A Football Homily

;The Road to the Church
;I haven't seen a storm like this in all my ten years here.
;Floods, typhoons, droughts — it felt like we had survived it all on our Thai Island. But to have a motorbike literally washed off a flooded road by a sudden, violent gale of wind and rain — that was a first. Several times my husband managed to steer us out of it by some miracle. Terrified, Shurik was shouting profanities so loudly he actually drowned out the roaring elements. Thank God, we reached the church unscathed, though we were soaked to the bone.
;Strangely, the gates were locked today. How odd. We had to take another driveway, the one shared with the police station.
;And there, we couldn't believe our eyes: the Catholic Church of Mary Help of Christians was closed. Through the glass doors, you could see it was completely empty. What kind of day was this… Where was everyone? Where was Father Michael? This wasn't like him at all. Something was wrong…
;We stood on the steps, utterly bewildered, trying in vain to make sense of it. Then, a tearful Thai woman who looked after the church grounds stepped out from behind a column.
;"No Mass today. Father has passed away."
;The Road to the Church (Part 1)
;I will never forget my first meeting with Father Michael. It happened ten years ago.
;…I was in a foreign country, penniless, with my husband in the hospital, completely broken after a motorbike accident. You can imagine my despair. In a hopeless situation, you naturally look for a road to the church. What a stroke of luck that in a Buddhist country, on a tiny tropical island, there was a Catholic church.
;In a typical Asian province, the church grounds looked like a little piece of Europe, which felt absolutely surreal to me. In the center stood a single-tower Gothic building made of red brick. A neatly manicured lawn was lined with cypresses, all pruned to the exact same height. A true miracle.
;Considering I had made my way through some sketchy, drug-riddled slums that hemmed in all this magnificence, I was simply overwhelmed.
;Alas, I only made it to Mass on my third attempt — God loves a trinity, as they say. Given that the walk from the hospital took about forty minutes — sometimes in the scorching heat, sometimes in the pitch dark — it felt like a true pilgrimage, and a threefold one at that.
;At first, I came during the day, only to find out that Mass was in the evening. I came in the evening — they told me that on weekends services were held in the morning. Finally, half dead with fatigue, I reached my goal.Like a Fish in Water
;The day finally came when Shurik invited Father Michael to go diving.
;Life, you could say, had turned a corner: bones had mended, and the clumsy crutches were replaced by a walking cane—mostly kept for style. The sea and the sun had done their magic; the patient’s rehabilitation was top-tier, as medical folks would put it.
;In the British diving center where Shurik had been invited to work, they had recently introduced a service called a "try dive." This meant a potential client could try breathing from a scuba unit in the pool of a five-star hotel for free. Under this setup, Shurik could freely "dive" his friends and close acquaintances. Like Father Michael, for instance.
;When Father Michael pulled up to our place in his light-blue car, featuring a graphic print of the Virgin Mary on the hood, the aloofness completely vanished from his face. On the contrary, he now looked like a respectful student.
;The two of them walked over to the hotel. They splashed around for about three hours.
;Shurik the instructor suffered from a certain stubborn meticulousness. Instead of just swimming around the pool for pleasure, he demanded the execution of almost every drill from the Open Water course: breathing with the regulator out of the mouth, sharing regulators with a buddy-partner, and taking the scuba unit off and putting it back on underwater.
;Back home, I fed lunch to a exhausted priest and a thoroughly satisfied Shurik.
;"Next time, we’ll head out to Sail Rock," my husband planned.
;"Oh, no, I won't be able to. Too much strain on my heart," Father Michael declined with regret.
;Even back then, ten years ago, he used to complain about a weak heart.
;The little house we rented was designed for low-budget folks like us. Thai, Burmese, and Filipino workers usually lived in these. According to local building standards, the house had two entryways—all doors wide open to ensure constant ventilation. The local cats took full advantage of this. One striped teenage cat named Tigra brazenly stretched out on the floor, right in the middle of the walkway, as if he owned the place. I had to step over him constantly while carrying plates.
;"He likes it here," Father Michael noted from the table, watching the sleeping animal with visible pleasure.
;"We had pets back in Russia too—two cats and a dog," Shurik said.
;"Cats are better," our guest stated for some reason, keeping his eyes on Tigra.
;I absolutely loved that: I trust people who love cats.
;My dishes were simple: chicken legs and breasts fried according to my favorite Chicken Tabaka recipe, alongside a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and fresh greens. For dessert, I served watermelon and pineapple, cut into chunks.
;I was surprised to see Father Michael eating his fruit with salt.
