The Breakwater: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 16 out of 30

A hollywood clip of where this next post happened:

            At the edge of Eastern Point in Gloucester, MA there is a lighthouse that guides the fishing boats back into the harbor. It was once in the movie The Perfect Storm. From the edge of that lighthouse there is a breakwater made of massive slabs of cubed grey granite that extends a hundred yards or more out into the middle of the mouth of the bay. In the evening, if you walk carefully out to the edge of the breakwater, you can see the sun setting over the faint skyline of Boston in the distance. There you can smell the salt air invading your nostrils, and watch as the gulls dart through the sky in the interplay between the gold, scarlet, and orange of the sunset and the deep blue of the North Atlantic. If you turn back towards the light house you might see the gentle sweep of the light over the water as the sun sinks further beyond the horizon, and in that moment the world can almost seem to have been completely transformed as everything stills and all that remains is the sound of the gulls and the water below colliding with the granite.

The lighthouse, taken from the breakwater.
(During the Summer)

            It was there that I stopped running from God and wrestling with God just long enough to actually start following God. It was a January afternoon, and snow had just fallen freshly on the ground all around leaving everything coated in a white that was in that moment still unspoiled except for my footprints. I was on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, a thirty-day retreat that all Jesuits make twice in our lives, and as a novice I was trying to get a hold of the fact that God loved me, and to learn to trust in that. There, in a moment of frustration, I decided to run out to the end of the breakwater. “This afternoon walk will be about exercise,” I thought, and so I made the stupid choice to run. The rocks of the breakwater were slippery with the snow, and the ocean that constantly churned around them had left some ice underneath the coat of snow on the top.  The wind was whipping frantically and almost immediately I had to stop running. Slowly, however, I was bound and determined to make it to the end of the breakwater anyway.

The Breakwater. 

            As the sun set over the horizon I could barely see the faint outline of Boston in the distance. Sitting there as the edge of this breakwater felt like sitting at the edge of the world. It was bitterly cold, and the wind stung every last bit of exposed skin.  There on the edge of the world, I started to laugh. I laughed at the fact that I had tried to run on ice covered in snow. I laughed at the fact that I was sitting on the edge of this breakwater with the temperature in the 20’s. I laughed at myself. I drew the hood of my winter coat down tighter to my face, and there huddled against the cold. I laughed, and said aloud to the God who was still trying to communicate to me through the beauty of everything around me, even if I wouldn’t listen to the still small voice within, “Well you’ve picked a real bright one in me Lord!” 

 No matter how blessed our lives have been, and perhaps sometimes precisely because our lives have been blessed, it can be hard to really have a grasp on not only that God could love us as much as God does, but also how it is that we, with all of our faults, should be loved. As the retreat progressed I found myself becoming clearer on God calling me to this life, and I also found myself, like St. Peter, saying, “Go away from me Lord, I am a sinful man.” In fact, I still find myself saying that sometimes. 

A Jesuit friend of mine once described a similar conversation that he had with God in prayer where he said to the Lord; “Well Lord, you know who you chose.” Usually those of us called to this life, when we realize just who calls us, and the immensity of love with which he calls us, feel completely unequal to the task. We know that we are sinners, and we know that we are loved, but to get to the place where one can bring those two things together, where we can say “I am a sinner loved by God,” that is not always easy. This of course, doesn’t just apply to those of us called to ministry, but to anyone who follows Christ.

The truth is that it is right to say that none of us are worthy of the love and blessings in our lives, or the people in our lives, or our vocations, or the beauty we’ve seen, the love we’ve shared, the celebrations we’ve been blessed with. The truth is also that God doesn’t really care much about worthy. My need to run out to the edge of that breakwater was about doing something dramatic, doing something to feel worthy of the beauty of the moment into which I was entering. I couldn’t, and God didn’t care. The truth that I have come to find is that in the end is that when you can come to see all of it as gift, even just living everyday in whatever life God has called you to, even when you know there are a thousand reasons why it shouldn’t be the case, you come to understand the truth and the depth of God’s love. Once you get there you know that all that you can be led to is love in return.

Sunset over Gloucester Bay. 

 Sometimes in our lives, when we are at the edges of our own breakwaters, fighting furiously to prove something that we can’t, that somehow we’re worthy of all of the good we’ve been given, all that we can do is listen along with St. Peter.  Sometimes all the  can do is put ourselves in the place of one who told Jesus to go away because of his sinfulness and listen to the words of Jesus. Sometimes out on the edge of the breakwater, all that we can do is listen to hear “Follow me.” 

The Ashes: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 15 out of 30

The Chapel at Campion Center

It seems only appropriate that this should be short today. In those first months working at the retirement home I found myself around many good, holy, men who were close to their time to meet the Lord. Over the course of those first few months there were a good number of funerals in the cavernous expanse of the Chapel at Campion Center. Sometimes the Chapel would be filled with people, others it seemed empty but for a few family members and as a novice, it got me thinking.

