Father Romy faced the children in the auditorium. He was impressed by their behavior. They were absolutely quiet. Their faces were all turned towards him. None of them even shifted in his or her seat.
"Dear children," he began, in a tone that he hoped would sound parental. The children did not react. They just sat looking at him, with no emotion that he could identify. They could very well be just manikins or robots.
"Dear children," he repeated. "Good morning."
All the children suddenly shouted in unison, "Good morning, visitor!"
Momentarily surprised, Father Romy wanted to laugh. He was not a visitor. He had been invited at the last minute by the other priest in his parish to conduct a recollection.
He heard the voice of the principal over the loudspeaker.
"Children," the voice said, "Father is not a visitor. He is here to help you with your spiritual lives."
The children all fell silent.
The principal, who had a wireless microphone in her hand, approached Father Romy on the stage. As she walked towards him, he felt something stir inside him. As a priest, he was not supposed to react in any physical way to women. When women came close to him to take a selfie or to shake or kiss his hand, he never felt anything that he could call remotely physical. He knew that concupiscence was a common problem for priests, but he himself never experienced it, at least as far as he could remember.
Now, however, there was something. It wasn't quite concupiscence. It wasn't even what he would consider desire. But it was definitely something.
The principal looked like the stereotype he had in his mind about principals. She was tall and slim. She was dressed in a long-sleeved uniform, revealing nothing of her arms. Except her hands, which had long fingers.
Her skirt was way below her knees. He could see the stockings glimmer in the subdued light of the auditorium. They were nice-looking legs, what he could see of them below the skirt. He shook his head to remove the thought of even looking at her legs. Vaguely, he remembered the prohibition against "bad thoughts." "If you fill your mind with bad thoughts," he seemed to remember some older priest telling him, "there will be no place for sublime ones."
He moved his eyes from her legs to her breasts. Although her uniform was designed so that she would not have to put a hand on her chest every time she would bend to pick up something from the floor, he could still see that she was not flat-chested. Again, he tried very hard to move away from that train of thought. Unconsciously, he looked up at the ceiling, hoping perhaps to find an angel or two hovering there to keep him from succumbing to the ways of the flesh.
YOU ARE READING
Love After Heaven
RomanceA murder victim gets a chance to return to earth to meet his wife and her lover. He still loves his wife, despite her complicity in his murder. But he returns to earth not as himself but as a priest! How can he and his wife come together again? What...
