(Short Story) Good Shepherd

1.

I know it’s ten o’clock when the electronic church bells begin chiming Ave Maria. We

replaced an obnoxiously loud actual bell with even louder fake ones after the belfry sustained irreparable termite damage last year. Since then,  I receive approximately one angry letter per-week from anonymous homeowners who hate the bells, some threatening to sue on the grounds that they violate religious liberty. I just think they violate common decency, but who am I to make such claims as parochial vicar? I stop at the floor mirror on the way out of the sacristy to make sure my chasuble is on straight. The glass is bent a bit so I look fatter than usual. I look paler than usual, too, but that’s not the mirror’s fault. Lord, have mercy, I say as I turn off the light and walk into the nave.

Every August for the last nine years I’ve stood before the pulpit at Good Shepherd Catholic Church to remind the congregation of the impending Parish Festival. Third Saturday of the month, as always. Clear your calendars, I say, even though I know there’s nothing to clear. I usually hear a baby or two crying and elderly couples murmuring about how they can’t believe another year has come and gone in a jiffy, but I can believe it just fine. My grandfather used to say that time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. I’m not sure what he meant, but occasions like these make me think he was right.

This year is the Festival’s 25^th anniversary, which I announce with all due pomp and reverence. I wear my excited smile and make exaggerated gestures with my hands and tell everyone that we managed to secure a dunk-tank and that this year’s games and concessions proceeds will go towards the resurfacing of the counter in the refectory or the filling of the sink-hole near the St. Anthony’s Grotto—whichever is direst.

 If there are no building projects to throw our money at, I let the church council dump finances into a charity of their choosing. Last year, Kat Jennings, the leader of the bunch, wanted to donate to PETA. I told her that I couldn’t justify that choice to a population made up of folks who spent most of their lives casually polluting the Monongahela, and then watched as her face sank behind her fat rouged cheeks. She asked me if I even cared about polar bears and I told her that I did but that was neither here nor there.

2.

Once in a while someone will ask me if I think God still punishes people like he did in the Old Testament. I want to say that I don’t think he does, but then again I have no other  explanation as to why the third Saturday in August has been over ninety degrees for almost a decade, or why my first assignment as a priest is in a ghost-town of Stephen King proportions. So I just say something theologically responsible about God’s love and mercy and direct all future questions to Monsignor Jakubowski, who’s more than happy to spit Aquinas and Augustine through the gap in his teeth.

The day of the Parish Festival arrives and the Monsignor and I stand in the rectory lawn under an old elm; it’s marked with a wooden plaque commemorating a priest from the 50’s who I can only assume never had to hire a grown man to make balloon animals. We watch as the parking lot black-top is transformed into an enormous griddle.

I’ve spent the last twenty minutes chasing a possibly-poisonous water snake out of the dunk-tank with a garbage picker. Pat McMann, the little Irish groundskeeper, put the thing in a shoebox and carried it off-site to the rapturous applause of everyone present. Only moments later I found him behind the face-painting tent, slashing around in the thistle with a knife in one hand and an empty box in the other. Then, with embarrassed reluctance he tells me that the operation has been a failure and that it’s in everyone’s best interest to permanently evacuate the dunk-tank. I tell him that I spent big bucks on it so keeping it open is a chance I’m willing to take. I return to my spot in the shade all-the-while waiting to hear the screams of Rick, the parish organist, as he is dunked on top of a copperhead. 

But for now all I can hear is “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow; don’t stop, it’ll soon be here,” playing from the DJ booth. Truth be told, I haven’t stopped thinking about tomorrow since I woke up this morning and remembered it was the day of the Parish Festival.

3.

Monsignor Jacubowski informs me that we’re approaching record temperatures today. He’s become quite the weather enthusiast ever since the local station replaced the geeky looking college kid who wears the horn-rimmed glasses with Sage Everly, the delightfully peppy brunette who wears black skirts that would have scandalized every generation but my own.  Monsignor says he likes her green eyes and her “proper haircut.” I tell him that he’s much nobler than I and he agrees.

I’ve lived with the Monsignor for nine years and he’s every bit as much an enigma to me now as he was when I first took this assignment. I affectionately call him Jack—a play off his last name—as his first name, Konrad, fails to evoke such a rapport. My development of a nickname for him is about the highest level of fraternity he’ll accept. He’s the son of first-generation Polish immigrants, and never desired to be anything other than a priest. I tell him that I desired to be plenty of other things but let’s be honest, when it came time to spin the wheel, this is where I landed.  Jack doesn’t appreciate me equating the spiritual life to a game show. But he often reminds me that it doesn’t matter how I got here so long as I try to be a holy priest. That’s good enough advice, so I promise him that I’ll do my best.

On this day, Sage Everly turns out to be right; it’s unbearably hot and I’m still sweating from the snake incident. Jack lets me know that I should be thankful I’m not his age: at least I don’t have to worry about having a stroke. I tell him I’d rather be dead than here; at least heaven doesn’t have a moon-bounce.

 I tug my Roman collar away from my sweaty neck and wonder if it might be better to just tuck it into my breast pocket and be done with it. But then I remember the old ladies with their silver-blue hair and their olive-wood rosaries pinched between skeletal fingers who would be more scandalized by a priest without his collar than one who had shown up to the festival in leather pants and a Def Leppard tee-shirt.

4.

