The Animals’ Sermon

I couldn’t go to Sunday Mass.

Jimmy would have given us a ride in the Dodge, but I just couldn’t. The religious trauma was too sharp. I couldn’t even sit and read the readings and perform Leccio Divina without getting sick. The readings were all about the Bread from Heaven, and I didn’t want to think about the Eucharist just then.

When I came downstairs for the day it was noon. I heard “chip chip!” calling to me from the dining room windowsill, and went to see my friend the Cardinal. The female Cardinal still comes closer to me than her mate will, but the male Cardinal deigns to visit my windowsill, if the window is shut. I’ve scattered the patio in front of that window with delicious heads from my dried out sunflowers. The bright red cardinal was perched on the largest head, preaching a sermon to me. “Chip chip! Chip chip!”

I wondered what hellfire and brimstone he was promising me.

Next, I went for my walk. The two months of colitis have finally cleared up, but I’m so weak it’s a challenge to take a walk. I willed myself to around two blocks of La Belle, just two blocks, slow as I needed, admiring the trees, stopping for breath when I had to. It was a lovely day for a walk. The ground was still soaked after Saturday’s deluge. The air smelled just a little bit like Autumn. It’ll be hot as it was in July by the end of the week, but Sunday was the beginning of a small cool snap, so it was nice to be outside. I turned down alleys past vacant lots whenever I could. I could pretend the vacant lots were meadows, out in the country where I desperately want to go for a hike.

It wasn’t until I got back that I saw that the live trap I left out for the groundhogs and raccoons had been sprung, and there was something in it.

I tiptoed cautiously up to investigate.

The creature that turned its head to regard me was not a groundhog.

The head was a sharp, triangular head, like the head of a rat in a children’s book. It was attached to a mound of matted and mottled gray hair, about as big as a house cat. There was a long, curled, shiny brown rope which for a horrified moment I thought was a bowel movement, but it was a tail.

It was a possum: the Virginia Opossum, America’s only marsupial, the unofficial mascot of Appalachia. And it was the largest, ugliest Virginia Opossum I’d ever seen.

The possum opened his pink V of a mouth at me, baring his teeth as if he were going to hiss, but he was silent.

“I’m so sorry!” I cried.

It was at that point I realized that I’d had the trap for weeks, but I didn’t know how to open it– nor how I was supposed to keep my hands clear of that serrated mouth if I did. But thankfully, Jimmy the mechanic did. He and his boy  got there in about two minutes.

“I don’t know if he’s been in there all night!” I cried in horror. “I just didn’t think to look because I never caught anything before! I was going to return the trap this week but I still don’t have the car to drive it back to the farm! Oh, I hope he isn’t starving! He probably needs water.”

Jimmy’s boy asked if he could put a ripe tomato in the cage, but Jimmy ordered him to stand back. He opened the cage, but the possum did not flee. It only turned that sharp cone of a head to glare at us, baring the teeth once more.

Jimmy turned the cage the opposite way, to face the lilac bush, so the possum would have a sheltered place to run into, but the possum remained still.

Jimmy’s boy asked if he could keep the possum as a pet. He spun a long yarn about the raccoons and rats and groundhogs he already had for pets, which were perfectly safe as long as you had bite-proof gloves and a long leash. I lectured about the benefits of a possum in an organic garden, because they didn’t wreak havoc like a groundhog, and they ate the slugs and other pests. We all backed far away across the yard, hoping the beast would leave the trap, but he didn’t. Jimmy and his boy headed home.

Adrienne and I watched the possum from the back window, waiting for him to move.

I was still afraid that I’d accidentally starved and dehydrated the horrifying creature. I thought perhaps it might be sick. Adrienne recoiled as I googled and read the list of diseases a possum might have. A friend online joked that the possum was probably not leaving because he thought he was in a swank hotel: four walls to protect him, a pile of free food. Luxury, for a backyard marsupial.

I went outside with a cup of water and a piece of zucchini.

“Hello,” I said to the beast.

The possum turned his head to bare those teeth.

I explained that he was free and could leave the trap at any time.

I wondered, if  Saint Francis had been Appalachian, if he’d have preached a sermon about a stubborn possum who refused to embrace his freedom and instead stayed prisoner in a trap because there was free food in it.

I thought sadly, and then angrily, about my complicated history with Saint Francis and the horrifying things that have been done by his children in his name. Of how I’ll never have a normal life or financial stability, or perhaps be able to walk into a church without anxiety, because of this place and these Franciscans. Of how I’d never be certain that God cared about me again until I saw God face to face, because of the Franciscans here in the Charismatic Renewal.

I thought of that story in the Fioretta, where Saint Francis has a vision that the devil will entice many people who have no business becoming Franciscans into the Order to try and ruin their mission. I wondered whose side Saint Francis would be on if he showed up today. Maybe he wasn’t my enemy. Or, maybe he was furious with me for not standing firm in my faith.

In my head, I named the ugly creature in the trap Giovanni di Pietro de Bernardone.  I couldn’t decide if I was doing so to honor Saint Francis or to hurt his feelings.

Giovanni bared his teeth at me as I crouched by the open cage.

“I brought you a snack and some water,” I said, as I set them down at the cage entrance. He didn’t lunge to bite my hand as I’d feared, or even acknowledge it. He kept his eyes on my face.

Just to see what would happen, I grabbed the back of the cage with the tips of my fingers and tilted it. The possum did not slide out. He remained where he was, clinging to the bottom of the cage as if he were glued in.

“All right,” I said. “Well, enjoy your snack.”

I wasn’t all the way across the yard before Giovanni decided to leave the trap, slowly, a picture of wounded dignity. He waddled into the tall grass on the other side of the alley, and remained there.

That evening, the Cardinal was back on the windowsill, preaching his sermon. “Chip chip!”  But maybe it wasn’t a scolding. Maybe he was singing me the canticle of Saint Francis: Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and governs us and who produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs. Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love, and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Maybe he was singing that prayer which Saint Francis never said, but which suits him: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.