Father Fred

I

His older and contemporary parishioners called him that, because they had, most of them, known him all his life; and, though they revered him fast enough, they loved him even more. He was rector of the church in which he had been born and brought up, among whose people he had knelt as child and boy and college youth, as deacon and as curate.

A difficult position? So it was considered, but Father Fred did not seem to find it hard. Or, if he did, he paid no attention to the difficulty. He had a simplicity and directness and an utterly baffling humility which ignored and disarmed criticism. Of what use was it to carp at a priest who either remained unaware of the carping or accepted it gently as his natural due?

His face indicated that he had never expected or been accustomed to have things made easy for him. Of course not. What should a soldier of the cross be doing with ease? There were lines on his forehead and about his eyes, strong lines about his mouth. People do more or less choose and make their own lives. Doubtless, Father Fred’s spirit chose to perfect itself through suffering.

His features were rather rugged for one who bore such a gentle spirit. He suggested comparison with a granite cliff played upon by a tender evening light. His lips were certainly granite; inflexible will governed their feeling curves, and occasionally released the humor that always lurked in their corners. There was nothing in all the world the owner of that mouth could be made to do if he did not think best. His eyes were dark and changeful, reflecting inscrutable moods. His face was often so pale that, glimmering in the dusk of the chancel, it made the observer think of Moses fresh from the mount. As for his figure, its tall height was thin to the point of emaciation.

Ascetic? No, not exactly. The humor of the mouth objected to that characterization, and many a gleam of the eyes reinforced the refusal. He was only a very brave and gentle and holy man.

Just as he might have chosen his own personal, poignant reaction on life, so was his objective opportunity precisely suited to him. But indeed it is not well to deal with the terms subjective and objective in connection with Father Fred. He was more completely integrated than are most of us. He was wholly identified with his purpose: that says everything.

Losing one’s life to find it, is a Christian paradox still all too little practiced for the good of the world. We are timid and cautious and reasonable. We will not understand that to let ourselves go out of our hampering individual likes and dislikes, is to enlarge and deepen ourselves, to take on force and ability, to win our souls. A man’s purpose is more entirely himself than he can ever be.

Father Fred did not think all this out. It is a paradox within a paradox that a man defeats his own end when he loses his life in order to find it. He must lose it for the sake of his cause; then the great, unexpected reward of selfhood will be added to him.

Father Fred was born into his purpose. More than that, the particular, dynamic phase of it which he served was strictly contemporaneous with him; it and he grew up together. Although he gave the impression of never having thought of himself as apart from it, it is probable that his utter devotion was the work of time and pain. He was simple by nature, but he was too intelligent not to know what he was not doing as well as what he was. He said of himself once that, coming to self-conscious manhood, he found his mind endowed with a rather alarming facility. He could understand and accept half a dozen points of view in as many days. But he knew that no force results from scattering, that a man must choose. Therefore he chose, with no hesitation, but with a resolution that gathered into one channel the lifegiving power of many streams. That was what gave his simplicity depth. All his other possible purposes served his one ruling cause.

What, now, was his purpose — this great end that governed all his brave young life? Well, in a way, it was nothing new, being simply the purpose of the ages: the Kingdom of God. But different periods seem to present different opportunities for service, and there is at present one explicit hope which enlists all the love and thought and effort of those who believe in it. To awaken his church to a realization of its full Catholic privilege, was the work to which Father Fred devoted his whole being.

To him there could be no doubt that it was the greatest work of his generation. Unobtrusive, almost obscure, it holds on its quiet, patient way underneath the din of our social reforms, our political purgations, our science, our stress of emancipation, all the clamorous, insistent things for which we seem to stand; and perhaps the next generation will find that the gentler movement has achieved more than all the rest put together. It has the same vision as they, the same earnest longing for righteousness. But it strikes at the root of the evil that blocks the way, instead of going to work on the leaves and branches. Sin is the root, is it not? Separation from God, disobedience. Very well; the way to cure that is simply to show God in the flesh, to shame and summon humanity by holding up ever before it the sign of its own divinity. If people truly realized that Christ was incarnate in them and that their lives were hid with Him in God, the wrongs of the world would have no choice but to right themselves at once.

