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Last Monday, 24 March, I completed fifty years as a priest. Golden Jubilee. Of the seven Jesuit companions that were ordained priests that day, three have died. I’ll tell an anecdote of one of them on that momentous day.
It came about through a Jesuit companion who died last year. Ignacio Zavala Alday. Our priestly ordination took place on the eave of the Feast of the Annunciation, 24 March 1958, in Anand, province of Gujarat, at the hands of Bishop Edwin Pinto. My mother had come from Spain to accompany me on that day, the most eagerly awaited date in her life and in mine. It was also the first time the priestly ordination was going to be held in a Mission Station, since up to then it had been always held in the Pune Theologate where we all studied, the reason being that the professors that had slogged preparing us for the priesthood would find some consolation in seeing us reach the altar after they had tutored us in the classroom and tested us (and occasionally failed us) in our examinations.
That year, however, it was thought that in order to foster vocations to the priesthood among the people of the land it would be good to hold the ordinations in a live parish, and so the church at Anand was chosen for us, and the new religious event was organised there with popular enthusiasm. A platform was erected on the football field of the adjoining school, and it was built in a rather peculiar way. Hundreds of large milk powder tins (rectangular and still full) were tightly packed and strongly tied together to make up the stage. They did creak and squeak under our liturgical steps during the holy rite, but they all bravely stuck together. Neither our weight nor our emotions shook them out of place, heavy though both were.
At the end of the ceremony we went aside to remove our vestments. Zavala was by my side. He took off his chasuble, stole, alb, amice, and folded them over the table. He stood for a moment looking at them. He then turned both his hands palms up, and looking at them alternatively he said in a low, awed, reverent voice: “How can this be?” And he kept looking at them. That was all. He just said it to himself, but I heard him. Those hands had just touched the sacred host for the first time. The sacred touch. The newly consecrated hands by the bishop’s anointing. A priest’s hands from now on and for ever. To bring God down from heaven and to forgive sins on earth. Hands of Christ. My own hands. I cannot believe it. How can this be? For sheer joy. Hands to bless and to be kissed. Hands to touch God.
All that feeling came from the fact that that was the first time in our lives we were touching the sacred host with our hands. The rule was strictly enforced at the time that we had to receive Holy Communion on our outstretched tongue without ever in any way allowing our fingers to touch it. We were even told that would be a sin. That was why the first touch of the white host on our fingers after the long way to the priesthood had the thrill of romance, the depth of mystery, the wonder of a miracle.
And hence I now reflect that younger priests today, who have been receiving Communion on the hand since their First Communion as children, are not likely to feel any special thrill when touching it again as priests. They are used to it. I am in favour of receiving Communion in the hand, but I admit that we have lost something in the way of respect, reverence, adoration. Thank you, Ignacio Zavala, for that thrilling moment.
I hope you too remember in heaven what I answered you at that moment. The gospel of the Annunciation had just been read at Mass, and I had preached the sermon. Gabriel and Mary. The divine messenger. Mary’s question “How can this be?” and the angel’s explanation. Mary’s yes to the angel. The mystery of the Incarnation. And so, when you asked yourself, “How can this be?”, the words sounded in my ears as Mary’s words to the angel, and I answered you, in a low voice too for you only to hear, with the words of the angel to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the virtue of the Most High will overshadow you.” Remember how we looked at each other. Our eyes were all wet. And we embraced tightly. |
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A very pious married woman was sorry that her husband was not religious minded, and when a famous preacher came to their village to deliver sermons on the Bhagavata Purana, he persuaded her husband to go and listen to the sermons.
The first day he went, he sat down, and fell immediately asleep till the sermon was over and everybody got up and all went home.
The second day, his wife went with him, and he also fell asleep, but his wife could not touch her husband in public and could not wake him up till the end when all got up and left.
The third night was the last, and the man also fell asleep, but then a mosquito flew around him, bit him, and flew away. The man woke up for an instant, scratched himself, and fell asleep immediately again, but in the instant he was awake, the word of God entered his ears and his mind. He was converted to a devout life, went to a pilgrimage to Benares, left his wife, and became a monk.
Such is the power of the word of God when it enters our ear. A greater power than the wife ever thought.
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Tenali Rama was invited to recite the story of the Ramayana. He began, “Rama and Sita went to the forest…”, and stopped there. They asked him to continue, but he answered: “Rama and Sita went to the forest. The rest will follow. Everything is there. Start on the path of God, and everything will follow. Just start. And the whole Ramayana will follow. But you must start.”
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A king married a wife thinking she would bear him a son. When she didn’t, he married a second with the same hope. When she too turned out to be barren, he married a third, then a fourth, and then others up to seven. But no son and heir was born to gladden his heart and to sit on the throne after him.
Overwhelmed by grief, he was walking in a neighbouring wood one day when he saw a woman of supernatural beauty. He fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. He told her: “I don’t want a son or an heir from you, I just want your love.” She became his wife, and she bore him a son. Overjoyed, the king went back to visit his first seven wives… and all the seven of them became pregnant in turn.
The Buddha taught: “The keen desire to get results is the greatest obstacle to obtain them. Remove the desire, and the fruit will come.”
(A.K. Ramanujan, Folktales From India, Penguin New Delhi 1991. pp. 65, 68, 87.) |
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“The young person buys very expensive clothes that seem to have been made by their personal enemy, and they wear them inside out just in case. Their footwear comes from The Carnival of Venice, and their hairdo is a poem in colour and shape. They hate any kind of ‘regular’ dress, sedulously avoid anything resembling their parents’ style, but carefully copy what other young people wear. The more outlandish, the better. Boys will spend all their savings just to buy a pair of non-fitting pants or a sweater meant for a monkey, and girls specialise in exchanging dresses and shoes at will among friends. When they bring home a new outfit they don’t wear it immediately outdoors. First they lock themselves in their room, put on the new piece, look at themselves in the mirror, gesticulate, dance, grimace, and only when they feel they have satisfactorily passed all the tests will they dare to go out with the new outfit. If they find they’re attractive, they’ll wear it forever. They can wear the same blouse three months in a row, even if their wardrobe is full of other blouses.
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Mum, where are my trousers?
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They were torn, my girl. You bum was showing. I’ve mended them and they’re now in the washing machine.
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Are you mad? Mend them! Wash them! I’ll kill you! Nobody’s going to be so badly dressed as me. Nobody. Good Lord! What can I wear now?
Girls are prone to invade other people’s wardrobes, including their brothers, and that can enrich their language.
(Alejandra Vallejo-Nájera, La edad del pavo, Temas de hoy, Madrid 2006, p. 86) |
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“The bird wishes it were a cloud.
The cloud wishes it were a bird.”
“The sparrow is sorry for the peacock
at the burden of its tail.”
“The great earth makes herself hospitable
with the help of the grass.”
“Be still, my heart,
these great trees are prayers.” |
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