The First Blessing

   The children cried incessantly, filling the hall with high-pitched shrieks and shrill sobbing. The constant crying bled through the hall’s four thin walls. The other rooms echoed the infants' and toddlers' tantrums, which lasted the entire duration of the Mass.
   Inside the church, the congregation knelt in silent reverence. The Mass had ended; the priest's first Mass in his home parish. Dozens of parishioners awaited the newly ordained reverend for his first blessing at the communion rail.
   The blessed silence broke at the sound of the ill-mannered infant. The flustered father of the child held firmly onto the boy. He had to silence his son before the others in the fold found out the offending child was his own. The man had been such a staunch and vocal advocate of kicking crying kids out of the church. The nearby hall was converted into a sort of cry-chapel, with a close-circuit camera connecting the two spaces.
   One by one, the members of the congregation looked back at the crying child. The man could see them shaking their heads in dismay.  He  held even firmly onto his young son. He whispered into the boy's ear with various threats of punishment for the boy's transgressions. The infant complained with unintelligible sounds, which further maddened his father.
   The father boiled in embarrassment at the baby's outbursts. His wife should have attended Mass, he grumbled; her sickness should never have been an excuse to stay home. He had a highly refined image to maintain, and would rather die than enter the cry chapel. Only women and their weeping offspring should ever attend Mass there, not a respectable man as he.
   The boy's father approached the altar rail with his son muffled against his chest. The line ahead of him took a long time as the priest offered his first blessings to each member of the congregation. With each childish protest, the man would tighten his grip on his son. He could see the older ladies of the church, those who shared his dislike of childish disturbances, shaking their heads at him. The man vowed to make his son pay for the humiliation he had to endure.
   The man knelt before the priest for the first blessing. The priest held his hands over the bowed head of the embarrassed father, and spoke the words of the first blessing. Before the man could arise, the priest said to him, “please, let me bless your child.”
   The man had forgotten about the child he held so tightly against his chest. He thought of denying his son the priest's blessing, out of spite for the boy's transgressions. He relented to the gentle priest's request, as a refusal would harm his good image. The man extended his now silent toddler towards the priest, who gasped at the sight. Tears streaked down the child's face; sweat matted his hair to his forehead. His unfocused, unblinking eyes gazed towards the heavens, his mouth open wide as though in silent adoration. The child lay in his father's arms as though breathlessly, lifelessly, awaiting his father's embrace.
   The hall across the way reverberated with the high-pitched laughter of children, which echoed beyond the cry-room's narrow confines.