Corpus Christi Sunday

The Lady in Black

A Memory for Corpus Christi Sunday

It's funny how, as you get older, a memory can surface in your mind that you haven't thought about in years, or maybe even, one that you never thought of again since the incident occurred. I had such a memory today.

I grew up in East Meadow, NY and attended St. Raphael Church, and was a student at St. Raphael School. I lived just short of a mile from the school, and so, didn't have the luxury of a bus transporting me to and from school every day. In sunshine, in rain, in snow, in warm weather or in cold, I, along with my friends Ricky and Glenn, walked.

On one extremely cold winter morning when I was ten years old, as Ricky, Glen and I began our daily hike, we were greeted by someone we had never seen before. She was a woman, perhaps in her sixties, bundled up in a long black coat, sporting a black ski mask that covered her entire head and neck, save for an opening that revealed her face. As she walked, the beads of her rosary passed, one by one, through her thumb and index finger, kept warm from winter's bite by the black woolen gloves she was wearing.

She walked briskly, out pacing us. But as she passed, she greeted us with a cheery benediction and ecstatically proclaimed to us the awesome beauty of God's creation, evident even in the bitter cold and snow.

When I got home that afternoon, and my Mom asked me her usual after-school question of how my day had been, I told her all the details about my encounter with the woman in black that morning.

"Oh," she said. " That was Mrs. Pritchard. She was just released from a psychiatric hospital. She thinks she's a nun. Sometimes she hides in the church before they lock it up and spends all night there."

I never spoke to Mrs. Pritchard again; never again saw the black shadow of her appearance rush past me, dressed in her makeshift habit, rosary in hand, on her way to church. For about a month or so, I would see her attending daily mass. But then, she disappeared, gone from church, gone from the neighborhood. One day, I asked my mom where was she, what had happened to her? She told me that Mrs. Pritchard had been committed again to the hospital, that, once again, she had been caught staying all night in church.

I recall Mrs. Pritchard today, on this Corpus Christi Sunday. And I wonder, was she really crazy for recognizing the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist to the extent that she wanted to spend all night with Him? Or are we the crazy ones for not?