Free The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore Page A

towards one’s personal salvation than the bickering that goes on about church bazaars. Miss Hearne had her lifelong devotion to the Sacred Heart. He was her guide and
     
    comforter. And her terrible judge. She halt a special saint, to whom she addressed her novenas: Anne, mother of Mary. She used to have a special confessor, old Father Farrelly, Rest in Peace. She had never missed Sunday Mass in her life, except from real illness. She had made the Nine Fridays every year for as long as she could remember. She went to evening devotions regularly and never a day since her First Communion had she missed saying her prayers.
    Religion was there: it was not something you thought about, and if, occasionally, you had a small doubt about something in the way church affairs were carried on, or something that seemed wrong or silly, well, that was the Devil at work and God’s ways were not our ways. You could pray for guidance. She had always prayed for guidance, for help, for her good intentions. Her prayers would be answered. God is good.
    As she knelt there, beginning her prayers, the organ ground out a faltering start and the choir started up discordantly in the gallery. Then the voices caught up with the music, lifted above it and the priest appeared, shuffling across in front of the altar, peering over the covered chalice so that he would not trip on the carpet. Two small altar boys scuttled after him, settling themselves on the altar steps with the ease and nonchalance of little boot-blacks on the steps of some great temple.
    The Mass began. The choir sat down noisily in the gallery as the priest mumbled the opening prayers. Miss Hearne looked at him, the celebrant of the Mass, Father Quigley, he must be. She kept her eyes on him tintil he turned, a tall mart with the hollow cheeks and white face of an inquisitor. His hair was still strong and black but it had’made its own tonsure, leaving a little saucer of white baldness at the back. His hands, she noticed, were long, with long spatulate fingers, gesturing spiritual hands.
    Then the organ groaned again and the choir stood up and sang. The crowd of worshippers immediately set off a tictac burst of coughing which rose in one part of the church, moved on, died, then started up afresh in an entirely different place.
     
    The latecomers jostled, whispered and shuffled at the back of the church, and the singing of the choir was all but drowned in the resultant noise and confusion.
    But Miss Hearne knelt upright, her heart singing a Te Deum, a full chant which admitted no distraction. For here she was in church, after all these years, with a good man kneeling beside her, not the youngest or the handsomest surely, but a man who had not forgotten her in the moment of meeting, a man who had kept his faith and said his beads and had not been turned away from God’s love by bitterness or evil or any sinful temptation.
    She gave thanks then to the Sacred Heart that He had sent her the trials and tribulations of her last lodgings that she might move to Camden Street and meet Mr Madden and walk with him to Mass, and from him hear the secret things of his life. And she went up unto the altar of her Lord, her Lord who rejoiced in her youth. She sang His praises and she asked her soul why it was sad and why did it trouble her. I believe in God, said the Missal, and she believed and praised Him again for He was her salvation and her light.
    ‘Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti!’ cried the priest and she confessed to Almighty God, to the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and to all the saints and to you father, that she had grievously sinned in thought, word and deed. It was her fault, her fault, her most grievous fault. Thus, the Kyrie and Gloria passed in alternate praise and blame as the priest moved towards tlie first Gospel. The congregation groaned and shuffled to its feet and the Gospel was read. Then in