I'm convinced the universe plays tricks on people because the first few months of the new year brought into my life a few things from almost thirty years ago.
A blizzard was predicted for January 29th and that meant the Saturday Mass my mother and I usually attended was canceled. It turned out to be a pretty big storm with heavy snowfall that continued into the evening. The manager at my night shift job asked me to come into work a few hours early so that left no time to get out the snow blower. This turned out to be a good thing because when I attempted to start the snow blower later that morning, the motor wouldn't crank over and it took some doing to get it running again. By the time I cleared out the sidewalks and driveways of our house and an invalid neighbor's house, the only nearby option for Mass was to visit a church I swore I'd never set foot in again...my childhood parish of St. John the Evangelist in Beverly.
I had grown to dislike St. John's during my high school years for various reasons. The dynamic priests who had once run the church had all been replaced by boring old priests who gave terrible sermons. After the passing of the much-loved Fr. Everard, the parish saw two pastors who kept asking for more money but didn't do nearly as much to make the church a welcoming community. Those increased donations were used to renovate the church's interior but the end result was incredibly ugly and later covered over with another renovation.
During my awkward high school years, I really could have used ministries and mentors geared toward teens but the parish was on spiritual cruise control. They did absolutely nothing for young people which is too bad because I was passionate about my faith but was starting to question it. I also noticed that there were very few females my own age who went to Mass.
What this parish did have was plenty of old people...and a good number of them were hypocritical because they liked to get dressed up for Mass but they really didn't do much to increase the faith once they stepped outside the church. When I was an altar boy, one of my priests told me there were a group of old ladies sitting up front who always came to him after Mass to complain if we made mistakes. Trying to do your best when you're young is tough enough but now I had to impress the “Russian judges” in the first row.
As I entered college, my family decided to switch to St. Mary Star of the Sea in downtown Beverly but every once in a great while I'd hear stories about my former parish that made me glad we left. One St. John's priest named Fr. Mullen put his foot in his mouth when he gave a Memorial Day sermon that criticized the glorification of war with such things as parades. A World War II veteran sitting in the front row was so angry, he yelled out something along the lines of: “If it wasn't for us veterans, you wouldn't be free!”
St. John's was also the parish of Mayor Bill Scanlon who I felt was an arrogant bully. During one election in which he was expected to win by an overwhelming majority, his campaign decided to sling the mud anyway by leaking to the local newspaper his opponent's sealed juvenile record from high school. His supporters justified these underhanded tactics and since the mayor had once played hockey in his youth, they would quip, “He's not trying to win the Lady Byng Trophy.” Yet Mr. Scanlon's campaign often touted the fact that he was a long time parishioner of St. John's. Years later, the mayor was seen helping to cut the ribbon of a new abortion clinic shortly after being named Catholic of the Year by St. Mary's School. Hypocritical indeed!
For one particular lent, my mother decided to attend Mass everyday and sometimes that meant she had to visit St. John's. I would drop her off and then pick her up later but I refused to enter the church. Unfortunately, the Beverly Catholic Collaborative Plan made it more difficult to avoid this place and one of our pastors got the bright idea to discontinue the 5 PM Mass at St. Mary's during the summer months and shift it over to St. John's because that building had air conditioning. My mother and I decided to go to Mass elsewhere for the season.
Now almost thirty years later, I pulled into the plowed parking lot of St. John's to attend noon Mass with my mother. The new front doors of the church were more ornate than the ones from my childhood. Only three or four old people were inside at first. With surgical mask and sunglasses still on, I looked around at all the changes to the interior. Almost everything was a little fancier even if it didn't need to be. For some reason, a purple accent stripe was painted two thirds of the way up the right wall. The pews were now angled instead of straight.
My eyes may have been looking at St. John's as it was now, but my mind kept switching back to how the place looked before and just after that disastrous renovation. I could see an usher in a red blazer walking up the aisle with a special crank handle in his hand that was used to open the long side windows. Today these windows are sealed because of the air conditioning and they have added gothic details too. I could see the awful gold crosshatching and burning bush flames that had once adorned the sanctuary and wondered of the old paint was still under there. I saw the church's original altar rails and purple curtains. Off to the left were the father and daughter singing team and to the right was Fr. Kiley playing the organ. One of the only things that remained untouched were the church's hanging lights.
More people trickled into church including an portly gentleman I had sometimes seen at the Carmelite Chapel, two girls in their 20s, an older woman and her daughter, and a family of high schoolers but the vast majority of parishioners were elderly and that made me wonder about this place's future. At one time, the bulletin for the Beverly Catholic Collaborative published each church's weekly need vs. what they received in donations and all three parishes regularly fell short. I glanced at the latest bulletin and noticed they stopped publishing the weekly need but collections at St. John's were still fairly skimpy.
I didn't recognize the priest celebrating Mass because we had been away for so long. His sermon on the lives of the saints was okay and at one point he said, “What we want might not be what God wants.” As a single Catholic, it was a line I heard often and it really bothered me because I just didn't know what God wanted anymore. At first, I wasn't going to put any money in the collection basket but then at the last minute, I changed my mind.
After Mass, we returned to the parking lot and one by one the handful of cars started to pull away. I could still see the throngs of well-dressed parishioners from long ago. During my childhood, the noon Mass was usually followed by a trip to Dunkin' Donuts for some Munchkins and perhaps The Three Stooges on TV. For this trip, my mother and I decided to get something to eat at a restaurant and when we got home, I cleared some more snow with the snow blower. I had been up for 24 hours by the time I got to bed. Another shift at work awaited and busy days like this left little time to have a life.
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