            There was a part of me that found those small funerals sad, and it seemed like the family and the Jesuits of that community who were present were bracing themselves against the crushing enormity of the empty space that they occupied. As I reflected on it more later though, I realized something... “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” The measure of our lives is not by what we have accomplished, or by how many people are gathered about our grave, its measured by our relationship with God. I knew some of those men with small funerals, and it wasn’t because they weren’t loved, it was just because they had lived longer than most people that they knew in life. Slowly the people, places, jobs, and things that they had had in their lives all turned to ash or dust. This is not, however, as sad as it seems to be. One of those Jesuits told me that he had seen so much of his life turn back into dust that he felt like he too was slowly going back to the one who had made him. He said “In the end all that I have ever really wanted was for there to be nothing left of me.” By this he didn’t mean that he wanted to drift into some sort of oblivion, but be finally consumed by the mystery of the God he had loved for all of those years. For him, ashes and dust weren’t just a sign of conversion, but of hope that he too would some day share in the resurrection. Maybe that’s how all of us should be thinking as we start this Lent.

The Jesuit Cemetery in Weston, MA. 

The Frying Pan: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 14 out of 30

         When I was young I never had a reason to cook for myself. My mother, being proud of her Italian heritage, loved to cook and she did it very well. When she couldn’t cook my dad had a repertoire of a few things that he did very well, among them was Chicken Parmesan. We NEVER ever starved in my house and, as any friend of mine who has ever visited my family’s house can attest, there was rarely an occasion where there weren’t ample left-overs. It is not hard to imagine then, that when I got to the novitiate and they told me that I had to cook about once a week for the community I was a little frightened at the prospect.  The afternoon before I had to cook the first time I went to the grocery store, and there I made my choice, Chicken Parm it was… I walked down the aisles in the Jackson Square Stop and Shop… Chicken, check. Bread Crumbs, check, Tomato Sauce, check, Mozarella and Parmesean shredded cheese, check, pasta, check. Bread, check. Ingredients for a Salad, Check.

The Desired Result

            The next morning we went out to the work that we did two days a week during novitiate. I went to the Jesuit infirmary at Campion Center in Weston, MA. One of the older Jesuit Fathers named Leo asked me: “So Michael, I hear that you are going to cook tonight, and what are we attempting to prepare?” “Chicken Parmesan, Father.” I replied, sitting there in the room that was used both as the recreation room and for activities.  He asked, “And why did you choose that?” “Well Father I have seen my Dad prepare it a thousand times, so I figured I could do it too.” One of the other Fathers, who rarely spoke, sat in his wheelchair. This priest had been in Jamaica for years working as a missionary in one of our high schools there, he nodded and grunted in approval of my choice.

            That night we started out after work towards the novitiate. I figured that if I had an hour and half before dinner I should be able to get things done. We got into the car and exited off of route 128 (Interstate 95 for those of you not in the know) and on to route 9 to return to the novitiate. What one needs to understand about route 9 is that it is a 4-lane road. In parts it is 50 miles per hour, in other parts there are stoplights and major intersections. It was the most direct route home. It was, however, Boston, at rush hour, and we got stuck. I finally pulled into the driveway of the Novitiate at 4:30pm, a half an hour before Mass, not sure that I had enough time to cook.

            As I walked into the house I apologized profusely to the novice master, “If I had known I would have left work earlier,” and  “I am so sorry, it won't happen again,” came forth from my mouth. Paul, my novicemaster, being a wise, relatively patient, and gentle person said, genuinely: “Michael, don’t worry, we’ll just order pizza.”

            This should be the end of the story because now, 8 years later, I would take it as a relief and get on the phone to the pizza place down the street, but not then. “No,” I said “I can still get it done.” “Are you sure?” he asked. “Yep.” Immediately I sprung into action. Chicken out, bread crumbs out, bread the chicken. Frying pan on the burner, Olive oil in, heat up. Fry Chicken (I burnt it because the heat was too high) Put Chicken in Baking Dish, Pour Sauce, scatter cheese. Throw in oven… whew, done with 10 minutes to spare.

            As I turned back to the counter away from the oven I began to prepare the salad when my classmate Matt, who was setting the table, walked through the door. “Umm Michael,” he said, in a remarkably calm voice, “I think there is a fire behind you.” I turned around, flames were gushing out of the frying pan and into the industrial hood that was over the stove. I was about to turn the novitiate into an inferno, and all that I could say in that moment was: “We should do something about that.” Thankfully, both Matt and I, who were not only novices to religious life but also to cooking, knew enough not to throw water on it. We searched frantically for what felt like an hour, but was no more than a couple of minutes, for the fire extinguisher. When we found it we unleashed hell on the grease fire, and in the process covered what seemed like half the kitchen in extinguisher foam.

            When I went upstairs to the chapel for mass, which was about to start just as the fire was going out, the first words out of my mouth to the novice master were “Now just so you know, the fire is out.” Immediately my novicemaster, who had survived the worst fire in the history of our province when he was a novice, tensed up. “We may have lost the brand new frying pan for good, but no more fire.”

The unfortunate victim. 

