First Holy Communion

I asked the seminarian if God had a penis.

Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash

March 2007. It was the day before First Holy Communion. Our formal induction into the mystery of the body and blood of Christ. The same ritual that promised transcendence but felt more like an overpriced masterclass in keeping secrets. You never describe the taste to anyone, especially non-Catholics. You never touch it after the priest drops it on your tongue. Never mind how the dry-as-dust communion wafer loves to glue itself to the roof of your mouth. You walk slowly to give it the decorum it deserves. And you must bring yourself to a pious genuflection whenever it is raised. Why? It is God in the form of bread, and occasionally wine.

That Saturday, I asked the seminarian if God had a penis.

He was fond of me, that one. He usually took me along on house visits for what he called apostolic duties. I liked walking beside him. Feeling important. Chosen. I was eight. Small. Innocent. Unassuming. I didn’t yet know which questions were off-limits. So I asked if God had a penis.

I felt the air shift. He raised his brows, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a teenager caught in an obvious lie. He glanced around in pure distress, ensuring no one else had heard my earth-tilting question. Then he locked eyes with mine, peering deep, half in disbelief and half expecting to find tiny demons inside me, pulling strings and puppeteering this blasphemy.

I hear that seminarian never made it to the priesthood. Reasons vary. Details stay sketchy. But I was happy for him. Truly. Just don’t ask me why.

Still, my questions were valid. Every text — scripture and catechism alike — called God He. This supreme being who lived behind the high skies shared pronouns with human men. How did we agree on that? Who decided? Has anyone seen God’s genitals? Does he even have any? He had a son, or so we were told. I would not have been surprised if genitals were involved. But the seminarian never answered. He mumbled something about mysteries not for little ears. Then he hushed me to never ask questions that could attract iwe chineke, the wrath of God.

Sunday morning came. Little boys and girls all neatly dressed in white upon white. We walked in performative holiness, our hands folded firmly in that universal prayer pose. Smiling felt like a distraction. This was serious. We were about to receive, for the first time, the very body and blood of Christ. Months of preparation. Passing the catechism classes. Confessing to a priest, for the first time as well. We were the little angels who would soon become bona fide communicants, doing it all in a state of grace, whatever that meant.

I was a key part of that mass, and I remember sitting in the front row. I didn’t just take the first reading and responsorial psalm, I also led the pack in special prayers of the faithful. We sang the prayers. Beautifully. You had to be there. I was truly innocent, you see. No malice. No unworthy desires. Just plain childish curiosity about how we knew to address God with a specific pronoun.

When it was time for communion, we, the first-timers, went first. My mouth felt dry. Probably from anxiety simmering with heightened expectations. There were stories of people whose tongues fell off because they weren’t worthy of this consecrated bread and wine. What if I hadn’t confessed everything to the priest? What if the question I’d asked the seminarian had voided my esteemed state of grace? He didn’t say it did. I decided I was safe.

When the communion finally touched my tongue, it dissolved almost instantly. It was our first and had been gracefully dunked in the wine. A sweet-smelling, fine-tasting red wine. I silently wished it were bigger. And maybe, just maybe, I envied the priest who had to drink that every day. The rest of the congregation got to take only the slim, tiny wafer.

Since we were not allowed to talk about the Eucharist, I could not tell my mother how disappointed I was. I wanted to feel something. Anything. Perhaps, a deep voice echoing in my head as we see in propaganda-heavy Hollywood movies. I expected a movement. A whisper. A tap on the shoulders. Whatever confirms that I have now ingested something, or someone, supernatural.