Tuesday, I stopped into the neighboring Catholic Church in the town next to where I live. When I told my husband this story he insisted that I write it down and share it with others. He’s been urging me for years to start a blog of, as I call them, mini miracles or M&M’s. A dear friend of mine once coined the phrase. I’ve found that once you breech the subject of mini miracles, it is surprising how very many of them are happening in so many lives. So here goes...
I often stop in St. Brigid’s Church to “Make a Visit” as it’s called, in Catholic old time circles. Usually I first detour to the ladies room for a handful of tissues, as I rarely make it through a visit without losing a lot of fluid, at least lately, that is. There was a time five or so years back when I would visit the tabernacle just to be close to the Lord, to pray and secretly sing songs to Him. I say secretly, because I would never have presumed to sing singularly and publicly with a voice as off key and weak as my own. I figure since He made my voice, He’ll just have to put up with hearing it. The last several years my visits to Jesus are more out of need than joy or longing.
So, on Tuesday I made direct route to the bathroom for a generous supply of tissues, which I clasped firmly in hand and then headed for the pew as close to the tabernacle as I could get. Upon entering the sanctuary, I heard the loud echoing sound of the industrial vacuum strapped firmly on the Back of Owen. Owen is the all round maintenance man at St. Brigids but I remember him very well from earlier days, when he performed a similar service for the other Catholic Church in town known as Our Lady of the Assumption, the French connection, St Brigids being strictly the Irish parish at that time in the mill town's immigrant past. I used to faithfully exercise over there with a group of other mothers whose children also attended Assumption grammar school and I recognized him immediately. He is an older man, perhaps in his seventies and has a still heavily Scottish brogue of sorts. He used to teach self-defense and if I’m not mistaken has a black belt in Karate. He is a rather large man who still emanates a manly and youthful strength despite his years, and as I waved, I caught his eye.
In consideration of Owen’s presence, I steeled myself to a greater self-control over any copious overflow of emotion a “ visit” to the tabernacle usually elicits from me. I set out to pray my usual pleadings and lamentings before God but the roar of the vacuum was building as Owen made his way slowly and surely closer to the altar area. I was having real trouble concentrating. Lately, St. Brigids is not the place to visit if you are seeking solitude with God. There is always somebody else around, construction workers, Owen or the Devout Ladies dusting the sanctuary.
The reason I still go there is a combination of convenience and beauty. Since the new pastor took over the shepherding of the St Brigids flock two years ago many changes have come to the parish workings, I’m sure not all are either appreciated or desired. This seems always to be the case when a new pastor is assigned. The most obvious change is to physical structure itself. The bell tower is gone, to the removal cost of what must have seemed an exorbitant sum of money, no doubt dwarfed by the estimated cost of a bell tower repair. The change inside the sanctuary, however, is what draws me on occasion to St. Brigids, rather than to my own parish church. Since Father L’s receiving the pastorate, the inner church has been transformed into a place of real beauty that would indeed encourage prayer if only there was a little more quiet available, which, I have almost no doubt, there will be, soon, as the construction is nearly complete!
Anyway, I finally gave up my attempt, at least for the moment, to convince God of the justice and need of my wishes, desires, prayers etc… and as Owen approached me with his vacuum now a loud echoing roar, I smiled a small greeting. He responded by shutting off the vacuum and returned to me the semblance of a smile and said “How do you like it?” His Scottish accent added a certain mystery to the question. “It is beautiful” I replied, “I love it”. He seemed gratified and moved a bit closer to me, standing, vacuum strapped on his back, looking for all the world as if it were an oxygen tank supplying needed breath. Then he said something completely outside the realm of my expectations. Something about something he did when his daughter was killed, and then he commented on the paint colors that Father and he had chosen for the new sanctuary design. My mind and attention was still on the beauty of the their combine efforts when I seemed to recall, as if it were a past fact of my own history that he had said the words, “When my daughter was killed.” I wasn’t quite sure in fact; if indeed he had said that. I frowned inside and probably outwardly as well, feeling perplexed and confused. I don’t know where his conversation went from there as my mind was suddenly in disarray. A moment later I interrupted him and asked plainly, “Did you say your daughter was killed”? “Yes” he said, “Three years ago. She was 46”. My mind raced from his words to the fact that on my Birthday, this Sunday I will be 49 and that means I was also 46 when Hugh’s daughter died. We were the same age. The sudden and odd exit from my somewhat complaining, meditative prayer time to my inherent and sometimes driven need to understand, coupled with a certain lack of tact prompted me to ask him directly what had happened; how she had died?