            That night we all sat after mass and ate what remains to this day to be the worst meal that I have ever prepared. Everyone were gracious about it, however, and we all had a good laugh when the novicemaster said, during the cleanup of the kitchen after dinner, “Oh no, not the frying pan given to the novitiate by his Holiness the Pope.”

            A couple of days later I went back to the Health center, and I was sitting there with the same Fathers as before. Fr. Leo asked how it went, and I told him the story of chicken burnt and frying pan lost. As I concluded the other father, who was named Ted, looked up from his wheelchair and rare words issued from his mouth. “That’s ok, when I was in novitiate I killed a horse!” The entire room erupted in laughter.

The Old Shadowbrook Novitiate, sight of the unfortunate
equicide. 

Apparently as novices at the old novitiate they had to work the farm that was there. He was told not to take a specific older horse out into the pasture one day, but he did it anyway. The horse had a heart attack, keeled over, and died on the spot. Obviously this is not an example of animal cruelty. As his words later in life attest, his intention was never to kill the horse. There he was, though, consoling a young novice by reminding him that the loss of a frying pan and a little burnt chicken really wasn’t that big of a deal.

            It strikes me that stories like this are what Lent, which begins in a half an hour here in Rome, is all about. The truth is that in Lent we need to first admit something that is universally uncomfortable to admit. We need to admit that we are not perfect, and be humble enough to accept it, laugh at ourselves and move on with God’s grace. That night in the kitchen I didn’t cook because I had to, I cooked because I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t. I cooked because I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t perfect and a frying pan went up in flames in the process. (Thankfully that was all that went up in flames.) The classic call of Lent, which is already posted on some churches here in Rome, is to repent and believe in the Gospel. Before we can do that though, we have to be humble enough to know that there are things to repent of, and free enough to be honest with those faults. It’s wrong to assume that we need to be perfect too. Sometimes, when we can be honest with who we are our imperfection can be just the thing that helps others become more comfortable with who they are. Even if it means admitting that you once, unintentionally, killed a horse. 


Note: An apology to anyone who read this post earlier. Unfortunately,  I copied a draft version onto the webpage this version should be better. 

The Novitiate: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 13 out of 30

Paul, our novice master, in the novitiate Kitchen. 

On August 25, 2002, I woke up at my parent's house in Westerly, RI. I followed my normal Sunday morning routine. I put on some Church ready khakis and a nice button down shirt. I was doing the readings at mass, so I threw on a tie and went down to the car and off to St. Pius for mass. Something was different that day though. When I got in the car the back of my Dad's SUV was loaded down with bags, more precisely my bags.  Right after mass, we were heading to Boston, to the novitiate, and I was becoming a Jesuit. That morning at the end of Mass, the parish prayed for me, and the next Sunday, and for every Sunday since, I have been prayed for by name at all of masses. (That is the kind of support that has sustained this vocation, even in its darkest moments.) After that mass we piled into the car and trekked an hour and a half up interstate 95 to Boston.

            When we arrived in Jamaica Plain, and in the church parking lot of Blessed Sacrament Parish, I stepped out of the car and across the threshold of the notivitate, and with one simple step I had entered religious life. I was greeted at the door by Paul, my novice master, and David, the director for formation.  I was then escorted into the living room with the rest of my family where some of the men who entered with me were already present. My classmate Matt has since declared that those first moments in the novitiate were something akin to a wake in terms of their general tone and unsure awkwardness. I remember looking at my sister, who was 5 at the time, sitting there perfectly still, and seemingly the most uncomfortable of all of us. 

         For those of us entering, we weren't quite sure what we were getting ourselves into, for those of us who came with us, they weren't quite sure that we were sure of what we were getting ourselves into.  Since the novice master, his assistant, the formation director, and the other novices were busy attending to the things that needed to be done, like waiting for the others, setting up mass up stairs in the chapel and cooking dinner, we were left to our own devices and it was nothing if not awkward, and I found myself feeling the weight of it.

The door to my cell in the novitiate. 

      The truth is that when I left the Holy Cross at dusk that bright May evening, every step was pointed solidly in one direction from that point until the end of that summer of 2002, towards Arrupe House, on Creighton St., in Jamaica Plain. I was very nervous for most of that summer. Was I doing the right thing? How could I know? That summer was filled with hanging out with friends, cruising around Rhode Island in the Volvo, and just a little bit of work to keep me flush with cash until the end of summer. I was fortunate that my friends Brian and Jill had moved just up the coast to Newport for that summer, without being able to hang out with them I may have had just a little too much time to think about what I was about to do. I stopped working on July 31st, because the feast of St. Ignatius just seemed like a good time, and spent the rest of the summer somewhere close to the beach. That day in late August, though, sitting there in the living room on Creighton St., it was all real all of the sudden.

The Arrupe House Chapel at Christmas. 