After about an hour of standing under the elm and thinking about all the conversations I don’t want to have with parishioners, Jack speaks up: “If you’re just going to stand under this tree all day, I can find a more-than-capable replacement for you.” He motions with his bald head towards the St. Joseph the Worker statue that is missing both hands and a sizeable chunk of plaster from a cracked thigh. It occurs to me that Jack’s probably been working on that line all day.

I give him a look that says I’m not going anywhere unless you come with me; I can’t face these vultures alone. He breathes heavily into his thick gray mustache and tells me that he’s almost eighty years-old and that he’s not going anywhere except maybe the concession stand to grab a cold ginger ale and one of those overpriced pretzels.

So I decide to humor Jack by walking down to where we’ve set up the games in the handicapped spots. There’s a tall shirtless man with his skin wrapped too tightly around his bones wearing pony-tailed blond hair down to his camouflage belt and with the cast of Diff’rent Strokes tattooed in grayscale beneath a chintzy beard. He’s just popped three straight balloons at the Work of Dart tent. He screams WAHAHAHA HELL YEAH and stuffs an Olive Garden gift certificate into his back pocket. I ask Maria McMann, Pat’s wife, if this guy even belongs to the Parish; I feel like I would have remembered giving communion to someone with Gary Coleman on his Adam’s apple. She says she doesn’t know but he’s already won three gift certificates for Outback Steakhouse and now one for Olive Garden. I say screw this I’m going inside to watch baseball.  

And that’s exactly what I’m about to do when I get the acute sense that all warmth and happiness have left the world. I turn around expecting to see Satan himself, but the reality is worse.

Meredith Frye has a purple face and teeth like a vampire. She melts out of her floral-patterned dress and her swollen feet are stuffed into a pair of white Sketchers. Tucked under her arm flap is a straw hat adorned with a bouquet of plastic roses and daffodils. Meredith is a retired bank teller who went thirty-two years without missing a day of work. Now she splits her free time evenly between knitting baby clothes and making my life a living hell. She excels in both of these hobbies.

She’s got her husband by the arm as if he’s an eight-year-old boy she’s kidnapped away from the cotton candy booth. Tim Frye slants to one side on his bad left leg and his Dungarees are a step away from resting around his ankles. He wears a grey crew neck that says “Damn the Torpedoes; Full Speed Ahead” and a trucker’s cap with some Naval insignia. He smells like cigars and Old Spice. I wonder if he dressed himself or if his wife picked an outfit for him. When he married Meredith he was nearly twice her age. The Monsignor often says that Tim’s mind is starting to slip a little bit and asks if I’ve noticed the same.

I say to him: I’ve never been much for diagnosing medical conditions; it’s why I’m a priest and not a doctor.

And he says to me: There’s a special place in hell for smartasses. 

Tim Frye adjusts his hat to cover his age spots and asks me what happened to the Chuck-a-Luck wheel. I tell him that the state has outlawed it as a minor form of gambling and he says that’s a damn shame. I tell him that I agree it’s a damn shame, but that we have plenty of other games like Slam Dunk Champion and the Terry Bradshaw Pigskin Experience. He tells me that those games are for jags who like wasting money instead of winning money and I don’t know if he’s intentionally patronizing me or if it’s just his dementia talking.

Meredith is the only person who hates the Parish Festival more than I do. Ever since I was assigned to Good Shepherd, she’s been trying to convince me that a Chinese Auction or a gourmet cookie sale or even a fancy dinner party where we sip apéritifs from look-alike Waterford glasses would raise more money than the Parish Festival.

I tell her: You have no idea how much I wish that were true, but I’ve had Kat Jennings check and recheck the math and nothing turns out a profit like the Festival. Sorry.

And I really am sorry.

Then she gargles some vulgarities in that old smoker’s throat and goes to tell her cronies that I’ve been sent here by the devil to destroy this parish. Personally, I don’t think he’d waste his time.

“Gooday, Father Cranberry.” she says to my neck. She’s got her beady eyes honed on my collar; I bet she wonders why I’m even allowed to wear it.

Meredith’s the only person in the Parish who consistently refers to me by my last name. When I see those reptile lips curl into a faint smile as she growls out the CRAAAAAAAAN in CRAAAAAAANberry, I half-expect to see her contorted body lift off the ground and start spewing liquefied evil all over my Dockers.

“Meredith, please,” I say. “Call me Father Stu.”

She’ll never call me Father Stu.

 “Are you enjoying the Festival?”  I ask. Of course she’s not. I know the only thing she’s enjoying is the hope that this whole enterprise might tank. And she’s double-mad this year because I told her she couldn’t sell her home-knitted baby clothes on Church property. She insists upon using her collection of Reborn dolls as mannequins, which I tell her is creepy as hell, not to mention confusing for all the older folks who think we’ve placed unattended infants out in the hot sun all day to model onesies.

“It’s lovely,” she says. “Just lovely.”

5.

Silver clouds with black underbellies begin to spill over the shallow Allegheny ridgeline and into the mid-afternoon sky: the vengeful hand of God extending towards a modern-day Nineveh—one filled with funnel cakes and cheap door-prizes. Jack sighs and says that Sage Everly didn’t say anything about this. I tell him that I doubt she was hired on account of her meteorological prowess.

