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| Cannonball Moment | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 5 2006, 04:49 AM (433 Views) | |
| ceig13 | Aug 5 2006, 04:49 AM Post #1 |
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The Right Reverend Cosmopolitan of Bampton Underhoop
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Author’s note: This is my parting gift to the Luke’s All Grown Up Message Board as it expands its scope to more cartoon characters this August. And hey, this may be quite OOC for some of you. + AMDG* Cannonball Moment First off, I would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Finster, as well as Chuckie and my sister, for inviting me to the coffeeshop for this “surprise” party-Chuckie, you give too much away actionwise-and to Father Provincial Douglas Barnes for doing the same after the mass, as well as attending here with the rest of my family, in-laws and devoted friends as well, both my inner circle and the whole Jesuit community of Bellarmine High and the Mission House. Without further ado, I’d like to begin this talk on a section of the life of the Founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola. At his young age, Iñigo Lopez de Loyola was a man of the world, whose pride in chivalry and love of adventure would send him to the army, with the typical knightly attitude of Renaissance-era warriors. As fate would have it, his leg was shattered by a French cannonball at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521, and being put out of action, was sent home to recover. With no books on chivalry he contented himself with The Life of Christ and Lives of the Saints, and it was then that he discovered a calling by a higher overlord. And with that, he left his house after his healing, came to the shrine of Our Lady of Monserrat and offered his sword and armor, and after years of writing those Spiritual Exercises at Manresa, met up with Francis Xavier and Pierre Favre, and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, as we have seen, that cannonball moment would force him home with two books on Christ and the saints, and I think that sort of happened with me after somehow, being that clueless half of the DeVille twins who never grew up, I got selected by my sophomore year History teacher on the English Reformation, with the Catholic side of the story. With my grades having been precarious on this very subject, I was egged on by Mom to improve or this very occasion, and so I had no choice but to plod on ahead. It was then that I encountered these people: Thomas More, whose disapproval of the Act of Supremacy of the monarch on the Church in England forced this longtime friend, Henry VIII, to have him beheaded; Edmund Campion the convert to Catholicism whose efforts to reach Catholics in Elizabethan England after the Armada’s foiled conquest made him a marked man, and at his trial confirmed that he was to accept the death sentence if being a Catholic made him a traitor; Henry Walpole, who watched Campion hanged, drawn and quartered and would convert and have the honor of suffering the same fate years later; Margaret Clitherow, who was literally crushed to death for refusal to divulge information on any Catholic priests sheltered by her; Anne Line, who, even facing the scaffold, not only admitted to harboring a Catholic priest but regretted not having admitted a thousand more; and many others. Well, doubt if you will whether the research process awakened something, but by the time I was able to present my report to class ugly questions have been raised in my head. “Where’s your life going, Phil? Why aren’t you as ready to live for something as these folks did?” I was left in a quandary afterwards, until spring break arrived, wherein I promised myself to do something useful, to make my life meaningful without sacrificing some of my identity in the process. And to cut the long story short, first I took part in a charity drive, and then volunteered in a downtown clinic for the homeless run by the Jesuits, all the while improving my behavior at a boring Sunday Mass and privately praying the rosary, something I haven’t done since my first communion some eight years from them. I also took my homework more seriously, thinking of them less as punishments than as opportunities to excel in-not that my grades changed, though! (laughter) Anyway, I was still an improved version of the old me, being the other twin playing catch-up with the more mature twin sister. But then, after much thought about my current predicament, I felt I was called to something higher. And so, after some four years, during my confession, I admitted to the priest that I heard the Call, but I didn’t know whether or not to answer. I already had a girlfriend, I was planning on a career in teaching (I only excelled in Biology and English), and as far as I know, I had no