Pray the Germs Away

Body and blood of Christ, bacteria and viruses of your neighbor:

I am a Catholic and like other Catholics, go to church on Sundays and participate in the mass ceremonies.  I have been a practicing catholic all my life.  I can remember when I was a child however, and I had to wake up early on Sundays and wear my dress clothes (not a dress) to church.  I would be tired from the night before, but over time I came to appreciate Sunday mass.

For those of you who do not have time or do not want to go to church, all I can say is that it is a wonderful place to reflect on things in your life and to be close to the ones you love.  Everyone is happy (except for maybe a screaming baby here and there) and share in the experience as the priest reads from the Bible.

“Sharing”; that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?  Perhaps my definition of sharing may be too extreme for some people . As I remember, one time I was at a church in Florida (which was very nice and peaceful) and when we all had to say “peace be with you” to the people around us; I stuck out my hand to shake hands, but to no avail, nobody shook my hand.

Later, I understood that there was a large percentage of people who preferred not to shake hands because of the possibility of spreading bacteria and viruses.  This made me happy on one hand and creeped out on the other.  I was happy to find out that I wasn’t considered a leper because  nobody actually made contact with other people outside of their family members next to them.

I felt concerned by this however, because I said to myself,  ”what do people have on them that is so bad?”  If we travel back in time to 2009, many of you remember the swine flu situation that we all faced, and before that we had AIDS.  Both of these diseases are still around and when they made their first appearance; the public went nuts and began to take extra precautions to protect themselves from being infected.

Some of these precautions still exist with us today, such as the people in Florida who did not shake my hand.  Something else which I have found interesting is the use of mini plastic cups instead of a chalice for communion.  I will admit that I have never taken a sip from the chalice even when “swine flu” and “AIDS” were not talked about.  I simply thought it was gross putting my lips onto something that had a large number of other people’s lips on it.

I suppose I was ahead of my time with this thought of not sipping the wine from the chalice, as I see less people drinking from it and more churches offering  mini plastic cups.  Maybe I’m a bad Catholic, because I still don’t take the mini plastic cups, or maybe I’m just paranoid about germs, bacteria, and viruses.