A Friar's Tale. John Collins
Sunday Visitor wanted to give it a try and the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal also thought it a reasonable idea. As Father’s last editor and the one who had worked with him on the manuscript from the beginning, I was chosen to try to turn his fragment into a book. I have to admit I was paralyzed for a very long time, feeling that I might be betraying Father by turning his last effort into something he might not have liked.
Finally, I gathered all my courage and gave it a shot, and this book, whatever its merits, is the result of that shot. This is not the book that Father imagined. This is something quite other, though it incorporates every word of the text he lived to complete. It now oscillates between his words and the words of other people—my words and those of his many friends who dug deep into their memory to supply the pieces of Father’s story that were missing. This book therefore contains a multiplicity of voices, although the voice that predominates is that of Fr. Benedict.
A Friar’s Tale makes no effort to be an all-inclusive biography. It deals with the topics Father thought important to share with his readers. It certainly includes all those things that formed his original outline plus a good deal more, and its purpose is to offer a sustained view into an astonishing life. In years to come more extensive biographies will certainly be written. They will be huge tomes, for Father’s life was long and very, very full. This book is simpler; it is but a friar’s tale, the tale of a friar who changed countless lives for the better. This book includes the loving efforts of a great many people who knew Fr. Benedict well over the different periods of his life. They shared their recollections so freely and completely that it is truthful to say that much of A Friar’s Tale is drawn directly from the memories of those who cared deeply for Father. They cared enough to attempt to finish what God hadn’t given him the time to finish. They thought him important enough to make possible the realization of his final project—his last letter to the world.
Following are the names of the people without whom this book could never have been completed:
Charles and Theresa Kenworthy
Charles Kolb
Edward and Zelda Widstock
Robert Smith
Daniel Quiñones
Carol Vunic
Fr. Darius DeVito, OFM Cap
Fr. John Claremont OFM Cap
Fr. John Lynch
Msgr. John Farley
Marjule Drury
Fr. James Lloyd, CSP
Fr. Bruce Nieli, CSP
Joseph Campo
James Lonergan
Edward Helmridge
Cathy Hickey
Charles Pendergast
Fr. Glenn Sudano, CFR
Fr. Andrew Apostoli, CFR
Fr. Fidelis Moscinski, CFR
Rev. Colleen Holby
John Burger
Fr. Joseph Sheehan
Natalie di Targiani
Thanks to Ilya Speranza and Richard Berger for reading portions of A Friar’s Tale in various stages of progress and for their comments and criticisms.
Special thanks to Peter D’Arcy for his perceptive editorial comments and especially for his limitless patience.
Prologue
Looking at the Sunset
September 2012
The Tale As Father Told It
I am in a hospital with frustratingly little to do. Apparently I’ve had an infection for quite a while, but somehow failed to notice it. Despite my lack of awareness, the bacteria that have been using my body as a playground for weeks have done their work and I’m flat on my back. Antibiotics drip into my veins from a little plastic bag which is attached to a device that beeps annoyingly from time to time. I don’t know what the beeps mean, and I must confess that I don’t really care. Fr. Fidelis, one of our best young friars, is with me almost all the time, and I leave such things to him. He takes excellent care of me; in fact, his care is almost too good. Despite my best intentions, I think I am too demanding, and I fear I am exhausting him. He is very dedicated, a fine young man—a fine young priest. I hope I was half as good a friar and a priest when I was his age.
Yesterday I had a skin graft to my knee, which I injured in a fall some weeks ago. The knee, incidentally, was the port of entry for the bacteria, and it is still sore. As a result of the surgery, Fr. Fidelis and all my visitors, as well as the nurses and doctors, must wear special sterile gowns when they come near me. All the gowns are yellow, and I must say they’re rather cheerful looking. Whether the purpose of the gowns is to keep my germs from them or theirs from me is still unclear to me. They all seem to be doing well, so I assume I have infected nobody. I’m glad; I would not like to be known as the “typhoid friar.”
My room is on the fifth floor, facing west. This is a stroke of very good luck, because it lets me watch the sunset every day. I have learned, by the way, that the sunset is something you can look forward to when you have nothing to do and are too weak to do it even if you did have something to do. It is September and the weather is very clear, so the sunsets are beautiful and brilliant and, I find, very consoling. I am beginning to see them as a gift and also am beginning to realize that I have been ignoring this gift for decades. Perhaps I have ignored much that is important. I pray that I have not.
Tonight the sky is blazing red, but right now the red is beginning to give way to darkness. The light will last only a short time longer, but it is intensely lovely. As I let myself become engrossed in the fiery sky—in God’s secret gift to me—I am able to forget about being in a hospital room, about the pain in my knee, about the dripping of antibiotics, about many things that have come to burden me. I permit my mind to drift, knowing what will happen. These days my thoughts turn to the past, which is rather odd for me. During most of my nearly eighty years I have faced the future—run toward it. But lately that’s changed, and I now take a kind of pleasant refuge in the past, in thoughts of my childhood and my life as a young friar—in thoughts of a time that I believe was better for us all. Memories of people I once knew but who have left this earth long ago come to me in no particular order. These people are still very real to me, and I feel as if I will soon be in their presence again. I look forward to that; the thought is a source of joy.
Scenes from my very early life fill my mind, and they come as welcome guests. The feel and sounds and smells of our home in Jersey City—a house I haven’t entered in decades—are real to me again, as is the sound of my mother’s voice, the taste of her cooking, the touch of her soft hand. These memories are another of God’s secret gifts to me in my old age. When I am immersed in them I become free like the child I once was, rather than the old and crippled man I have become. “I dwell in possibility,” wrote Emily Dickinson over a century ago, and I always thought that she must have been thinking of a child. Like all children, I once dwelled in a special kind of possibility. For a child who has not yet been hurt by the world, as we all must eventually be, everything is bright and filled with unending wonder, limitless possibility.
It seems that God has given me the ability to dwell in possibility again, to return to those days long gone. As the sunset fades I become five years old, a little boy with his dad. My father is tall and strong, and I am absolutely confident that he can do anything. I am fiercely proud of him and hope that one day I will be just like him. He is an engineer and leaves our home every day to build buildings in other places, places that seem far away and mysterious to me. We are walking, father and son, and this walking is becoming difficult for me. My father’s legs are too long, and I can’t keep up. We are going somewhere important, and we must not be late, so I do my best. I am almost running, but I still fall behind. I feel that I am failing, but my wonderful father does not let me fail; he swoops down like