Looking Back
By Fr. Glenn Sudano, C.F.R.

“Alleluia!” had an extra meaning this year for both friars and sisters who secretly gathered at the hospital to offer Father Benedict an Easter Sunday surprise. Thanks to the expertise of extraordinary medical personnel and the prayers of thousands thro9ughout the world, Father Benedict has already returned home. Although Father will be traveling less, he will continue his work of serving the Church by preaching and writing. In this photo Father honors the two helpful friars who assisted him during his time in the hospital; Br. Peter Marie Westall (center) and Br. Daniel Marie Williamson.

“The older you get, the more you look back.” I didn’t discover this simple maxim in some dusty book of ancient wisdom buried in the back of a library; rather, it’s somewhat homespun since it was culled from my own experience of life.

Last summer, something special happened to me which may give me the right to make up a maxim about getting old. I was quietly inducted into the “Over the Hill” club. I was not awarded any special certificate, presented with a sporty lapel pin, or even taught a secret handshake. There is no need to carry a card since one’s receding hairline and expanding waistline make this quiet rite of passage known to everyone. Yes, last June I definitively entered middle age when I, as they say, “hit the big 5–0.”

I don’t know how I got to this side of the hill so quickly. When I was young, time seemed to go slowly and just drag on; yet, as an adult, life often feels like a drag race! Like a kid on a roller coaster, one inches uphill with great anticipation of the exciting adventure to come. When you go over the hill – hold on! But then before you know it, it’s over. As a child I just couldn’t wait to decorate for Christmas, yet now that I’m older, it seems Christmas comes around every six months. Now I wonder if it wouldn't be easier just to leave everything up.

Some say Youth 2000 and the friars are a marriage made in heaven! Throughout the United States and beyond these Eucharist-centered prayer festivals continue to bring thousands of young people closer to Christ and the Church. Although many people contribute to the work of Youth 2000, friars and sisters play a major role through preaching and offering the Sacraments. Br. Columba Maria Jordan and Fr. Francis Mary Roaldi are shown with some of the young people who participated at a Youth 2000 held at Craig Lodge in Scotland.

Getting old catches you off guard. For example, you wonder where you are in old family photos, cops look like kids in costumes, and addressing your new parish priest as “Father” feels funny. Yes, although he’s ancient, there is no known way of stopping the steps of Father Time. While we sleep, he quietly inches up and etches lines in our brow, turns our hair white one strand at a time, and somehow surgically weakens our eyes, backs, and knees.

Some people will be surprised to know that ultimately exercise and vitamins may do little to offset both bulging and balding. It seems that these and other signs of aging are the job of one’s DNA. This is one reason why despite some people’s valiant efforts, they age awkwardly and appear to tumble down the hill, while others sort of casually meander into the sunset of their senior years. If the DNA office has assigned you to the express lane, there is little use in complaining. Yet, while nature might be unfair, do know that in the end justice prevails because both lanes head in the same direction – downhill!

I may be mistaken, but I suspect that while most adults would like to look and feel younger, they wouldn’t want to be younger. The way I see it, infants enter into life, toddlers discover it, children enjoy it, but from adolescence into adulthood, you wrestle with it. Therefore, it’s good to smarten up early on and learn who’s boss. This is the difference between an old person and a mature person; the first fights and the second surrenders. The reason why some elderly people are angry and anxious is because they put the “Serenity Prayer” on their refrigerator, but not into practice.

Fr. Raphael Jakez Chilou isn’t celebrating Mass for our sisters in jail, but simply relaxing during a rehearsal! The use of drama to tell stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints is an effective tool of evangelization. At special times the sanctuary of Saint Adalbert’s Church becomes a sacred stage. Each year neighborhood families gather to enjoy the sisters’ enchanting Christmas Pageant and the friars’ dramatic Passion Play. On the eve of the feast of Saint Francis, his final hours are portrayed at an inspiring prayer service traditionally known as the Transitus.

