a parishioners way to Joan of Arc "We Welcome You Wherever You Are On Your Journey" |
| Editor's Note: In Sunday Mass we sometimes hear snippets of a particular parishioner's journey either in the Welcome or as a homilist. We never get to hear the full story. The web, with no time or space limitations, allows us that opportunity. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of parishioner journals. The journey that brought you to St. Joan of Arc. I am pleased that Pat O'Regan of our webteam has taken pen in hand for our first story. Pat's "SpiritTrek" will run in 6 parts, one each week. We welcome all spiritual journals to the website, be they short or long. Send your submissions to our webmaster at jeff@stjoan.com. |
|
| Pt. II: Later Childhood, High School Pt. III: College, Army Pt. IV: Later Years Part V. Looking for Faith Part VI. Finding Christ |
Part I. Early Childhood
It began well. I grew up in a strict Catholic family, and so, predictably, the Faith was pressed upon me from the start. But I didn’t mind. If I found the Sunday High Mass, with its interminable sermon, long and tedious, there was much to hold my youthful attention. My memories of that service are vivid:
As I see it, religion, if it is a part of our lives at all, is given to us, early in our lives, largely by our parents. Taking that, we become religious, more or less, or not at all, depending on our personalities. Some people are obsessed with the idea of God, others would not say a prayer if confronted with the imminence of the Grim Reaper. This is personality. We are as different in our religious instincts as in our musical or verbal abilities. Why should being religious be any more mysterious, setting aside vested interests, than being musical or verbal? Scientists, I understand, have identified the part of the brain that is the seat of spirituality. Sooner or later - at the pace of science, probably sooner - they will discover that this part of the brain is larger or more active in some than others, and, no doubt, that it is larger or more active in those with a greater religious impulse. (I have been saying since high school that homosexuals are biologically different than heterosexuals. Now the world is finally catching up to me on this question. In religiosity, too, no doubt - I am biochemically different, in some radical way, than a guy who becomes a monk.) No mysterious gift is needed.
Bits and pieces come back to me. A growing understanding:
The world must be a fearful place for children. They must recognize that they are small, dependent and wholly subject to adults, who often make no sense to them. Furthermore, children, it would seem, can scarcely believe they have a way out of any predicament in which adults might put them. Childhood is both inescapable and interminable. I can easily imagine childhood as a hell-on-earth surpassing in its horror anything an adult might experience.
The frailty of children might explain the popularity among them for Mickey Mouse and, even more so, Mighty Mouse. These creatures are like them - small and weak - but, for all that, independent and strong, exerting their wills on the world. It may also explain the humor for adults in one Gary Larson cartoon. A pudgy, bespectacled youngster stands at the entrance to the living room, backed by a huge, ferocious-looking mechanical monster. His father, hirsute, fat and tee-shirted, is seated heavily in an easy chair, watching TV and drinking a beer. The kid says to his father, “Hey, shrimp-brains, come see what I made in shop. Come have a look at it, fat-head.” We remember that we were kids once, and so we laugh at their power. An acquaintance once told me that her friend’s son, having learned something about child abuse and reporting at school, came home one day and told the mommy, somewhat firmly, “You can’t touch me.” I found it funny; my acquaintance said that her friend found it something less than funny.
Religion, in that it put somebody powerful on my side, must have given me solace in a difficult childhood.
When I started at the Catholic grade school, my participation in religious activities, of course, increased:
There was a fair amount of that at home. What pains adults go to to convince kids that they are the problem (when the problem, of course, is often the adults). Today, I feel sorry for the old man (now long deceased). He was woefully and miserably ill-equipped for the hard job of parenting kids. To make matters worse for him, we were pretty good kids, allowing him little chance to vent his frustrations. I can hear him still: “Sure you have the grades” - I was a good student - “but how long do you think they’ll last?”
The sacraments came into my life at about this time. Looking back, though I remember it vaguely, the solemnity of that First Communion must have been one of the big events of my young life (right along with Midnight Mass and the first Mass on Christmas morning - thereby getting the mandatory two Masses out of the way as soon as possible to attend to the real business of Christmas without delay - and the first time I went hunting with the old man). I must have been growing spiritually, for I remember clearly that I marked it to my credit to pay attention at Mass, even to listen to the sermon, however devoid of meaning (for me). And, of course, there was Confession, too. More about that a little later.
Even to my young sensibilities, the ritual sometimes was sublime:
The prayers of course are some of the most beautiful stuff in writing: “Remember, O, Most Gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession…”
And, of course, I had my Guardian Angel. - I called him Michael, and he was a big part of my young life. “Angel of God, my guardian dear…”
