The Sacrament of Silence
AS A GIRL growing up in the 1940s, Eva Dorvinen always goes to Confession every other Saturday afternoon at Holy Trinity Church on East Ayer Street. In her cloistered stall, where she kneels before a grille, she whispers the bad things she’d done. Father Dupree, a kind man with thick eyebrows, would ahem and command her to say ten Hail Marys when she got home. There, in the afternoon sunlight, she kneels before her bed to whisper the ten Hail Marys. She invests each word of the prayer with regret and sorrow so much that by the time she gets to the tenth recitation, her eyes are filled with tears of gratitude. She loves the feeling of being blessed with such a divine grace.
The Mass liturgy, filled with the cadences of Latin spoken and sung, is a lifeline to her c
