Some people had air-raid shelters dug deeply into their gardens. Our family had a strong steel box placed
against the side of our home. Neither of these shelters would have been protected us
from a direct hit from a bomb. All the same, they would have been some kind of
shield from flying and falling bricks and tiles, and possibly trees.
It so happened that on the eve of the two of us making our First
Communion the sirens wailed an air-raid warning. Dad, who had been a lad at the
time of the First World War and had recently joined the Territorial Army, was
well composed and knew what to do. All of us, Dad, Mother and five boys, were bundled
into the family steel box, furnished
with several camp beds and a quantity of blankets, together with a few snacks.
Each of us had his own gasmask. Baby Chris was placed in his gasmask
incubator.
To this day this is what stands out in my memory after all these years: we were allowed to suck boiled sweets until
midnight and not a moment beyond this. In those days the rule was that anyone
intending to receive Jesus in Holy Communion had to have been fasting from
midnight…no eating, no drinking of anything, absolutely anything. We could not even
suck boiled sweets.
For one moment this made us two little horrors into two little holy
heroes. ..for one solitary moment in our childhood. We had fasted from midnight in preparation
for the most sacred occasion in our lives.
Sometime during the night the ‘all clear’ was sounded, but none of us
heard it. Eventually, when Dad judged that the world was quiet and peaceful, we
all returned to our home. Mother scrubbed us and dressed us in white satin
trousers, shirts and bow-ties. She combed our golden curls into a semblance of
orderliness.
Of the occasion in church I remember not a single thing---God forgive
me! But how could I ever forget the
splendid, never-to-be-repeated, breakfast of strawberries and ice-cream? Dad and Mother gave each of us a Crucifix as a memento of this most special of all days. Over the years these Crucifixes have acquired a huge significance for Isidore and for me.
I remember them hanging over our beds right up to the time – ten years
later - when, as young men, we left home to enter the Novitiate of the
Dominican Order. Immediately we had completed our studies for the priesthood
Isidore and I were sent to work in the West Indies. Ill-health forced Isidore
to return to England.
By the time I was due to return home Dad had died, my three brothers
had married and settled in their own homes, and mother had moved into a
comfortable small house where she would be on her own.
My First Communion Crucifix was among the few articles she was able to carry from the big family house
to her new home.
This Crucifix hung over her bed right up to the time when she died at the age of
ninety three years. And then my Crucifix was buried with her clasping it upon
the breasts that had nourished me, the heart that had loved me for many and
many a year…she, who more than anyone had reared me to become a practicing Christian,
she who more than anyone had prepared me
for my priesthood…she whose father and brother had been ministers of the Lord in the
Methodist Church.
The Crucifix of my First Communion was the Crucifix of her burial…an
eloquent symbol of the Holy Communion between mother and me, one of her children. Even now Isidore still has his First
Communion Crucifix. It is nailed to the door of his room. I see it every time I
return to England on vacation.
This very Crucifix is the symbol of the Holy Communion of the bonding
of us twins: together on the same day we received for the first time the Body
of Christ; together on the same day we were ordained to the Priesthood.
This Crucifix, hanging on his door, keeps us in mind of what we mean to
each other…keeps us in mind of how much we owe our vocations to the mother who
nurtured us. The
Crucifix that heads this blog is the very one received by Isidore over seventy
years ago. This is godwsway of showing both of us ourway of best serving Him in
a way that is fulfilling to us both.
Peter Clarke, OP
