I was reminded of some special encounters I've had recently with some special men. During Lent and the Easter season, I've had the priviledge of being invited for dinner with the friars several times. I always look forward to these not only for the precious time spent with them in a totally different environment but also because they have an excellent cook who always provides some wonderful dishes; but kiddingly it's more for the first than the latter.
It's nice to socialize with them as men in a pub or in someone's home without the vestments being in the way. Sometimes I do forget that they are men just like me. I feel that I'm in the the old TV sitcom Cheers and once the elevators of the 5th floor open up to their recreation and dining room I feel like I've enterd a place where, "everybody knows your name."
We at St. Anthony's have many friars and some I only know in passing or by attending one of their masses. This past Sunday over a glass of wine I got to know a lot more about one very special friar, Fr. Philip. Instead of describing him in my words, I'll share something he wrote for the Secular Franciscan publication Shalom. I would like to preface this by telling you that Fr. Philip had a difficult time in getting accepted to the priesthood because of a number of physical diformities, but his perseverance finally got him in.
"As I write this message, for April, the month of Resurrection this year, I look back upon a month marked by illness, a heart out of beat, where a catherer had to be inserted, contemplation of a new left knee as the old gives way to arthritic decline, a renewed conviction that I am a holy mess.
But Christ had healed me and given me the grace to conquer fear of death. For as my illness brought me to the contemplation of death, my faith, built up by prayer and humourous recognition of the vagaries of age, leads me to say: Christ is risen, by his death he has conquered death and made of the grave an entry into eternity with him. Death is anticipated as an adventure, to be experieced with the confidence given by the Divine Presence.
Death is undoubtely an alteration, a departure from the familiar, an acceptance that life is lived as God ordains, a passage through this world into the world to come, the world we were created to inhabit. Death is a reunion with all who have passed on, as I will soon pass on, to the fullness of that life lived only in part in this world. I am eager to die, not because I wish to leave this world with its ambiguity: I will gladly stay here until the Lord calls me. I desire ardently to pass on, into what is truly beyond.
God has blessed us all with the spirit of adventure, a spirit often buried in the pressing need to meet the problems of the day. But the problem of this life, become the challenge of the life to come. What is it? Can I endure it? Do I have a sense of God's peace deep enough to make me want it more? Prayer makes us at home with God and gives us a desire to live with him where he is, as he, in Christ, lived with us where we are. Christ is risen! Alleluia!"
Fr. Philip, who's had a withered arm and one leg shorter than the other since birth hasn't let his handicaps stop him from serving the Lord and from being a sheperd to us. Sometimes I need these encounters to remind me that these are human beings just like you and me that suffer all the same things as us. I don't need to say anymore about him, I'll let the words he wrote speak for him.
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