Free A Blessing In Disguise by Elvi Rhodes

‘It’s not at all what I have heard. But I shall think about it, Miss Frazer, as I shall about many other things. I’m not going to do anything in a hurry.’
    â€˜Very wise,’ she says. ‘It wouldn’t do at all! Not at St Mary’s.’
    And then I can’t keep it back any longer. I look her straight in the face.
    â€˜Miss Frazer,’ I ask, ‘why did you do what you did?’
    She looks back at me. Her eyes are like grey steel.
    â€˜You know why I did it. For me to take the Lord’s Supper from the hands of a woman, a so-called priest, would be a blasphemy. A total blasphemy!’
    â€˜I am not a “so-called” priest,’ I say evenly. I will not allow myself even to raise my voice, nor, I know, will she. ‘I am a true priest of God. My orders are valid. I am consecrated by the Bishop to celebrate the Mass.’ Even as I say it I’m sure she’s aware that the former bishop of this diocese, at the time I was ordained, refused to ordain women. I had to go to another diocese.
    â€˜Mass is not a word I care to use,’ she interrupts.
    â€˜Choose your own word,’ I tell her. ‘I’m still consecrated to offer it and what you have done is not only an affront to me – that hardly matters – you have refused God himself, at the very moment he offers himself to you. What has God done to you that you do this to him?’
    â€˜I could say –’ the reply comes back from her as swift as an arrow – ‘that he has sent a woman masquerading as a priest into our midst, I could say that if it were not that I believe it was the devil who sent you!’
    I shall get nowhere with her. The arguments will go round and round.
    â€˜So,’ I ask, ‘if that’s how you feel why don’t you go to St Saviour’s in Brampton where the priest is a man? And why do what you are doing so publicly?’
    â€˜I have no wish to attend St Saviour’s,’ Miss Frazer says. ‘As I have told you before I have worshipped at St Mary’s all my life. And I did what I did publicly because I believe it to be my duty. St Mary’s has temporarily lost its way. But it will find it again. I am, so far, only one voice – or at least the only one to be heard out loud – but I shall do my small part to guide it back.’
    â€˜You will not drive me out,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll never do that.’
    â€˜We shall see,’ she says – then turns and walks away. Two or three yards down the path she turns round. No doubt she has one parting shot.
    â€˜By the way,’ she says as if nothing the least bit untoward has happened in the last few minutes, ‘I hope you’re going to do something about the state of the churchyard. It’s been disgracefully neglected over the last few months. In my father’s day he would have sent his own gardener down rather than see the grass in its present state, but alas, I no longer have a full-time gardener. Just a man for two hours a week.’
    I can hardly believe her! Is she off her head? And if that’s the case will it make her easier or more difficult to deal with?
    â€˜I understood there was someone who looked after the grass in the churchyard?’ I make a great effort to speak in as normal a voice as I can produce, though I want to scream.
    â€˜There is,’ she says, ‘but he’s only part time, they say they can’t afford any more, and no-one seems to know
what
time or when. In my opinion he needs closer supervision. We must always respect the dead. I’m sure you agree?’
    â€˜Respect the dead!’ I cry. ‘What about the living? What about you respecting me? Whether you like it or not I’m your parish priest. But you – you don’t even have respect for God!’
    â€˜I don’t acknowledge you!’ she says. ‘And I never will!’
    â€˜Then I shall manage without