My mother’s brother, the only one of my uncles that I knew well, was ordained a priest 60 years ago today. The middle of the war. The middle of “fortress Catholicism.” When there were still a large number of “national” parishes drawing their congregations by ethnic group instead of geography, so that the vast numbers of immigrants could have a priest to hear their confessions, and be in fellowship with them, in the language that they had been born to. My uncle’s fluent Italian (and him of nothing but Irish stock) meant that he spent most of his years as a priest in those parishes. A blessing he found it, and not only for the food.



My uncle died nine years ago but, this year especially, I needed to make a gesture to him and in his memory. And so I went on the afternoon of Memorial Day to visit one of the priests of his ordination class, one of his close friends, another Irishman with fluent Italian. I hadn’t seen the Monsignor in some years but, as is always remarked, it’s the short term memory of the elderly that fails most quickly and we had a good visit mostly on things long since. I knelt for his blessing before leaving, which moved him. Which moved me. To a kiss on chrismed hands, now gnarled.



I read somewhere that John Paul II intends his continued ministry despite the ravages of age and the impositions of illness to be in part a mark of solidarity with the elderly, a sacrament of the inviolable dignity of the human person whatever his condition. May it be seen so. There’s so much talk of the “mercy” of euthanasia, so many the faces of the culture of death. We need to develop the daily habit of resistance to that culture. Human and Christian closeness -- that’s the mark of mercy and the real balm for each of us. A source of immense grace while we live and, in Him, of peace at the last.



Because they're such a daily source of blessing for me, I've fallen already into the habit of posting hymn links on the blog. Here, then, one for my uncle and his priest classmates. O God of loveliness.