August pictured himself part cello. Imagined the bow dragging mournfully across his hollow chest, pulling out chord after celestial chord. Shea was an ugly brute—a barnyard face on a body the cassock couldn’t hide—but his looks fell away like a costume the moment he parted his thick lips and spoke. He began simply, as a rule. “A parish priest must be a man of faith.” Anticipation rippled down the rows. “And more. He must also be possessed of an ardent desire to communicate that faith.” About there August closed his eyes. It wasn’t the words themselves—they were plain enough—it was the way they emerged, each breaking the seal of Father Shea’s mouth as though it were the silk of a cocoon. “To communicate, one must be in communion, and to be in communion is to speak out from inside the words.” Father Shea paused. “The sense inside the sound, that’s what people listen for, that’s all they’re truly willing to hear. Words are empty vessels without intention, without thought.