            When the time came, we went up-stairs for mass in the novitiate chapel, my second mass that day, and after we went downstairs for drinks an hors devours before dinner. I remember the family of one of my classmates (though I won't say who for fear of reprisal) hitting the bar immediately as soon as we got down stairs.  As we went into the dining room for dinner, we all sat with our families, and ate dinner before it would be time for them to depart. My little sister, who had been nervous all day, and very well behaved for a 5 year old, eyed the chocolate cake out of the corner of her eye, and that was the moment that I knew that everything would be alright.

            In that moment David, the formation director, had seen her looking at that cake, and in his usual larger than life and graceful way, got up, walked over to her, grabbed her by the hand and brought her over to the cake which was sitting atop the novitiate piano. He lifted her up so that she could grab a strawberry off of the top, and a big smile came over her face as she shoved the chocolate and frosting covered strawberry into her mouth. I know my mother still remembers that moment, and I suspect that it is a good part of the reason why she felt at least a little better about my entering that day. The truth is that that was David, there was nothing contrived or disingenuine about it, and I think that he may have delighted in it just as much as my sister did. His gentleness and joy with her that day would be echoed with me over the course of the next couple of years that he was my formation director. It was the same sort of gentleness which could support you in the middle in the middle of a tough conversation about where you saw yourself going in Jesuit life, while at the same time having a gigantic bowl of Jelly-beans ready to share just a little joy.

The view from the novitiate roof deck. The Prudential
Center hovering over Mission hill. 

            In that moment I discovered that, even with all of the new rules that were about to govern the way I lived my life, there was still room for me to be me in the society. There was still space to love my family, to joy in simple little things. I wasn't supposed to be aloof, or become separate from the people and places that had meant so much to me. The truth is that being a Jesuit has made me closer to my best self, and more present to those little joys and attentive to little blessings. Moreover, if the Provincial's assistant for formation could be that attentive to the cake that a 5 year old was eyeing from across the room, I knew that the way of life that I was entering was something warm, human, and life-giving.

            The sad part of this story is that David died far earlier than he should have, and unexpectedly, though in his maudlin Irish manner, I suspect that that was precisely what he wanted, though certainly none of us did. On that Sunday evening though, that look of joy in his eye told me that just maybe I could survive this place called Arrupe House, and the novitiate. 

The Graduation: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 12 out of 30

 

My friend Rachel graduating...

          Just a few short hours after our last trip to the Boulevard, we graduated from College. That morning, since “R” is pretty far back in the alphabet, I got to watch most of my friends graduate before me. I took pictures and could see the looks on their faces as they walked across the stage. Finally it was my turn.

Jill, Frank, and Brian... College Graduates.. (almost 10 years ago) 

            There are moments in our lives where everything slows down, where we experience the moment in slow motion because we want to remember every little detail. I have had other moments like this since, when I took my vows, when I said goodbye to friends in St. Louis and Boston, and when I served mass for the Pope. There are moments where things just slow down, and we remember them clearly years after. This was one such moment, and I am not sure that I can make sense of it in any other way than to say that when those moments do come along, God is good enough to let us experience them just a little bit more slowly.

My family in the stands. 

            The actual process of graduating from Holy Cross seems simple enough, climb stairs on to stage, accept diploma with left hand shake hands with the president with the right, continue along the stage, go down the stairs, exit. The things is, I remember the faces on the stage that morning. I remember Kim McElaney with a huge smile, a big hug, and I remember her saying: “I am so proud of you.” I remember walking on to the stage and, having heard the president say “Congratulations” to the 4 or 5 students before me and I remember having been prepared to say “Thank you” I remember looking up towards the crowd, and having picked out where my family was sitting earlier, looking up at my parents and my mom’s mom, and my dad’s dad. I remember the sky being bright blue, and the sun bleaching out everyone at Fitton field. I remember the green astro-turf carpet on the stage,  the white tent that surrounded it, and the line of rolled up diplomas neatly tied with purple ribbons in the special boxes that Holy Cross had made for the occasion.

 I remember the name being called ahead of mine and having to will my feet to move, just a little, to proceed to the spot where Fr. MacFarland was standing, I got up to the stage and expected to hear “Congratulations,” but instead I heard “So I guess we’ll be seeing you around…” The man threw me a curve, I was ready to say “Thank you” and instead I said “um yeah, around, yeah,” and walked off the stage, and I could see my friend Joe, who was seated in the front row, chuckling as I walked off, and I couldn’t help but laugh at myself a little too.

It can be all too rare a thing in our lives when we have moments where things just slow down, and we realize that we are right where we are supposed to be at that moment. I can’t say that it was always an easy ride for me at Holy Cross, in fact the record will show that there was a point during freshmen year where I thought of leaving to go to the diocesan seminary, but somehow felt like I would just be running away if I did. I had a deep sense that I had to see it through. Had I not made those decisions in darker moments this moment of graduation, and a thousand others like it that occurred over those four years never would have come. Sometimes, when we are right where we are supposed to be things slow down, and I think that maybe in those minute God is giving us just a minute glimpse of what eternity is really like.