In the slowly waning sunlight, the whole parking lot sinks into melancholy. The dismal inflated clown atop the moon-bounce flashes a sorrowful smirk. His big red hat flops back and forth in the intensifying breeze and whimsically long arms flail wildly while tykes hop about his gut. Over at the Lucky Duck pool, dozens of brightly-colored creatures with hideous grins and lifeless eyes float in unison like a demonic armada patrolling the rivers of hell. I believe I once read a similar account of the underworld from a medieval Christian mystic, or at least saw something like it in a nightmare.

Everywhere, kids holding wads of orange tickets are being ushered from booth-to-booth by grandparents in table-cloth shirts and fit overs. The children throw rubber balls at a fat cat here and take a mallet to a plastic rodent there while grandma and grandpa say things like “Goodness, I think I felt a drop,” and “Helen, do you think these tickets are refundable?”

I scan the horizon—that shadowy mass that hangs over the termite-damaged steeple like a cartoon anvil—and begin to think there’s no way we’re avoiding this one. I can see it already: lightning, hail, and flash-flooding that will surely take down some of the more tenuous structures. Refunds galore. Huge expenses, minimal income. I ponder how many pairs of knitted booties I’ll have to allow Meredith Frye to sell so that we can at least break even. Fifty? One hundred?

God, I whisper, help me!

And that’s when it happens. I’m looking over at the Lucky Duck pool trying to figure out why there’s a dead squirrel floating nonchalantly atop the tepid water as if it were part of the game, when Meredith Frye slithers into view. She doesn’t see me, and neither do the kids crowded around the blue plastic kiddie pool poking at the squirrel carcass with a stick. She has her straw hat tucked under one arm and whatever’s left of her husband’s dignity restrained with the other. There’s a little cardboard box next to the pool that says FIRST AID but the teenage volunteer who’s been selling the tickets has probably at least three-hundred dollars in small bills stuffed in amongst the gauze and Captain America band aids. Then, without any sort of diversion or sleight-of-hand—really,  without looking around at all—Meredith Frye plunges her fat little paw with her fingernails painted pink into the box, scrambles around a bit, and removes as much money as her pudgy fingers can manage. She crushes it all into a silver-and-green clump, places it in the fold of her straw hat, and walks away.

What…the…HELL? WHAT WAS THAT? I’m kind of just standing there in bewilderment, my synapses misfiring into an empty shell of a body like a computer that has been given too many commands at once. The Monsignor is a few feet away chatting with Maria McMann. He’s sharing a recipe for something called Babka. I interrupt.

I say: Jack, this is urgent.

He says: It better be.

We move apart from the crowd.

I ask: On a scale of one to ten, how likely would it be for Meredith Frye to steal money from the Parish?

He says: If I wanted to play guessing games I would have spent my day plucking rubber ducks from the kiddie pool like everybody else.

I tell him that I love him for the old grump that he is, but I’m in no mood for his bone-dry sarcasm; we’ve got a situation on our hands. He’s not used to me showing emotion outside of watching the Pirates, so he starts listening.

I say that I’m almost certain I just saw Meredith Frye grab a whole bunch of money from the Lucky Duck ticket-booth; in seminary, they never taught me how to deal with lunacy of this magnitude.

Jack, with his narrow face angled toward the dim spot where the sun used to be, bites the end of his glasses and looks especially pensive. I speculate that he’s thinking of a polite way to inform me that in forty-nine years of priesthood, he’s never heard anything so stupid. So I fire preemptively and explain to him that in nine years of priesthood I’ve never said anything so stupid. But I know what I saw. And what I saw was a deranged old woman taking money from a children’s game at a Church fund-raiser.

 For the first time, the thought crosses my mind that Meredith Frye could have been responsible for the snake in the dunk tank—the dead squirrel in the kiddie pool, too. What else? Has she laced the kettle corn? Placed glass on the slip-and-slide?

“You know,” Jack says. “There’s a way we can figure this out.”

“Let’s hear it,” I say.

“Just go over to the ticket booth and see if there’s money missing.” He says. “That space cadet you hired to sell tickets must have some semblance of an idea how much money should be in the box.”

 That space cadet is Ryan Krug, and he was supposed to be an actual cadet in the army until he got plastered drunk one night and stood on top of a Sheetz station throwing donut holes at unsuspecting customers. Now he’s a member of the Community Cares initiative which provides minor criminals a safe place to complete required community service hours. Interrogating Ryan won’t prove anything. Even if he hasn’t already pocketed half the money for himself, I don’t expect he’s been keeping diligent financial records.

I tell Jack that I don’t want to make a scene. Then I remember: that’s what this whole festival is anyway—a big scene. I picture myself confronting Meredith Frye. I’m catching her by a frilly shoulder scrunch as she attempts her escape. Then, as I should have expected, she proves my delusion to the entire Parish by publically showing that she hasn’t stolen any money after all. I’ve imagined the whole thing, she says, because I subconsciously desire to see her defamed. Then she calls me the devil and spits on my Birkenstocks.

Suddenly, I’m not so confident. Surely nobody—not even Meredith Frye—would have the audacity to pull off such a bone-headed heist. But at the same time, isn’t that the genius of it? What kind of ignoramus would steal money in broad daylight? And with no attempt to hide it?

