Page 59 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 47

will be saved from the fires of hell because you studied your Latin
well. Studying is now your vocation in life.
“The seminary’s not supposed to be a bed of roses. Vocations are
hard to come by and have to be paid for. Either in the seminary or
after Ordination. I swear to you, it’s far better to pay for your voca-
tion before Ordination. Not after. God help you. Your endurance
in study and prayer is one way to pay off the debt we owe God and
His Blessed Virgin Mother for giving us the highest vocation in the
world.”
He marched, talking, up and down the main aisle of the study
hall, between the rows of varnished desks and craning freshmen. He
punctuated his words with his powerful hands, the same hands that
called God down to earth every morning, the very hands that he’d
told us had given the sacraments to dying soldiers.
I thought of my priest-uncle, his chaplain hands, and his mother,
my grandmother, Mary Pearl O’Hara, who had on the lilac wall of
her room a framed poem about the wonderful hands of a priest. She
herself wrote out a copy of it especially for me. “You have beautiful
hands,” she said. “You have beautiful fingers. I have arthritis.” She
held her sweet fingers up for me to see. I kept her poem, so hopeful,
so sentimental, in my shoe box.
“The Beautiful Hands of a Priest”

We need them in life’s early morning.
We need them again at its close.
We feel their warm clasp of true friendship.
We seek them when tasting life’s woes.
At the altar each day we behold them,
and the hands of a king on his throne
are not equal to them in their greatness.
Their dignity stands all alone.
And when we are tempted and wander
to pathways of shame and of sin,
it’s the hands of a priest will absolve us
–not once, but again and again.
And when we are taking life’s partner,
other hands may prepare us a feast,

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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