December 1988 Print

IN THE OLD PARISH we have never had any doubt about it. Our old pastor was all but a saint, or at least the next thing to it. He was blessed in our eyes anyway, as long as God let him stay with us; and he has been more than venerated since he left us for Home.

Yet he had his human faults, no doubt, even though it might be black heresy to say that some of the holy saints themselves might be hard people to live and get along with. Not that Father was of that type. He was not. A kindlier, decenter, humbler, holier man never followed Our Lord on the Way of the Cross.

And if he had his failings they wouldn't be any that Satan could take a hold of, you may be sure of that. No, they were well-intentioned enough so that, annoy you as they might, still you knew they were of God.

He was always the great one, for example, to encourage the household arts among the women of the Old Parish. It was through him that our Altar and Rosary Societies got so famous in the altar cloths and lace antependiums and albs and surplices they turned out that when our bishop had his jubilee he wore a rochet done in Carrick-macross lace by our own Mrs. Patrick Crowley. She sent it to him in the name of the old pastor, and the bishop was proud to wear it.

And the art of cooking was another thing that the old pastor encouraged with all his might and main. Ours was the first parochial school in the diocese to have cooking classes; and he insisted that the Altar and Rosary and the Child of Mary organize them for their members when he had hardly been in the parish long enough to say Mass.

It was odd in a way, for as we got to know him through the long years, he was the type of man who had no earthly use or understanding of creature comforts at all. "If I didn't make up the bed for him he'd sleep on the springs," Bessie Cleary used to say despairingly.

Bessie was his housekeeper, and—to hear her tell it—he used to run her ragged. Bessie prided herself on being a prime cook; and the old pastor was what you might call a very meager eater. He used to break her heart that way, coming into the dining room when she had something special prepared and bringing along an old theology book so that if he took a spoonful of something itself you knew his mind was not on what he was eating.

As far as he was concerned, Bessie was wont to complain to her friends, Mrs. Patrick Crowley and Aggie Kelly, at that time our organist, Lent started in Advent and went all the way until Trinity Sunday; and then started all over again.

"If you let the man have his way," she would throw up her hands, "he would commemorate Easter and Christmas by a fast as black as the ace of spades, and they holy feasts!"

Yet all the long while Bessie was his housekeeper—and I suppose she drove the good man to distraction—he was forever impressing upon her that the curates should have the best that the grocer or the butcher had to offer; and that her ice box must never be empty. Bessie would not have minded that last so much—save that he always added, with as much sternness as he could command, "for I won't have God's poor turned away from my door. Give them always of what we have, and see that we have it to give."

Now that was a heartscald to Bessie, for despite that he was a priest and high educated, she felt that she knew a thing or two about people who came to the rectory door looking for an easy handout; but—try as she would—she could never pass on her knowledge to him. He simply would not listen to her, no matter how she raved about tramps and tinkers who had easily got on the right side of him, but who wouldn't have fooled her for a minute.

Of a morning if Bessie were upstairs doing up the rooms and the kitchen door bell rang, the first timid jingle would make her drop everything and practically break her neck flying down the stairs lest the old pastor get to the door ahead of her.

"I owe that much to the curates," she'd say grimly, "for if I didn't interfere they'd eat their lunch out of a can. You wouldn't mind," she'd fume, "but as sure as shooting it's the good-for-nothing ones that time their approach until I'm safely upstairs. Just as soon as my back is turned, bending over a bed changing the sheets, don't they know enough to land at the back door. And if I didn't land down on them right on top of the bell, I'd be just too late to see the full of my ice box parading off in my market basket, and himself very sheepish because I knew well he had given them in addition what was left in his pocket. I declare to goodness," Bessie would say, "I don't know how I ever put up with it."

That was the way she used to carry on week in and week out to Mrs. Patrick Crowley, but little satisfaction she ever got. For that doughty woman, although she might feel free to criticize the old pastor herself—to her credit she never did—would allow no one else, not even Bessie Cleary, to make free with his name.

But Mrs. Crowley passed Bessie off always with a gentle reminder about love of neighbor and what you ask in My Name, and never let her own temper rise.

Only once did Mrs. Patrick put Bessie in her place, and then it was not quite satisfactory, although the whole Old Parish felt and knew that Mrs. Crowley was in the right of it. That was the time that Bessie got so exasperated with the old pastor over what remained of a leg of lamb that she had the audacity to so far forget herself as to fly up in his face. And all the dear good man would say even then was, "Elizabeth, must you always be a Martha? Is there no Mary in you?"