I play the series-of-events again and again in my head; they’re in a grainy motion-picture sequence like an alternate-universe Zapruder film.  I construct elaborate defenses for what I think I’ve seen, such as: perhaps she just dropped something in the money box and was simply picking it out. And the thing that she was picking out of the box—who knows what it was— happened to, in the right lighting, look a little bit like a crumpled ball of cash. Simple mistake. Or, even more likely: she thought the box was filled with first aid supplies. After all, doesn’t it say FIRST AID right on it? It does. Well, maybe she needed a band aid or some of those baby Aspirin. Or maybe a cough drop to clear the phlegm from that craggy old…

Clarity. I say out loud: Who am I kidding? Certainly not myself. No, sir.

Jack asks:  Who the hell are you talking to?

I can’t tell him who the hell I’m talking to, because I’m not talking to anyone. All I can tell him is that I now feel like I’m on a personal mission from God, enlightened by divine wisdom and armed with smiteful rage.

He says: Whatever. Just don’t disgrace the priesthood.

I say: I won’t.

And I go to find Meredith.

6.

Through the parking lot I run. Do I care that I look like an idiot? No I do not. I willingly left my pride next to the Lucky Duck pool. I’m sweating like crazy—partly from anger, but mostly from heat exhaustion—and I’m imagining that I live in a world where I can hold a church festival without worrying about a little lizard-of-a-woman in a tidy dress stealing hundreds of dollars from a children’s game in broad daylight. I’m also imagining how happy I would be if the Parish Festival didn’t exist at all, and I had spent my day watching the Buccos with a cooler of Iron City Light resting somewhere between my recliner and the Lil’ Tornado portable fan I just bought at Dollar General.

Some may say that I’m a man of small dreams, and they’re probably right.

Over at the performance stage—which is really just the rectory patio decorated with some tiki torches—Kat Jennings is doing a kind of in-place shuffle dance as a few white-faced women in green corduroy overalls sing “On Top of Spaghetti” and wave ribbons at terrified children.

I ask Kat if she’s seen Meredith Frye. She says that on one hand she hasn’t seen her, but on the other hand she has seen some out-of-this-world ribbon dancing.

I say: Wow. Stupendous.

But what I want to say is: Kat, look at me and look at me close. My life is unraveling around me. I’m an unhappy priest at a pathetic little church and I’m chasing a purple-faced woman through a parking lot so I can finally, for the first time in nine years, put one in the win column. I’m a perpetual loser, and I need a victory right now. Can you not see that? How can you not see that?

She doesn’t see that. Nobody does.

Lord, have mercy on me, I say. If I ever get to heaven, I suspect God might ask me why I’ve decided to spend my whole life as one dead among the living—a miserable and ungrateful man hiding behind shallow cordialities. And I’ll have no good answer.

7.

Just then I hear a loud scream coming from the parking lot of the Ain’t It Better the Second Time Round’? Consignment Shop, which is where everybody’s parked because we filled our own parking lot with low-quality amusements, local vendors, etc. etc. Antonina Baranowski, the parish cantor who once achieved small-scale success by singing background vocals in one of those stop-motion Christmas classics, is running in my direction, waving violently as if to flag-down a rescue chopper.

“FATHER STU! FATHER STU! GRAHHHGHHHHHAAAHHH! COME QUICK” she says.

I tell her that I hope someone is dying because I literally cannot take one more trivial inconvenience in a day that has been plagued by trivial inconveniences.

She takes me over to the parking lot of Ain’t It Better the Second Time Round’? and it appears that someone might actually be dying, and that someone is Meredith Frye. She’s sprawled on the ground, and by now, there’s at least fifteen other parishioners gathered around her in a morbid little circle.

 I ask what happened: heat stroke? Heart attack?  Somebody talk to me.

“Well, I had just come over to my car,” Antonina says, “And I was going to get some ones so Danny could play that game—the one with the cute little ducks? You know the one?”

I nod. At this point I’m very familiar with the ducks.

“Then, wow, yeah. Sheesh,” Antonina says. “Meredith just kind of stumbled forward and collapsed into that pothole.” She points at the pothole where Meredith’s face is squished into some cinders.

This is all too much for me, really. I have to wonder: did God, you know, smite her?  Did truth and justice finally prevail? Did God say to himself: enough is enough—it’s time to cut out the middle man and take matters into my own all-powerful hands? I always figured smiting would be a more dramatic event, what with localized earthquakes and pillars of salt and pyroclastic fireballs and all that good stuff. This is sort of anticlimactic, if I’m being honest.

People are looking at me kind of like: you’re the priest, isn’t it time for you to do your priest stuff and take charge? Shouldn’t you be remedying this situation? Deep down I know that that’s exactly what it’s time for, but I’ve never been good with things like this. My feeling is, once I know this woman is dead I’d be more than happy to stand in front of a Church-full of men in nice suits and women in nice blouses saying nice things about her until the cows come home. But as long as she’s breathing, I don’t know what to say to anyone.  

8.

Sometimes late at night I used to sit in the corner of the church by myself, quiet and still. All I could hear was the air conditioning unit clicking on and hissing off, but I had convinced myself that if I was quiet enough, I might one day hear God. That, at least, was the idea. In the silence, I stared at the darkened stained glass windows: men and women in robes and sandals holding crosiers or staffs or quill pens. These, I knew, were good men and women, who did good deeds with their crosiers and staffs and quill pens. In the zeal of my youth, I desired to be like them. I prayed that God would make me holy—that he would turn me into someone who might one day be immortalized in a technicolored glass collage, perhaps even with my own quill pen writing something nice that people across the world would read and maybe even tell their friends to read. Those nights when I used to look at the stained-glass windows were the ones that allowed me to sleep in peace. I knew who people wanted me to be and I knew who I wanted to be, and the two were in perfect synch.

