Juan has come late to mass again, wandering over from the retirement center next door. He can’t seem to remember what time it is.
I’m unsnapping my alb—everyone else is gone—but, grudgingly, I bring him over to the tabernacle, open the two small metal doors, and remove the Body of Christ.
And when I reach out to put the host on his tongue, before he receives, he turns his smooth, brown, ancient head and kisses me on the inside of the arm.
In the crook.
from Light When It Comes (Eerdmans 2016)