I Have Forfeited Everything…
In the almost twenty-two-hundred years of Christianity, it was a liturgical celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection unlike any other.
The only other Catholic priest in the history of Florida’s prison enterprise (I called it “the Department of Incorrections”) had been driven out of the system by the anti-Catholicism of the Department’s fundamentalist and convinced-of-their-own-righteousness “ministers” and “pastors.” The report was he did not survive one month.
Just weeks before Ash Wednesday, at the dedication of the new chapel in the prison where I worked, I managed to alienate almost every one of the other 80 (all non-Catholic, of course) chaplains by including a rabbi, an imam and a medicine man representative of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida who “cleansed” the chapel by burning sage.
Oh well!
As the Easter Vigil approached, my “I hate priests with BIC lighters” prejudice took control.
[For our non-Roman Catholic/non-Episcopalian-Anglican friends, let me explain that the Easter Vigil, the most solemn liturgical celebration of the year (think Christmas Eve on steroids or times 242), begins after sunset and in a completely darkened church.]
Sometimes something of a liturgical purist, it drives me crazy when a priest “flicks a BIC” to kindle the New Fire.
Instead, I line a Chinese wok with alumni foil; fill the wok with lots of broken, long wooden matches; toss in some incense (just ‘cause I really like using incense); and, about 15 minutes before the liturgy begins, snuggle a white hot charcoal – we have a special kind that lights very, very quickly and burns for about an hour – in a side pocket at the edge of the wok.
At the beginning of the ritual, a slight tap and the charcoal falls into the wok and WOOOOSH!
A long wooden match is then used to light the Pascal Candle – the symbol of the Risen Christ – and the New Fire is passed from the Pascal Candle through the congregation as folks’ candles are lit one from another, one by one.
This sacred moment is designed to reflect the first reading of the Mass and the Creator’s declaration “Let there be light.”
I was set!
The first in-a-Florida-prison Catholic Easter Vigil in history.
Special permission had been given for inmates to be out of their cells after sunset; two guards stood at the back of the room; and the wok – with white hot charcoal hidden at the upper edge - was placed on a small table in the open (emergency) doorway at the front of the chapel.
At the appointed moment, I tapped the charcoal into the wok.
Woooosh!
The New Fire blazed!
Right under the fire/smoke detector!
There’s just no way to describe the sound of the alarms.
As if under battlefield conditions, I limited the scripture readings, skipped a sermon, celebrated the Eucharistic Prayer, and distributed Communion to the inmates as they were being escorted out of the chapel and back to their dorms!
All while the siren blared and blared and blared!
Turned out there was not a guard or officer in the1800-prisoner institution who knew how to turn off the alarms.
I’ll probably go to meet the Risen Lord still laughing about that one (and hope He’s laughing with me).
I don’t collect tchotchkes.
I do collect (actually they’ve all been gifts) a few fantastic works by Florida artists, St. Francis of Assisi statues and lighthouses.
The artworks – gifts from my parents, brother and sister – keep me grounded in the family and communities that nourish and nurture my Faith. The St. Francis collection has grown organically over forty-nine years as a priest. The lighthouse collection – about forty – began with the illustration of my ordination invitation. Cloistered Maryknoll Sister Rose Marie did the artwork – a line drawing of the Cape Florida lighthouse on Miami’s Key Biscayne.
Born on April 9, 1903, one of seven children – two daughters and five sons - of Elizabeth and Patrick Walsh, Mary Josephine Walsh gave my Cape Florida lighthouse image its special meaning. She received her religious name – Sister Mary Assisi – and made her First Profession of Vows on January 6, 1932 and her Final Profession three years later at Maryknoll, New York. Having joined the still very young community of the Maryknoll Missionary Sisters, she almost certainly expected to spend most of the next sixty years of her life in Africa or Japan or China.
Instead, her secretarial and (hidden) administrative skills kept her “at headquarters” for the Sisters and the Maryknoll Fathers.
Beyond question, her most influential (I’d say powerful, but hers was a “power” that came from the depth of her generous spirit.) role was as secretary to decades of rectors – heads or directors – of the Maryknoll Fathers Seminary in New York. There, she secretly guided men’s careers toward ordination, keeping more than a few from the trouble that would have come down on them had she revealed information to which she was privy. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she sometimes “lost” bad news about a seminarian before it got the rector – her boss.)
