‘This is the Martha part’

It’s still dark outside as Bee Runnion slips in a side door at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Decatur.

No one pays attention to the gray-haired wisp of a woman as she pads quietly down a hallway in her beige, slip-on sneakers.

At 7 a.m., there are few souls stirring inside the church, save for a few construction workers there to renovate its main sanctuary.

Outside, runners trot by in ones and twos while passing cars slice arcs of light up the curve in the road.

Runnion doesn’t mind that she’s unnoticed. Behind the scenes is where most of her work takes place as a sacristan at St. Thomas More. Before parishioners arrive, before the priest greets them with “Peace be with you,” she has already prepared its small adoration chapel for Mass.

She is God’s stagehand.

It is a role she inherited in 1990 when the previous sacristan passed away. The way she sees it, a priest already has so many demands on his time.

“He shouldn’t have to worry,” she says. “He should just come in and have everything ready for him to celebrate Mass.”

In the half-light of early morning, Runnion pulls out a key and unlocks a side room. Then, as she has for 18 years, she begins a set of tasks as sacred and routine as her daily prayers.

Retired but still buzzing with energy, it’s clear why her grandchildren nicknamed her “Honey Bee.” The 84-year-old widow commutes a few miles in her burgundy Honda Civic to attend Mass seven days a week.

“I love to hang out with Jesus and love to be in the chapel. And since I’m here, I may as well make myself useful.”

Away from public view, she opens a mini-refrigerator stocked with extra Communion wafers and retrieves a jug of Manischewitz Concord Grape wine.

“You’re supposed to use grape wine,” she explains.

But Manischewitz? That’s not special, is it?

“Once it’s consecrated, it’s very special,” says Runnion, a teetotaler except at Mass.

She pours a dollop of wine into one glass cruet and puts water in another. She covers a gilded chalice with a folded white cloth and carefully sets the host in place. She carries them into the chapel, where Monsignor Paul Fogarty studies his Bible in silence.

Runnion doesn’t speak to the priest. She doesn’t need to. She knows what needs to be done.

She slips fresh votive candles into 70 red glass holders. She places tall white candles on the altar, bowing with each approach.

The finger bowl, the chalice, the water and wine —- she readies everything for Mass to begin. Only then does she take a moment to pray beneath a stained-glass window that commands “Obey.”

The scent of candles grows thicker as parishioners file in for the 7:30 service.

One by one, the faithful step forward to receive Communion. In that moment, the small details that Runnion has watched over meld into a crescendo.

Among those who heed the call are an older woman in a heart-covered sweater and a woman in off-to-the-office business attire. There is a man in a denim work shirt and a young woman in sandals and shorts.

And there is Margaret Besci of Stone Mountain, a third-grade teacher at St. Thomas More School with the natural cheeriness of, well, a third-grade teacher.

She is a member of the altar guild —- six women plus any kind-hearted relative they can press into service. They launder altar cloths, polish tarnished brass and silver, and clean and decorate the chapel. Before dripless candles, wayward wax was their constant enemy.

“I don’t mind getting down on my knees and scrubbing the altar,” Besci says. “I feel like I’m doing something, but it’s not in the spotlight. It’s more behind the scenes, and that’s why I like it.”

Runnion jokes that she doesn’t do floors and windows. Her focus is on having everything at hand for Mass until the moment the priest intones, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

With those words, some parishioners hurry to work. Others linger in prayer.

Runnion retrieves the chalice, the cruets, the cloths and the finger bowl, then scurries into the background.

While she tidies, she brings up the biblical story of Martha, who toiled in the kitchen while Mary listened at Jesus’ feet.

“This is the Martha part,” she says, as she swishes the chalice in a bowl of soapy water.

The work may not be glamorous, but the underpinnings are profound.

“Regardless of what you are doing, if you do it with the right attitude and the right heart, you are serving the Lord,” Runnion says. “You can do it in many ways.”

Among her many ways: She makes sure there are consecrated hosts for the next Mass. She monitors the holy water and when it’s low, sprinkles salt into tap water for the priest to bless. Any unused holy water, any vestige of consecrated wine, she carefully drains into the earth.

They are small acts that, added together, assume a spiritual grandeur. But make a fuss over the time Runnion devotes to her work, and she brushes it away.

“I’ve never given it a moment’s thought,” she says, “any more than I have counted the time I spend praying.”