I once heard a middle-ager lament, “My get up and go, got up and went!” There should be no surprise that energy levels lessen as the miles add up. Yet, I suspect this is part of Our Maker’s plan for this machine. If the fact that our physical well-being is indeed important, is not our spiritual health even more so? For this reason, it is not only natural, but even good for us to slow down. Only if we slow down can we look back to evaluate, appreciate, and learn from both the good and the bad. Older people need not look their age, but they should act their age. Years ago, they worked hard but also took the time to slow down. In the evenings grandpa sat on the porch and puffed on his pipe while grandma rocked in her chair darning the socks. Today, however, the elderly are on the go, out and about, racing from pillar to post trying to keep up with the kids. Now, I realize no one should simply sit home waiting to die, but isn’t there a value in slowing down a bit and preparing to die?

Perhaps in His wisdom God wants us to slow down in order to reflect. The word “reflect” literally means to “bend back.” When people reflect, they look back at their lives and at themselves - which is hard to do on the run! This is what separates us from the animals; our ability not only to look back interiorly but to look forward to eternity. Your pet lives in the here and now; they have a memory yet no ability to willfully recall or interiorly reflect. A canary in a cage can see itself in a little mirror; however it has no idea what it’s looking at. The mirror reflects its image, but the canary cannot reflect on itself.

While this is certainly a side note, we can say that another way by which our Creator forces us to reflect is by forcing us to remember. No doubt there are aspects of life we would rather not look at; simply put, they’re too painful. However, even what is bad in the past can serve a good purpose. This is why we are hard-wired with a system by which we are automatically brought back. Our return to the past can sometimes be heart-warming, yet admittedly, it can also be heart-wrenching. Our brain can be likened to an ancient mansion occupied with many memories. Some are fresh, many are faded, but each one is assigned their own room where they patiently wait behind closed but never-locked doors.

We all know that certain things like smells and songs bring us back in time. With one whiff or simple

stanza, an invisible magic carpet comes and whisks us away. For example, the distant caw of a crow can bring us back to the family farm, or the scent of sea salt to our favorite beach. For myself, the ticking of a clock in a dark room and the rich scent of coffee percolating on the stove brings me back to Bellmore, my grandparents’ summer house on Long Island. Also, the smell of wet wool and pencil shavings or the sloshing sound of windshield wipers brings me back to my grammar school days. Yes, in our mental mansion there is an endless array of rooms where memories grow old, yet never die.

Recently, on a sunny spring day, I was driving to our friary hermitage nestled up north in the woods of Sullivan County, New York. As I was driving down a picturesque stretch of an unpaved country road, past tall silver silos and bright red barns, a certain familiar scent wafted by my partially opened window. No doubt, many of you would have winced and quickly closed the window at the offensive odor. No, not me! I opened the window wider to take in even more of the intoxicating aroma. What you would kindly call “earthy”, I would describe as “heavenly.” Then the unexpected happened. Would you believe my Honda turned into a horse? That’s right, there I was sixteen and skinny as a rail, galloping full speed through a flat and almost endless sun drenched field!

The mind is amazing. While driving down a winding country road, the pungent smell of a fertilized field opened an invisible door and in a flash, I was a kid back at camp. Growing up, I spent eight happy summers far from the hot city streets at a camp conducted by the Salesians of Saint John Bosco. As a teenager, I returned as a worker, supervising the stables and instructing campers how to ride and care for horses. Although my hands were on the wheel, I was once again stroking and slapping the horse’s strong muscular neck, then feeling his warm soft snout. Everything came back; the acrid smell of the horse blanket wet and heavy after a full day’s run, the tug of the curry brush combing a rough mane or tail, and the squeaking of strained leather saddle and straps. Memories don’t die, they simply doze.

As mentioned, memories may make us feel warm and grateful or cold and bitter. After twenty-five years as a religious, I have counseled many, too many, who are plagued with childhood memories. Even as adults they’re still running from invisible monsters with names like rejection, criticism, betrayal, and abandonment, to name a few. They may be the very reason why some people don’t stop and others can’t sleep. For those who have live skeletons in closets, pondering the past may be frightening at first, but with God’s grace and the help of others, freedom and peace are finally found.

With what we now know, one would think we would use all of our energy and resources making sure a child’s mansion is filled with good memories and kept clean of every form of evil. Parents also need to assure that their children are not simply protected from those things which endanger a child’s body, but to also provide an environment which serves the real needs of the spirit and soul. Contractors know that a building’s strength is not only in the beams - but the bedrock. Sailors are able to survive storms not because of the size of the boat, but rather the weight of the ballast. Tall trees, in like manner, stand strong in the wind not because of their tall limbs, but rather, deep roots.

