A Glimpse of the Good Life…

            Three Catholic priests – two friends of mine and I – recently arrived in late afternoon at an old farm house on the outskirts of Hendersonville, North Carolina.  As we were being welcomed by the young mistress of the place, with her four children, we unloaded a house-warming gift (a case of red wine), a cello and a violin.  After teasing the kids a bit, frightening the family cat with our boisterous movements, and wrestling with the beautiful German short-haired pointer named Penelope, we took over the place.  First things first:  the inviting sound of a popping wine-cork, crusty, hot baguettes fractioned into pieces, and the gurgle of olive oil poured into a dipping dish.  I wander into the sitting room:  a TV-less nook-of-a-room lined with bookshelves, art and family portraits on the wall, a coal-burning fireplace around which the seating is arranged with a piano in the corner.  I sit down and play a tune or two and then listen to my goddaughter Ellen display her newly acquired ability to make music. 

            Meanwhile, the young woman and my priest friends set up shop in the spacious dining-room, and before long two cellos and a violin are bringing Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor back to life.  Soon the man of the house is home from work, and, donning his “John Deere” cooking apron, begins to do the prep work for dinner, giving the wife a break to make food for the soul.  The squeals of delight and fright of three of the children float through the open front windows of the house along with the cool evening, mountain breeze. 

            “Here,” a voice breaks through my concentration on the scores of books all around me – “here, watch him for a while please,” says mom, as she deposits the few-month old Sebastian in my arms.  Moments later Pachelbel comes to life again; and I find myself reclining in an old arm chair, a glass of Spanish Rioja, ruby red, on the table beside me, little Sebastiano (the godson of one of the other priests) in my lap trying to put his toes in his mouth, and, in my hand, G. K. Chesterton’s delightful and hilarious book, Orthodoxy, that recounts his adventurous journey into Catholic Faith.

            The little rug-rat in my lap eventually loses interest in his toes and pulls off my reading glasses, a signal that it’s time for a walk in the fenced-in yard.  Out there the two older children, sister and brother, are lugging each other around in a red wagon, while Cecilia, the youngest of the three, brings me her collection of sticks, clover leaves, and a dead bug and lays her trophies at my feet.  As Seba and I admire this assortment of treasures, Kolbe (whom I baptized years ago), crashes on the tricycle after he has accidently run over Ellen’s foot.   A bit of crying and frustration commences that takes some time to soothe, I offering consolations along with admonitions to be more careful (as well as tougher in the experience of a little pain). 

            By this time, Pachelbel has become almost as smooth to the ear as the Spanish red is on my palate; and the children are announcing that their stomachs are growling.  The curtain then rises on the next act of this happy drama:  a family gathered around the table, loaded with food and drink; the father of the household speaking words of thanks to the Almighty Father; a priest making the sign of the cross over a feast that itself is a sign of God’s bounteous love for His children, with the quiet strains of mountain folk music playing in the background.  Yet another pop of a cork, more-than-enough food heaped on plates against the “protests” of guests all too eager to savor more of the delicious pasta, and children of boundless energy growing impatient with how slowly adults eat and how interminably they talk and debate about the most inane things.  Why, don’t these grown-ups know that the lightening bugs are out, sparkling in the yard within the reach of little hands? 

            There is a tug at the sleeve of my clerical shirt:  Cecilia, already aware at her young age of the power and influence of the feminine, tries to charm me into letting her be excused from the table.  “You’ll have to ask your Papa,” I remind her, and she screws up her face in disappointment, thinking that I would have been much easier game.  Mom, nevertheless, grants dispensation.  And off they all go, we adults following them as far as the front porch.  As the after-dinner tobacco smoke and steam from hot, fresh coffee mingle and drift slowly upward in the cool, heavy air, we congratulate ourselves on our music, our culinary skills, and the points scored in dinnertime debate.  Our bragging is, of course, only in jest; for we all know that our happiness in this quickly fading day is each other and our being together – a sort of stubborn, mulish remnant we are who still know how to relish a Southern evening from the vantage of a rocking chair on the porch, “disturbed” only by the clamorous glee of the next generation playing in the yard, who we hope and pray will learn by our example:  a family – dad, mom and offspring – laity and priests, joined together in the family of the Church, clinging to the human things of life, which through the filter of our Faith, grant us a glimpse of eternal joy. 

            All now is still in this night of mid-June.  The children are tucked in bed, sleeping soundly the sleep of the innocent and secure – that is, the loved.  My jaw aches a bit, suppressing a yawn.  Someone finally says, “Well…,” and we know it’s time to pack up the only “gadgets” we used that evening for fun, a cello and a violin.  Pachelbel will slumber for a while, and Sebastian will be a little bigger next time.  Hopefully we’ll all be a bit wiser, having drunk again from the font out of which life flows, that fountain of the love of God that formed the family in which we all have visibly reunited during that blessed evening – the Church, and in her, the human, Christian family, whose circle widens to embrace three priests and, one knows, many another friend.