Going all to pieces over exchanging sign of peace

Don’t say you’ve never experienced it either – that Sunday at Mass when you’re minding your own business and someone you don’t know comes in with the sniffles beside you.

And then they use the back of their hand to clear the twin streams heading towards their upper lip….the same right hand they intend using when it comes around to offering the sign of the peace.

With that one involuntary hand movement, they have unwittingly thrown you right off your Christian stride.

Because whatever revelations might drop from the mouth of the priest over the next half hour, all you can think of is what has already dropped from the nose of your new neighbour.

You know deep down that he’s just a good Catholic with nothing more contagious than a common cold – but he didn’t use a tissue and the clock is now inexorably ticking towards the time you have to shake his snotty hand.

Could you politely decline the sign of peace on the grounds that you’ve a busy week ahead and have no wish to spend it in the throes of an unnecessarily acquired cold?

But then you look like a pariah because you’re supposed to be coming up to a state of grace, and yet here you are refusing to shake hands with a fellow worshipper in front of the entire Church?

There isn’t time or opportunity to explain your reason anyway; it’s just a simple shake and a quick mutter of ‘peace be with you’, not a chat over a glass of wine at a dinner party.

So you know you’ve no option and yet the more you try to put it to the back of your mind, the more it remains front and centre.

You find yourself watching out of the corner of your eye to check if he’s gone and wiped his nose with his hand again; if he’s picked his ear or coughed into his fist – and the priest might have revealed the Fourth Secret of Fatima during his sermon but that’s not what’s bothering you ten seats from the altar.

You try to internalise so that you get over your Howard Hughes moment; people have been sneezing into each other’s space for centuries without a heavy death toll.

Our forefathers didn’t have electric showers – indeed many of them only had a shared tin bath once in a blue moon – and they didn’t die from hygiene issues.

This poor man has nothing more deadly than a runny nose and a dearth of tissues; he no more wants to use his hand for this purpose than you want to shake it.

And then the consecration is over and the priest is speeding towards the sign of peace; you’re like a common criminal heading towards the hangman.

So you offer him the handshake with a big smile, overcompensating for your 30 minutes of bad thoughts or any negative signals you might have given off by grinning like you have loose wiring or screws.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.