;"Back in Russia, it would never cross anyone's mind to do that," I remarked.
;"And that's a shame: it's very delicious to put a little salt on it," Father Michael smiled blissfully.
;He also taught us how to marinate meat in tamarind fruit. Tamarind is a type of acacia tree that grows as tall as a poplar. The pods contain seeds with a terribly sour coating. It’s something like dried cherry plum, only even sourer. Their thermonuclear acidity does a wonderful job prepping meat before frying.
;Ever since then, whenever I see a tamarind tree, I think of Father Michael.
;The Car with the Virgin Mary
;After the hospital, our new Catholic friends successfully helped us find housing and even cleverly negotiated a discount with the Thai landlords.
;Shurik could already move around with a cane over short distances. For example, down to the ring road, where we could wait for a songthaew—or a tuk-tuk, as the red, open-air minibus is more commonly called on the Island. Mind you, they didn't run very often and weren't cheap. Getting around the Island is a massive headache if you don't have your own transport.
;We were standing there, waiting for a public tuk-tuk, when suddenly the familiar car with the Virgin Mary pulled up beside us: Father Michael had spotted us on the roadside.
;"Get in, quick," he invited.
;From then on, every Sunday he would pick us up. Sometimes the six-seater car was already packed with parishioners, and we had to squeeze in.
;If you think all priests are this accommodating, you are mistaken. We found that out the hard way, unfortunately, when another pastor filled in during Father Michael’s absence.
;Thai people don't speak English very well.
;So poorly, in fact, that wits coined a special name for this bizarre language—"Thaiglish." Not only does it lack articles, tenses, and plural forms, but certain letters are missing entirely. For example, Thais can't pronounce the letter "l" at the end of a word, replacing it with an "n"—so they pronounce the word school as skoon. And in the word money, they stress the last syllable and stretch out the "ee" sound too much. If you say it with the correct stress, they won't understand you. On the bright side, Shurik and I had a complicated relationship with grammar ourselves.
;This made Father Michael blow us away even more with his excellent English. He had simply studied at a seminary in the Philippines, where he mastered the language perfectly.
;Jose and Maria would wait for him at the entrance after every Mass to chat.
;They would hang out by the church for a good hour, and the priest gladly discussed a wide variety of topics with them, sometimes quite complex ones. For instance, the Thai mentality.
;"Thais are foolish. They will never be able to play football well," Father Michael once declared. "It's because they are incapable of working in a team. A Thai thinks like this: that guy is okay, this guy is okay, but I am the best!" Father Michael grinned with a self-satisfied smirk and puffed out his chest, which looked incredibly funny.
;There were two Catholic communities on the Island: at St. Anne's Church in Nathon, the service was conducted strictly in Thai for the locals, while on Chaweng, at the Madonna Chapel, it was in English for the farangs (foreigners).
;There, Father Michael would read his homily first in Thai, then duplicate it in English. The Thai portion sounded completely different in timbre: it was a strained, melodic tenor, the way the natives speak. But the moment Father Michael uttered, "My dear brothers and sisters!", a powerful, rich bass would echo from the pulpit. This switch served as a signal for us—like, time to wake up and pay attention.
;Now I deeply regret that I didn't fully grasp his English back then. His homilies were highly theatrical: the priest would angrily raise his voice, hold dramatic, theatrical pauses, or make jokes, mimicking people in character, which would have the entire congregation rolling with laughter while I felt like a total idiot. Shurik, on the other hand, would openly doze off.
;One day, Father Michael chose that same notorious topic of football as his theme, likely because of some fans who had caused a riot somewhere after a championship match. He decided to use this to illustrate the biblical verse, "Do not create an idol." The good father condemned, ridiculed, and shook his fists. That Sunday, the homily lasted longer than usual. Ah, if only I didn't have such trouble translating!
;"What did you get out of the homily?" I asked Shurik after Mass, while the parishioners were mingling around the table with tea, coffee, and Coca-Cola. "What was he talking about?"
;We usually pooled our extracted bits of knowledge together—two heads are better than one, after all.
;"What's there to get," Shurik replied in a bored voice. "About fOOtball," Shurik stressed the first syllable, mimicking Father Michael.
;"I know it was about fOOtball, but what exactly?"
;"Well, like, we have to believe, and then they will win," Shurik raised two fingers in a peace sign.
;A very loose translation—essentially the exact opposite of what was said. I burst out laughing and rushed over to the priest to recount this whole game of "broken telephone."
;How he roared with laughter! To the point of tears, holding his stomach and squealing. Catching Shurik's eye, he gave him a big thumbs-up from afar. My husband bowed jokingly.