inclinations to poverty, chastity or obedience. The priest told me it was something only the freely-given grace of God that will provide to me, however undeserving I felt before him. And with that etched in my mind, and after reading and quietly thinking of the pros and cons of the matter, I went one day to the Java Lava for my shift, and when that was over, I told all of them in the office what I have been keeping to myself until then: I wanted to become a priest in the Society of Jesus. Mom and Dad didn’t take this well, of course - that’s a given, seeing their son never having children of their own. But it was Lil that was the most devastated by the news of losing the person she could actually confide with. And for some reason, I felt the same. After three months had passed, with my resolve intact, she finally talked to me, feeling hurt about not confiding this inner turmoil to me. After some sort of amicable reconciliation talk first with her, then my parents, and finally with my peeved girlfriend, I offered my figurative sword and left my family at age 18 to the Kostka Novitiate for two years of isolation and formation, and things go on from there, with me having spent ten to twelve years between then and the priesthood railroading through Philosophy, Biology Education and Sacred Theology degrees, with a regency assignment at a Blessed Miguel Academy in South Central LA, a long diaconate and not a few problems with Hebrew-thanks for the tutoring, Tommy-Jesuit dialectics and apologetics in between. So having about 20 long years in the Society, with almost half of those years as an ordained priest and a sophomore year Biology teacher, I have learned a lot of things along the way. First, of course, is the value of living simply-that’s why I’m the deadbeat uncle who never gives Carl presents. The value of indifference to what the world can offer me allowed me to work, first as a volunteer teacher in Blessed Miguel, then as temporary pastor of a Yorba Linda parish, and now as a teacher and chaplain of Bellarmine High, all the meanwhile not worrying about financial aid. Second comes chastity, of course. Foregoing the joy, not only of sex, but of family life, as Tommy and Kimi, Chuckie and Lil, Tyrone and Susie, Dil and Ava, and Timmy and Angelica, have all done, is quite hard on the surface, and though I have that plaguing doubt, I was able to reconcile myself with my choice. After all, I did not choose God, but He chose me, although why I chose the Jesuits only boils down to easy access reasons-their formation house was quite near Jim Junior High. Anyway, I have no regrets. Then there is obedience, the feeling of true freedom in using it for good, because, no matter how hard it is to do, it is what true freedom is meant for. Father Provincial Barnes has been kind enough to send me into what are for us the “easy” missions-teaching jobs in schools. Of course, there is quite the disappointment in what I’ve been told to do-I’d rather much do more social justice work, especially in prisons and in inner-city neighborhoods like Blessed Miguel, but then again, we learn to manage with what we have. As part of the Catholic Church we also profess obedience to the Pope, although I’m sure you’ve heard of the occassional nutcases who are too deviant-don’t worry, we’ve, um, taken care of them now! (laughs) Nah, but seriously, the orthodoxy that seems to have disappeared one generation ago has come back to the order, and has led us to a better, and a certainly more consitently Catholic way of harmonizing the secular and the religious-finding God in all things, as St. Ignatius said. And finally, there is the lesson of love of neighbor, despite the differences we may have. Discussions about reproductive health and evolution are heated in my classes, exacerbated by my apologetics training and my attempts to reconcile it with my studies, but just wait until class is over-we’re all in the cafeteria as though nothing happened! Not letting our passions overrun our friendships has been the key for me in being able to learn all three, and a lesson that may be worth learning for us all. For in the end, everything we do in our lives can, and must, always be for the greater glory of God. Thank you. +++++++ ”Found it too wordy, the speech?” Phil asked Tommy at the cake line. “Wordy? Nah, you did fine there, Father,” he replied reassuringly. “Oh c’mon Tom, I still kinda find it awkward you guys calling me Father!” “Then again, it was equally awkward for me hearing your Hebrew.” “Touché there, my good friend,” he said. “Now let’s have the cake before the others level it to the plate.” *AMDG- Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, Latin, for the greater glory of God. Motto of the Society of Jesus. Often written on top of documents by Jesuits or people studying in their schools. |
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7:18 PM Jul 10