Touching God

Upon my return from Thailand, my family was wary of this “Baptist” (some thought Jesus freak) in their midst.  To assuage some of their concern, I chose to attend Catholic mass with them.  Just because I was a Baptist did not mean I rejected their Catholicism, a stance I affirmed when I refused to attend a Sunday evening “church school” at my Baptist Church in Bangkok because they were studying Cults, the first of which was “Roman Catholicism.”

At the service, I remembered most of the prayers and the ritual stances (standing, kneeling, sitting).  When it came time to receive communion, and feeling that as a confirmed Catholic I still possessed my union card, I joined the line heading up to the altar.  The first few people opened their mouths and the priest placed the host on their awaiting tongues.  What came next surprised me.  The next few people put out their hands and the priest placed the host into it, which they then put into their mouths. 

My shock was because of my experience the week after making my first Holy Communion, white clothes, white bucks and all.  After receiving the host from the priest and returning to my seat, the wafer became stuck on the roof of my mouth and I couldn’t get it off with my tongue.  What would a 7-year-old do?  I slowly took my index finger and knocked it down so that I could swallow it.  I assumed no one saw me but I was wrong.  Within seconds, I felt a hand tug hard on my ear to remove me from the pew.  It was Sister Ann Sebastian, who in my mind was the gestapo of Mother Superiors.  (When I studied Freudian psychology years later and came across his concept of the superego, the image of Sister Ann Sebastian came immediately to mind.)  When we reached the back of the church, she “blessed” me out asking how dare I, a puny little sinful boy, touch God.  (Of course, I didn’t really understand the difference between touching God with my tongue versus with my finger, but I wasn’t going to raise that objection given the Sister’s angry demeanor.) 

Of course, I apologized but that was not enough.  She demanded that I attend confession for the next several weeks and do penance for my transgression.  I complied with her demand.  Although she meant it as a punishment for my “sin,” I didn’t mind because I always felt cleansed by God when I emerged from the confessional.  If I got hit by a bus on my way home, I would go straight to heaven (until I found out about this place called Purgatory; given my propensity toward other transgressions it was a more likely after-life landing spot). 

As I looked now at what was happening before my eyes, I wondered what had changed.  Why was it now fine for Catholics to touch the host, to handle the body of Christ, with their hands?  Were people fine with it?

Theological education helped with answers to my question.  I learned about the Second Vatican Council called by Pope John XXIII to “bring the Church up with the times.”  I studied Greek thought that influenced the Church as they wrestled with conceptions of the sacred as holy and in some ways untouchable by human frailty:  sin and the holy cannot mix.  But there was also this strain regarding the immanence of God and how God was present in every creature.  A paradox to be sure.

Baptists view communion as a time of remembrance of the sacrifice made by Jesus once on behalf of humanity.  There was no transubstantiation taking place with the bread and wine (for Baptists, if there was drink to go with what I affectionately referred to as Baptist chicklets, it was grape juice.  Damn those tea-totalers!)  However, I always felt something was missing from the Baptist experience, a missed moment of grace.  I did think the Catholic Church made too much of the distinction between God and humanity.  After all, I was taught that Jesus was the God-Man.  How more connected can you get than that!  (Of course, Anselm’s treatise, Cur Deus Homo, Why the God-man, with its insistent Roman jurisprudence mindset, suggested to me that the divinity of Jesus was what made him distinctive, and I wouldn’t have been touched by the grace of God had it not been for his willingness to make the sacrifice.  That penal-substitutionary view troubled me, and perhaps it is why I felt more comfortable with Abelard’s view of Jesus' sacrifice as a model for others to follow, and the mystics’ emphasis on union with the divine.)

Anyway, when I attend Mass periodically at the Catholic and Jesuit college I teach, I continue to show my Catholic union card, tattered and weather-worn as it is, and receive communion in my hands, often with a wink and a nod from the celebrant distributing the host who knows the variations of my Christian background.  The grace I feel from the ritual is not because of some magical transformation taking place, but because I am with a community of people who not only participate in the ritual but embody the example of Jesus as they go out to serve others or work for justice.  In these ways, I know, Jesus is in them, a divine-human encounter, that helps make the world a better place. 

