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To Seek the Light Burden

To Seek the Light Burden

Last updated on: July 5, 2026 at 10:12 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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To Seek the Light Burden 2026-07-05T22:12:39-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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A Monstrance like the one in the adoration chapel

image via Pixabay

I was at Mass, by myself.

It sometimes still hurts to go to Mass by myself, but I’m used to it.

I always sit in the back and keep my phone in my lap in case I need to scroll to stave off a panic attack. Lately, I haven’t had to.

I have, as you know if you read me regularly, been learning to be at peace with my life in Steubenville, going to the only parish that counts as “neutral territory:” not traditionalist, not Charismatic, not silly, not self-serious, just a normal Catholic church with a friendly pastor. In fact, the pastor was so friendly that I actually got up the courage to ask him if I could go to confession, in his office so as not to be trapped in a confessional, and I managed to get through it and receive absolution without a panic attack for the first time in years. He was extremely understanding. I was getting up the courage to ask to go to confession again. But the parish assignments had shuffled around, and he is three hours away now. I was wary, but curious to see if the brand new pastor would be safe. I sidled into the foyer, avoiding eye contact, and sat on a bench that I think is meant for purses.

The new pastor was there, but not the one celebrating Mass. He joined the celebrant and briefly introduced himself after the opening hymn but before the Introductory Rite. He said he was glad to be here and welcomed us all to the church. And then he said “I used to pastor the Servants of Christ the King, down at the cathedral parish.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

Surely, they hadn’t done this to us. No bishop, or administrator, or whoever’s caught the hot potato of running this Diocese just now, could possibly be this cruel. Not someone who used to be involved with Servants of Christ the King, a Charismatic covenant community, at any level, let alone someone who proudly broadcasted that he had been. Not a proud Charismatic in charge of the only parish that felt half safe. That couldn’t be. I must have misheard him.

The priest left the sanctuary and walked to the back. When he passed me in the foyer, I made eye contact with him. “Servants of Christ the King?” I whispered. “The Charismatics?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile.

I ran for my life.

I guess he followed, because he tried to talk to me when I stopped to shake and hold my stomach outside. “I take it you–”

I tried to stammer about what happened to me in Deliverance Prayer, which is beside the point, because I am the least of the victims of a religious movement that is rotten to the core. I shouldn’t even be a part of this story. There are thousands of victims infinitely worse off than I am. If the Pope can excommunicate the SSPX, he ought to protect us from the Charismatics as well. But I found myself trying to explain. I am always trying to explain. I have written thousands upon thousands of words trying to explain myself, because something inside me will die if I don’t, but I can never really get it right.

“Father Scanlan?” the priest echoed me as I stammered.

“Father Michael Scanlan.” I spit out the name like the obscenity it is.

I left him standing on the sidewalk, and made my way to my car. I sat there, nauseated, realizing that I’d lost my last chance. There is now not a single “neutral territory” parish left within driving distance. It’s not as though the Church will ever reform itself and become safe. The years of progress I’ve made in learning to receive the sacraments without panic came to nothing. I have nowhere to go.

I found myself driving downtown, on the street that is risibly known as Sunset Boulevard, through the wealthy neighborhood and past the middle school to the brick buildings in the oldest part of Steubenville. I drove to that ridiculous overblown Baroque-style building where the Tridentine Masses are held, and I parked.

No, I’m not going to become a traditionalist, so don’t ask. I don’t plan to go to that church next week either. I can’t even be in the nave without terrible memories, because it’s where my complicated wedding was held. It’s just that there’s an Adoration chapel in the basement at that church. I couldn’t possibly, not in a million years, attend Mass, but maybe Christ wouldn’t mind if I sat underneath the space where Mass was going on for an hour. I could even hear Mass going on upstairs, if there was anything to hear. Of course, this was the Latin Low Mass, so there was nothing, not even a chant.

How far away from Mass do you have to be, before God considers you to have skipped your Sunday obligation? I hope the narthex counts, because that’s where I usually am. I hope the basement is acceptable. I hope that when I sit outside and shiver on the porch, He still checks off the attendance box. I hope that when I’ve had to sit in the car outside, He has noticed me there. I hope that when I couldn’t possibly get out of bed and drag myself into such a torturous place, He came to me there as well. But I won’t know for certain until I see Him, if I ever do.

I sat in the back, leaning on the wall, trying not to think about anything.

After awhile I opened my phone to read the readings from the bishops’ website– not the Tridentine readings, but the normal ones.

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Have you ever read a passage in the Gospel that is so incompatible with your own experience in Christianity, you can’t possibly reconcile the two?

What do those words have to do with being a Christian?

Is there some other place, at some other time in history, where it was restful to take up this yoke?

Could anything every hurt as deeply as the burden you take up, when you choose to follow Jesus?

Or, is it really the yoke and the burden that hurt so much?

Because, when I’ve come to Jesus– just Jesus, not any of the trappings of the Church, not the cliques and the fads and the music and the ceremony, but Jesus– I’ve found Him to be kind and understanding. When I approach the Gospel, I find someone entirely reasonable. Someone compassionate. Someone Who doesn’t hurt. I have rested in Jesus.

Couldn’t I ever find a place to rest in His Church?

There was no sound upstairs, except the rumbling of feet going to receive Holy Communion and then the rumbling of feet getting up to leave. After the second rumbling, I thought to go home myself, but just then another family came in. There was a mother and a father, and a child who was too big to be as noisy as he was being. The child was making harsh non-verbal sounds as if he was autistic, or had Tourette’s. I realized I was trapped. I couldn’t leave just then. If I’d left just then, the child or his parents might have thought I was leaving because I was annoyed with them. Once, a long time ago, when my Adrienne was a baby and I was trying to pray in church, someone scolded me and stormed out of the Adoration chapel after Adrienne made too much noise. I’d never want anybody else to be humiliated like that.

The parents knelt to pray, the mother gently trying to shush the son as she did.

The look in the son’s eyes said that he feared was in trouble. “Oh, sorry,” he said, too loudly. “Sorry. I just… I thought of a sound. I thought of a sound and I couldn’t help it…”

He met my eye for a moment. I winked and smiled at him, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. Being embarrassed, in front of fellow Catholics, in the presence of Christ, is the worst feeling there could ever be. I’ve felt that way a million times. I’d never want a child to feel that way.

I stayed until the family left and then a little longer.

This story doesn’t have a heartwarming or a happy ending. I cried on the way home, and then the shimmering migraine aura began. I spent the afternoon in bed.

But, maybe there is a point to all of this. Maybe the easy yoke is the act of having mercy on the people around you. Maybe the light burden is the burden of not being able to leave, because if you did, somebody might be hurt.

I don’t know where I’m going next, but I have decided to follow Jesus.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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