The Catholic Church has always taken its stand supremely on this one simple, sufficient fact of the Incarnation. It has surrounded its message with all the suggestive beauty of symbolism that worshiping ages have been able to divine and hand on to one another. For a symbol is nearer reality than any attempt at direct expression. The result is a marvelous service, a mystic ritual, full of the sublimest intuitions and intimations that groping humanity has ever glimpsed. It certainly is not too much to say that any worshiper, truly assisting at a Catholic mass, must spring to the heart of God and, at least for the half hour, be gloriously good and free.

But — sad and perplexing fact! — it has happened that a great part of the Church has lapsed from its simplicity. Doubtless, four hundred years ago, it had to take itself severely in hand and right some of the grievous errors into which it had fallen. But that was no reason why it should — nay, it was the reason of reasons why it. should not — forget, the sacramental significance which was its soul and breath of life. It has had a precarious time of it, trying to uphold the noble externals without the inner substance, and it has dissipated its efforts in endless experiments. Now, here and there, more and more, it is beginning to realize its distraction and loss, and it is coming back — coming, coming. Or, rather, it. is waking to an appreciation of the mysteries which it has all the time held in its sleeping hands. Prejudice and ignorance make its rehabilitation a slow and difficult matter. But that is all right; it is willing to work and suffer. Father Fred had need of all the resolution that moulded his lips and of all the humor that lurked in their corners.

He was not the first one to promote the Catholic tendency in his church. The rector who preceded him had instigated the return. Under this good and wise man Father Fred had served as curate; and the two of them, working together, had built the church edifice. That was a profoundly sagacious proceeding, already a sort of fulfillment of their high desire. For a church, designed and built on a sacramental theme, silently, day in, day out, demands the realization of that which it typifies. Soaring Gothic pillars and arches, glowing windows, a noble rood screen, a gleaming white altar, silence, holiness — these things connote the solemn ritual of the mass, the thrilling daily presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and all that goes to make the spot significant of the immediate touch of God. As the two priests brought their church to completion and steeped themselves in its spirit, it must have seemed to them often that the Kingdom was already come.

But then it must have seemed doubly hard to turn from the vision and understand that, instead of being immediatcly present, it was very remote, and that it could not be hastened, but must abound in delays. Father Fred’s parish was more responsive than many, but it knew its own objections. Such shaking of heads over the first cope! Such murmurs at the idea of confession! Such a long and indignant refusal to forego participation at the late Celebration! Admonition and concession went hand in hand.

II

When I first became aware of the gradual process, I was a somewhat, idly attentive Protestant, dropping in at the beautiful church from time to time. I did not live in the town hallowed by its presence, and my visits were infrequent enough to impress me vividly with the change at work. Of course I did not understand it. I only knew that every time I entered the place I saw or heard something new to fill me with love and awe. Inconsistent emotions on the part of a professed agnostic! But it is one of the peculiar characteristics of the Catholic ritual that it does not wait to be understood or accepted before it produces its effect. I received the Lord Christ in my heart long before I knew anything about the doctrine of the Real Presence, and at a time when (heaven forgive me!) I would have repudiated the doctrine with scorn and indignation.

Father Fred himself I regarded with admiration and solicitude. He looked so frail and so worn as, in the pulpit, during the singing of the hymn immediately before the sermon, he brooded over his people, yearning to divine their need. His face had a beautiful, strong wistfulness. ‘O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!’ But why need he be quite so inexorable, for himself or for the rest of us? His sermons made no concessions — none. They voiced such an imperative summons that if we had obeyed them literally, the floor of the church would have been strewn with plucked-out eyes and cut-off hands. As it was, we went away sobered and thoughtful, stung out of our complacent acceptance of the limitations of human nature. Father Fred recognized no limitations, that was evident.