Friars and friends team up every month through a new evangelization initiative directed towards young adults called the “Catholic Underground.” The evening which is conducted by the student friars residing at Saint Leopold Friary in Yonkers, creatively brings prayer, adoration, music and social time together in a wonderful way. This Grayfriar News photo shows some of the talented people who have their hand in making the “Catholic Underground” an evident success. (From left to right) Br. Solanus Maria Benfatti, Amy Kuebel, John Keller, Felicia Navarro, Br. Louis Marie Leonelli and Br. Anthony Marie Baetzhold.

Our Savior once told a story about two houses; one set in stone and the other in sand. When the wind and waves hit, we all know which one was a wash-out. This is why, in the end, enthusiasm and sincerity alone make a poor mix for mortar. While there are always exceptions, the unmet emotional and spiritual needs of childhood often lead to an eventual collapse. This is the very reason why even sacred structures like marriage, religious life, and priesthood need a firm foundation. Setting solid stones on dry sand is fine in the sun, but in a storm, things quickly come down with a crash.

While we know that physically things can go wrong from day one, it may be the same emotionally. This means that while we were floating and being formed for months in our embryonic ocean, perhaps we were affected by our mother’s moods. Therefore, a peace-filled and indeed prayerful mom would have kept us feeling safe and sound inside. On the other hand, a mother froth with anger and anxiety could have put us in a tiny tempest. This begs the question why some people live stormy lives or act unbalanced – were they born seasick?

Yes, the power of one splitting atom in a reactor pales next to the potential of one cell splitting in a womb. There, in this small warm world, a wonderful adventure which we call “life” first began. Later, at birth we were thrust squinting and stretching into a bright new world. Yet, while our skin was wet and tender to the touch, what was most fragile was well-hidden deep inside us; namely our psyche. This is the very reason why even infants need tangible signs of love and affection; indeed, in these early months, the human spirit is super sensitive and receives every impression, tender or tough.

To say that our minds and emotions are impressionable is a supreme understatement. In the beginning, we were all like freshly quarried clay, pure and simple. Admittedly, though an artisan could fashion something useful with one hand, it really takes two hands in order to make something beautiful. As with pitchers and pots, so too with people, experience teaches us that two parents best form one child. Nature has decided that as it takes a man and woman to create life, it takes a husband and wife to make it beautiful. Some studies clearly show that an infant needs the gentle caress of a mother, then later as a child, the firm hands of a father.

Br. Giuseppe Maria Siniscalchi and Br. Philip Maria Allen pause for a quick photo during their 70-mile journey through New Jersey to the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa located in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. This annual event, popularly called “The Polish Walking Pilgrimage”, has now become an annual tradition especially for the novices. Friars not only march and camp out with thousands of pilgrims but serve them as well by playing music, offering spiritual conferences, giving personal testimonies and hearing Confessions. The four day journey which is physically taxing yet spiritually uplifting concludes with Mass in Polish at which weary friars can be seen in very deep contemplation!

If conception is often accompanied by great pleasure, and birth by great pain, then it can be said that both would be present in raising a child. It is quite a challenge to provide a child’s every need at the right time and with proper measure. There are few parents who do not desire to lay a strong foundation or provide happy memories, yet there are many who fail. This is why God desires that we take the time to ponder our past and to pray. For some, remembering brings pleasure and for others, pain – yet for both, God’s grace can do wonderful things. Some are made grateful which brings Him praise and others made merciful which finally brings them peace!

So, Mom and Dad, here’s your son, no longer skinny and slowly getting gray. Because of you, my brothers and I have memories like mansions packed with gold. You have given us an anchor for rough waters and roots for the storm. You have taught us that life’s worth is not measured in what is gained, but rather, what is given. Not with words have we learned this lesson from you both: that the joy of the journey is sharing our strength with the weak and our wealth with the poor. In this way, God has deigned that all His children, rich or poor, strong or weak, may help each other to Heaven, and together hobble home beyond the last hill, where all is made new and no one looks back.

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