Resurrecting Chicago

We were required to pronounce them in Latin — our religious vows –our promises to God to live as the Savior taught us: “Go sell what you have, give the money to the poor and then come and follow me.”

I have always found Latin a comfortable language to dwell in. Some of it sounds like English and because the Mass of my youth was conducted in Latin, I still think of it as somehow mysterious and holy.

We were eighteen years old, dressed in black cassocks and thought we knew what we were doing as we pronounced our vows according to custom in the Congregation of the Resurrection.

Did I, a young man, understand chastity? No girls, I thought. And, further, no marriage.  And, further, no children. I add now: no grandchildren. And, Poverty?  I thought it meant we shouldn’t have money or spend it. Obedience sounded heroic to me so I wanted to be obedient.

There were seven of us kneeling in front of the seminary altar with our families and friends behind us in the nave of the church. A life-sized statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus looked down at us with open arms. The gold-leaved altar sparkled and was beautifully decorated with red roses. The seminary choir was chanting solemnly in Latin. In front of me, attired in silver trimmed white-satin vestments stood the provincial, a sturdy, stout, authority with a gentle manner.

“Ego, Geraldus Watt in consepctu Dei Omnipotenti, voveo Deo ad anum: paupertatem, castitatem et obedientiam….”

I got through it OK. But, the boy next to me popped  a “caritatem” instead of “castitatem,”substituting an “r” for an “s,” thereby, promising to love everyone but sneakily avoiding the promise to be chaste.

In a nutshell, that morning I thought the vows meant no bank account or pocket money to spend on my relationships and no freedom to go anywhere of my choice.

I wanted to live with the challenge that Our Lord held out to me that morning.  I wanted to follow Him and give Him my will and my life. I wanted to serve the people of God as a Catholic priest and as a Resurrectionist.

What has been my experience these many years of living the vows? My life has not been my own. I am responsible to my brothers in  religious community.   The religious community keeps me at work and solvent. The people I serve trust me to be chaste, though, at my age, they are not too worried about that vow. These vows leave me free to preach the Gospel. I love to try to live them every day.

Even this morning, I keep thinking of the slip of the tongue that caused my friend and brother to vow caritas.  Caritas doesn’t mean charity.  It means love with all its grace and power as Jesus taught us when he said: “Love one another as I have loved you. By this will everyone know that you are my brethren: if you love one another.” (Jn 13:34)

I’m remembering that a life lived in love is what we vowed back those many years ago.  I think my brother in Christ inadvertently got it right.

Christmas! Long anticipated. Closer. Near. Here. Gone.

We Catholics should sue. Business and profiteering have swamped Our Lord’s birthday, or, rather, absconded with it and substituted it with a season of greed.

I think, however, that the Christmas steal by business might be a good thing.  Reindeer, Santa,  pine trees, toys,  mistletoe, snowfall with its sledding, buying presents, receiving them, these things are now  simply “The Joyous Season.” Business has taken the word “Christmas,” and changed it’s meaning. That’s true, but business is  stuck with two very Christian words right in the name: “Christ” and “Mass.” So we Christians get the last laugh.

We know that Christmas is all about the birth of  Christ: Jesus who is both God and man. It’s all about His Mass, the sacrifice of His life for us and the offering of Himself as Christmas food for our lives.

Thank God that there was an innkeeper who finally gave Mary and Joseph lodging.  The couple had been knocking on doors looking for a safe place to rest, a place where the young woman could give birth.  They had been knocking at doors and kept hearing the same refrain:  ‘No room here! Try further up the road!” The first business to reject Christ was the the lodging industry.

Be sure to answer the knock when Our Lord is trying to contact you. If you hear the knock–or, even some rustling at the door of your heart, open up! Let Him in, before He’s gone.

The sea is so vast and my beach is so small.

The idea of taking a cruise never appealed to me until I reluctantly boarded one because of a friend’s insistence. This was many years ago. To my surprise, I found out that I like cruising. It is so relaxing. I had time to read and leisure to meet interesting people on my morning jogs (yes, in those days!) on deck six. The food was appealing and the evening shows were entertaining.

I’ve taken several cruises since then, some with friends and sometimes alone.

