Page 60 - What They Did to the Kid

48 Jack Fritscher

but the hands that will bless and unite us
are the beautiful hands of a priest.
God bless them and keep them all holy
for the Host which their fingers caress.
When can a poor sinner do better
than to ask Him to guide thee and bless?
When the hour of death comes upon us,
may our courage and strength be increased
by seeing raised over us in blessing
the beautiful hands of a priest!

My father had said, “Ryan, never touch my tools. Be careful
of your hands. You can’t work on the car with me. You can’t lose
your hands and lose your voca tion.” My father looked forward to
my Ordination Day. My Uncle Les and Father Gerber both had
instructed him that Canon Law decreed that a boy with damaged
hands could never have those hands anointed for the priesthood. I
couldn’t touch pliers or saws or car parts.
The very first days at Misericordia I had wanted to obey every-
thing the priests told me, so I could learn the priestly mystery and
feel the chill go down my back every morning when as a priest I
would say the words of consecration, “Hoc est Corpus Meum, This is
My Body,” and hold Jesus in my hands.
“The sophomores,” Father Gunn said, motioning to the sixty-
three second-year boys drawn up in shorter aisles at the rear of our
large study hall, “have stepped one year closer to the priesthood by
one-hundred-percent keeping their part of their deal with God.”
He wanted all of us to be fine-looking, broad-shouldered young
priests marching out to all the people in the world who were sinning
and dying and who would fall like starlings to the oil fires of hell if
we didn’t learn to save them.
Danny Boyle and the German lady who was blind, and Porky
and Hank and even Father Gunn needed my dedication to duty. My
obedience could eventually cure all kinds of blindness. It could lead
me to the words and introduce me into the mystery. I renewed my
summer determina tion and let poor lost Oliver Twist go his hapless
way. “Ich habe Dienst,” Father Gunn kept repeating. “I have a duty.”

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