We crawl through charred landscape, trees like burnt toothpicks against a twenty-foot cliff. “To the next ravine!” My buddy’s voice raked in my ear. “Hurry!” His voice downshifts to a husky whisper. “Remember, grunt, we’re in enemy territory!”

            I scramble behind him, black branches scratching my army fatigues, my oversized helmet falling across my forehead slick with sweat. We drop our rifles and hit the sand.

“Good thing that wasn’t the Battle of the Bulge, or you would have been toast,” he pulls a peanut butter-jelly sandwich from his backpack. I slug him in the arm, “At least my army-crawl doesn’t look like a blowfish.”

Early summer, my junior high pals and I were bivouacked in the state park south of town. All winter, we had saved our allowances for the Army Surplus Store. No video games for this gang. We toted plastic uzi automatics and wore old field jackets with names stitched in patches on the camouflage: “Jones,” “Davis,” “Smith.” Where did they fight? we wondered. Where were they from?

My friends concocted stories about these soldiers, their courage and valor. Me? I just hoped to wear a uniform of my own someday.

This morning, twenty years later, I open the doors to the sacristy closet and reach for a rectangular garment, the amice, Latin for helmet. I hold it in my hands. “Place upon my head, O Lord, the helmet of salvation….” I raise it over my head, then wrap it around my neck. “that I may be defended from the assaults of the Devil.” 

Inside the church, people line up in front of me, eyes downcast. One by one, they make their way forward and raise their eyes and look into mine. I dip my thumb in ashes. “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” I trace a black cross over the lines on their foreheads and imagine soldiers with mud on their faces: Jones, Davis, Smith….

After Mass, I remove my chasuble and return it to the closet, next to the amice. The back of my hand brushes the gold cross stitched to the purple fabric.

More target than camouflage.

“St. Michael, defend us on the day of battle.”

I think back to my days as a kid. The call to adventure, the call to join in a fight bigger than myself. I’m grateful for those days. And I pray—I pray hard—that someday, I’ll wear with honor a surplus uniform stitched with the name of Christ, emblazoned with His Cross.
 

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