Typical of the sixties generation of which I was otherwise an awkward, even unsuccessful part, I had been away from the Church for thirteen years by then. The reasons were less about the church than my Judas Iscariot like lack of trust in God, although of course I rationalized with the best of lapsi illogic.
"I'm thinking of going back to Church," I said, or something very much like it.
"There's a little church around the corner," she said, or something very much like it.
'Around the corner' was a little street, in between Sunset and Santa Monica, that I had no idea existed, Holloway Drive, on which stood a small edifice which had the name of a church I had never heard of, St. Victor. St. Victor was a Pope, it turns out in the early part of Christianity, from Africa. My friend was then attending this parish, although shortly after, she would move to Santa Monica.
I think it was a weekday, in November 1983, around the Thanksgiving holidays and the anniversary of my mother's death that I walked into a sparsely attended 12:10 daily Mass. A slight but straight, darkly even medievally handsome middle aged priest was celebrating the Mass.
As he preached his homily, he proclaimed with committed authority that "God was knocking on our hearts". As I sat in the shadows of the very last pew I felt as if that priest's deep set brooding eyes were boring into mine as he spoke. Impossible. But I couldn't deny that it felt as if Someone were indeed knocking on my heart, and that, as the priest whom I came to know to be Monsignor George J. Parnassus, would often say, there were no accidents with God.
I began to attend Mass, without recourse to the other sacraments, especially that of Reconciliation. I did that for three years. Somewhere in there, I approached the Monsignor for the first time. It was not a propitious encounter.
I wanted to bring used clothes to the Church for the yearly rummage sale, but there was no one around to ask about the proper depository of donations, except Monsignor. With stern deliberation he was wending his way down the then slim terrace from the sacristy, to go through the side door and through the church to the rectory. He was brusque. "I'm on the way to an appointment," he said, and he wasn't stopping for my question.
The Djinn who walked away from the practice of her faith as a teenager had become something of an adult. I concluded two things at that moment. The momentary failure of the distracted human Monsignor was not a reason to leave St. Victor's and avoid the centrality of the God Present in the Eucharist, although I was somewhat vague on my theology in those days. And, for some reason, I knew that this priest with an edge was someone whose respect I wanted to earn. There was probably some psychological transference, as he reminded me a great deal of my mother, by now dead at least ten years, and equally of my father, who shared with him a part Greek heritage. I had a spiritual, and a very earthly reason to stay, both.
It was about 1986 that I decided to become a full fledged member of the parish and share in the panoply of the Sacraments available to me. I went to some parish meeting. There was Monsignor, with another man, who would also become a lifelong friend, respectively conducting the meeting. After the meeting concluded, I sat on the edge of the stage in the meeting room/auditorium. Monsignor was eager to hear about me, what I did (I had just begun my job at the State Bar that very year), and where I came from, and what I thought about this and that. It was brief, but it was encouraging. We seemed to like each other.
Having apparently assessed me and my motivations, he began to ask me to assist in parish activities. St. Victor's was, and remains, something of an interesting bridge between the days of pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II and from my perch from the pew, the best of both. People called it, and still call it a "gay-friendly" parish. That misses the point. What it was and has always remained, under the helm of Monsignor Parnassus to today, is a place for us, sinners all, seeking to practice our faith without compromise, recognizing the limits of our fallen human nature and seeking forgiveness for our endless failures through which God continues to love us. We were to conform to God, not God to us. Perhaps that is why Monsignor preached so often on the Confession and I think he used the phrase interchangeably with that of "Reconciliation." He would say, "I notice how almost everyone goes to Communion each and every Sunday, but there are few at the Confessional on a Saturday." He would urge us to lay ourselves before our God, with humility. Always with a humility, which he noted time and time again, eluded him and for which he prayed constantly. For himself, and for us, together.
I didn't seek to confess with Monsignor as mediator very often. I recently told a priest, Fr. Wolfe, from another parish to whom I go to Confession when he happened to meet me at my own "You know, don't you, that we (Catholics) often don't go to confession at their own parishes?" He knew. It had been true even in his day. But every once in a while, with much on my mind and soul, I would break that rule and sought out Monsignor Parnassus, by appointment to discuss a sin that weighed on my mind, that was surely separating me in my walk with God. People who might have been put off by Monsignor's austere demeanor, a defense, he would once tell me, when he became a teacher at school and had to deal with students, for which he felt no internal confidence, missed the most precious of experiences of reconciliation with God. He spoke with both kindness, empathy and theological depth , and it was as if, something that I felt true of his homilies, in those moments God was speaking through this complex man, especially.
