I have spent virtually the whole last week inside, except for a pre-scheduled foray to the doctor to check up on my blood pressure and cholesterol. Once he determined the horrible cold had NOT, happily, travelled to my lungs, he became disinterested in that medical aspect of things, and rushed me to blood letting, a brief uninformative here's what's next on the list of things to do to control the aforementioned blood pressure and cholesterol and out the door. I returned to my nose blowing and coughing and sleeping as soon as I got home and put on a new less ill used pair of jammies.
Until today. Saturday I wanted to venture forth, but having missed several days of work, I decided caution was best and though I felt nearly fully recovered I stayed about the house. But today, I had my cup of coffee outside with the birds, and chatted comfortably (i.e. without too much sniffling) with a friend before going to Mass.
The two Monsignors, pastor and former pastor, who usually cover the five Sunday masses, have been having various and serious medical issues of their own, and while they try to make every service, it has just become extremely difficult. We have thus had several visiting priests, usually the most amiable Father Lopez from the Los Angeles Monastery of the Angels, with whom we have become very happy. But today, he was apparently not available and someone "new" came to cover. Not really new, in that he has been a priest since 1955, and long time was pastor at Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, until retirement was required. Why required in a time when there are so few priests? That is a question for another day. Such priests really never do retire and do what this man, Fr. Colm O'Ryan, did today--help out when the needs of a parish demand it. He is pictured above, less white haired than the man I met, and perhaps more apparently outgoing than the man I met.
When asked by one of the servers how he wanted to do something during the service, father demurred. We servers of course are used to very different personalities as our replacement celebrants. More than a few, we have found, well, I shouldn't speak for my altar colleagues, but I think they'd agree, are somewhat authoritative, some because they came up at a time when priests were the fiat on all things spiritual (often creeping into the secular but we kids certainly wouldn't have pointed it out) and brooked no question, even mild question, and some because though raised at a much more permissive time discovered a wee bit of the power of the ministerial cloth that appeals to the lesser part of human nature. There have been those who are quietly happy in humility, and have no need to lead every detail,, but one never assumes. Martin said when Father was willing to proceed as this parish did on things like where the homily would be preached, or where the intentions would be read, "You're the boss, Father." Fr. O'Ryan said, no, not the boss, that he was to serve, always to serve.
We got to talking about his time as priest and things that had changed, among them, that Irish priests like himself, from Waterford (the place where the crystal was made until I sadly hear, last year) were rare in the modern church. He was, he said, "one of yesterday's people". He did not say it with bitterness. It was wistful. Perhaps it was that so few Irish men want to be priests today where in days gone by it was a thing of joy for a man to go to seminary, for himself and his family. I did not have time to ask. Although he had been called at the last minute, he had notes from a homily given earlier in the week, about having heard Victor Frankl, the Auschwitz survivor and philosopher, the writer of "Man's Search for Meaning", and about something that Frankl had said about happiness. It is not something to be pursued. It is something that ensues as a result of certain choices made, things not external. Is it the choice to love or to gather things from which happiness ensues? Fr. O'Ryan suggested we try the love, of God and man, from which our happiness would flow. "Try it," he said.
Perhaps there is something still to be learned from one of yesterday's people.
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