At the beginning of the book of Acts, the disciples go up with Jesus to the mountaintop as he ascends into heaven, and it could be that for them this was just one of those sorts of moments. I say that because as Jesus ascends into heaven, messengers from heaven appear to ask them why they are staring into the sky. Heaven comes down to meet them in that moment, not because it wants them to stay, but to impel them forward. Just as the two messengers ask why they are standing there looking to heaven, it is good for us to always ask in these moments just where it is that we are going, because those glimpses are always a preparation for something else. For the Apostles it was the moment when they returned to Jerusalem to await the Holy Spirit. In my moment it was about returning home to prepare to enter the novitiate. These moments that we remember so vividly I think often point us to the future precisely by allowing ourselves to live in the present. Those moments can give us the times that we recall in later days to push us through into the future.

Matt, Joe (with all the academic bling) and I at the end of
the day.. (Thank God I found an exercise bike a few months
later...) 

At the end of that day, I stood up on the quad at Holy Cross with my two closest friends that year and had lunch, after I had handed in the cap and gown and I packed up the old Volvo and headed out. As the car drove down Mt. St. James I have to admit it was a weird feeling, and I may have welled up a little, but it was time to leave the mountaintop, and get ready for a new mission. 

The Boulevard: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 11 out of 30

      There is a diner on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester that is, almost single-handedly, responsible for my need to drop a bunch of weight during the novitiate. The Boulevard is an old train car turned into a diner that is open 24 hours a day, you can get breakfast anytime, or in my case, a hamburger, fries, and a coke. It got to the point during my senior year that when my friends and I walked in, the burger would go on the grill without my having to say a word. It should come as no shock then that on our last morning at Holy Cross, after the sun had risen over Mt. St. James, that we piled into my friend Matt's car and drove down to the diner for breakfast. The windows were rolled down as we peeled down College St. for one last time. We were all incredibly sleep deprived after two weeks of celebrating our impending graduation, and everything seemed funny at the time. It was the beginning of a brilliant May morning, and we were off to the diner one last time.

            I remember the glow of the early morning light reflecting off of the metal top of old quonset hut turned field house, and the bleary eyes of a few of my friends as they walked back from the field where we have all just watched the sun-rise, since most of them hadn’t slept. Of course, when we arrived at the diner we weren’t the only ones with this idea, and so we sat down at the counter, instead of our regular table, and settled in for breakfast. The thing that I remember most about that morning was not what I ate, not what was said, the thing I remember the most about that morning was the sense that it was full of the possibility of something new. We were all on the edge of a big change in life, but it seemed most important to honor our friendship by having one last meal together before everyone arrived later in the day.

            One last trip down to the Diner before the real events of the day began. Having gone now through the normal 3 changes of mission that every Jesuit goes through by this time in formation I have become pretty aware of what it takes to transition well, and what some of the pitfalls of moving on can be. There is a sense in which you do have to grieve a little, and a bigger sense in which you have to have the courage to move on. I love that stereotypical way to encourage someone in Italian is to say “corragio,” courage, because in these moments that is exactly what is needed. Moving on from a place isn’t easy, and in the moments before it, it is always important to spend time with the people that have meant the most in the places that have meant the most. That morning it wasn’t that the food was so exceptionally good at the dinner, though it was good, it was that one last time we were there together in a space that meant something to us, because we had spent so many nights there hashing out all of the world’s problems, but more importantly, relishing the friendship that we shared.

            I have been back to the Boulevard since, and it should be no shock that it just doesn’t feel the same. Everything changes and our experiences, when they are our best experiences, are never really about the burgers or fries, or the old tin train car, they are about the people that we have been blessed to share them with. 

The Shoreline: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 10 out of 30

            It was just about a month away from my graduation from Holy Cross, and I was driving a minivan with 7 other undergrads down towards the southern shore of Virginia. Our destination was the peacock motor-inn, where we would meet the community organizers from District 10, where we would be doing service for the week.

            That week we helped clean up a house that had burnt down,  we tore down a porch that had rotted away from an older woman’s house, and tutored the children at the local Baptist church. That time tutoring would be the one and only time I have ever attempted to teach math. During the course of that week, though, one of the members of the community who was most welcoming to us was a man named John, who had organized a good number of the projects, and showed us around the southern shore. Then there was the one night that we went down to the beach with John at sunset. There on the western shore of the bay, looking out over Chesapeake bay, we stood and watched the sun set into the water. At one point John you could just tell how proud John was of his home. Here we had come into this community that we as college kids thought was poor and in need of help, and we stood there with john on this beach at sunset and something occurred to me. 

John, looking out over the bay. 

            The truth is that whenever one goes on one of these trips, especially when we are young, we go expecting to help someone out. We go expecting to march in and in youthful exuberance make a real difference in the work that we do there, but the only thing that ever really changes in the end is ourselves. On that beach that night I watched as John taught us something, not just about how beautiful the beach was, but about not taking things for granted. The surroundings around us can become so common place. Even living in Rome, there is something that has become commonplace about walking past the rooms that St. Ignatius used to live in, because they are here in the house. I walk past them a few times everyday to go to the dining room. Today I went for a walk with a friend and we just sort of ended up strolling down to St. Peter’s. When I lived in Boston I knew that, in its own way, even Dorcester Bay was beautiful. The question is, when faced with the extraordinary beauty that surrounds us, do we find the time to be still and be grateful in front of it?