She landed over at Mrs. Crowley's in "high strikes" after that, claiming that it just proved that the old pastor was getting feeble-minded, calling her out of her name. Mrs. Patrick Crowley bore with her patiently enough—considering Mrs. Crowley—trying vainly to point out the Gospel. But she lost patience with Bessie at last, and said in exasperation, "If you were born Protestant and Puritan, they'd make an awful mistake if they ever named you 'Charity.'"

It made a long breach, as you may well imagine, between Bessie and Mrs. Patrick Crowley, but it is to Mrs. Patrick's credit that never once did she bring it up against Bessie in talking to Father; and she made her chum, Reverend Mother at the convent, hold her peace, too. Even though Mother Theresa was very wrathful, as nuns can be in the cause of God.

That was how the situation stood for a long while. Bessie knew she was right; and Mrs. Patrick Crowley—and she was not alone—gave all her faith to the old pastor. Yet Bessie and Mrs. Crowley even came around to the point of drinking tea together again. And Mrs. Patrick insidiously—but in a nice pious way—so put the fear of God into Bessie deary's heart that she made her—as much as anyone outside God and Our Lady can—a changed woman.

Mrs. Crowley, as it happened, worked her Christian Catholic wiles, if you could call them that, for it was only the truth she dinned into Bessie's ears, all the way up until Advent. By Advent she had Bessie convinced that according to the Holy Gospel "the greatest of these is charity." Mrs. Crowley, as she said to Reverend Mother at the convent prayerfully, at last had got the old pastor and Bessie thinking the same way. For it bothered them both to have two daily communicants at odds. Bessie was always the most pious of Catholics; and the old pastor... well, time alone will make him the saint we know him.

Anyway, come Christmas Eve, Bessie came back from Confession with even more of that strange rare feeling of lightness of soul and universal love than the most of us have. And Confession on Christmas Eve, you must admit, brings you close to God. After the Sacrament of Penance, you can't miss the sight of the shining Christmas star.

As she tracked across the lawn from the church to the rectory with her heart and mind on the birth of the Little God, she didn't even notice the bending figures, with a basket, going the other way past Holy Name Hall, in the snow.

She was surprised, as she went into the kitchen, after stamping the snow off her overshoes and plucking them off in the back entry, to find the old pastor standing there.

It was a surprise to see him in her kitchen, for he was always one to keep to his own part of the house and never bothered her, as she was wont to say to the curates if they came out looking for a glass of milk or a piece of pie at ungodly hours. But still and all on Christmas Eve, she thought little enough of it. If he wanted to give her an envelope before the Christmas collection came in, it would make little difference. He was always that good-hearted you could count on him; which was more than some girls could say who worked for Monsignors, and the like.

So, "Would you like a cup of tea before twelve o'clock, Father, and I've tuna in the ice box to make you a sandwich, or maybe an egg?" is all she said, lightly, as she went about her business.

But before she hardly had her hat off, "Elizabeth," said the old pastor, "Elizabeth, I know you don't like me bothering about here and upsetting your plans. Two people just came here. They were vagabonds, of the kind you have always warned me against. They said they were, or I'd not believe it. Lovely, decent people they seemed to me. They told me that they were just looking for a place to stay the night, and it wasn't food they wanted. I filled a basket for them... but Elizabeth, I was very careful not to touch anything you might have prepared for the boys' Christmas dinner. It... it was mostly jelly I gave them and what milk we had."

"Well, for heaven's sakes!" Bessie began without thinking, and then, "What on earth did you give them jelly for?"

"It was ready cooked, that's all," said the old pastor meekly. "I don't think," he said, "it was food they wanted as much as lodging, but I was afraid you would be cross if I invited them to spend the night here, and I can't have crossness on Christmas Eve or Day. You see, Elizabeth, you see..."

"I see well enough," said Bessie, "and if it wasn't that I'm just back from Confession and the sight of the Holy Star, I declare to goodness, Father, I'd feel inclined to give you a piece of my mind. Not that I don't know enough to not speak out of turn, but if my mind wasn't filled with the Holy Babe having His borning this night..."

"Elizabeth," said the old pastor in an awesome whisper, "I don't know... I think... the woman seemed to be with child."

"What!" shrieked Bessie, all her frustrated motherly instincts hurt to the core, "What! And you let her go out into the night and the cold—and with jellies!" A wave of the feeling of the Holy Eve came over her. "Father," she said, and her voice was full of awe, "it wouldn't be... God wouldn't let the like of you be the one to turn Our Lady from our door. My mother always told me that sometimes she and Joseph try again for a resting place on Christmas Eve."

