At 2:00 a.m. on Sunday morning this young priest is sleeping very soundly indeed, because on Saturday morning he is coaching football, and on Saturday afternoon he is chaplain in the city jail, and on Saturday night he is hearing confessions in the parish church, and then he is trying to prepare his sermon for Sunday, so he only gets to bed at 11:00 p.m.
At 2:05 the phone rings.
On the phone is a citizen who sounds very desperate. He is saying: “Heart attack!. . . .He had a heart attack!. . . My father had a heart attack!. . . . He is dying!. . . He needs a priest!. . . . Now!. . . Father, please come!. . . Now!
The address is far across town, and outside the parish, but the young priest knows that he can not say to this desperate character: “Call this priest at this number”, because the poor guy will feel very bad and will be thinking, “I call a priest when my father is dying, and what does he say? He says ‘No! Get somebody else!”
So the young priest says: “Okay!. . . Okay!. . . . I’m coming!”
He gets up, and gets dressed, and takes the oils from the sacristy, and pyx from the tabernacle, and goes not through the quiet streets to the subway. There are no people in the streets around the parish house. There are no people in the subway station, except the cashier, selling tokens. The priest has to wake the cashier, to buy a token.
When the train comes, it is all lit up, but there are no people in it. The doors open, he gets into the car, the doors close, and the train rolls on. There are no people in the car. The priest feel very weird indeed, like Buck Rogers in the Twenty-fifth Century, going somewhere in a machine, with a loud roar, and no people.
At the subway stop near the address there are a few people. It is a tough neighborhood. There are lights, here and there, with music coming out of a couple of windows, and one girl in a doorway who looks at the young and says: “What about it, Padre?”
Finally he finds the address. It is a tenement house, and sure enough there are lights in the sixth floor. But there is no elevator. . . . The priest runs up the five flights of stairs, because he does not want the poor old man to be dead when he gets there.
In the corridor, on the sixth floor, he finds the right door, and knocks. The door is opened by a big burly citizen in his undershirt, with hair sticking out of the undershirt. He is holding a glass in his left hand. When he sees the priest, he lets out a triumphant roar, saying: “See!. . . . He’s here!. . . . I told you he would come!. . . Pay me!”
The room is heavy with cigarette smoke. There is a round table. These citizens look like they should be in the city jail. There are cards on the table, and money, and glasses, and a bottle.
The big hairy beast who opens the door is very happy indeed. He says: “Father, I told these guys that you would come! Even at two in the morning! And you came!”
The priest says: “The heart attack? . . . . Your father?” The hairy beast laughs and says: “Oh, yeah!. . . My father!. . . . He really has a heart attack! But that is five years ago, in Milwaukee. . . . When this happens, I call a priest in the middle of the night, and he comes!. . . . That is when I discover that you will do this! . . . . Father, I will split my take with you!”
The priest says: “No. . . . The parish has a policy. . . . We do not accept money for sick calls.”
The big guy turns to the five criminals who are sitting around the table, and says: “See?. . . I told you!. . . . I told you he will not take money for coming!”
The young priest goes down the five flights of stairs, and out into the street, past the girl in the doorway who says: “Now. . . Padre?”
There is a drunk in the subway station, begging, so the priest gives him the coins he has left, after buying the token.
When he gets home, it is almost four o’clock, so there is just time enough for him to have a cup of coffee before he goes down to hear confessions before the five o’clock Mass.
Over the coffee he is thinking: “Well . . . . . at least the rank and file of Catholic men have some confidence in the clergy.”
* * *
I have another friend, who is a priest, and this one is very good with boys. He has a warm heart, and is always picking up hitch-hikers.
Once he is driving along a lonely road, and he sees a hitch-hiker, so he stops, and takes him into his car. This hitch-hiker pulls a gun, and hits the priest over the head, and robs all his money, and the poor priest is in the hospital for two weeks with a concussion.
The doctors will not let him drive for a while, because they are worrying about the head injury. On his first day of driving, he passes a sailor on the road, who has his thumb out, asking for a ride.
The priest stops, and takes him in. As they are driving on, the priest says: “This is an adventure, for me. . . . Because the last one I picked up hit me over the head and robbed me. . . . But I know that this will never happen again.”
The sailor looks at him, and smiles, and then pulls a gun, and says: “Gee, Father! . . . . You really have hard luck!” He beats him over the head, and robs him, and the priest goes back into the hospital.
In the hospital bed, the priest is thinking: “Well. . . . Christ our Lord has Judas Iscariot. He is arrested by the Scribes and Pharisees. He is tried by Caiphas, condemned by Pontius Pilate, and executed by the Romans. . . . . But he says: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’ . . . . And when the thief on the right says: ‘Remember me!’, He says: ‘This day thou shall be with me in paradise!’. . . . That is like picking up a hitch-hiker.”
He is thinking. . . . . “Not everyone is a Caiphas. . . . Not everyone is Pontius Pilate. . . . Not everyone is an executioner. . . . Sometimes you meet Saint John, or Mary Magdalene, or the Virgin Mary.”