I did promise the humorous and the ascetic. Now you have to bear with me. What I find humorous others may not. Ascetic is different. Something is or is not ascetic.
About a year ago, I was giving a chastity talk to a group of college kids. I do a lot of those talks. They come easily to me, having been a university and seminary professor and dean for 35 years before retiring. I feel at home with the college age kids, graduate students and cats. There was a young lady who attends a Catholic university that has mass in the Extraordinary Form available to its students. I believe it’s every Sunday and maybe once or twice during the week. I don’t want to tell a lie, so I’ll have to say, “I believe”. I heard that somewhere, but I have not seen it myself. But I digress.
At the end of my talk the young lady approached me and said, “Father, do you have a moment.” Well, that threw me off. You see, at the time, I was the superior and in my community everyone is Brother, even priests; but the superior is always Father, even to the laity. It makes no difference if he’s not a priest. He is Francis; therefore, he is Father. This group of kids know us well. We don’t run their parish, but we live within its boundaries. They see us at mass and we volunteer here and there, when we’re not working at our pregnancy centers.
As she continued to speak, I realized that she thought that she was speaking to a priest. How could she tell us apart? We all dress the same. None of us has a name tag or special insignia that says “cleric”. Before she proceeded to go into a confession, I said, “I’m not a priest. I’m a religious.”
This is where things began to get funny. She said to me, “Why are you called Father?” I explained the concept. One would have thought that I had told her that her mother wore army boots. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “That’s why I go to the TLM.”
“I beg your pardon,” I said. I was truly confused. She responded, “At least there, the Fathers are real priests.” The conversation continued for a bit and she asked a few questions about my talk, which apparently had been her intention for getting me alone for a moment. After we parted I started to laugh and I could not stop myself. At least at the TLM, the fathers are real priests.
I’m assuming that there is more to her attendance at the EF than this, but I have to admit that this was the funniest reason for preferring the EF. I went home and said to Brother A, “You’re not a real priest.” He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “You go by Brother instead of Father.” Then he really thought I had lost my mind. He said, “So do many other clerics who are religious. Is your diabetes acting up again?”
Now to the ascetic, this is really another beautiful story. It actually happened to me at an SSPX chapel. Before anyone calls my bishop or my superior, since I’m no longer the superior, the bishop and my superior had given me permission to attend this mass.
The mother of one of our Secular Franciscans died. The lady attended mass at the local SSPX chapel. Her children wanted to have her funeral mass at the SSPX chapel that Mom loved. The daughter who is a Secular Franciscan came to me and asked, “Is it OK, if I attend my mother’s funeral mass?” I knew why she was asking. I explained to her, “The Church would never deny someone a corporal work of mercy. To bury the dead is one of them. Francis would want you to attend your mother’s funeral mass.”
I knew that she wanted to attend her mother’s funeral mass, but she wanted to make sure that attend mass at an SSPX chapel was kosher with the Franciscans. So I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll go with you, if it’s OK with your family.” She said that it would be OK and she left. We agreed to meet outside of the chapel, before the mass began.
However, I was not counting on there being no car available. We have one car that 12 of us share. You have to sign it out in advance. OK, no big deal. The SSPX chapel is about five miles away. I can start walking and when the bus comes, I can hop on the rest of the way. I won’t wear my habit. I’ll wear clericals (which I hate) just to keep cool. Everyone says that the clerical shirt was created by a Protestant minister in Scotland. I believe it was created by his wife, who really had a secret desire to choke the son of a gun. Back to our story.
I’m diabetic and I have leukemia. When you take as many meds as I do and have a strict diet, yadda yadda yadda, you’re not supposed to be out in the sun too long. This was August. Well, the bus finally came by when I was at mile three, my clerical shirt was soaked in sweat. I had pulled the tab out of my collar, put it into my pocket, and undid my two top buttons on my shirt. In other words, I looked a mess.
I arrived late at the chapel, out of breadth. The man at the door was not exactly the right person to be on the welcoming committee, if that was his job. I never found out. The thing was that he did not like what he saw.
He blocked my way and said, “Father, if you’re going into church you need to be properly dressed.” Well I could have been blown over with a feather. I had no idea what he was talking about. Suddenly I realized it. My shirt was unbuttoned at the top and the tab was in my pocket. I thanked him, buttoned my shirt, slipped the tab into my collar and went inside.
Needless to say, the part of the mass that I caught was beautiful. I looked around and saw my Franciscan sister at the front with her family. Not wanting to intrude, I slipped into the pew behind them. After the mass, as we were waiting for everyone to get organized into their proper cars, my spiritual sister said to me, “I was afraid to come, but when I saw you arrive, saw the state you were in, and felt my sense of loss, the asceticism of the mass struck home.” I smiled.
Fraternally,
Br.JR, OSF
Nice stories Br. Jr!