Part III - The Final Chapter

Bee Gees Song of the Day: E.S.P.

Danger, suddenly an early warning Suddenly the soul is burning But I still believe in someone, somewhere

Four years ago I had the good fortune to go to work for a well-regarded regional architecture firm. It was good fortune for a variety of reasons: great opportunity for career advancement; good solid management team; stellar reputation in the industry. (Okay, wait a second. What in God’s name does this have to do with the Pope, rosaries or redemption, you ask. Have we moved on to a new blog? Is this even the same guest blogger? What the HE** is going on here?)

Patience. There is a valid segue here. For it was at this firm that my true redemption was to come to fruition, very much by chance.

I was sitting at lunch one day with some coworkers and my tale of rosary woe came up in conversation, as it had so many times with others over the past several years. I regaled them with much of the same drama that I have shared here, and got the obligatory laughter, as well as the appropriate commiseration that I had not, and would never. achieve my goal. So I went on, thinking nothing more of it.

Two days later, I came to work and sat at my desk, where a small white envelope was waiting for me. Puzzled, I picked it up and noticed that it was quite thick in the middle. I carefully pried it open, and pulled out a small note card, from which an even smaller brown envelope fell onto my desk. I picked up the brown packet and held it in my hand as I read the note:

“I was so moved by your story about your father and his desire for a rosary blessed by John Paul II. I would like you to pass this rosary along to him, which I received during one of my private audiences with him.”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. You see, as it turns out, one of my principals is married to one of the lead architects from the team that designed the John Paul II cultural center. During the construction of the project, she and her husband were invited twice to meet with the Pope. And their “audience” with the pope was a bit different from mine. She showed me a photo of her kneeling to kiss his Grace’s ring, and told me that, after you kiss his ring, he drops a small envelope into your hand that contains a rosary that he has blessed himself. Personally.

“I already have another of my own, so it would mean a great deal to me for your father to have this one. I hope he will like it.”

He did.

Redemption! AKA: New Pope, Kathryn Hopes, Pop Mopes

Bee Gees Song of the Day: To Love Somebody

I live and breathe for you But what good does it do If I ain't got you, ain't got you?

Fast forward several years. So much has changed. John Paul II has gone on to the Great Beyond. A new pope, Benedict, is named to carry on his mission. I am now gainfully employed, and have since married and had my first child. Life is good. But still, something is missing.

My feelings of failure, while they have waned with the years, nag at my subconscious like a slow leak in a pipe hidden deep within your walls. Not noticeable on the surface, but creating unforeseen damage within.

Until one day, while leaving mass (at a time when I was quite diligent about attending), I came across two young girls manning a table, imploring congregants to support their missionary efforts. It seems that they were raising money for a trip to Italy, where they, as I did lo those many years ago, would have an audience with the Pope. Unlike me, however, they apparently had been clued into the “no sale of blessed items” hoo ha, and they were earning their transport by selling rosaries which they would take with them to be blessed by the Pope during their audience with him. They would then bring them back and deliver them to the congregants who had purchased them prior to their trip.

A fire lit within me. There it was. For a mere $15, I could finally deliver what I could not before. All would be forgiven. I tore open my wallet and fumbled through the bills. I had enough to purchase four. I ordered all four. (Who knew when I might run across a request for a blessed rosary again). I selected two simple brown rosaries with wooden beads and two with bright, rainbow colored beads. I asked the lovely young women, these angels of mercy and my saviors, when the rosaries would be delivered. Their trip was three weeks out at that point, and they would be right in this spot the Sunday after. I smiled and thanked them, and exited the church with a lightness I hadn’t felt in years. Everything seemed brighter, more colorful. It was as if a new life had been bestowed upon me.

Four weeks later, I arrived at church early. The young women were there. I tried not to appear too anxious as I jostled past a young couple and their three children. My angels smiled and pulled up my order. “Yes, you ordered four rosaries, Ma’am. Here they are. Thank you so much for your support.” “Oh no, thank you,” I gushed. You don’t know how much these mean to me”. I clutched them to my breast, and walked into mass.