            That day, along the coastline of the eastern shore, John taught me something that I am still learning to this day, to not lose our gratitude just because the extraordinary becomes something that we normally witness, but to find ways to still be in awe and still be grateful. 


 

The Proof: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 9 out of 30

Holy Cross on one winter day, the bell tower of O'Kane Hall.  

The email popped up on my Holy Cross Groupwise account one overcast winter day in Worcester. “To all philosophy majors:” it read, “This year’s Markham Prize philosophy contest topic is the existence of God.” The Markham prize was given out every year for the best essay on a chosen topic, it carried with it a nifty medal, and a cash prize.

Convinced of my own magnificence in the field of philosophy I began to sketch out my argument. I remember sitting in the old philosophy seminar room on the upper floors of O’Kane Hall sketching out my argument during a particularly boring seminar, and in one moment I found what I wanted to say. There on top of a large oak table I sat scribbling on a legal pad as the pale light of an overcast day spilled in through the gabled window. I got home to my room in Lehigh Hall and began to type, and type, and type. I spent all night on it, and I remember sitting at my desk, which faced the window and from which you could see the chapel, as the sun rose over the other side of the hill and lit up the cross on top of the chapel, turning it a bright gold.

            I had done it. I was convinced that I had proven, in a new way, the existence of God. I sat there and soaked it all in. I thought to myself… I am just that good. I followed the contest rules, put a fake name on the cover (I think I even had the audacity to take the pseudonym Neo-Thomas, as in the new Thomas Aquinas) and submitted the essay. Then I waited, and waited, and waited.

The group in Mexico on the day off that we had, we were all
so young.. (I am third from the left standing)
Photo Courtesy of Laura Peynado's facebook page.

            At the same time, I was applying for the Mexico program that Holy Cross had for that following summer. I t was two weeks in the south of Mexico going from one little village to another, spending time among the poor and listening to their stories. I was all set to go, but the problem was that it cost $1400, and I had fundraised nothing. The truth was that I found it hard to approach people to ask for money. We had always been raised to be self-reliant in my family, you do our best to make your way and only if you absolutely have to, you turn to immediate family, and only to immediate family. There is value in having that sort of work ethic, it has been the source of a great deal of good in my life, but it can also be a temptation. That kind of thinking can also sometimes lead us to a place of arrogance, to a place where one feels that they can always make their own way on their own. I was definitely there. I would make my own way, I would find my own way to go on this trip, I didn’t even want to ask my parents for money. It very well could have meant that in the end I wouldn’t have been able to go on the trip, but then grace intervened.

            With three days to go before the deadline to get money in for the trip to Mexico, I went to my mailbox in the student center. I went down the small back hallway where my mailbox was, put in the code, and saw a letter sitting there that had come through campus post. It was from the Dean. I had never received a letter from the dean before. In truth I had never had reason to hear from the Dean. I had always done all of my work, passed all of my exams, maintained a good GPA, why now? With some fear, I opened the letter. “Dear Michael,” it read, “Congratulations, I am pleased to inform you that…” I had almost forgotten about the contest, I was so nervous about not being able to pay for the Mexico trip. The letter continued to tell me that I had won, and that there would be an awards ceremony in a week’s time. The first words out of my mouth were the first words of the Benedictus. I am not being super sappy here, that is true. I had been using the office for prayer for a long time at that point and “Blessed be the Lord” was the first thing to come out of my mouth. I ran down to the philosophy department, where the secretary told me, “You know that you just won $2000 right?” Relief flooded over me, I had the money to pay to go to Mexico on our immersion trip, and everything was going to be ok.

            Almost as quickly a new pride swept over me, I was all too quick to say publicly that I had proven God’s existence, which in fact I didn’t. My proof wasn’t that great, it was just better than the other ones that the committee read. After I put it down and read it years later I have actually become ashamed of it a little, and looking at it I am humbled by the folly of my own pride. What happened? I went to Mexico.

Fording a river in Mexico...while in the back of a truck. 

            The irony of that essay was that the prize that I won for writing it provided me with the money to go to a place and be among a people who, in ways both joyful and sorrowful, rendered my answers useless. One of the great joys of finding faith, of finding God, is that we feel like we have found the pearl of great price.  When we arrive in that new place we feel like we have gained no small measure of wisdom for having done that, and that is true. The problem becomes when we use that pride, knowledge, and wisdom the way that the Pharisees did. Our words become weapons rather than invitations; our words become judgments rather than proclamations. Mine certainly did for a long time. The question always has to be one of whether we find ourselves humbled enough by our knowledge of the scriptures and traditions of the Church to let them be things which help people experience the love of God or whether we are made foolishly proud by what is a only really ever a miniscule knowledge of the divine.