;After that, Father Michael started a church Facebook page, where he posted his homilies in black and white—for those who were specially gifted at being slow on the uptake auditorily.
;The Price of a Confession
;Unlike Jose, who never took Communion, Maria was extraordinarily devout. Her mind was a constant whirlwind of religious ideas, each one more mind-blowing than the last. Behind her back, Shurik and I called her Simply Maria, after the heroine of one of those popular Latin American soap operas.
;Early in our acquaintance, she drove us ragged with an idea for a procession, which was supposed to be led, according to her plan, by Shurik on his crutches.
;"Alex will carry a banner that reads 'Thank you for the miraculous healing' in two—no, three languages: Thai, English, and Russian!"
;Thank goodness the wind blew that thought right out of her head, and she forgot all about it.
;But that wasn't all:
;"Lelya, I’ve decided we must found a Rosary society! Absolutely! And you will be the leader."
;"Why me?!"
;"You’re the only one here who has made a pilgrimage to Medjugorje."
;"So what? With my English..."
;"It doesn’t matter, we’ll be praying the Rosary, not chatting in English. I’ve already informed the nuns about it."
;"And what did they say?"
;"They suggested asking the pastor."
;I relaxed; Father Michael always let Maria’s grand ideas quietly fizzle out. Once, I even heard him say: "I don’t trust people who talk about God too much."
;And he’s a priest! I thought back then.
;Time passed, and I realized he was absolutely right. Father Michael couldn't stand ostentatious piety. I had learned that much back in the hospital.
;…From time to time, Father Michael would drop by to visit Shurik. I felt terribly awkward for my husband: it seemed to me the priest was coming with the intention of hearing the patient's confession before Easter, but instead had to engage in polite small talk, rather than getting down to business. I was convinced that if Shurik just confessed, he would start recovering faster. In our situation, any remedy was worth a shot.
;But the more I nagged Shurik, the more he dug his heels in.
;As luck would have it, Father Michael peered through our window once again. I invited him into the ward and pulled up a stool.
;"I'm so sorry, Father, I just can't seem to persuade him to confess before Easter," I complained, swallowing my embarrassment.
;Shurik lay there, turned entirely toward the opposite wall.
;"None of your business," the good father snapped at me.
;"Fine then, I'll leave you two miserable souls alone," I popped out of the ward and went to gather small mangoes in the hospital garden.
;When I returned, I found a red one-hundred-baht note sitting on the bedside table.
;"Where did the money come from?" I inquired.
;"Where, where... I earned it," Shurik teased.
;"How?"
;"Father Michael paid me. For the confession," he joked.
;"Unbelievable! A whole hundred baht!" I cried, genuinely amused. "I go to church, I confess regularly, and nobody gives me so much as a coin. And here you are..."
;"Oh, come on," Shurik laughed. "He said a patient in another ward donated the money to him, so he decided to pass it along to someone in need. And I happened to be right there with my confession. But I told him you'd donate it right back at the Easter service. That money belongs to the church."
;And so we did: I placed that exact hundred-baht bill into the collection basket during the Easter Mass.
;The Water Miracle
;By his looks, it was obvious that Father Michael was Chinese, not Thai. To me, he looked like a walking illustration of a "Chinese mandarin." Nevertheless, the Thai language was native to him.
;The history of his family was passed down to me by Maria.
;…Once upon a time, a young boy was herding livestock in a Chinese village, on the outskirts of which stood a Catholic church. While the goats grazed on the grass, the child would stand by the open doors, listening closely to everything happening inside. He loved the hymns accompanied by the organ and was deeply moved by the priest’s homilies. It was no surprise that the young Chinese boy came to believe in Christ, and at one point, embraced Catholicism.
;When Mao Zedong came to power and launched the Cultural Revolution, the persecution of Christians for dissent began. People fled wherever they could, including Thailand. The young Chinese man settled in the north of the country, in the mountains of Chiang Mai.
;When it came time for him to marry, he resolved that his chosen one would strictly be a Catholic. A considerable amount of time passed before he met a lovely girl from a Chinese Catholic family. Naturally, he proposed.
;When their son was born, the ecstatic father declared that the boy would definitely become a priest. That child was the future Father Michael.
;I had never met a priest as intelligent and multifaceted as Father Michael. He was well-versed in classical music, interested in quantum physics, and was a big proponent of the Japanese theory about water possessing a "memory."
;One day, my friend Katya was thirsty and asked him for some water.
