Have You Become A Protestant?

 Although I had a preference for the Extraordinary Form at one time, I was never at any point an exclusively Traditional Latin Mass Catholic.  In fact, I was probably much more active in the Augustinian Community than I ever was in the TLM cohort.  My relationship with the Augustinians had quite the inauspicious start.  

When I made my first confession in almost 20 years, it was to a Franciscan priest who was overjoyed by my return to the Church.  I think he went pretty easy on me considering the length of time I was away and the extent of what I confessed.  I remember leaving that confessional box feeling 100 pounds lighter as though actual weight had been removed.  The second time I would go to confession would bear no semblance to this experience.

I was probably a little too glib and certainly not penitent enough for my sins because I got an earful from the elderly Augustinian priest who heard my confession.  I was afraid one of two things was going to happen: Either he was going to throw me out of the box, or I was going to get up and leave before I received absolution.  He told me I needed a lot of prayer and fasting and a better attitude and then he pushed a Chaplet of Divine Mercy card through the screen to me.  "Do you know the chaplet?  Pray it for your penance."   He told me to make an act of contrition and then he said the prayers of absolution which I found distracting, and I stopped my confiteor.  He snapped at me "keep going!"  When I left the confessional I made note of his name and swore I would never return to him again, even if I was desperate.  But a seed was planted.

I soon learned that this elderly short-tempered priest (or at least I thought he was short-tempered based on one experience) lead a Holy Hour every evening that concluded with the Rosary and Benediction.  I saw a whole other side, but I was still stung by my initial encounter with him and was wary about getting attached.  One thing was very apparent:  He loved God very much and was devoted to the Blessed Sacrament.  He started to grow on me.

One Sunday in Lent, my husband did something inconsequential in the grand scheme of things to tick me off and I broke a dish in anger.  My kids witnessed this and I felt immediate remorse.  It had been awhile since I'd been to confession and my tantrum was weighing on me, so I decided to go to the Shrine because I knew confession was scheduled for 4pm.  I got there early and was surprised that a priest was already hearing confessions.  I looked at the name plate on the door, took a deep breath and resigned myself to the possibility that I was going to get lambasted again.  I could not have been more wrong.

When I told Father what I did and how embarrassed I was that my kids witnessed it, he asked me quietly:"How long have you been married?" 

"Twenty years Father."

"How many children"?

"Three Father."

He then began a long conversation about his own childhood, his upbringing and his memory of his own dear mother.  He asked me if I prayed with the kids and I told him it was a challenge sometimes because of household distractions but that I was bringing them to 40 Hours at our parish that evening.  He asked me about my own prayers life, and then told me he thought I was on the right track and that I should pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for my penance.  Thus began the spiritual direction that would guide me for the rest of my life.  I often sought Father out for confession and if no one else was in line, for spiritual direction.  I almost never missed his Holy Hour and one Saturday evening, it was just me and him.  So I placed the humeral veil on him before Benediction and swung the thurifier as I'd seen the man who usually assisted Father do.  When we concluded, I helped him put everything away.  He said to me with a gleam in his eye: "You would have made a good altar server."

Now Father was as uncompromising and straight forward as priests come.  But he, like his patroness Saint Faustina, was a disciple of mercy, and he preached and lived mercy with every fiber of his being.  I soon came to learn that unlike most of the priests I'd met through the TLM, Father practiced social justice and charity and taught it to his students when he was pastor at an East Coast parish many years before.  He told of how he took the kids to a nursing home and was resigned never to return because of how unpleasant it was, but had no choice but to go back because the kids insisted on it.  He worked with a non-English speaking Southeast Asian community at a time when it was almost unheard of to minister to those whose native language wasn't ours. 

One November day, a regular at the evening Holy Hour told me that Father was disturbed because some "sedevacantists" had visited the shrine.  I didn't even know what that word meant at that time.  The gentleman went on to explain that there was an order of nuns and priests who had broken with Rome and the Pope many years before because of Vatican II.  Father immediately detected who they were because they did not reverence the Blessed Sacrament when they passed the chapel doors.   I had no idea why the SSPX would visit a Novus Ordo shrine but I reflected on this years later when I visited Father shortly before he passed away.

Some time after this, his health declined to the point where the order decided he needed to live at the infirmary at Villanova where his medical needs could be met and he could still hear confessions and offer Mass.  I visited him a few times and we wrote to each other and sent messages of encouragement. I knew he didn't want to be there but he was obedient to his superior and made the best of it.  As I got busier with work, and he grew more infirm, the visits stopped and the cards were a lot less frequent.  I wrote to him excitedly to tell him about how my parish priest was now offering the Extraordinary Form and how I loved it and I got no response.  

When I heard Father had declined to the point where death was imminent, I went to Villanova to say goodbye.  He was in a chair watching television and when he saw me there was no warmth in his eyes.  I knelt down in front of him and starting to talk to him and he stopped me and asked: "Have you become a Protestant?"  I had no idea what he meant.  

"No Father, I go to Mass every day just about it. I still go to adoration at the shrine."

I started rambling about the first time I went to him for confession and how I was so humiliated and he said he'd given me what I needed, and that he'd always tried to give me what I needed.  I handed him a holy card of St. Therese that had been blessed during a general audience with Pope Benedict XVI and he smiled and softened and looked down at it with great affection. I asked him for his blessing and then he turned from the disciplinarian to the kindly old priest I'd come to know and love.  I kissed the top of his head and left his room, and when I looked back at him, he was smiling at me.  He passed away less than two weeks later.  

It would be a while before I would understand his reproach of me.