Mary Furlong Coomer - Score One for St. Rose of Lima

 

When I was seven years old, that was 68 years ago. I'm 75. You don't have to do the math. [audience laughter] When I was seven years old, I was in a Catholic school. And we were preparing for our first communion which necessitated prior to that, our first confession. The heat that I was most afraid of would be the eternal flames of hell. [audience laughter] Already at age seven, they had put the fear of hell into me. If you ever noticed, everything is geared in the most lax people, all the scary stuff. They don't think about the poor scrupulous little seven-year-old sitting there trembling in her seat, because she just knows somewhere along the line, she must have done something wrong. All right. Concurrent with that preparation were stories about the lives of the saints. 

 

Now many saints, as you may or may not know, and it's certainly worth a google, were blessed with a strong desire for self-abuse and not the good kind. [audience laughter] So, there was all manner of flagellation and crowns of thorns. And in the case of Saint Rose of Lima, of whom our nuns were especially proud, because she was this side of the Atlantic saint from Lima, Peru. So, she, among other things, walked on broken glass as her penance. There were later stories about crowns of thorns. I'm not kidding. You should look this stuff up. It's insane. But anyway, she did this because she wanted to be close to our Lord and all His suffering. Now this was pre-self-esteem days, [audience laughter] you know, she goes back to the 1500s. 

 

But anyway, so we heard the stories of all the different saints. And then, in order to confess properly, we were given a little book that had just like every sin you can imagine in the book. We were supposed to study the book in order to prepare for our first confession. But I thought, oh, my God, what if I missed something? I was really nervous. Now, they had two priests and that's two people on each side. They had two confessionals going that day. But I was so scared I just took the book in with me, and I just figured I would be on the safe side if I just read every sin [audience laughter] and said yes I did it or no, I didn't. 

 

Now, I had problem with some things I didn't understand, like what in the world was S O D O M-Y. [audience laughter] And the good priest who heard our confessions was known to take a wee drop. [audience laughter] So, I have a feeling, because he did not even stop me at all, that my mellifluous little seven-year-old voice just put him out like a light. [audience laughter] But the next day, Sister Catherine Albert, who I must say was generous in just sweeping the room with her eyes, she never looked right at me. She said, “Boys and girls, we are a little behind on our confession schedule, because we had a very thorough little girl [audience laughter] who she could have said child that—" Cut it. She said, “We had a very thorough little girl who found it necessary to name every sin.” And that's really not necessary, just hit the high spots. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I was mortified, plus I'd blown my only confession before my first communion by doing that. Now, what should have only been an embarrassing faux pas in my little seven-year-old mind was a grave sin for which penance was required. I went out back in the alley. There was a lot of broken glass. But I'm like, “You know what? No.” [audience laughter] So, there are limits on sanctity. But I did go in the bathroom and I did turn on the water. We had a very good hot water heater. I did turn on the hot water, as hot as I could get it. I put the stopper in the sink and I plunged my little hands into that hot, hot water and I just held them there as long as I could and I just prayed to be forgiven, because I had to do penance for this faux pas, which of course I thought was a sin. 

 

So, when I levitated out of the bathroom [audience laughter] with little lobster claws, my hands and my mother asked me what happened. I have to tell you, when I explained to her what I did, I felt holy. Thank you.