Friday, September 30, 2022

Forty-three years ago in Boston...


On October 1, 1979, I was standing on the Boston Common with about 600,000 others. I was a young Episcopal cleric at the time. A Catholic priest friend of mine had encouraged me to go to Boston where Pope John Paul II would be visiting and saying Mass, so I took the train from Providence, Rhode Island, very early in the morning. It was packed with people making the same journey for the same purpose: to take part in the Mass which the Pope would be offering on the Common.

It rained for most of the day, and I was standing in it with no umbrella. An excited community of religious sisters was in front of me, screaming their heads off and waving their signs to no one in particular. I didn't know a single person around me, and after standing in the mud and rain for nearly seven hours, I couldn't imagine ever doing anything like this again.

But then... the Pope arrived. The Mass started. The memory of the long and uncomfortable wait we'd had melted away. I didn't hear anything but his voice.

When he began his sermon, my heart was ready. And when he repeated, "Follow Christ!" that's all I wanted to do, more deeply than ever before. So I made my decision then and there. I would become a Catholic. I didn't know how, and I didn't know when, but for me, to follow Christ meant that I had to become a Catholic.

Little did I know at the time that I was listening to a saint, who would not only welcome me along with my family into the Catholic Church, but who would also allow me to become a Catholic priest. I thank God every day that I heard his words, and that the Holy Spirit urged me to respond.

Follow Christ. No matter where He leads.