Owen, must just have needed to speak of his daughter’s death that day, or perhaps my presence and the similarity of our ages had prompted the disjuncted statement about his daughter’s death. She was killed, murdered during the same news cycle, as when Katrina hit the U.S. coastline, which somewhat explains my lack of memory on this particular rampage. The story is one of those tragedies that anyone paying attention at the time, would have to remember, like Waco or Colombine. A madman had entered a Texas church and opened fire on the local pastor killing both him and the deacon who was also present. The killer then left in a rage and began a tour of the town shooting wherever and at whomever he wished. Hugh’s daughter, an accomplished horsewoman, her trailer full of horses, was enroute with a friend that day, to some horse event or other, when a man drove past her vehicle shooting wildly at them. After he had passed, she got out to check on the safety of her horses. He must have seen her in his rear view mirror and spinning around and headed towards her. He shot her in the back, killing her, and then proceeded to shoot her girlfriend several times finally shooting her in the forehead and leaving her dead in a ditch. As I write this, a vague distant memory returns to me of seeing this story on the news that fateful day three years ago.
Owen finished his story, telling me that the killer, holed up in his home with the police surrounding him, ended the ordeal by shooting himself. “It’s a good thing he did. Or I would have killed him and then I’d be in prison today. I couldn’t have let it go”. I don’t know what I said in response to his words, perhaps because I didn’t say anything. When we see these tragedies displayed almost as commonplace crimes on the nightly news, they simply do not have the same impact as when speaking to an actual victim of such a grave, evil and seemingly senseless crime.
I asked Owen what his daughter’s name was and told him that I would pray for her. He thanked me and responded, “That’s what they want me to do. Pray.” Again I was without words. He began reminiscing, and asked me if I used to exercise at Assumption Church having recognized me from there. I was actually surprised that he remembered who I was. I always remember a face, but am surprised when someone actually remembers mine. He told me that when his daughter died he had decided to retire from Assumption, but within a very short time span, the diocese of Worcester had contacted him requesting that he work for the new priest at St. Brigids. He replied with a certain characteristic aggressiveness, “If I like him I’ll work for him if I don’t, I won’t.”
And so the Non-praying Scottish black belt, ex-retired maintenance, construction, worker turned interior design and lighting consultant and all around get it done man at St Brigid’s, has been working almost nonstop since his daughter’s death. He has been implementing Father L’s vision for meditative worship, turning what was an average church experience into a place of richness and harmony. Beautifying the place of worship and sacrifice where God incarnate visits His people, a place where I go to visit with Him and sometimes with those He brings my way, a place to unburden my soul, pleading my hopes and desires for my loved ones and for their needs. When Father L. invited his non-praying all around handyman to Christmas Mass, Owen questioned Father, “Do you know anybody else who has spent more time on his knees in church than me”? Why should I go to Mass? After all, Owen assured me that he and his son had raised the altar themselves, rebuilt the flooring and personally tiled the sanctuary, and all that during the sweltering heat of last summer. “ I’ve spent more time than any other man I know on my knees in this church”. Never the less, this past Christmas found Owenn present and accounted for, front row, in full Scottish Regalia, Kilt and all while his wife and daughter sang in the choir. I see God’s hand and love at work in Owen’s life and although I cannot account it a supernatural work of God It strikes me more as a miracle of the natural where God in his mercy does as Jesus said. “Your Father in Heaven knows what you need” P.S. Thanks be to God , Owen isn't in prison : )
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