What I enjoy most are mornings at sea. I sit out on my balcony and pray, wonder, muse, even dream. Amazingly, out there on my private perch, there is a kind of epic silence, probably made more-so by the vastness and spread of the sea as the sun lifts its head above the horizon.

On my most recent cruise, I was out on my balcony praying the Morning Prayer of the Church. We were hundreds of miles out at sea and the horizon was a bold straight line far away. Above it was a faded blue sky of cirrus clouds with the morning sun reflecting off the endless tiny waves. Nothing more. No land, no birds, nothing but the gentle rippling sea as we sailed along. And then — there it was. I had to blink to make sure of what I was seeing. Floating by our ship, about forty feet away was a white globe bobbing alone on the dark sea, lit up by the morning sun.

What captured my attention as it floated past my perch was its roundness that clashed with the drifting sea. It was an intensely white sphere, about the size of a beach ball or maybe, a volleyball whitened by the action of the sun and  sea. The morning sun  made it shine out there. 

All identification –original color, brand name — gone. Whatever color the ball had been was now bleached out. 

The ball was perfectly round and white, gently bobbing and rolling by me and, then, –it was gone.

 I immediately thought of “WIlson” from Tom Hanks movie, “Cast Away.” Chuck, a UPS executive survives a company plane’s crash into the sea. He is the lone survivor on a tiny, remote island.  Some packages, also washed up on the island’s  beach. When Chuck opens one of them he finds a brand-new white Wilson volleyball.

Later, when Chuck accidentally cuts his hand and grabs the ball, a bloody impression  is left on it.  The blood stained ball resembles a face and over the years Chuck talks to it — his friend for four years.

One day Wilson floated away. Chuck’s only friend pulled away from his flailing arms.

That ball that I watched float by my ship could have  been any friend who drifts away before we realize what’s happening. Something we said (or neglected to say) drove our Wilson away or our friend drifted away because of lack of vigilance. My friend who loved cruises and insisted that I go with him on one has long ago faded away from my circle of friends and I’m not sure he is still with us. 

Wilson sitting on the beach before he drifted away.

I wonder if anyone else saw or will see that ball somewhere out there on the waters.

But I saw it and it brought back to me the memory of my friend.

A quiet church.  Off hours. The huge expanse is empty. I’m unlocking doors. On Sunday these pews are filled and there is a lot of activity. But now, no one. No sounds. I don’t notice anything different. The same shades of darkness fill this place.  Then,  a shadow moves at the rear of the church.

Until he rose up, I simply hadn’t noticed him hunched over in the darkest part of the church . He had been lying on a bench lengthwise.  Somehow, I hadn’t seen him in that pew when the church was locked up after Friday’s evening devotions. When he heard me open the sacristy door the next morning and enter the sanctuary, he awoke and sat up. It scared the h-ll out of me.

He acted as if he had done it all before, and he probably had. He was homeless and neither of us thought it necessary to belabor the point.  We exchanged “good morning” and that was it. I never saw him again. And, I don’t think I’d recognize him if I did.

These days I notice people more than I used to. It could be because my life is simpler in retirement.  Different people deliver my groceries once a week but each one impresses me. Neighbors walk before supper and pass by my porch. I’m beginning to recognize the regulars.

At the state park not far from my home, I sit at a picnic table and just watch people.  The same Asian couples come about twice a week to fish along the solid banks of the Illinois River as it flows through Morris. The women wear straw wide-brimmed sun hats and the men baseball caps.

Moms walk down to the slow moving water in shorts and loose tops hand-in-hand with their toddlers.  They watch them throw sticks and pebbles into the gentle river. The kids smile when they hear their stones go “plunk!” One boy looks up at his mom with a huge grin on his face as if to say : “Look what I did!”

An elderly man with a narrow, metal loop around his head sporting a microphone which clings to his right cheek comes regularly to lounge at a nearby picnic table and smoke a few cigarettes.

There are dog walkers of all kinds, some with two or three house dogs lunging forward straining their leashes; other walkers  are ambling as slow as their old sniffing companions. Plus, there is a whole set of people wandering around the park quietly who I haven’t focused in on yet.

In one of her short stories Flannery O’Connor described a scene where a young man is asked about God. The boy affirms that he believes in God and says, “but I don’t think he notices me yet.”

I’m thinking: God notices the homeless man in church, sees every individual in this park and His regard is weighty.  I want to see what He sees.