The next Sunday was Father’s Day. What better day to present this redemptive jewel to my Father. I could see his face, tears welling up in his eyes as he threw his arms around me and told me what a wonderful daughter I was. I actually felt sorry for my sisters, whose gifts surely wouldn’t hold a candle to mine. After dinner, the moment of truth. I could hardly contain my excitement as I handed him a small bag, the rosary therein. As he pulled it out, and examined it curiously, I shared with him the fact that this rosary had been blessed by the one and only – the Pope. His face lit up. “J.P?” he beamed. That’s when I knew that redemption was a fleeting thing. “No. Ben,” I muttered. Once again, that look I had seen seven years ago filled his eyes as he thanked me and told me how much it meant to him. His feigned gratitude hung in the air like a bad odor you hoped no one else would notice. Clearly, there must be a hierarchy of popes, at least in my father’s eyes, and John Paul II was The Great One. Who knew? I figured a pope is a pope is a pope, right? No. Apparently not. I had failed once again. And the finality of it weighed on me like a boulder. There would never be a chance for true redemption. After all, JP II was dead. It would be impossible to present my father with a JP blessed rosary.

Or would it?

Tomorrow: JP lives.

Guest Blogger: European Vacation

Bee Gees Song of the Day: Spics and Specks

All of my life I've tossed with the day
The spicks and the specks of my life gone away

When Erica first asked me to be a guest blogger on her site, I was flattered and more than a bit enthusiastic at the prospect. A guest blogger! What an honor! And one that I was pretty sure she had not bestowed on anyone before me. But then the panic set in. After all, I had never blogged before. In fact, I had never even read a blog before Erica started sending me the links to hers. Would it be obvious to all who read me? Would I be a target for comparison with the more eloquent and experienced hostess of the blog site? Would I be pitied for my inability to measure up? How could I even put myself in such a position? And what could I write that would be even remotely interesting to the myriad of visitors to her blog site? I know nothing of Korean drama and haven’t (recently) run into any chain-smoking serial killers. I have concluded that guest blogging must be right on par with public speaking and death as a source of unadulterated stress.

So I delayed. I came up with excuses like “Oh, I’m very busy at work right now. No time for such frivolity.” But she knew it was all so much procrastination. How long could I postpone the inevitable? At what point would she realize that I was simply a coward? So here I sit, sweat beading on my brow; my hands shaking with every key stroke.

And what to write about? Well without any recent notable experience, I decided to share one of my favorite stories about my father, which I had occasion to recount while entertaining a client yesterday evening.

European Vacation

Ten years ago I had the great opportunity to take a whirlwind tour of Europe with a group of college students. Seven cities in three and a half weeks. One of those opportunities that you know won’t pop up again any time soon, so I jumped at the chance. Our last stop was Rome, where we had a scheduled audience with the Pope (John Paul II, for those who don’t keep up with these things). If you have not been to the Vatican for an “audience with the Pope,” I will share with you that it isn’t an opportunity to walk in, shake hands and chew the fat with His Grace. It is occasion to squeeze into a giant room with 50,000 other people and squint to see him walk across the stage and speak in a thick, Italian accent you cannot understand.

But that is neither here nor there. The significance of this visit was that it provided me the opportunity to obtain for my father the one thing he had always wanted: a rosary blessed by the Pope. Not knowing about such things, I asked him where I could acquire such a rare gift, and he assured me that you could walk into the Vatican gift shop and pick out one of thousands. Basically, according to my father, who is never wrong, the Pope walks into a giant Catholic warehouse where these pieces are stored, raises his hand, says a few words in Italian and blesses the whole lot of them. So there I am, after our audience with the pope, in the Vatican gift shop, inquiring of an elderly nun which of the rosaries has been blessed. She scoffed at me, and told me in her condescending, broken English that blessed items cannot be sold. I informed her that she was mistaken and explained to her what my father had told me. She just shook her head, made a clucking noise, and shuffled away. So there I was, thousands of miles away from home, unable to deliver on one simple task that would make my father happy. What made it worse was that, if I had known better, I could have bought the rosary ahead of time and taken in into the Pope extravaganza, where His Grace did, in fact, bless en masse all items brought in by the audience.

I felt dizzy. My legs felt weak. I contemplated my options. I could simply stay in Italy, never to be seen or heard from again. That way, the despair of losing his precious daughter would outweigh the fact that he didn’t have a blessed rosary…maybe. I could purchase one of the rosaries, and tell him it was blessed, but I was pretty sure that guaranteed a one-way ticket to hell for me, so best not to go down that road. I finally concluded that a genuine, Vatican-issued rosary was as close to being pope-blessed as you could get, and surely that would satisfy him.

Upon arriving back in the states, I immediately held out my father’s gift to him, and excitedly gave him my best sales pitch on the whole “Vatican-issued” bit. He held it up and, with perfect fatherly gratitude, told me it was exactly what he had wanted. I smiled, and acted like I believed him. But we both knew the truth.

I was a failure.

(Tomorrow: Redemption!…Or not.)