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| Grace, and a Little Old Irish Priest |
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There are certain people who have a certain "extra presence" about them, and it is glaringly obvious to all who observe them. This quality I speak of is not the superficial charisma of a business leader or a movie star, but of a light that shines so brightly from a person that others are drawn to them like moths to a flame. It is a quality- an undeniable overflow of the Spirit- that overshadows orthodoxy and dogma and crosses cultural boundaries.
In my childhood I was more or less conditioned to be afraid of everything, including God, and I got some serious mixed messages regarding God and Who He is. My mother is an observant Roman Catholic, which means that my sisters and I were formally raised in that tradition, but my father as well as my grandmother (his mother) are Regular Baptists. Needless to say, as there are a number of theological differences between these two traditions, (and vastly more so in the 1970's and 1980's than today) I was extremely confused as to what it meant to be a Christian, and even more mystified as to what one has to do to escape hell fire. As a child I was terrified of everything from stinging insects to my sisters' arbitrary wrath, but there was nothing I was more afraid of than burning in hell. Between the dire warnings from the Chick Tracts handed out by the Baptists and the fearsome wrath of Sister Mary Refrigerator Perry if you were out of line or asked a heretical question in CCD, religion was one more thing to keep me good and afraid.
In all fairness, it had to be really confusing to be a Catholic in the early 1970's. Mom had gone to Catholic school- before Vatican II- so by the time my sisters and I were old enough to shut up and sit still through Mass or get a good thumping, every tradition and practice of her religion had been radically changed. She grew up with Latin Mass and had memorized devotions to the patron saint of everything from lost causes (St. Jude) to the saint she has stuck on the dash of her van (St. Christopher.)
I am sure it wasn't easy for her to cope with such reforms as the "Folk Mass" (think hippies and guitars and drippy lovey-dovey homilies that sounded more like dreamy descriptions of acid trips than sound teaching on Scripture) and the hideous renovation of her church building where someone thought it a good idea to replace the wonderful (yet deliciously macabre) Gothic art and dramatic Victorian statues with bright green Astroturf carpet and some really cheap looking modern art that I think had a former life as very tacky office furniture. The culture in Mom's church as we grew up was swinging wildly between the ultra orthodox old-school Catholics who believed all Protestants to be hell-bound heathens and who wanted to bring back the Latin Mass, and the ultra liberal hippies who always smelled funky and who I think in hindsight were confusing acid trips with spirituality. Neither extreme was good.
I remember both Mom telling us kids to pray for all of our "heathen" relatives, especially my Dad, to convert to Catholicism so they wouldn't go to hell, (There's a way to scare the thunder out of your kids!) and at the same time my Grandma telling us kids that we need to accept Jesus, get saved and get Baptized in the river by immersion, or we would go to hell like all the other Catholics.
So who was going to hell? Catholics or Baptists? It depended upon which one you asked.
And even if you were Catholic, as we were taught, if you died with unconfessed sins you would end up in Purgatory (sort of like the waiting room at the Dr.'s office- nothing to do except hope your wait is short and you don't catch a rare and incurable disease from your seat mates, and to pray that Montel will be over very, very soon.) If you died with a really bad unconfessed sin you would just go straight to hell, so you had to make sure either you didn't sin much or you went to Confession as often as you could, because confessing your sin didn't count unless you confessed it to the Priest and he told you what to do (Penance) so you would be forgiven for it.
Mom took us to Confession often, sometimes as much as once a month or more, especially during Lent. Some of the Priests were downright frightening, and since you didn't know which one you would get until you went to the confessional, you hoped you wouldn't get the "mean" or "scary" ones because they would give you hard Penance and tell you to say 500 "Our Fathers" or 100 "Hail Marys" and they would also tell you to forgive the kids for throwing you in the bushes and/or beating you up AND you also have to ask them to forgive you for cussing them out when they did. Since the Priest was to us, "Substitute Jesus," we were led to believe that the Priest was telling us the same thing Jesus (supposedly) would tell us- "Do these things, and you might be safe- until you sin again." I was always terrified of going to Confession. My main fears were that either I would get a "mean" Priest who would tell me I had to be nice to my sisters even if they threw bugs in my hair, or I would forget to name all my sins and then not have them forgiven because I didn't name them.
Secretly when you went to Confession you hoped to get Father Furey. He wasn't there often because he was older and semi-retired, and he also served as the chaplain at the prison. Maybe it was because he spent so much time with hard core criminals that little kids' sins looked petty, but Father Furey was usually very lenient with his penance assignments. He would also usually succeed in getting a smile out of you even though Confession was supposed to be Serious Business.
Father Furey was one of those people who simply radiate the Holy Spirit. Even though God was not supposed to be funny, Father Furey was. He had business cards printed with his name and phone number on them, that also said at the bottom, "Have Bible, Will Travel." He cracked jokes even on subjects we were taught not to joke about. Some of his best friends were Protestant Pastors as well as street preachers of all sorts, (at a time when ecumenism was not always viewed in a positive light) as well as he often talked about the relationships he had with the prisoners he ministered to. I discovered that many prisoners' lives were transformed by Father Furey- not because he told them how to follow The Rules, but because he showed them God's love and grace. Father Furey was not afraid to give someone a hug or to make someone smile. He was just as at home with convicted murderers as he was with little kids, even though he was a small and frail old man.
I remember one particular time going to Confession and I was pretty scared about it, because I had done quite a bit of swearing, as well as I had probably violated at least eight of the Ten Commandments the previous week. I thought even Father Furey would give me "hard penance" for all that mischief. I remember almost crying my way through that Confession, because in my mind I had been pretty bad and was hell-bound for sure. Father simply said, "Is that all?," then he added, "You're OK. Pray about it, and ask for help to do better."
I may not have realized it right at the moment, but I think I had a taste of the relief that the adulterous woman in John 8 must have felt when Jesus scattered the Pharisees who wanted to have her stoned. Instead of saying to her, "Take your punishment," in His grace he forgave her, saying, "Go and sin no more."
Since that time I have struggled with the concept of doing vs. surrendering, and it is an ongoing part of my wrestling match. There are indeed times for Christians to act, but that action should flow from the grace that we have first been given in Christ rather than from an effort to "earn" salvation or in an attempt to escape hellfire. We are capable of neither, apart from Christ.
I can see why Father Furey transformed so many lives. He didn't try to convert people to Catholicism via fear of hellfire, nor did he strive to teach people The Rules. He surrendered- and lived out the grace that God had given him.
I am thankful that God has strategically placed people like Father Furey in the most unlikely places (and as a kid, the last person I expected to show me mercy was a Priest) to show us His grace.
I don't worry about going to hell because Jesus paid that price for me, and thankfully it's not about what I do or don't do. I really don't want to speculate on who is damned and who is saved because that's between each individual and God and I thank God that I am not the Judge, He is. When I was a little kid I envisioned Jesus as being the Enforcer, sort of like Arnold Swarzenegger in "The Terminator," just waiting and watching for me to screw up. Now I believe I have a better picture of Who Jesus is in my memory of Father Furey smiling and saying, "Is that all?" "It's OK, just pray and ask for help to do better." |
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