Holy, Holy, Holy

Weeks before the Holy Week, the church usually recommends getting a confession, observing fasting and abstinence, eating no pork or beef on Fridays, praying the rosary, and guarding yourself from sin.

At the St. Therese Chapel at UPLB, I usually attend the 5:30 pm mass as much as I can. The chapel is often packed with students, faculties and nuns at this hour. The slow setting of the sun provides warm hues of orange and yellow as the mass proceeds. The wooden altar, with the glass encased images of Mary and St. Therese, is bathed with natural light coming from the tall glass-stained windows from the banister. The sight is just awesome, and couple this with the outstanding choir (Lisieux), you’ll feel like something is possessing you to stay put and absorb the entire homily. It’s the sort of calm that keeps you sane despite voluminous projects, insane reports and deadly exams.

Lately, I’ve been going to the chapel because of an entirely different reason: a crush. He’s a classmate from Class X this semester and just last February, I’ve noticed that he sits at the outer benches to hear mass. At first, I didn’t care. Then came a sort of recitation in our class; the type that makes you do calculations on the board. I’m not so good at math. I can’t do quick mental claculations like other people can and I just hate these on-the-board-calculation-recitations because I tend to freeze and get my solutions wrong (I did fine with my problem by the way). Anyway, when he came to solve his assigned problem on the board, WOW!, he just stood there for about 10 seconds and he’s done! He did it so fast that even my prof was surprised. I have a weakness for guys who are math geniuses so forgive me, please, for being a tad shallow. After seeing that, I saw him in a different light (naks!).

It’s nothing serious, really; besides him being tall and cute and smart (Electrical Engineer!), wala lang haha. Point is, I felt guilty that I go to church because of him. So, I stopped going to church for a while. Eventually, after one week, I went to church again and saw him there on his usual place with his crisp white shirt, clean-cut hair and a guy friend sitting next to him. I found a seat near to them and spied shamelessly on their conversation. I looked back to catch a glimpse of him when, OMG, I saw him hold the guy’s hand! WTF!? I looked away and I thought to myself, hhmmm…baka close lang talaga sila…best buddies I suppose. So I ignored what I saw and tried to concentrate on the First Reading. But something kept nagging at me to look back at them again. And so I did. But Lo and Behold, the guy had his arm around my crush! They were giggling and whispering and looking at each other’s eyes while making kilitian! Okay Fine! I thought, circumstantial evidence lang…not good enough to convict.

I didn’t look back until the mass ended. When I did, I saw them taking pictures of themselves at the their seats. Cam whores. After that, they walked out of the church and I followed. At this point, I wasn’t even sure why I was trailing them but still I did. They were laughing as they passed Click; they were walking with a nanometer apart from each other while they kept looking around as if checking for something. They disappeared into La Ville and the second they stepped into the dimly-lit alley, my crush gave the guy a quick peck on the cheek. Ay, ako din. 

I get it, Lord. Thanks for teaching me another fun, life lesson.