The contrast between his fiery sternness in the pulpit, and the shy friendliness with which he waited beside the church door afterwards, both encouraged and frightened me when I at last made up my mind to speak to him. I had a question to ask. During the Communion service just ended, I had been surprised by the touch of two novel, conflicting emotions. When the congregation had begun to steal past me up the aisle, going to receive their Lord at the altar, I had risen from my knees and started to join them. Then I had hesitated, wavered, and had knelt down again, baffled and perplexed. Something at the same time called me and held me back. If I had only known it, the moment was deeply important and significant. What did it mean, that an agnostic should desire to partake of the most imperiously assured mysteries in the world? And what did it further mean, that an independent Protestant, thus desiring, should hesitate to act? My first response to the Church went hand in hand with my first submission.

But the rebellion proper to my intellectual condition was not slow in following. Father Fred, looking tired and pale and thinner than ever in his black cassock, received my question as if he had already divined it: Would a Congregationalist be welcome at his church’s altar-rail? He looked at me soberly, with the whole many-faceted import of his lifelong purpose and conflict darkling in his eyes. He sighed a little, he could not help it. He was very tired, he had not yet had any breakfast, his sympathy had already responded to a great many claims; and here was a stranger enlisting him in a discussion which his sensitive intelligence told him must he long and grievous. But he did not hesitate. Could I stop and talk with him a few minutes? Indeed, I could not. I was tired myself; and, though I had had plenty of breakfast, I now wanted my dinner. All the Protestant’s native antagonism sprang up in me at the priest’s failure to grant me the privilege I so inexplicably desired. Well, then, might he come and see me? I graciously consented, and we parted with an air of having picked up each other’s gloves and looked to our lances.

It was indeed long and grievous, the conflict which we waged during the next few months. But it was not altogether painful, there was too much humor in it. The shock of encounter between two opposed, mutually incredulous points of view strikes out many a smile as well as many a sigh. Father Fred kindly hid most of his smiles, savoring them on the inside instead of on the outside of his mouth. For the laugh was almost always on me.

There was that primal discussion in which I began the statement of my position by setting forth with explicitness the things I did not believe. They were so many that I might have talked for a week if Father Fred had not taken advantage of my first pause for breath to say gently, ‘If it is n’t too intimate a question, would you mind telling me some of the things which you do believe?’ The request took me aback. Agnostics have no call to believe; their business is denial. But I could not utter the ‘Nothing’ which logic pushed to the door of my lips. Something deeper than logic rose up and cried shame upon me. I sat in bewildered silence a moment; then my nature made the second of its unexpected responses to a summoning authority. My astonished ears heard my faltering voice define a very creditable if somewhat limited creed which I had not known that I possessed. Father Fred approved it, and astonished me still further by proceeding to build on it a superstructure, the fitness and reasonableness of which I could not deny.

There was that other occasion on which, outraged by an imperious sermon on Confirmation, I forswore the church entirely, shook its dust off my feet; and then, in less than a week, was reduced to an abject scheme of devices to get back again. The natural, obvious method was simply to go back; but I thought I had to preserve something which I vaguely called my selfrespect. I had been sincerely affronted; I must be pacified. The Confirmation sermon had left none of the ‘sects’ — to one of which I belonged — a leg to stand on. In truth, the zeal of the discourse did carry it too far; but that was no reason why I should presently deliver myself of a burning criticism of it, a denunciation which I addressed to Father Fred himself. As a method of getting back into the church, once I had dispatched it, it did not strike me as happy. ‘Now I have done it,’ I thought ruefully. ‘No self-respecting person can pay the least attention to one who arraigns him so officiously.’

