The answer went beyond what I had expected.
I was six years old when I entered grade one at St. Aloysius School. It was not long before I learned that to deliberately miss Sunday Mass was a mortal sin.
Because my father had my sister and me baptized in the Catholic Church (my mother was Anglican), I assumed that he must be a Catholic. While my mother worshipped at St. Cyprian’s Anglican Church, and my sister and I went every Sunday to the 9 a.m. children’s Mass at St. Aloysius Church, my father worshipped at the Municipal Golf Course.
And so from the age of six I began to pray that my father would return to the Catholic Church.
When I was in grade seven, I was taught how to serve at Mass, and learned the Latin responses to the presiding priest’s prayers: “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum. …” My mother warned me sternly, “Don’t let them talk you into becoming a priest!”
No one tried to talk me into becoming a priest, but by the time I finished grade ten, I felt that this is what I was called to be. Before graduating from the Catholic High School of Montreal, I told my parents. My mother cried every morning for two weeks, weeping into the oatmeal as she prepared my breakfast.
I went on to study at Loyola College in Montreal. Largely because of my Jesuit teachers, I felt drawn to enter the Society of Jesus, but I was in no hurry. After receiving my B.A., I decided to spend a year teaching and was hired at my old school, Catholic High. At that time not many teachers had formal preparation; they learned on the job.
I have never worked harder, before or since. I taught religion in grade nine, geometry in grade ten, algebra in grade eleven, and English in what was called the senior matriculation class, equivalent to the first year of university.
I survived that year of teaching and went on to enter the Jesuit novitiate in Guelph. After two years as a novice, I did studies in Latin and Greek at what was called the Juniorate, at Guelph; philosophy at St. Louis University, where I earned an MA in English literature; and, finally, theology at Regis College. I was ordained to the priesthood and sent to teach at Saint Paul’s High School in Winnipeg.
It was during a visit to my parents one summer, when I was alone briefly with my father, that he said, “I’d like to talk to you about something that’s been worrying me for a long time.” When I asked what it was, he answered, “I’d like to be baptized.” And so I discovered that my father, for whom I had been praying all these years to come back to the Catholic Church, had, in fact, never been in it!
I arranged for him to take instructions at a local French language church (he had been brought up in Belgium speaking French, though we spoke only English at home). Several months later, at the age of eighty, he was baptized.
My prayers had been answered, but in a way I could never have imagined. Why had my unbaptized father had his children baptized in the Catholic Church? I don’t know, and I never asked him. I suspect that because he had dear friends in Belgium who were Catholic (among them my godfather, for whom I was named), he wanted his children to share that faith.
And so I was able to arrange for the baptism of my father, who had arranged for mine. I thought I knew what I was praying for when I prayed for him all those years, but the answer went beyond what I had expected. I discovered that prayer was indeed powerful, even when I didn’t know what I was praying for.
An author and MH friend for decades, Fr. Eric worked in the Spiritual Exercises ministry. He is now retired and living in the Jesuit infirmary in Pickering, ON.