            The truth is that my pride became its own undoing, and that is something that can only be attributed to grace. I thought I knew the answers, I thought that I could give reasons to an unbelieving world. That is why I wrote that essay, but in the prize I received I found questions which I struggle with to this very day. In front of the face of the poor and suffering the pride of my own answers faded, and the fidelity and love of God that I encountered in so many who had so little made me begin to want to know who this person was more and more, not in the context of a book, but in the context of relationship. As the Benedictus says, in that moment I was set free. 


By the way, to further illustrate the point above, here is a link to that essay.

The Airport Run: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 8 out of 30

Logan airport. 

It was the break from our Ignatian Spirituality class senior year. Joe P, Brian, Matt, and I were talking in the kitchen of Fr. William Reiser, S.J.’s house down in the middle of Worcester, when Fr. Reiser came up to me to ask a favor. A Jesuit from France was going to be arriving at Logan airport for a talk at Holy Cross the following week, would I mind driving to the airport to pick him up? Bill didn’t give me much other than a name, Jean-Yves Calvez, S.J., and the time that his flight would be arriving, 2:30pm. I agreed to do it, and asked my friend Matt and then Jesuit novice (now Fr.) Charlie Gallagher if they would like to join me. We made the hour-long trip to the airport and sat in the Sam Adam’s Pub for lunch while we waited. We looked out over the tarmac, and when the Airfrance flight came in we quickly paid for the fried clams that we had been eating and ran down to arrivals.

            I had made a sign on Microsoft word that said “Fr. Calvez” on it, and a small man in a big coat turned the corner, looked up at us, and the sign and waved. Introductions were made, Fr. Calvez told us that Fr. Reiser had told him that a young man applying to the Society was going to pick him up. Matt grabbed his small suitcase and he and Charlie began talking about all of the Jesuits that they knew in common as we walked towards the car.

This is the same model and color as my old car. Sadly I couldn't
find an actual picture of it though.

            My car was a navy blue 1993 Volvo 850 GLT (that’s right, the sports model) It had been my father’s for 8 years before he more or less gave it to me at the beginning of my senior year of college. At this point in the spring of 2002, this car wasn’t particularly elegant, but the seats were still leather and it was still comfortable for the ride back to Worcester. We put Fr. Calvez’s suitcase in the trunk and got into the car. As we made our way out of the airport traffic began to pick up. This was back in the days before the Ted Williams tunnel in Boston, and getting back and forth through the Sumner and Callahan Tunnels could be something of a chore. As we sat there, under the harbor, in the tunnel, Fr. Calvez asked me a simple question: “So Michael, what theology classes are you taking this semester?” I answered: “Well Father, I am taking Jesuit Spirituality and Vatican II Theology.” Fr. Calvez quickly responded: “Very interesting, I was at the council you know.” “No Fr. Calvez, I didn’t know that, what did you do at the council?”

            This turned out to be the first dumb question that I asked, I expected an answer like “I got coffee,” or “I was a page.” With all gentility and humor, Fr. Calvez responded: “I worked on a document.” My second dumb question: “Really Father, which document?” I expected to hear one of the more minor documents and that he had just advised in the writing of it. He responded: “I wonder if you have heard of it, it is called Gaudium et Spes, my friend Karol and I wrote most of it.”

            STOP for a minute; let’s just break down that statement. 1) Gaudium et Spes, arguably the most important, revolutionary, beautifully written, document of the council. Inarguably in the top four in all categories because it is one of the four Constitutions, the four most authoritative documents, of the council. (2) His friend Karol. You likely know this polish friend of Jean by a different name, John Paul II.

Fr. Jean-Yves Calvez, S.J. 

            OK, so to recap, at this point I realized that this diminutive French Jesuit riding around Boston in the back seat of a college kid’s second hand Volvo is none other than one of the more important figures of the Church in the 20^th century and a personal friend of the Vicar of Christ. Now, to be fair, Bill Reiser’s sense of humor calls for such a thing. He knew that I would be gracious to our honored guest and that the conveyance would be comfortable enough, but he also knew that as the car ride progressed eventually it would be revealed who this man was, and none of us, including Charlie who was a Jesuit Novice and Church Historian, would have guessed it.

            The rest of that ride Fr. Calvez glad regaled us with interesting stories of the council and of his “friend,” andwe hung off of every word. He spoke in a generous and gracious manner that was not at all patronizing, but in fact very interested in what the three of us thought. Here is a man who, in part, wrote one of the most important documents of the history of the Church, and yet his name appears nowhere on it. He was a friend of the pope, and yet two college kids and a novice picked him up at the airport. He was obviously known as a great scholar among scholars, but the three of us had no clue as to who was about to sit in that back seat when we arrived at Logan Airport that morning.  