But, ah, that tinsel trait, self-respect! I had yet to learn that its absence can give more grandeur and dignity to a life than its presence ever bestows. Father Fred’s answer to my denunciation was the most surprising epistle I had ever received. I could not believe it; I rubbed my eyes dazedly over it. He craved my pardon, he said that he had gone too far, he denounced himself more severely than I had dreamed of doing, he implored me not to let his blundering stupidity come between me and the Church who, in spite of all that he could do to make or mar, must always vindicate her supremacy. Not one touch of offended priesthood, not one hint of resentment. There was never a nobler letter than that. As I read it, I felt myself in the presence of a truly great man.

The warfare between us was typical of the whole conflict of the generation, and I hope that the result was typical too. Little by little, I ceased to contend. Having been several times disarmed, dismounted, amusingly disconcerted by the gentle reception of my defiant charges, I came to have difficulty in remounting my embattled steed. Somehow, he looked ridiculous; I was ashamed of him. Having again and again perceived that the points which my intellect challenged had long ago been confessed by my heart and my worshiping knees, I grew cautious in my denials. They, too, had a way of turning ridiculous. The dawn was a slow one. The symbolic meaning of objects which in the dark I had taken for mere shadows, gradually unfolded itself to my wondering eyes. Of course, of course! As the human body stands for the soul, expressing it and interpreting it, so the Church stands for Christ, for the whole principle of worlddivinity. And, just as self-revelation depends upon richness and fullness of utterance, gesture, expression, inflection, so the more facets the Church has, the more brightly it will flash its meaning abroad. Every phase of its ritual stands for some invaluable connection between man and God.

The personal holiness of her children has ever been the Church’s greatest vindication. They have not always granted it her, — and surely their failure has not been her fault, — but when they have responded, the argument has been irresistible. I found it impossible to deny the peculiar potency of the source from which Father Fred drew his amazing saintliness. He was continually astonishing me. I had known good people before (thank heaven, many and many of them); but they had often chosen to create for themselves certain definite limitations. Father Fred, as I said before, knew no limitations; and his ignorance worked both ways. He devoted himself as whole-heartedly to the small details of the parish work as to its vaster possibilities. ‘Let’s go and ask the Father about it,’ was the prevailing formula with which perplexed committees, and troubled social workers, solved their difficulties.

At first this seemed to me all wrong. I thought the many petty demands an imposition on the part of the parish, and Father Fred’s patient attention to them a waste of time and strength. But I soon found that my criticism was incomprehensible to the priest. ‘Why, that’s what I’m here for,’ he said, with a certain courteous blankness when I shamefacedly began to apologize for ‘bothering’ him with a question about the material welfare of one of his parishioners. The impulse was as inevitable in me as in all the rest of his flock; and, after a deprecation or two, I gave over hesitating and apologizing, and was very soon running to him as freely as every one else. Being away from town on a visit, and meeting with a stranded forlornity who appealed to me for help, I promptly wrote a letter of introduction to Father Fred. Then for a long time I sat and pondered the significance of that spontaneous act on my part; and ended by concluding that it must be a superlatively good man whose name sprang into the minds of his friends as the natural answer to all their problems of service and salvation.

That, with all his holiness, he should have remained so humble and lovable, so humanly companionable, was the final proof of his genuineness. His virtue gave no offense to the most worldly sinner.

III

The church services grew swiftly in beauty. Father Fred was not patient by nature — all the more marvelous his control! — and perhaps he felt that his time was short. At any rate, he began to hasten the steps. The parish responded. It was not very rich, but it gave eagerly, lavishly. Beautiful is the look of a church occupied by plainly dressed people and glowing with alabaster-box costliness which the shabby shoes and the worn gloves have made possible. Incense, a sanctus bell, an occasional glorious solemn procession, new vestments and altar-cloths “these lovely symbols crowded to open the gate of heaven a little wider. Father Fred’s tired face showed an ever-deepening content. Finally, just before Passion Week, the best realization of all took up its thrilling abode in the church and transformed and quickened it with an awful holiness. On the altar of the Lady Chapel, beneath a glowing, darkling light, the Blessed Sacrament was reserved.