Nowadays, I don’t really know who people want me to be, nor do I know who I want to be. The two are certainly not in synch. Have I lost my faith? My love? My basic humanity? I can’t say. All I can say for certain is that right now, some part of me wants to grab that straw hat out from under Meredith’s wrinkly arms, take the stolen money and wave it around so everyone can see it, shaming Meredith and making her into the same forlorn outcast into which she’s made me. But for one reason or another, I cannot bring myself to do it. So close to proving I’m right, yet I’m frozen. In the window of Ain’t it Better the Second Time Round’? three mannequins with purple silk pocket squares sticking out of pinstripe suits stare at me with their smooth indented eye sockets. I’m no more alive than they are.

Back when I was a seminarian, I had a dream of what it might be like to go to my high-school reunion. In the reverie, my principal, who was for some reason Danny Glover, was announcing everyone present by name and saying what his or her occupation was. When he declared “Stu Cranberry: Priest!” everyone applauded and whistled and hollered, and then, to celebrate, I went out for beer and wings with two ex-girlfriends and the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 3.

 I see the scenario playing out differently nowadays. All my old classmates would be there—some having grown from scrawny duds into stately and successful professionals with briefcases and jackets with elbow pads, and others, once beautiful and popular, now being overweight and despondent from years of marital woes and whatnot. In my Roman collar and freshly ironed short-sleeved dress shirt, I would not fit into either group. A long-lost friend might come up to me and say: Damn Stu! A priest? Thought you’d be dead by now! Then he’d give me a noogie or a shoulder slap or something that friends do to show affection and ask me what I’ve been up to. Saving souls? Feeding the hungry? Becoming a saint? And I’d get a lump in my throat thinking about all that I wasn’t—all that I’d failed to become in five, ten, twenty years.

Would I tell that friend about Meredith Frye? About the day I finally defeated her? Humiliated her in front of her friends as she lay on the ground like a corpse?

No. In this dream, there would be nothing to celebrate.

9.

Rain begins to fall—reservedly, at first, but then in steady sheets. All gathered are still. No umbrellas, no one running for cover. Just the patter of the now driving rain upon the asphalt and the somewhat sour smell of saturated earth. Tim Frye starts repeating over and over my darling…my darling. He’s sobbing quietly, but his tears are lost in the deluge.

Pat McMann is on one knee feeling for a pulse. He’s looking at his watch and counting just loud enough for us to hear. Jack shows up and asks did somebody call the ambulance. Someone says yes; EMT should be here shortly. Even in the misty air, all I can taste are splinters. We all wait. One minute. Two minutes. Sirens pierce through the storm and everything flashes blue and red.

 I look at Meredith, raindrops splashing off her face. The purple makeup washes away and her skin shimmers like a porcelain doll. She looks so pitiable there on the ground, with her floral-patterned dress bunched up too high and her straw hat still tucked under her arm. I can’t help but imagine that this downpour is not just a normal downpour, but God looking upon her and weeping—like a father would—seeing his own daughter in such misery.

As a boy, my dad would sit at the foot of my bed and read me Curious George books until I forgot about how terrified I was of the spindly tree shadows that danced across my wall once the lights were out. We laughed and laughed as Curious George went to the circus and to the amusement park and even to the zoo, where you figure he should have known the rules. Then one day we ran out of Curious George books to read, and my dad reached onto my bookshelf and grabbed a thick red book with a rough cover like an egg-shell. It was called Extraordinary Lives of Extraordinary People, but the most extraordinary part was that neither of us could figure out where that book had come from. The pictures were black and white and the first letter on each page was done up in wild calligraphy.  

One of my favorite stories in that book was about a hermit woman—I can’t remember her name—who had a vision that she was holding something small, perhaps the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of her hand. She didn’t know what it was, so she consulted God.

“God, what may this be?” She asked.

“All that is made,” God replied.

The woman became terrified by the responsibility of holding something so important, but God reassured her: That which you hold in your hand will always last, because God loves it, and all that exists only does so because God loves it into being.

Aren’t we all just little things in the hand of God? Meredith? Myself?

Sometimes I wonder: how does God see us when we are at our lowest? When we’re sick? When we’re miserable? When we lack the ability to believe that our lives are worth anything? When we’re called, at least in some way, to die? Does he see us differently than we see ourselves? Each other? I hope he does. I can’t be sure, but I’d like to think that perhaps he lifts us up in his hands, brings us to his face, and weeps over us. And then, as we lay groggy and helpless, his tears wash away all the bad that we are—all the evil we’ve worn upon our skin like dirt upon a child. And just as we are about to drown, just as we can’t take anymore, we emerge as from a bath. We’re clean and refreshed and happy. And God smiles at us and says in his big God voice: Ha! Don’t you feel better now?

And we say: Yes! As a matter of fact, that feels much better. Thank you!

10.

The ambulance guys show up and slide Meredith onto a gurney. One of them, with a big brown beard and the type of face you can trust, says that she’s going to be fine. “Mild heat stroke n’at,” he says. “Day like today? Lucky it wuhnt worse.”  I nod. Tim Frye looks lost so the crew lets him ride up front. He and Meredith are carried away as the obnoxiously loud, fake church bells toll a melodic farewell.

