Quoted By:
The church is quiet, too quiet, as if the air itself has been pressed flat.
Light filters through stained glass, washing the room in soft blues and reds.
People sit in long rows, close together yet strangely isolated, their eyes lowered, their hands folded.
The priest speaks in practiced rhythms — not songs of triumph, but words of surrender, confession, humility. —
> The congregation echoes him:
soft, subdued, carefully measured.
Not their own words, not their own oaths, but lines repeated since childhood.
The bread is lifted — plain, thin, tasteless. —
The wine is raised — not to toast, not to celebrate, but to remember suffering. —
> “Take, eat… take, drink…”
— The symbolism is profound, but deeply inward:
not a feast of strength,
not a promise of glory,
but an invitation to lay down pride, desire, ambition, and self.
The ritual carries the weight of guilt and the relief of forgiveness.
> It teaches:
life is fragile,
earth is temporary,
glory lies elsewhere,
endurance is holiness,
hope is deferred.
There is beauty in this “ to those who believe ”
but it is a beauty shaped by grief, sacrifice, and the longing for redemption.
The hymns rise, soft and mournful, floating like incense.
Voices blend, not with passion, but with restraint.
Eyes look down or up, rarely at each other.
There is submission here:
to God,
to humility,
to the acceptance of suffering as sacred.
The Eucharist is not a feast of life, — But a rehearsal of Death —
a reminder of mortality,
a quiet promise that salvation lies beyond the world,
not in it.
The people leave calm, centered, subdued.
Not empowered.
Not inflamed with courage.
But comforted in their surrender.
