over and shook his hand and smiled as he said: ‘I’m so sorry about that horrible fright I gave you on your wedding day.’

‘So am I,’ said the man, so venomously that Father Dan was repelled by the malice that blazed from his face. In truth Tomás did not look well. His face was pale, and his eyes were watery. He smiled, although it was not a pleasant expression. Tomás sat heavily on a nearby chair, and Father Dan saw the colour drain from his face. He appeared to be on the verge of exhaustion as he said with real feeling. ‘I’ve still got her!’

Go with the Crowd

Claude Stevens won the silver medal at the discus at the Montreal Disabled Athletes Olympics in the 1970s. Claude was a merchant seaman for twenty years until he fell off the hold of a ship and was paralysed from the chest down. He was renowned for his sense of humour. One of his favourite stories was of the wheelchair athlete who flew to Lourdes for a cure, but he was so exhausted when he got there that they were afraid to take him out of the wheelchair to immerse him in the pool, as is the traditional practice for pilgrims, for fear he might collapse. Instead they put him, wheelchair and all, into the sacred pool. Then another of the great Lourdes miracles took place. The man was not cured but when he came out the wheelchair had a new set of tyres!

Gratitude

I am an atheist, thank God.

For God’s Sake

If I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me my grey hairs.

CARDINAL WOLSEY, 1473–1530