(How do I know that? ‘Cause – ordained in 1976 - I was one of those men who owed ordination to her secrecy and kindness.)
Sometimes, we do small things – simple acts of kindness – without thinking and just ‘cause we do them. When my ordination announcements were printed, I made sure to stop by Sister Mary Walsh’s office (Years earlier she changed from her “religious name” – Sister Mary Assisi to her family name.) to give her an invitation to my Ordination and First Mass – May 22 and 23, 1976. It was just the right thing to do.
While at Maryknoll, New York in the early 1990s, I visited Sister Mary Walsh at the Sisters’ Motherhouse. Quietly, she informed me:
“I have cancer and I am dying. I’ve started to give away whatever I have. One of the only things I am keeping is your ordination invitation. With the lighthouse. Because that’s always been the way I’ve thought of myself and my vocation: To be a light – a reflection - of God’s goodness in a dark world.”
At the beginning of my First Mass – “Mass of Thanksgiving” – in Miami a few weeks after ordination, I introduced the nine other priests in the sanctuary to the congregation. During the reception afterwards, a quite upset parish matriarch confronted me: “How can you call that priest ‘Old Weird Frank?’”
“Ma’am, have you talked to him?” I met her question with my own. “May I suggest you go over and talk with him.”
She did.
Minutes later and very rattled, she came back to assure me “You’re right. He’s weird.”
Decades ago, Frank had collections – he did not “collect”; he had collections – of Christmas cribs from around the world: sheep, cattle, Marys and Josephs and
Childs Jesus. Well into his 80s, he now collects crosses as a reminder of his mortality and to unite him with the Christ of the Cross and Resurrection.
Frank taught me the most important lessons of my seminary training and priesthood. The first was simple: “The greatest way to love another person is to pray for them”
The second was his special insight into the Cross and Resurrection we celebrate at Easter.
Surely, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) We recognize and celebrate that with the Medal of Honor and other military awards; we declare it to the world with the canonization of saints. But the truth is Jesus didn’t have to “die for our sins.” A simple request for the Father’s forgiveness and it would have been done.
No, Jesus died because he remained faithful to the message that genuine love – charity, putting the other before self, service – was more important than obedience to Law. He could have kept silent, but dared to continue proclaiming that message:
“Some of the [religious leaders] in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’
“’I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.’”
(Luke 19:39-40)
Because he was killed for faithfully proclaiming that message, the Father raised him from the dead. The loving Father called out, “My beloved Son ‘in whom I am well pleased,’ come out! Death has no hold on you!”
At that moment, Jesus – lying on the stone slap of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea – was free of pain – the wounds of the scouring, the crown of thorns, the nails, the soldier’s lance in his side. At that moment, all pain had ceased.
With the Father’s call, Jesus knew that, if only for a microsecond, he would reexperience it all again. Yet he chose to be raised by the Father. Knowing, too, that he would, at some time, experience again the pain of saying goodbye to those whom he loved, he lifted himself from the stone slab.
Father Roger has his own Easter Proclamation:
“I’ve been there.
I have seen with my own eyes.
The tomb is empty.
It’s empty!
There’s nothing there!
He is risen!”
And, because the Father is Justice Itself, Resurrection is a promise for all.
After the “wooooosh!” of the New Fire, we kindle the Pascal Candle.
Then, that simple flame is passed – shared, person to person, parent to child, lover to lover, believer to guest – until, in the miracle and mystery of Easter, the church reflects the prayer of the universal Church:
“May the light of Christ rising in glory
dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”
In her wondrously quiet style, Sister Mary Walsh of sacred memory planned the readings for the Mass of the Resurrection that would follow her death. Happily, the Pascal Candle – the Lighthouse, “a light of God’s goodness in a dark world.” – burned brightly aside her casket as one of the Sisters read the words Sister Mary Walsh, my protector and the protector of so many others, had chosen for her Mass of the Resurrection - from St. Paul’s Letter to the Community at Philippi:
“For his sake, I have forfeited everything…so that Christ may be my wealth”
Phil 3:18
We will spend much of Easter gazing at and reflecting on my collections of lighthouses and St. Francis of Assisi statues and praying in gratitude for the lessons “Ole Weird Frank” and Sister Mary Walsh have taught us: The courage and love of the Christ in daring to rise and leave his tomb, to love others by praying for them, to be “a light of God’s goodness in a dark world.”
We pray you will learn and live these lessons of prized and precious friends.