Page 196 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

office. He longed for the minor sacred offices, to be vested
with the tunicle of subdeacon at high mass, to stand aloof
from the altar, forgotten by the people, his shoulders cov-
ered with a humeral veil, holding the paten within its folds
or, when the sacrifice had been accomplished, to stand as
deacon in a dalmatic of cloth of gold on the step below the
celebrant, his hands joined and his face towards the peo-
ple, and sing the chant ITE MISSA EST. If ever he had seen
himself celebrant it was as in the pictures of the mass in his
child’s massbook, in a church without worshippers, save for
the angel of the sacrifice, at a bare altar, and served by an ac-
olyte scarcely more boyish than himself. In vague sacrificial
or sacramental acts alone his will seemed drawn to go forth
to encounter reality; and it was partly the absence of an ap-
pointed rite which had always constrained him to inaction
whether he had allowed silence to cover his anger or pride
or had suffered only an embrace he longed to give.
He listened in reverent silence now to the priest’s ap-
peal and through the words he heard even more distinctly a
voice bidding him approach, offering him secret knowledge
and secret power. He would know then what was the sin of
Simon Magus and what the sin against the Holy Ghost for
which there was no forgiveness. He would know obscure
things, hidden from others, from those who were con-
ceived and born children of wrath. He would know the sins,
the sinful longings and sinful thoughts and sinful acts, of
others, hearing them murmured into his ears in the confes-
sional under the shame of a darkened chapel by the lips of
women and of girls; but rendered immune mysteriously at

196 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man