Oh! that was a great day. As the unaccustomed people passed about the main body of the church and caught the unfamiliar gleam between the pillars, they hesitated, stopped, and knelt where they were. Thus instantly does the authentic touch of God prostrate the soul. The whole dear edifice had been lifted to heaven; or, rather, heaven had come down to inhabit it. Father Fred was not very well; but he forgot his ailment, forgot himself, forgot everything, as he knelt, before the altar. He lingered so long that, he was finally left alone; and in the shadowy church, with its dim soaring arches, its silence, and its one vivid heart of light, he — but one must not try to imagine what he felt and knew. Did he sing, ‘Nunc dimittis’? One wonders. but found the streets of the New Jerusalem in his familiar aisle. There he still kneels and prays, there he works. But he has lost all his anxiety, for he knows that he cannot fail. As for the church, it goes ever from glory to glory, plucking God, holding Him by new corners of his shining robe.

The next day he was taken ill. The parish was at once uneasy. He was so frail, so other-worldly. Body and spirit both seemed sealed to a high doom. But supplication fought with fear. As the menace deepened and the uneasiness turned to alarm, a desperate common purpose ran through all the different scattered lives of the church and bound them into one endeavor which constantly, by night and day, voiced itself before the altar where the priest had last knelt. Ah, how they loved him! They could not let him go. During the six days of his illness, there was never a moment when the altar-lamp was not shining pityingly on some bowed head and some imploring hands.

Cruelly stricken must the heart have been that pleaded there when the slow, tolling strokes began to fall from the tower and to reverberate through the church. Oh! all in vain, then, impotent was the entreaty, Has not God promised to answer prayer? The test which Father Fred’s death made of his parish was bitterly hard.

But they met it triumphantly. With tears raining down their cheeks and sobs choking their throats, they turned their broken supplication into a song of praise. Thus their rector had taught them, and thus they would do. They lost no time about it, either. They seemed to feel that upon them depended the degree of bliss with which Father Fred would enter Paradise. He had ever been one to think of them before himself, to consider first the effect of a crisis upon his people. It was impossible not to picture him turning back from the gate of heaven and watching with his anxious, yearning, summoning look to see whether his church was going to prove itself loyal or faithless. They must not disappoint him, they must not shame him; they must send him on to his great reward with immediate, definite proof of his worthiness. He must bear with him the sheaves of their acquiescence.

It was Wednesday in Holy Week when he died. As Saint Francis, fasting for forty days, ate one crust of bread that he might not presume to imitate his Master too closely, so Father Fred chose to die on Wednesday rather than on Friday. The burial was on Saturday. There had never been a service like it in all the progressive annals of the church. Good Friday had given the people a chance to ease their hearts by yielding themselves to their grief; they had mourned unrestrainedly. But on Saturday they summoned themselves and one another to a resolute pitch of triumph. The most critical of them forgot their prejudices in the desire to give Father Fred all that he loved and had worked for, all the beautiful, solemn symbols of eternal truth. They counted neither the cost nor the consequences. If they had considered the latter, they might perhaps have thought the occasion too exceptional to entail ordinary results. But surely it is not unseemly to suggest that the rapt, triumphant face of the priest in his coffin bore a trace of his old, never-failing humor as the glorious ritual came to its own in his beloved church. A noble practice has only to gain one complete expression to establish itself. The tear-thrilled voices that sang the Requiem Mass on that Easter Eve were not likely ever again to indulge in criticism. Glad that he had lived to such purpose, Father Fred must have been still more glad that he had died.

But has he died really? Or does death mean all that we imagine? His presence seems to inhabit his church more vitally than ever. May it not be that death, dissolving the shows of things, admits the spirit to the realm of reality? that heaven and earth are only the bright, and dark sides of the same truth? In that, case, Father Fred did not leave his church when he died,