Resurrecting Chicago

I had a chance to return to Bermuda recently, and I took it. Bishop Wes was scheduled for an off-island ordination ceremony in Ontario and need a sub for a week.  I still can celebrate public Masses, though I’m wobbly.  As long as I can maneuver in a sanctuary by holding on to chairs, kneelers and altars, I’m fine.

Bermuda is a lovely nation on a small archipelago about 800 mikes South-East of new York. (My best guess.) I’d visited there Last December when the island nation was in it’s winter rest from it’s usually balmy temps but when I arrived this time, the humid heat hit me as soon as we got off the plane.  “We” included this time, Father Richard Grek who joined me so that he could get some vacation in this summer before his stints begin as locum tenens for vacationing priests in the Mid-West.

The Bermudians are a courteous and hospitable people so once again I soaked up not only the sun, but their sunny dispositions. After morning Mass each day at St. Theresa’s cathedral, Father Rich and I joined the regular coffee klatch in the parish hall. Re-connecting with Kathy and Don Johanne, Annie and Malcomb, Maria, Bernice and all the rest was a great way to begin each day. Each of these parishioners has a unique story concerning their Catholic journey. It enriches my faith to hear again of their experiences as Catholics.

Perhaps, Don and Kathy have the most compelling story. For thirty-five years Kathy did not receive Holy Communion because of her irregular marriage situation. Bishop Kurtz, whom Bishop Wes succeeded, had helped them through an annulment process which allowed them to marry in the Church. Don, a convert and Kathy –the word “enthusiastic” was created for her– are now happily able to take part and receive Holy Communion.

In my journey as a Catholic priest, Our Lord has blessed me with great experiences of great people. And in that regard, the Catholic community in Bermuda holds a special place in my heart.

It was after morning Mass.  I was just getting into my car when a middle-aged  man came up to me and with eyes wide, said: “Father! Wait a minute, I have something for you.”  I said fine, thinking that if I were in luck, I’d be munching chocolate chip cookies and  drinking tepid coffee on my twenty-mile return trip home.

The man returned carrying what looked like a small card-board box, just about the right size for a dozen or more cookies.  With joy he opened the box and showed me a shoe. Not any kind of a shoe, it was a simple, slip-on black walking shoe. “This is the shoe Bishop Sheen wore on his last day on television,” he said.   I thought, “Well, this is interesting. I am being given a gift of Bishop Sheen’s own, personal shoe.  How many people have a framed shoe that the great preacher wore? But, I was wrong.  He wasn’t giving me the shoe; he was giving me an opportunity to touch it. Thereby I would somehow receive what he called a “Miracle.”

This man was rapt in his idea that a kind of good luck would come to me with the veneration of the shoe.  So, I touched the shoe (actually the frame which held the shoe) with, I hope, proper reverence, thanked the man and drove off in wonder. I’ll try to explain.

I’m afraid that the man who wanted to bless me with Bishop Sheen’s shoe has somehow mixed belief in miracles with a talisman or good luck charm. I am not demeaning the man but I think he is mistaking the meaning of the shoe.

Some of our people have drifted into peripheries.  What has a third class relic to do with building the kingdom of God? And, the spectacle of a holy shoe in a frame, hung on a wall, I think, is more than a distraction.  It’s a diversion. Our impulses of reverence toward the holy aren’t always healthy. A shoe, is a shoe, is a shoe. No matter who wore it.

The story goes that the old preacher was sitting on his porch on a particularly hot and humid morning.  He was fanning himself with an old piece of cardboard.  The young preacher stopped by and they got on the subject of preaching, how long, how dramatic, how emotional.  The old preacher finally said just remember this: “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”  Shoes are for walking,