The Weight of Priesthood

by Stephen Carter
I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD one March Sunday. The chapel curtains were bright with the springtime sun, as if angels were standing outside. The church itself was new, built only a year or two before out in the middle of some farmland. Cows were the closest neighbors. The brown bricks and stoic wood paneling gave the building a solid feel—unlike my stomach, which was clutching and jerking.  One of my buddies, David, was sitting on a chair at the front of the chapel, and large, suit-coated men had gathered around him. I was next in line.
My whole extended family had come to see me. After all, I was one of the first grandchildren to go through a confirmation. Later we’d all get together at our house and eat sandwiches, but first, I had to take the hotseat.  I was a little frightened.  But it was a fear that had never entered my heart before.  I knew the metallic pang from the anticipation of a parent’s wrath. I understood the snatch of panic when older kids came after me.
But this was the first time I had the fear of God in me.
Is that what you call it? Fear? I can’t call it respect or awe; those seem passive nouns. I need some thing active to describe the feeling of coming up against the major powers I had heard about all my life. Fear is when you are going to do something and you don’t know exactly what will happen as a consequence.  It’s when you wonder if you are in over your head.
When you wonder if you might lose something. Or be crushed by what you are given.
Read the full essay