My father, a lapsed Greek Orthodox, who came to Mass on Christmas and Easter mostly to share the holiday with me, and to hear me in my role, as of about 1987, as substitute lector, and then later as a regular lector, took an immediate shine to Monsignor, as did Monsignor to him. Both their fathers had been the immigrants from Greece. Both their mothers, Dad's of Italian heritage, and Monsignor's of Mexican heritage, were American born. Both fathers had had something of a similar beginning although unlike my grandfather, Monsignor's father had found success and apparently wealth as a boxing promoter, so well known that today he is in the Boxing Hall of Fame. He was also called George. He had died in 1975, only a year or so after my mother did. So, whenever there were parish dinners, my father was present, often at Monsignor's table with some of the rest of his family, Monsignor's brother Bill, and Bill's wife Gloria.
My father had an intellectual interest in all religion, saying often that IF he were to practice one, it would either be as a Jew or as a Catholic. But he would not commit to anything--not even whether he actually believed in God in the first instance. Anyone who knew my dad knew that he would become vague on the subject and, as I used to say to him, a little like the narrator in "Our Town" observing the rest of humanity, as if he were not a member of it. I'd shake my head in frustration. When Dad was about to have his four part by pass surgery in 1989, having checked the box on the hospital intake form reflecting he had no religion, I ran to Monsignor for advice. What should I do? In the same way that Monica was advised regarding her son, Augustine, Monsignor advised me, daughter of Constantine, "Leave him alone. Just pray." Dad and I would have our skirmishes after his successful surgery and his rocky emotional recovery about Catholicism. After one of Monsignor's magnificent homilies, as usual delivered without notes- my father said, "I didn't hear or see anything startling." Frustrated, I said, "If Jesus the Lord stood behind Monsignor transfigured during the homily, I think you'd still say that!" but Dad kept coming. Perhaps it was some of the social occasions, dinners at the rectory with various parishioners, and a dinner or two at restaurants, where Monsignor would try to penetrate my father's religious wall, that greased the wheel.
Monsignor was an impressario, not of boxing, but of preaching God's word. And my father protested, but stayed close to me, the Church, and Monsignor.
Dad was 85, having had a bit of wine with dinner, when he called me, and said that he wanted to become a Catholic--to make it "easier" for me was his cryptic rationale. I knew it was related to his age and disposition after death. It would be easier for me if I could bury him out of St. Victor. Was it only that? I don't know. I will never really know. What did Monsignor say to me over a dinner with several people, once, at Sofi, a Greek Restaurant. It is prideful for us, as Christians, to want to see ourselves hit a home run spiritually speaking. I wanted my father to have some kind of Pauline like conversion on Holloway Drive, simply because of my and our attendance at this Church, but however it happened, it brought Dad to God, and I need not have anything to do with it.
Dad had a condition for his training as a Catholic. It had to be Monsignor Parnassus to conduct it.
Knowing both men, each close to the vest, both capable of conviviality, a secret kindness and sharp reproach of themselves and others, I wished I could be a fly on the wall. My father would argue every point of theology, and ask questions to which he really was not seeking an answer. I couldn't imagine Monsignor being patient with him. I certainly wasn't. And yet, one day, somewhat before the Easter Vigil in 2003, in the sacristy before the 12:15 Mass which by now I had attended as a lector since 1987, with a brief self imposed respite for one year in the late 1990s, Monsignor said Dad would be received into the Church.
By then Monsignor had retired as pastor, his mother, a grand dame to whom he always offered a tender deference, had died, his own health having been long compromised by what I have always believed to be a botched surgery on his spine in the early 1990s (he never said to me; Dad once told me he had vouchsafed the story to him. No surprise. Dad seemed to have the role of a second older brother to Monsignor. It was somewhere between informal and formal. Words did not get spoken about it, as befitted men of their generations. But when it came time for dad to be received, Monsignor stood up from the side of the altar, and presided over this one reception. I was Dad's sponsor. I saw the tears welling up in the eyes of the servers who knew us all, as they welled up in mine. And Monsignor, who was not given to hugging, took my father, who also avoided physical or verbal sentiment, into his arms.
Two difficult determined, fascinating and decent men, my two fathers, in their respective ways I have come to realize, one of blood, one of spirit, each contributing to the person I had become.
To gain their respect, one had to work very hard, and sometimes still not know if the line had been met, no, in truth, pretty sure that the line hadn't been met. Which only meant that I wanted to try all the more, sometimes with a level of enormous frustration that still did not deter.