;The usually stern Father Michael suddenly beamed. When he brought out a glass bottle of water, I noticed a homemade label stuck to the side with the word Graceful written on it. I recalled that the exact same thing had been done to water vessels in a documentary the priest had screened for the parishioners after a service.
;The good father poured the water into a glass and handed it to Katya with a mysterious look. She drank, and he gave a sly smile.
;"Can I have some more?" Katya held out the empty glass. "It's so delicious!"
;Father Michael laughed and splashed some more in.
;I took a sip from the magic bottle too. Indeed, the water tasted remarkably delicious; you just wanted to keep drinking it, while Father Michael watched the process with genuine affection.
;Palm Sunday
;I remember my utter confusion when I attended Church on Palm Sunday for the first time in Thailand: there wasn't a single willow branch in sight.
;Then it clicked: why would there be pussy willows? In Russia, they merely symbolize palm branches due to a lack of anything better, but here, you're surrounded by the real thing, just like in the original scripture. In Thailand, it isn't Willow Sunday; it's truly Palm Sunday.
;Yet, instead of actual palm leaves, a tray by the entrance held woven botanical arrangements crafted into green rosettes and ornamental cords. That was the local custom.
;Unlike the date palm, whose branches are manageable, coconut palm fronds are unwieldy and cumbersome for a church service. These elegant, lovely woven creations, symbolizing the palm, were much more practical.
;Each parishioner would select a few to make a bouquet, take them home to keep in a vase until the following year, and then burn them on Ash Wednesday.
;When the service ended and everyone gathered around the table with the traditional refreshments, I stood focusing intently on my "palm," trying to decipher the secrets of the craft.
;Father Michael walked up to me.
;"It's very simple."
;"I want to weave one too," I said.
;The father gestured to a young Burmese helper and commanded her to bring a palm frond and a knife. She ran behind the church and returned with a large green fan. Father Michael sliced the spine off the branch and began weaving it with a pair of strips.
;"Go on, take over," he shoved the greenery into my hands.
;He had to correct me a couple of times, but then I caught on and got quite nimble at it. Father Michael watched me and laughed, and his staged aloofness vanished completely.
The Baptism of the Black Infant
;I will always remember that particular baptism.
;The godfather-to-be turned out to be a Croat, while the godmother was a Montenegrin. Both were tall, starkly contrasting with the petite local nuns. They were standing by the font, bickering over some historical grievances between their nations, right in the middle of the sacred ritual.
;"We fought you back then, and we’ll fight you again!" the Croat hissed, leaning over the font.
;"Oh, shut up, you Usta;e!" the Montenegrin snapped back, adjusting her formal dress.
;Between them stood a tiny, dark-skinned Thai baby, completely oblivious to European geopolitical conflicts, waiting to be cleared of original sin.
;Father Michael, as if entirely deaf to their mutual insults, calmly and unhurriedly carried on with the prayers. When the moment came, he scooped up some holy water and poured it over the baby's head.
;"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
;The baby let out a high-pitched wail. The bickering godparents instantly froze, suddenly remembering where they were. Father Michael looked up at them with his characteristic, deadpan "mandarin" expression, completely unfazed.
;A Word of Four Letters, Starting with 'H'
;We didn't just attend Mass; we also sang in the church choir.
;The choir consisted of three Filipinas, Shurik, and myself. It was an interesting ensemble, to say the least. The Filipinas sang exclusively by ear, having no concept of sheet music whatsoever. Our rehearsals were a testament to human patience: we would learn the songs line by line, repeating after the Filipinas like parrots. Shurik and I had a rather tough time adjusting to their unique vocal style.
;One day, Jose—the Filipino who never took Communion—approached us after a service.
;"An wealthy Indian family is flying in from Hong Kong. They are throwing a lavish wedding at a five-star hotel, and they want a Catholic ceremony in our church. Father Michael suggested you two handle the music."
;"But we don't have an organist," I countered. "The Filipinas only play acoustic guitars."
;"Lelya, you will play the organ," Jose declared with absolute certainty.
;"Me?! I'm a pianist, I've never played a pipe organ or a synthesizer in my life!"
;"You'll manage. Father Michael insists."
;There was no backing out. The church possessed a decent electronic keyboard that emulated a pipe organ quite well. The main challenge was that a real organ requires completely different finger technique and articulation—there is no sustain pedal, so you have to connect the notes purely with your fingers, otherwise the sound just dies instantly.
;For two weeks, I practiced like possessed. My fingers were stiff, and the acoustics of the empty church made every mistake echo loudly. Father Michael would occasionally peak out of his office, listen for a bit, and nod encouragingly.
