A Friar's Tale. John Collins
what I most desired, and, in so doing, He made possible a life of contentment for me. Now, this is not to say that I have lived up to the potential God gave me. Nor is it to say that I have fulfilled all or even most of the tasks that He has sent my way, either. It is certainly not to say that I have been ecstatically happy at every moment over the last eight decades. Of course not! I’ve experienced the highs and lows, the successes and failures, the wonderful surprises and crushing disappointments that everyone does. Let me tell you, I have often failed miserably, and I am painfully aware that I have let God and other people down terribly many, many times in my life. But no matter what happened, I always knew that God had permitted my dreams to become my destiny, and that is a wonderful gift. It is something for which I humbly thank our heavenly Father every day.
There is a quotation I heard or read many years ago, and I haven’t the slightest idea from where it comes. Perhaps it’s from some poem, but I’m not even sure of that. It goes like this: “I take this puppet, which is myself, and I fling him against the sky.” I like this image very much, and think it is something that every Catholic and certainly every priest and religious might consider. Those few words could be a profitable source of meditation for most of us. Let’s face it; we rarely fling ourselves against the sky in the faith-filled confidence that God will find some way to catch us. We are often too timid with our lives. Put in the most basic of terms, we usually do not have enough faith to dare anything at all, and because of this lack we permit our dreams to die or to be taken from us. We allow ourselves to become less than what God would permit us to be—perhaps less than He wants us to be. This is part of our fallen nature; it is something we must struggle against.
When I was seventeen, a day came when I had so many butterflies in my stomach they felt like a herd of hyperactive elephants. It was just ten days after my graduation from Immaculate Conception High School in Montclair, New Jersey, and it was the moment when I was to leave the only life I had ever known for a life about which I knew little. All I really understood about the Capuchins, whom I was about to join, was that they practiced the most austere form of Franciscanism that existed in the United States at that time. I realized that attempting this way of life would involve many adjustments and sacrifices for me, but I didn’t have a clue as to whether or not I’d be able to measure up as a follower of Holy Father St. Francis in the Capuchin tradition.
All these years later I can freely admit something that I wouldn’t dare have even hinted at back than: I was a nervous wreck when I was going to the novitiate and terribly homesick for a long time once I got there. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: the religious life in the early fifties was anything but warm and fuzzy; it was, in fact, often cold and impersonal. At times it seemed like something from which any sensible person should flee, and it was certainly a very stark contrast to the loving family from which I came. Yet somehow God gave me the grace I needed to fling myself against the sky and to stay, awaiting treasures to come. I like to think that He gave me the grace to live the life for which He had created me.
I find the memories of that day amazingly easy to conjure up. As I dictate these words I have in my mind a perfect picture of my pre-novitiate self, waiting at Penn Station in Newark, New Jersey. Yet it is as if that person is someone else, someone whom I observe from a very great distance, rather than myself. The young man I am now envisioning—the one I was an eternity ago—is not alone. His parents stand on either side of him, and although he doesn’t really notice it, they are closer to him than they would normally be in such a situation. They almost hover around him protectively as if trying to shield him from something. He is wearing a very well-pressed but slightly uncomfortable black suit, a crisp white shirt, and a black tie. That way of dressing was not accidental. Such was the unvarying uniform of the seminarian in those days. As I think about it today, however, I suspect that I must have looked rather funereal.
Despite the fact that I was still a month short of my eighteenth birthday I felt very grown up—a man dressed in a man’s suit and embarking on a man’s life. How wrong I was! I see clearly now what I could not acknowledge even to myself then, that I was simply a boy who felt he should be more mature than his few years allowed him to be. Although I was simply a boy, I was a boy filled with expectation, one brimming with hope. The desire to be a priest had been a constant in my life for years by that time. No—I must correct that. It had not been a constant, at all. It had been growing steadily and powerfully until I had come to see it as a wonderful inevitability. I realize that on that June day in 1951, I could no longer even imagine a life that did not involve the priesthood.
Because of that feeling—that joyful obsession—I don’t really know if I truly appreciated the finality of things as I awaited the train that would carry me far from New Jersey, far from my family and the only life I had ever known. I suspect it had not completely sunk in that I would never again live in my parents’ home, that they and my brothers and my sisters would no longer be intimate parts of my daily life. I also suspect that I didn’t completely appreciate the effect my leaving must have had on my father, and especially on my mother. From the day I departed to the day they died, my parents never failed to support my vocation; never once did they try to dissuade me from what I was convinced that God was calling me to do. I know they were proud of me, and the memory of their pride is something I treasure today every bit as much as I did sixty years ago. I know that they prayed every day for my success and perseverance. But what I didn’t really know—or at least didn’t understand—back in 1951 was that it must have hurt them to see their eldest son leave at such a young age.
After I boarded that train, the family they loved so much was forever changed, and this must have been a source of sadness for them. They never spoke to me about this; they never even hinted at it. But from the distance of many years, I can see it in a way I could not back then. Youth is oblivious of so much. That lack of awareness protects young people in ways they never suspect until they are much older.
The train finally arrived with all its irrevocability. I kissed my mother goodbye. Then I shook hands with my father. I’m sure an onlooker would have seen our leave-taking as formal, maybe almost emotionless. But it wasn’t. The depth of feeling was there, and it was powerful; yet it was contained, even hidden, because that is simply the way people acted back then. It was a far more reserved era, a time when emotions were considered private, not suited to public display. Time conceals many things, but other things it actually reveals or at least makes clearer. And I believe I can see that day as it really was far better now than I did then. As I look back at that moment, I find I am actually a little overwhelmed at my parents’ love for me, at their pride in me, at their strength in being able to surrender me to God. Perhaps I didn’t feel all that as I waved goodbye to them and boarded the train, but God has allowed me to feel it now in all its wonderful intensity.
I can remember walking down the aisle of the train in search of my seat, my ticket clutched a little too tightly in my hand. I can remember the lurch of the train as it pulled out of the station and headed west, and I can remember feeling that the first part of my life was ending and the second beginning. I have to say that I was filled with excitement and nervous anticipation.
The trip to Huntington, Indiana, where the Capuchin novitiate was then located, proved to be long and somewhat boring. It was also hot, as there was no air conditioning in the summer of 1951. I could see that the land was becoming flatter and flatter the farther from home we got. That must mean we are getting close to Indiana, I assumed, dutifully remembering what the sisters had taught us: that Indiana was part of the Great Plains and that plains are, well … plains and lacked the hills and valleys that are so common on the East Coast. The train sped on, with me doing my best to imagine what the strange land of Indiana would be like, what the Capuchins would be like. I knew Indiana sometimes had tornados (another bit of information I had gleaned from the sisters), and I was still young enough to hope that I might actually experience one. I read for a while but couldn’t concentrate on what I was reading.
I tried to pray, but even that was difficult until I reached into my pocket and found my rosary beads. It was so familiar and the feel of the beads slipping through my fingers so comforting that I was able to let the contemplation of its mysteries enfold me as the train traveled on. I even discovered that the gentle rocking of the train seemed to help in praying the Rosary, or perhaps that was just a little gift God was giving to a nervous boy on his first trip away from