When Dad was losing the battle of sepsis in the hospital in April 2008, connected to breathing apparatus and pumped with vasopressors to keep up his blood pressure, I met with Monsignor and talked about the line between ordinary and necessary care and extraordinary efforts. Monsignor helped me during those days navigate that treacherous tightrope and I was impressed by his certainty of God helping me to the right decision. "Will what they are doing improve his chances?" he told me to ask the doctors. Dad's chances could not be improved. He died on April 8, having survived to his 90th birthday without ever having had to leave his home or lose his independence.
Monsignor was by then quite physically impaired, but still ambulatory by cane and it was he who said the homily at Dad's funeral which was instructive religiously, as required by the occasion, but enormously personal in its clear affection for my dad, so much so that more than one attendee noted never having heard one so warm.
After dad died, Monsignor took me under his wing, as I knew he took so many of us at St. Victor's, one of his spiritual daughters and sons. There were many invitations to the large dinners at the rectory, and many group outings to his last favorite restaurant, Lucques. He still could drink a little, mostly now Proseco, less hard on his stomach. He could attend these moments with parish family members in mufti, that is, without the collar which he always wore with honor, but which sometimes caused people to distance themselves.
After I lost my job in 2011, I planned on increasing my attendance at Mass, but not necessarily to go every day. God, of course, had his plans, and I began attending daily, and then helping out, and then bringing Communion, mostly every day to Monsignor. It was never easy for me. When he was having a difficult day, he would ask that Our Lord be left on the personal altar he maintained, and where, for some time when he was able, he had said Mass privately. He was not going "gently into that good night" and he realized that he required God's help to temper his temper, and to bring him to that humility which eluded him, he acknowledged in prayer after prayer in dealing with the suffering that had been visited upon him. I often found myself joining quietly in that prayer, for humility I once said to him, "is indeed a tough nut to crack." I always felt that there was some secret sadness in him as I felt existed in my father before him. Perhaps we all have our secret sorrows, never to be discovered by those who love us.
There were times I thought, he's giving up after a hospital stay. But then, he'd be back in the rectory and orchestrating a project, the last something he called Our Lady of the Well of Nazareth, by which he worked with Catholic Relief Services to make and arrange donations for the building and rehabilitation of wells in drought prone and drought striken areas. Particularly he became interested in East Africa. He had research done. He did some himself somehow. He summoned several of us to his bedside to discuss events to raise money and to dictate letters. I became his scrivener and his secretary.
He became discouraged for a while at what he perceived to be a lack of sufficient interest in the project, although many had in fact donated, probably because he asked it. I would remind him that the economy was bad, as he himself had recognized, and that people had their own charities. I understood their problem. I had my own, for which I did little enough, the Sister Servants of Mary. We who assisted wanted him to be at the center of the fundraising, to use his name, to make him the honoree at some event, even if he could only attend for a short time. He resisted, even angrily with a resounding "No!" It was Our Lady who was to be the center, the one honored.
And then, he decided to dictate a letter, and put it on tape. I stood by his bed tape in hand at his request as he did what was always so amazing, create a homily and an appeal all at once, with beginning, middle and end perfect and affecting, a spiritual Vincent Lombardi.
In his voice: "I myself was trying to see the future that I had with this work and because of illness and old age and a certain amount of tiredness I was very disappointed in myself and in the project and wanted to simply withdraw from it altogether. But then I was given a report about what had actually been done. . .and this was a startling statement of what can be done by the Blessed Mother when she is asked to help her children. And I believe she was telling me also in a very clear way that I must not withdraw from it, that I must keep on even though I am old and ill. She can use an instrument like me to do her work, but I must have a pure heart and a clear commitment so I am resolved to do all that I can to continue in this. I am speaking to you now in this letter to tell you that you must consider that this is her work and that you must not say no to her, you must not turn a deaf ear to her call to help her children, but to do what you can with comittment with spreading the word about this and with your personal sacrifices for Our Lady of the Well of Nazareth." He ended, as follows, as only he could, with "Period. That will be the first letter."
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That was probably at the end of 2012 or the beginning of 2013. He had fewer good days after that. A few of us were able to bring him Communion, and he was able to take Our Lord right up to the Thursday before the Saturday he died. Monsignor Murphy gave him the Anointing of the Sick. He sought the Sacrament of Reconciliation often during his illness. He reminded me that he did not want anyone to say after he died that he was surely in heaven. He was certain he'd be spending time in Purgatory, so that he could be fully purged of the effects of sin on earth and made pristine before being in the Presence of God. He was very clear that the souls of the dead must be given our prayers. He asked that on his marker, it say, "George Parnassus, Priest" with the dates of his birth and death and ordination, followed by, "Pray for Him." It is probably no accident that the prayer card for his ordination asked the same thing, "Pray for me."