            I think I learned two lessons that day. The first is the old, trite lesson, that one should never guess a book by its cover. To look at the man you would have never known that he was who he was, and while I certainly didn’t think poorly of him before I met him, it only became apparent that rather than my doing Fr. Reiser a favor by picking Fr. Calvez up, Fr. Reiser was actually doing me a favor by giving me time to pick the brain of this intellectual giant of the Church. The second lesson is much more profound, and one which I carry with me more and more. In this life we often want to leave a legacy behind, but the question is to what end? There is a church here in Rome that has over the tomb of a cardinal the inscription “Here lies dust, ashes, and nothing.” That might be a little extreme, but what might be more important in this context is just this; we can live for our glory and leave our name behind, or we can choose to live for God’s glory and do some remarkable things in the service of the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Calvez counted his greatest achievement as something that he isn’t given credit for, but that has changed the way that we think about the Church in the world, particularly in its relation to the poor. His telling us wasn’t to publicize it, but to start one of the most amazing discussions about it that I have ever had, for obvious reasons. In our lives we can be famous for doing nothing, as many Hollywood non-actresses and heiresses prove. Fame means nothing and fades. Eventually all that is left is dust, ashes, and nothing. Sometimes the greatest works of our lives are the ones done in anonymity, those things that we do not seeking reward for ourselves but the betterment of all, or more importantly the greater glory of God. Besides, how often do you get to change the world just by sitting, writing, sometimes arguing, and learning with your old friend Karol?

The Nap: 30 years, 30 Days, 30 Stories. Day 7 out of 30

Where this nap took place. 

I shouldn't have been able to fall asleep. The seat that I was sitting on was really nothing more than a short stool with a back on it. It was very uncomfortable. There were 5000 people all around me. Bright fluorescent lights filled the room with a light that assaulted the senses. Thee space itself resembled something of a cross between a boat and a spaceship, and there were guards around that woke up people that they saw snoozing.

Somehow, I fell asleep. There with 5000 people mulling around, I managed to fall asleep. With a group of my college friends around, I slipped into unconsciousness. As much as I fought the urge to do so, I kept feeling my eyes get heavy, and my head began to nod.

The Audience Hall, from the front. 

            This wasn't just any place to fall asleep in either, this was the Pope Paul VI audience hall, and now soon to be Blessed John Paul II was praying the Rosary. In fairness, I was 17, and I had just gotten off of a plane from the US hours before. Although my body should have thought that it was somewhere around one in the afternoon at the 7pm Rosary that John Paul II used to hold, the truth is that the red-eye out of Logan Airport and the night spent trying to sleep on a plane had taken its toll. I clutched in my hands the rosary that I had bought outside and tried to keep up, even as my eyes began to close under the irresistible weight. I looked up at the stage at the front of the hall and saw the man that many have already acclaimed a saint kneeling in front of the statue of Christ emerging from the tree of life, and I fell asleep.

            I think it was my friend Joe who woke me up, I had fallen asleep during the first decade, and the Pope was now just saying the Salve Regina, it was over. Joe whispered in my ear, "Mikey, I would have let you sleep, but when you started snoring.. well." "Thanks Joe," I muttered, my eyes still half shut. I sat up in the chair disappointed, I had just missed praying the rosary with the Pope, and I was more than a little ashamed.

            The truth is, of course, that in retrospect there was little to be ashamed about. What had happened was perfectly normal, and human, and understandable. I am sure that I am not the only one in our group who nodded off, and the likes of Joe, Erin, Dave, and Mary Clare who were all there and might read this, can let me know if I am right. St. Theresa of Avila famously once said something like falling asleep in prayer is the surest sign of surrender to God. If that is true, then that night the surrender was unconditional.

(almost) Bl. John Paul II... yep he was
praying the rosary during this nap....

            The truth is that sometimes in the moment we make too much of something simple, or we can demand too much of ourselves. To have stayed awake obviously would have been preferable, but at the same time, that night I sadly didn't have it in me. I remember, as a 17 year old, being disappointed that I had missed out on that night, but also feeling somehow guilty about not being able to stay up for that rosary. The truth is that in that strange way that only a college kid can think of themselves as the center of the universe, I honestly thought I had been disrespectful to the Pope.

         12 years ago this week, I feel asleep in the audience hall at the Vatican. So what? The next time I was in that hall was 6 months ago, when I went in the hall this time in a freshly pressed suit and clerical collar and sat right up front, because I was now a Jesuit. The truth is that in life (and I do this even still now) we can make too big of a deal out of something that is really nothing.

             We need to remember that we are always in front of the God who made us, who knows our resting and rising, who knows us well enough to know where our hearts are and to know what fills our desires. We are going to be subject to our own frailties, and sometimes we'll even make bad choices. We need to be patient enough with ourselves and trusting enough in God to know that in those moments where we nod off God delights in our being just as he created us. We need to remember that we are not nearly so powerful, or even important in some sense, to think that in those moments where we really do fall down,  that we would be able to make God stop being loving and forgiving. It took a long time for me to realize that, as St. Paul tells us, nothing can separate me from the love of God. In no small part because of confession, not even the things that we do can really separate us from the love of God, a lesson that I have learned all too well over and over again. Sometimes we just need to relax. God didn't make us to be perfect, he made us to be in relationship with him. The God who knows us better than we know ourselves delights in who we are, and always welcomes us home. This is the same God that I am pretty sure was fine with my falling asleep that night. For my own sake, though, the next time you see me sleeping in Paul VI hall, wake me up!