The rain eventually stops. Somebody says that’s all she wrote and somebody else grunts. When the commotion clears it’s just me who remains. I see that Meredith’s straw hat has been left in a muddy little puddle on the ground, so I crouch down and pull it up by the tip of a soggy pink bow. The hat is folded over, just like when it was stuffed under Meredith’s arm. I unfold it and pull out a soft-ball sized clump of soggy paper bills, as I expected. Sorting through them, I shake the rain water from the folds and creases, and after I have crossed the street back to festival, I drop everything in Ryan Krug’s FIRST AID box. Three-hundred and forty-eight dollars in all. He doesn’t even notice.

Maybe the best things we do in this life are those done when no one notices, when our pride is dismantled, when we come to know the purifying burn of losing. It is then that we stand in the flames like unknown martyrs, carrying our insignificant causes with us into the ashes.

Still holding the straw hat, I take my spot with the Monsignor under the old elm. A few narrow and lonely rays of light pierce the gray canopy which shrouds the late evening, and mist, spectral and dark, begins to lift from the earth. Jack snickers and asks if I ever found the cash I was after. But I was never really after the cash.

I tell him no, I never found it. I must have been wrong. And each word lingers on my tongue and blazes through my body like fire.

Five Blockbusters That Are Secretly About Religious Discernment

     When I first began discerning a call to religious life three years ago, I did as any reluctant servant might: I recklessly tore through the recesses of YouTube, watching anything and everything related to discernment. From high-quality promotional videos to nap-inducing question and answer sessions, I filled my hesitant brain with all the digital-spiritual guidance it could contain. While I felt that God was calling me to consecrated life, an element of apprehension still remained. Then one August day, only a few weeks before I was scheduled to report to rural Pennsylvania to begin my nine-month postulancy, I flipped through the movie channels on my home television. I stopped on Spider-Man 2, one of my all-time favorites, and watched it from beginning to end. By the time the credits rolled down the screen, I knew that God was calling me to be a priest. No multi-part catechetical series or motivational talk from a well-known priest was necessary—just the Holy Spirit working, as it often does, in the ordinary.

     This event got me thinking: what other Hollywood Blockbusters are loaded with themes of discernment? After doing some of my own brainstorming, as well as talking-over this very important matter with my friar brothers, I have put together a list of five films that I believe are “must-see” material for anyone discerning a religious vocation. And, as I am dealing with film synopses, a SPOILER ALERT goes without saying!

MEN IN BLACK

"So, confessions will be from 2:00-4:00, then the Knights of
Columbus spaghetti dinner to follow."

I don’t know if Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld set out to make a sci-fi movie about religious life, but yeah, he totally made a sci-fi movie about religious life. The film’s plot is as follows. After a life-changing encounter with the unexplainable, a loose-cannon police-officer (Will Smith) is confronted with the reality that the universe may not be as it appears. Ceding to a deeper calling, he leaves behind the world he once knew to join the ranks of an organization that spends its days quietly and humbly defending Earth from evil enemies which most people don’t believe exist. As if the religious-life parallels weren’t yet uncanny enough, our quick-witted hero cannot attain full initiation into the mysterious “Men in Black,” until he is vested by his superior with “the last suit [he] will ever wear” (his habit). Oh, and he also receives a new name, J, which I’m like 90% sure stands for either Jerome or Jeremiah. In the end, Smith’s character leads an obscure and often thankless life as a man who, while part of the world, certainly does not belong to it.

Still more comfortable than clericals...

SPIDER MAN 2

In this critically-acclaimed 2004 Marvel sequel, Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, faces a common dilemma: he discovers that it is way easier to be a normal guy than to be a superhero. Who would’ve thought?  After a fancy-free montage in which the-hero-formerly-known-as-Spider-Man literally eats a hot dog instead of combatting crime, Parker realizes that the eight-appendaged villains of the world aren’t exactly going to fight themselves. While normal life had its perks—namely climbing the ladder of academic prestige and flirting with Kirsten Dunst—it is way cooler to be the man he was born to be. If nothing else, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 reminds us that it is not we who choose the vocation; it is the vocation—err, radioactive super spider—that chooses us. As Aunt May says: “I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.”

Made nice crispy bacon.
Remembered it was Friday.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

Catholic literary legend J.R.R. Tolkien deserves immeasurable credit for crafting a fictional universe so subtly Christocentric that even non-believers have wandered through it utterly captivated. But for those of us too lazy to read the books (that’s like 1,500 pages, at least!), New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson’s corresponding Lord of the Rings film trilogy brings the same world to life on the television screen.  And who doesn’t love those hobbits? Just like us, they enjoy a warm fire place, a lively party, or a second breakfast. Perhaps this is what makes the journey of Frodo Baggins so strangely relatable. Given the remarkable task of carrying the Ring of Power all the way into Mordor, Frodo laments the fact that he must now spend his days fighting orcs and giant spiders when he could have been taking it easy in the Shire. In this regard, the young Hobbit illustrates the most fantastic reality of discernment: our quest to follow God’s will oftentimes leads us far from home, but the adventures we face along the way never fail to make the journey worthwhile. Perhaps the most decisive moment of Frodo’s epic voyage comes at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. Faced with the decision of whether or not to continue towards Mount Doom, Frodo recalls an earlier conversation with his wizard friend, Gandalf:

“I wish the ring had never come to me; I wish none of this had happened,” Frodo says.

Gandalf replies: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.”  (Queue awesome Howard Shore soundtrack).