"Bessie," said the old pastor very sharply. "They were vagabonds. I could see it. God wouldn't test me so. I am unworthy... but not so unworthy, God help me."

Bessie Cleary felt an odd feeling, a sensation of motherliness, come over her. "Lad" she said, and she knew it was not herself speaking, but her own mother and someone beyond. For she had always kept her place and the old pastor was more than twice her age. Yet, benumbedly, she heard herself saying, "Dear boy, peace to men of good will."

Well, as she said afterward to Mrs. Patrick Crowley, coming out with a thing like that, and then suddenly realizing it, it just shook her into consciousness. She got very cranky then; she supposed later to Mrs. Crowley and Reverend Mother it was the reaction.

"Put your coat and hat on," she said to Father, just as though she were Sister Mary James talking to a small boy in Sixth Grade. Bessie never got over that. "And put your overshoes on! We're going looking for that woman!"

"Yes, Elizabeth," said the old pastor, meekly, and puttered away for his hat and coat, hoping against hope and trying to remember whether it was it overshoes or his rubbers he had given the man with the leaky shoes the day before when Miss Cleary was upstairs. He had felt so clever in reaching the man before he had rung the bell.

Well, the two of them tramped the roads in the snow practically the whole night through; and a wetter and more bedraggled pair you never saw nor a more disconsolate. Bessie did not know which way to turn, when the air had cooled her down, to apologize to the old pastor for her unseemly conduct. And he, the all but saint, took all the blame for everything on his own shoulders.

It was not until Bessie, seeing the glint of dawn in the sky, remembered that the old pastor was to celebrate the Solemn High at five that she insisted they turn their way back to the rectory. She was all then for waking up the house and saying Father was too tired to officiate and would one of the curates call up a priest from one of the religious houses in Millington. But Father wouldn't hear of it.

He made his way over to the church at once for an Act of Reparation, lest he had done wrong; and Bessie fussed about the kitchen and broke six dishes in a row.

Christmas Day went and came and nothing signal happened. And Little Christmas came and Candlemas Day and Lent and Easter and then Advent and Christmas again. And no matter what the old pastor thought, the rest of the parish felt that it was just a nine days' tale with Bessie. We didn't put much stock in any of it, save that we were very condemnatory of her dragging the old pastor out into practically a blizzard, giving him every chance to "catch his death," all for a hysterical whim of her own.

Mrs. Patrick Crowley alone had a certain faith in what Bessie had told of that night. I suppose that Bessie told it plainer and clearer to the mentor and arbiter of all our Old Parish affairs than she would ever tell it to us underlings.

And so it was Mrs. Patrick Crowley, who, for all she has headed our Altar and Rosary for nigh onto fifty years, nearly precipitated a parish scandal when she suddenly insisted that Bessie Cleary, our priest's housekeeper, adopt a strangeling from the orphans' home.

This was a full two years after that strange Christmas Eve, and the waif had barely been dumped without note or apology on the orphanage doorstep. How Mrs. Crowley figured the child's age—and not a name or a date on his clothes—no one ever figured out. The Sisters were at a loss to put any number of months on him, so fine and lovely a baby was he. And as pretty as a picture. Sister Justine said he looked like nothing more nor less than the painting, "The Light of the World."

But Mrs. Crowley figured it out, and Bessie worked it out her own way as well, that he was a Christmas Eve child. Bessie adopted him at once with full papers, and she gave the old pastor as her reference.

It caused a little talk, in a way; although Bessie left him with the nuns, only spending every spare minute she could running over crowing over him. But as the old pastor said to our dear old Bishop, "I can stand her crazy over a baby better than over bingo!" And I suppose he told the Bishop the story; for Sister Justine said to Mrs. Crowley that the next time the Bishop visited the home he especially asked to see the boy, and he either gave him an extra blessing or at least spent some time praying over him.

It is all a long time ago. The old pastor is this long time dead, and Bessie Cleary no longer is the priest's housekeeper. The new pastor wanted to keep her on, but she told him frankly the place would never been the same, and he took it very well.

It was only recently that Mrs. Crowley told me this story. It came of her pride in the fact that she and the old lady I know as Miss Cleary are planning themselves a day of days next year. They are to be present at the profession of a Brother who is dear to them both. Brother Christopher, I understand he will call himself in religion.