Father Bernie Finds a Listener

by Robert J. Marton

Father Bernard Smith, known to parishioners as “Father Bernie” or just “Bernie” to his boyhood friends, had been assistant pastor at St. Francis of Assisi parish in Mayefield for two years.  It was his second assignment as assistant since his ordination five years ago.  He assumed his next step would be as a pastor somewhere in the diocese.  It was unusual for a priest to be assigned to the parish where he grew up, and Bernie hoped he could stay awhile longer in this place he knew so well.  His father and mother were deceased, but he still had his older brother, Walt, as well as aunts, uncles, cousins and many old friends in Mayefield.  He wasn’t particularly interested in becoming a pastor:  he became a priest to be a teacher, a mentor, a confessor, a healer of souls, not an administrator.  But the Bishop makes those decisions.

 Father Bernie was content in his vocation.  He heard the call as a teenager, and answered it in college. The result was as fulfilling as he expected it to be.  The priesthood could be a lonely life, but he was a loner by nature, and his hours of thought, contemplation and prayer seemed to energize him, just as too many hours of interaction with parishioners, fellow priests, and people in general seemed to wear him out.

He wished he was a better preacher, however.  He prepared and practiced diligently, but looking down from the pulpit on Sundays, he got the feeling no one was really listening.  He really envied fellow priests who were truly eloquent from the pulpit, like his current pastor, Father Jim Verrant.  Father Jim was a story and joke teller.  His homilies engaged the congregation.

But even Father Jim’s eloquence failed in comparison to old Monsignor O’Brien of his youth.  Even in his seventies, Monsignor O’Brien never preached for less than thirty minutes – a half-hour or more of blind faith, condemnation of sin, and the threat of swift and eternal punishment in a lilting –yet powerful—Irish brough. He preached in a small church, but Monsignor O’Brien’s booming voice –emanating from a short, frail looking man– was made for cathedrals.

Father Bernie did his best in the pulpit every Sunday, trying not to get distracted by bored faces and glazed-over eyes. He used all the tricks taught in seminary – short sentences, modulated voice, meaningful pauses– but what he read in the faces of the congregation was disinterest.  So he kept his homilies brief to lessen the pain for everyone, including himself.

“Crazy Patrick” Fagan –before he moved away and abandoned his family– had suggested that Bernie “should tell jokes like Father Jim.  He keeps us in stitches.  The one he told last week about the old nun was hilarious.”

Father Jim’s joke:

Elderly Sister Ursula was on her death bed.

The other sisters gathered around her, trying to make her comfortable.

 They gave her some warm milk to drink but she refused.

Then one of the sisters took the glass back to the kitchen and added a liberal dose of Irish whiskey to the milk.

Back at Sister Ursula’s bed, she held the glass to her lips.

The dying sister drank a little, then a little more and drank the whole glass down to the last drop.

“Sister Ursula,” the other nuns asked, “please give us some wisdom before you pass to the Lord.”

She raised herself up in bed and with a pious look on her face said, “Whatever you do, don’t sell that cow.”)

Several parishioners had mentioned Father Jim’s joke, all repeating it in different forms.  They thought it was very amusing, but when questioned by Father Bernie about its religious message, none was sure.  What was the lesson?

Bernie tried telling a joke once, not from the pulpit but to a class of teens at St.LouiseHigh School.  The joke didn’t have a particular point; he just wanted to get their attention:

“One Sunday, the priest delivered a stirring sermon on the importance of God in our lives.  ‘Dear Lord,’ he began, with arms extended toward heaven. ‘Without you, we are but dust…’  The priest would have continued but at that moment a young girl in the congregation asked her mother quite loudly, ‘Mommy, what is butt dust?’”

The kids thought it was funny.  “Butt dust” … they chuckled over and over.  However, by the time they left the classroom and retold the joke to their friends, “butt dust” inexplicably became “ass dust” (??), which prompted several calls of inquiry to him from the sisters at St. Louise.  Correctly retelling the joke to the nuns didn’t elicit much humor.

It was his last attempt at joke telling.

Early in his tenure at St. Francis, Father Bernie felt he had made a real connection with a parishioner.  One Sunday, as he spoke from the pulpit most eloquently (at least, in his mind) about peace– personal and global—he looked down on glazed-over stares, then noticed one older gentleman smiling broadly and nodding his head in apparent agreement and appreciation.  Mr. Munson (as he later discovered his name was) seemed to hang on every word as the priest invoked the simple words attributed to St. Francis, the patron of their parish:

 “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred . . . let me sow love
Where there is injury . . . pardon
Where there is doubt . . . faith…”

and ending with:

“For it is in giving . . .that we receive,
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,
It is in dying . . .that we are born to eternal life.”

Mr. Munson smiled throughout.

He’s paying attention!

He understands!

I have connected, Father Bernie thought.  Somebody gets it.  He had planned to end the sermon at that point, but inspired by the sudden interest, he spoke for five minutes longer, pulling out every St. Francis prayer and quote he could think of, concluding with (in honor of Mr. Munson’s smiling countenance):

“It is not fitting, when one is in God’s service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.”

As Mr. Munson continued to smile and nod, Father Bernie –resisting the impulse to give the old guy a “thumbs up”– stepped down from the pulpit on an emotionally high note and resumed the Mass with enthusiasm and vigor.

Someone listens.

Someone appreciates him.

This was a great ego booster.  Or, rather, it was until Father Bernie raced from the sacristy to the front door of the church after Mass to greet his new fan, only to discover Mr. Munson nodding silently in a group of parishioners.  Everyone was contributing to the conversation except Mr. Munson, who, as it turned out, was stone deaf –could hear nothing—and didn’t even read lips.  But he did go through life with an agreeable smile on his face whenever someone spoke.

Nevertheless, Father Bernie continued to preach directly to Mr. Munson, week after week.  Why not?  Maybe he was absorbing some of the message, which, Father Bernie assumed, was more than the rest of the congregation was.

(Robert J. Marton)