THE MATRIX

"Woah. This is like, less confusing than
Trinitarian theology."

Anyone who has ever felt a call to the priesthood, deaconate, or consecrated life has undoubtedly held a common thought: there is something more to this world than what we can perceive with our senses. In the 1999 neo-noir science-fiction masterpiece The Matrix, computer-programmer Thomas Anderson finds himself pondering this same truth, which ultimately results in a 136 minute-long battle against the super-intelligent humanoid computer programs which police his fake reality in order to prevent him from discovering that humanity is being harvested by cyborgs. We’ve all been there. But what makes Neo (as he comes to be known) so interesting is that, well, he’s pretty sure that this isn’t his battle to fight. As a matter of fact, a few of his fellow freedom-fighter comrades agree that they picked the wrong guy for the job. But a few thousand turbo face-punches and slow-motion bullet-dodges later, Neo decides that there is no way he can go back to his normal existence now that he knows the truth. With humanity’s future at stake, he pushes forward, eventually coming to realize that he is, indeed, The One—the man prophesied to overthrow the evil Matrix. Good thing he didn’t keep his desk job.

Pictured: a normal day at the monastery

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

What is a Jedi if not a monk with a lightsaber? They’re even wearing habits! My secret hope is that the next Star Wars installment might just take the next logical step and feature a Jedi wearing a cord with three knots to represent vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. For the amount of times I’ve been mistaken for a Star Wars character in public, it would only be right and just. Anyway, I digress. The newest Star Wars film is a story of discernment through and through. Will full-time scavenger, Rey, heed the influence of the Force within her, or will she deny its power? Will she pursue her true identity as a powerful Jedi, or reject the responsibility? Will Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber receive its rightful heir, or will it go unused as the New Republic is systematically annihilated? Spoiler alert: everything turns out okay; the Force—a.k.a. the Holy Spirit—is always at work, even in a galaxy far, far away. And as for Rey, she never fails to display complete humility. After realizing the great power of the Force within her, a character inquires as to her name. Rey simply replies: “I’m no one.”

(Lenten Reflection) Unusual Joy

As a Catholic in the Western world, I like my faith as I do my summer blockbusters: fast, loud, and explosive. My first true encounter with a Saint of the Church—in an undergraduate religion class— felt something like being at the movies (just without the eight dollar bucket of popcorn). St. Francis of Assisi—a person about whom I had once known nothing—captured my secular imagination like Mel Gibson’s William Wallace or Russel Crowe’s Maximus. Here was a man who gave up everything to serve not nobility, but God; here was a knight for Heaven’s cause, stripping himself of worldly splendor and past transgressions to kneel at the foot of the cross! Hollywood wishes it could write that script. I certainly did not understand at the time that I, in the recesses of my soul, desired to live like Francis. Nor would I have predicted that I, only a few years later, would be attempting to do just that.

But existence, like any good movie, consists of more than action sequences and high-drama. If I’ve learned one funny thing about religious life it’s that it can sometimes look uncannily like “regular life.” Yes, as a friar I strive every day for conversion—to pray, to deny myself, and to live a supernatural life according to the Gospel message—but there still comes a time at the end of the day when I have to take out the trash. With every visit to the Blessed Sacrament, there’s a Costco trip to be made or a toilet to be scrubbed. I assume that such mundane tasks did not spare even Padre Pio. For a Franciscan, life is not all “kissing lepers and talking to wolves.” This reality begs a necessary question. As Christians, what do we do when we’re not converting sinners, making disciples of all nations, or doing all those things that we read about in Butler’s Lives of the Saints? Is it reasonable that we be expected to bear witness to the Risen Christ when we work forty hour weeks and then deal with seemingly endless troubles in our off-time? How can we become holy when our own lives often seem so…normal?

Fortunately, our God never fails to inspire us. While all saints were certainly normal people like you and I, some feel just a little bit more “human” than others. Enter Pier Giorgio Frassati, the devout young Italian who turned our traditional view of sanctity on its head.

I was first introduced to Blessed Pier Giorgio when I was a novice friar. As I scanned a display shelf in a Catholic bookstore, one of my classmates held a relatively thin paperback up to my face. “You’ve got to read about this guy!” he said. “You’ll love him.” I looked at the book’s cover: teal with a black and white image of a man snow-shoeing across an unforgiving landscape. Below the books title, the subtext read “Daredevil Athlete, Roguish Prankster, Unrelenting Activist, Unexpected Mystic.”

I grabbed the book from my brother. “Woah, how have I not heard of him before?” I asked rhetorically. Without even reading a page, I knew I was about to enter into the world of a real wild-man: a Catholic Jeremiah Johnson, if you will. The book’s pages, however, painted the picture of a much different character—one who, in many ways, was much more heroic than his photograph suggested, yet at the same time, as familiar as a lifelong friend.  

Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati was the son of a wealthy, agnostic politician who ran a prominent liberal newspaper. Despite his father’s wishes that he, too, work in the publishing business, Pier Giorgio entered university studies with the intent of working with and evangelizing low-income miners. Throughout his short life, he fought for social justice as a member of Catholic Party, organized outdoor excursions with friends, and was committed to his vows as a Third Order Dominican. But above all else, Pier Giorgio was authentically, radically Catholic. His faith was the driving force behind his every action, whether feeding the hungry after school, being obedient to his parents, or climbing a mountain. His faith was the reason that, when he came to die, the poor no less than the great came to pay their respects by the thousands.

