Adam lay in his hospital bed and gazed bleakly at the ceiling. This was turning out to be the very worst Christmas of all – appendicitis, of all things, had stricken him down a couple of weeks before the festive season. He had endured stoically the ritual humiliations, the rectal examination and being shaved by a grinning male orderly who had added insult to injury by saying that it didn’t really matter if the razor slipped because a Catholic priest had no particular use for that appendage. Adam had tried to explain that he wasn’t a priest, he was just a student who wouldn’t take the first step into Holy Orders for several months, but the man had just scowled at the attempt to spoil his joke. (more…)