;The day of the wedding arrived. The church was transformed into something out of a Bollywood film: garlands of exotic flowers, silk draperies, and guests dressed in stunning, brightly colored saris and tailored suits. The fragrance of incense and expensive perfume filled the air.
;I took my seat at the instrument, my hands trembling slightly.
;The ceremony went beautifully. When the time came for the grand finale, I launched into Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
;As the powerful chords echoed through the hall, something incredible happened. The Filipinas caught the rhythm, and their voices soared. The Indian guests, swept up by the music, began to sing along, their voices blending into a magnificent, joyful chorus. I forgot about my nerves, forgot about the lack of a pedalboard—I was just riding the wave of that glorious sound.
;Father Michael stood at the altar, beaming with a radiant, joyful smile.
;After the ceremony, the wealthy father of the bride approached us and handed us a generous envelope for the music. But the best reward was seeing Father Michael later that evening.
;"Splendid, simply splendid!" he chuckled, giving us a warm thumbs-up. "You brought the house down."
;That day, the word 'Hallelujah'—a word of nine letters, starting with 'H'—took on a whole new meaning for us.
Shurik in Prison
;If anyone had told me back then that my husband would end up in a Thai prison, I would have laughed in their face. But on the Island, the distance between ordinary life and a cell at the police station can sometimes be measured in a single day.
;It all happened because of a silly bureaucratic mix-up regarding his work permit at the diving center. One routine inspection, and Shurik was taken away.
;I was in absolute despair. A foreign country, strict local laws, and a complete lack of understanding of what to do next. My first thought, naturally, was to run to Father Michael.
;When he heard what happened, his face darkened instantly. All his usual detachment vanished.
;"Don't worry," he said quietly but very firmly. "We will get Alex out."
;It turned out that Father Michael’s authority on the Island reached far beyond the walls of his parish. He didn't just pray for people; he knew exactly how the local system worked and carried immense respect among the authorities.
;He didn't make empty promises. Instead, he immediately got on the phone, calling people in the local administration and the police department. He spoke in his native, rapid Thai, his voice sounding sharp and commanding.
;The very next day, thanks to his personal intervention and guarantees, Shurik was released on bail pending the resolution of the paperwork. When my husband walked out through the prison gates, pale but smiling, I felt like crying.
;Father Michael didn't take a single baht from us for his help. He just waved it off with his typical chuckle when we tried to thank him.
;"Just make sure you don't miss choir practice," he grinned.
;Hallelujah in Minor
;And now, ten years later, we were standing on the steps of that very same church, soaking wet under a historic storm, listening to the tearful Thai caretaker say those unbelievable words:
;"Father has passed away."
;He had suffered a sudden heart attack during the night. His weak heart, which he had complained about so many years ago during that pool dive, had finally given out. The Island had lost its shepherd.
;Because of the strict quarantine regulations that were in place at the time, there could be no grand, public funeral service in the church. Everything had to be done quickly, quietly, and with a minimal number of people. It felt terribly unfair. This man had spent his life bringing people together, yet in his final hour, the gates of his own church were locked.
;The Filipinas from the choir arrived shortly after us, their faces streaked with tears. Jose was there too, looking completely hollowed out.
;"We can't just leave like this," one of the Filipinas sobbed. "We have to sing for him. One last time."
;"But the church is closed, and the keyboard is locked inside," I said, my voice trembling.
;"It doesn't matter," Jose replied, his eyes fixed on the glass doors. "We'll sing right here. On the steps."
;We gathered in a tight circle under the awning, while the rain hammered against the red brick walls of the Gothic tower and the wind howled through the cypresses.
;There was no organ, no sheet music, and no wealthy wedding guests. There was just the five of us, drenched to the bone, standing outside the locked doors.
;We began to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus entirely a cappella.
;But it didn't sound like the joyful, triumphant explosion of music we had performed at the Indian wedding. Without the bright registration of the electronic keyboard, the melody naturally shifted. Our voices, heavy with grief, turned that majestic anthem into something entirely different.
;It was a Hallelujah in minor.
;The Filipinas sang with a heartbreaking, raw sorrow, their natural musicality turning the chords into a mournful wail. Shurik’s bass anchored the harmony, while I tried to keep my voice steady, staring at the empty altar visible through the dark glass.
;We sang through the roaring storm, shouting our farewell into the wind. It was our grand finale for Father Michael. A final tribute to a man who had taught us how to find the road to the church, how to weave palm leaves, and how to look at life with a wise, patient smile.
;When the last chord died out, blending into the sound of the falling rain, Jose looked at us and whispered:
;"He heard us. I know he did."