Blessed Pier Giorgio Holy Card

On one occasion, I found a prayer card of Blessed Pier Giorgio sitting atop a counter in our friary basement. When no one claimed it, I happily snatched it and placed it proudly upon my bedroom desk. I looked at the image—an extremely jovial Pier Giorgio among a group of friends—and thought about the faith that inspired that joy. What incredible faith, to live a normal life elated by the simple hope of God’s love! I mailed the card to a friend, hoping that the simple example of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati would inspire him as it did me. Briefly, I worried that since there were a few men depicted on the holy card, my friend might not know which one was Pier Giorgio. Then I looked again at the image, at that face radiant with supernatural life, and understood that he would be impossible to miss. Shouldn’t we, too, be impossible to miss?

In a world rife with relativism, atheism, and profound negativity, many often wonder why anyone would decide to follow Christ. After all, why allow superstition to limit pleasure and happiness? Why follow the “rules” of religion? Perhaps there is no better time than the Lenten season to follow in the footsteps of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and bring the joy of Christ into the normalcy of life. How can we do this? All it takes is faith—a mindfulness of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. Pier Giorgio once said, “You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength I will always be joyful!"

Lent offers us an opportunity to renew this faith through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In the weeks leading up to the Resurrection of our Lord, let us look to the example of Blessed Pier Giorgio and all the Saints. Let our prayer be for the constant presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Let our fasting be from negativity, from idleness, and from all that keeps us from loving as a Christian is called to love. And let our almsgiving be the profound mercy of God offered to all who need it, from our family members to strangers on the street. Let us show the world that we are truly joyful! And our joy is unusual, as it comes not from the pleasures of the world, but from the supernatural power of Christ. The power that transforms you will be the same power that transforms all whom you meet.

Remember, not every life is meant to be a summer blockbuster; but it should be a great film nonetheless. A blessed Lent to you all!

(Reflection) Food of Angels, Food for Men; All You Lowly, Come and Eat.

"Hey, One Eye." They call him so because he has one eye —one eye and a lid, creased with age and spattered with melanin, sunken over an empty socket.

            Darla's eyes, circled with bright blue liner, leak from the corners so I cannot be sure whether her soul or her ducts are broken or which would be sadder.

            Dawn holds her jaw in pain, leaving half of a warm pastry abandoned on her paper plate until she can get a job to get benefits to get to the dentist.

            I ask Greg to consider produce: "Imagine you can have anything you want, what would it be?" "Anything?" he asks, eyeing me in way that makes my skin crawl with an unseen colony of ants. "To eat." I say. "Within reason."

            When I get close, they smell like cigarettes and jelly donuts. When I get close, I can see the browned nubs of teeth lodged in gummy smiles. The guests at the Monroe Community Center are a motley crew, and to deny it would be a disservice —to romanticize poverty and to romanticize their lives in a way that they do not ask for them to be romanticized.

            These eyes, these teeth, these faces, these bodies – among many tobacco-scented others – take their place in the single file line shuffling toward the personal items pantry.

***

            Heads of long, conditioned hair and neatly kept beards; stockings and khakis peeking out from the hems of down-filled jackets; hands clasped and fingers interlaced; feet adorned with Sorrel snow boots on this below-freezing day moving forward, forward. They move toward a man dressed in a green robe, doling out thin discs of bread.

This gathering seems composed: perfectly pressed and put together. But they are a motley crew in their own right. Professors, students, staff, locals —all take their place in the single file line shuffling toward the body of Christ. 

***

            Two hours passed between my morning at the Monroe Community Center and mass at Notre Dame's Basilica —not enough time for the afterimage of the pantry line to fade from my retinas. The similarities, then, strike me: two lines, held taught by a shared humanity, filing toward a source of nourishment; two groups standing in naked necessity before that which can robe it.

Upon first glance, they appear so different —and smell so different, too. But they share a bond of poverty: one spiritual and one material. The two types are intimately linked, reminding me that all of us are intimately linked by our shared Father.

St. Francis acknowledges this truth with the words, "the truly pure of heart are those who despise the things of earth and seek the things of heaven" (Francis and Clare. The Complete Works). He knows that to lift our hearts to God, they cannot be laden with weights of the world. Saint Clare similarly said, "You know, I am sure, that the kingdom of heaven is promised and given by the Lord only to the poor: for he who loves temporal things loses the fruit of love" (The First Letter of St. Clare to St. Agnes of Prague). Love can be found in God alone — in a God who is love. Love for the temporal goods of the Earth, rather than for the eternal God within them, is a perversion of love’s intended state.

The link between material and spiritual poverty was not known only to saints of centuries past, but also to the holy of today. Dorothy Day prayed "for an increase in the love of poverty, which goes with love of our brothers and sisters" (On Poverty) because she felt that "we cannot even see our brothers in need without first stripping ourselves". This is the empathy of the incarnate Christ, who entered physically into our human suffering.

***

Three days later I find myself at the Catholic Worker. The room is filled with people gathered for mass. It is filled with workers, guests, children, visitors, the materially poor, the spiritually poor, the hungry, the tired, and the joyful. But in their act of gathering, the distinctions between them disappear. The bonds are reaffirmed. The margins are scuffed by those who tread over them together in procession toward God.

By Mary-Kate Burns
(Thank you for this beautiful reflection)