A Brief Moment In Time

The small box from my sister, Mary, was the last Christmas gift I opened, and inside was a DVD titled, ”A NEW YORK CHRISTMAS TO REMEMBER AT ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE.”  I put it aside to watch the day after my family left when the house was empty.  As I sat in my home, far from 58th Street, and watched the incredible performance, I felt myself embraced in loving memories, and for a brief moment in time, I returned home.

The following story was written years ago, but is, I believe, perhaps even more appropriate in today’s climate.

I went home yesterday.  The taxi picked me up at 54th Street and Fifth Avenue, and I told him to take me to 59th and 9th Avenue.  He turned around and asked “The Hospital?“  I said, ”No, the Church.”  And he turned again, and said knowingly, “The one with the blue sky and the stars?,” and I said, “Yes.  I am going home after 25 years.”  He removed a plastic star, purple and green and quite hideous from his visor, gave it to me and said, “This is my gift for you.”

It was a quick trip, and within minutes I was on the corner of 60th Street and 9th Avenue, where I had spent so much of my life.  And it was, it seemed, only a few seconds ago, and yet, it had been 25 years.  The 12:10 Mass had begun, and I was late, but so had the train from Long Island run late, as did my appointment at Elizabeth Arden, and why worry about minutes, when where were all the years.

An invitation had come from Scottsdale, AZ a week ago.  There would be a renewal of marriage vows after 25 years for my friend, and a small gathering thereafter.  She had been my friend since we met in Kindergarten, September 1940.  Our lives took us in quite different directions, but the relationship endured through scanty notes, tardy Christmas cards, and finally, a sad note upon her Mother’s death.  Not another spoken word until today, 28 years later.

I went up the side steps, the way we always did, and as I always had, felt an incredible surge of joy and peace pervade my entire being with the beauty and majesty inside the doors that swing so effortlessly open - side by side.  There were differences, but the memories and ghosts of yesterday and voices long since gone engulfed me immediately.

The pulpit, where so many hours of magnificent oratory were spoken is intact.  The voices I can still hear.  The cold glacial call to intellectual heights of Father Holden; the more emotional demands made by Father Murray.  All the challenges to so many of us who listened in our youth - the demands made on us to think and know and behave in what we believed.  There was never at one time in those years a simple sermon; only one which drove us higher and higher in our capacity to learn and grow and know.  I recall very little of peace and love - we knew that was expected of us, but the constant stirring to know and understand more was constantly upon us.  Odd as it may sound in these later days of our enlightenment, few of us were totally aware of poverty.  We accepted a certain lack of material things, but never sensed any deprivation.  Rather a sense of snobbery prevailed among us for the simple fact that we were unique in our Church and our school.

For all the giving, there were expectations.  Father Farley, whom we all knew, had an uncanny way of determining who among us might drink, and who might not.  And if we were in the earlier group, then we must beware.  He was a vigilante, whom we feared and loved, and who brought formal dances and youth group activities into so many young lives.  Again, we were never grateful because at no one moment was it ever indicated by anyone in any capacity that we were being “given” anything.  We were a community; a family.  It was not an encounter.  It was togetherness in the total Christian meaning of the word.  I, more than ever, think now in the days of organized social awareness groups, of the debt of gratitude I owe to so many people involved in my youth who gave so much to so many of us - and let us leave, hopefully, to give some of Christ’s message back to others.  There were no ties, no obligations, only the unspoken message - to do unto others as they did unto us.

I never went back.  I never said thank you.  I live with what I became in those days.  Most of us have left.  Albeit is there any longer a “Hell‘s Kitchen?”  Other neighborhoods, yes, but that one has faded into a sort of romantic memory conjured up by people who never lived there.  It was a reality to us - bad, but strong and vital and an integral part of New York history.  There are other poverty stricken people in New York of different races with other problems and perhaps they need the sense of majesty and overwhelming glory that we found in our Church.  Perhaps that is why we escaped with a sense of wholeness because the very core of our life was centered on the glory and majesty of our God.  We were able to see the sun and moon and stars and believe in Him.

I have no right to have an opinion.  It has been 25 years since I went home.  However,  it is important for me to say thank you to so many who have gone, and perhaps others who came after who may have wondered if they really did any good.

One insignificant fact - the two children who met in 1040 - one was black, the other white.  A fact acknowledged that day and never remembered again because that was how we were taught and loved by all involved in the community of St. Paul the Apostle Church.