I loved my Catholic faith for many years of my life, but because of my divorce, canon law forbids me to come back with full graces. I’m disappointed, of course, but I hold no animosity. In fact, I look back at my Catholic life with smiles and with a few laughs thrown in, too.

I remember going to confession following my first holy communion a few months later than Our Lady of Fatima’s once-a-month requirement.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I whispered through the sliding window inside the confession box. “It’s been three months since my last confession. I proceeded to tell my sins, and I made up a few more just in case I was going to commit them anyway.

When I finished, Father Adamowski scolded me about missing confession for too long and that if I did it again, God could send me right to Hell. He gave me something like 10 Our Fathers and eight Hail Marys as my penance. At the altar, I lost count so I added a few more just so as not to make God angrier than he already was.

On the walk home, I kept looking up at the blue sky for a lightning bolt and I kept looking down for the big hole in the ground that I would fall through and go straight to Hell.

Back then I was scared of God and not thinking like I do today that he must have been laughing at me, especially when I ran the last 50 yards into my house afraid that the devil himself was chasing after me.

As I grew into adulthood, my presence in my church became more important to the pastor. First I was a reader of Scripture, and then I took lessons to become a Eucharistic minister, someone who offered the bread (the Body of Christ) and the wine (the blood of Christ) to those who come to the altar for communion.

One Christmas Eve at midnight Mass, I was administering the cup of wine when a man obviously drunk stumbled up to me from the communion line.

“The blood of Christ,” I said. He grabbed the gold cup and began to chug the wine. After the second swallow, I placed my hands on the other side of the cup. We wrestled back and forth for a moment before he finally let go.

A few minutes later, I looked down the line and there he was coming back for seconds. When he reached me, I placed my hand over the cup.

“It’s empty,” I said softly. He stumbled away and I watched him exit through a side door. God and I had a good chuckle over that one.

At about the same time, a new young priest came to our parish. He looked very much like a healthy Christopher Reeve who played Superman in the movie. After he delivered Mass, a flock of women were always by his side, obviously flirting with a man who had signed a promise of lifelong celibacy. Soon, these women were calling him Father What-A-Waste behind his back, and he knew it.

I got to know him well, and l saw him by himself for a minute one day. I couldn’t help but ask him this question.

“So, Father What-A-Waste, with all these women around you so much, how difficult is it to keep your oath to celibacy?”

“It’s easy,” he said with a touch of sarcasm. “I lock myself in the basement once a month and eat raw meat to stop my animal desires.”

He left our church with a leave of absence. We heard some years later that he had left the priesthood, married a parishioner, and had a young son.

A good Catholic woman once told me that the different institutions of religion that man has created will all get figured out when we get to heaven. She said we’re going to open the gate and come upon a strip mall of faith stores. There’ll be a Protestant store, a Jewish store, a Muslim store and of course a Catholic store. She said there might even be a store for agnostics and one for atheists, too, and a few others for those “jack-in-the-box” religions.

She said we’re going to walk up to the faith store of our choice, but find the door locked. Then in a panic, we will try the other store doors and find them locked, too.

Once we regain our composure, we’ll look around again and see a very small store at the end of the mall with very small letters on top that spell “God.”

And as we open the door and walk in, we’ll finally meet our maker and everyone else from all the different faiths. God will be laughing so loud at us that the only thing we can do is, … well, look around the store and laugh along with him.

Some time ago, I asked a Catholic friend what she was going to give up for Lent as an act of self-denial and sacrifice to experience a period of suffering.

“Donuts,” she said.

I controlled myself at her reply and I thought, “God, I can hear you laughing from all the way up there.”

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.