Beautiful Day

I went to see the film, Beautiful Day, the film about the life of Fred Rogers.  Only it wasn’t; not in the way I expected.  Rather, it was a story about how Mr. Rogers affected the life of a journalist assigned to interview him; a man who was struggling with his own demons of unresolved grief over his mother’s death and anger at the father who abandoned him at such a dark time.  I was not expecting the emotional response the film elicited from me.

Three moments in the film were the most pivotal for me.  The first, Mr. Rogers asked the journalist if he thought his mother would be proud of him. My mother died when I was 23, a sophomore in college.  She wasn’t there when I, in the words of my father, “finally graduated from college after 14 years.”  He was referring to my Ph.D. graduation from Emory University, where I received my degree in Religion, Ethics, and Society, while also working as a community organizer in public housing projects in Atlanta.  Would this have made my mother proud?  I think so.  As I wrote in the preface to my dissertation, my mother was the one who pushed me to complete my confirmation in the Catholic Church, and to finish high school even though she had to drop out to work to help with her family’s finances.  I often imagined her smiling when her Baptist minister son, returned to the Catholic fold by teaching at a Catholic and Jesuit college, where I have taught for almost 30 years.

The second moment was more troubling.  Because of his anger and resentment at his father’s abandonment, when the journalist’s father tried to reconnect with his son at his sister’s wedding, he didn’t call him dad, but by his first name.  As I have written elsewhere, I never called my mother mom but Kay, her first name.  It was driven initially by resentment toward her, for the over 20 years she wasn’t home because she worked second shift at a candy factory to support the family.  I too felt abandoned, seeing her only on weekends for most of my childhood; and those times with her were not the warmest mother-son affairs.  I was too young, too self-absorbed to notice the sacrifices she was making for the sake of her family.  When the resentment subsided after going into the military, I was too used to calling her Kay and can’t remember a time as an adult when I called her mom.

In the film, Mr. Rogers guided the journalist toward a reconciliation with his father.  In this way, the film was about Mr. Rogers, demonstrating the kind of person he was around everyone he met.  The grace the journalist received at the hand of Mr. Rogers was his ability to resolve the anger he felt and, as his father lay dying, once again called him dad.  Hearing this, I wept; not because the two had reconciled, although it was a beautiful moment in the film.  Rather, I cried because my mother would never hear me call her mom as an adult.  She was comatose the last time I saw her alive, the result of the loss of oxygen to her brain from a heart attack.  She died 10 days later.  I had chosen to call her Kay; a decision I have regretted every day since.

The third moment in the film was one of humility and gratitude.  Sitting at a restaurant with the journalist, Mr. Rogers asked if they could spend a minute thinking of all the people in their lives who had brought them into being, who had helped to make them the persons they were today.  The entire restaurant heard the request and sat silently reflecting on his request.  So did the entire theater.  No one talked, no babies cried, no cell phones were checked.  We sat collectively thinking of the people who had brought us into being the persons we were today.  I was at the film with my wife of 40 years and so she was the first who came to my mind.  I wouldn’t be who I am today without her love, her support, and her patience.  I thought of my son, who helped me to become a father, teaching me how to be nurturing, caring, and patient.  I thought of my mother, my father, and my family, most of whom I had spent time with recently at my nephew’s wedding.  I thought of my teachers:  Mrs. Kelly, who noticed I was having trouble hearing in second grade which led to having the operation I needed to save my hearing.  Mrs. Cody, who pushed me to do my best academically so that I graduated eighth grade first in my class.  Dr. Drayer, who taught me that it was fine to question and to doubt and yet still be a person of faith.  Glen Stassen, who demonstrated how one can be both an academic and an activist working for justice.

I thought of the people I had met and worked with over the years:  Jack and Gladys Martin, Baptist missionaries in Thailand who welcomed me into the family and nurtured my budding faith.  Mrs. Sanford, President of the Perry Homes Tenant Association, whose life embodied a commitment of service to others in her community.  My colleagues and students at Le Moyne College, who helped shape the kind of teacher and friend I have become. 

The list of people who came to mind went on and on, all in just one minute.  I experienced a deep feeling of gratitude and humility realizing how much of my being was interconnected with all these others who loved, challenged, and continue to inspire me.

In the end, I not only learned something of the kind of person Mr. Rogers was (masterfully portrayed by Tom Hanks), but I also experienced the affect his life has had on those with whom he has come in contact, whether it was the intent of the filmmakers or not (and I believe it was).  And while the emotions I felt at the end of the film were both warm and raw, I came away thankful for another Beautiful Day.