Calling.

--for Father Thomas L. Meagher, P.P.

   We Catholic boys all listened for The Call.
   The Voice of God, exquisite in our ears--
   Come follow me, or, as it was with Paul,
   Thunder, enlightening, the bang and whisper
   By which God speaks great plans and the small.
   Be fruitful. But not apples. Is that clear?

   Or as it was with Noah, Build an ark.
   Or Abram, Prove your faith, man, kill your boy.
   Or Moses, So you're thirsty? Smite the rock.
   Or Job, out of the whirlwind, Gird your loins.
   Or fervent girl-child, Joan of Arc,
   Who burned but never renounced her "voices."

   Belief is easy when God speaks to us.
   The ordinary silence--there's the thing--
   The Soul-consuming quiet, the heavens' hush
   That sets even the pious wondering.
   Lord spare us all, we doubting Thomases,
   Who, even with a trembling finger in

   The wound, still ask aloud, "My Lord? My God?"
   Ever curious, too inquisitive.
   I was named after a "Father Tom"--
   My father's uncle, Thomas Patrick Lynch,
   A sickly boy who died before his time,
   (1904-1936)

   Saving Apaches at Rancho de Taos,
   Breathing some easier in the saving air
   Of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
   The blood of Christ, when he was done, ran clear.
   Once in the basement of my grandparents' house
   I found his cassock and Roman collar

   Hanging from a rafter, blessed and bodiless
   And under it, a trunk of priestly things,
   Surplice and biretta, right chalices,
   A sick call kit and leather breviary.
   I tried them all. Though nothing seemed to fit,
   All the same, I kept on listening.

   And I served at altar for our parish priest,
   The Reverend Thomas Kenny-never "Tom,"
   Never wavering, never doubtful in least--
   A Holy Roman Irish Catholic man
   Who lost his bearings when they Englished everything,
   Like Barry Fitzgerald or Father Flanagan.

   After morning Masses, he'd make me kneel
   For half an hour in the back of church
   To offer thanksgiving for the holy meal
   I was after having in the Eucharist.
   "Be stingy with the Lord, boyo, and he'll
   Be stingy in return." He kept a list

   Of saints and shortcomings, shahs and shall-nots,
   Mortal, venial, deadly, and cardinal sins,
   Contrary virtues, graces, gifts of God,
   The glorious and sorrowful mysteries,
   Holy days, first Fridays, Stations of the Cross,
   Corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

   It was a language I'd learned to speak,
   Lovely and Latin, a sort of second tongue--
   My parents' and people's, the nuns' and priests'--
   That rose in the air like incense and song
   Ghostly and Gregorian, like memories:
   First gushing, then going, but never gone.

   And I am listening, listening still
   "We're given two ears and one mouth for good reason.
   Pray to know God's purpose an4you will."
   So said the old priest, and I believed him.
   "Carpe diem, Tom--each minute is a gift."
   And though still dumb and blind, sometimes I seize it.

   Pray tell us, Father, was yours a calling?
   Or hearing nothing were you nonetheless
   Given to visions that made you willing?
   Or seeing nothing did you answer yes
   On faith? Or hope? Or love? Dare-deviling
   The way our Good Lord in the wilderness

   Bested Satan after forty days.
   And you've been at it, Father, forty years
   Of bishops, building programs, bingo games
   Parish councils, parish raffles, parish fairs--
   An endless litany of faces, names,
   Duties, details, human failings, the old fear

   That God is watching or that God isn't.
   Hard times these days to be a parish priest--
   Damned if you do, and if you didn't,
   Confiteor Deo omnipotenti.
   The pay is lousy, there's no retirement;
   The nights are cold, the days are withering.

   Many are called and few are chosen, still
   The harvest's great, the laborers are few,
   Discernment's still nearly impossible.
   This crowd wants the old way, that one wants it new.
   And yours to mind the temple, and yours to mind the till.
   The cardinal wants his cut, the deacon needs his due.

   And you were trained to bear the sins of others
   And take their scourging in the public square.
   Taught to treat them all as sisters, brothers,
   Forgiving everything, though they forswear
   Any kinship or communion. More's the bother--
   There's no vacation pay or profit share.

   Like poets, priests get by on metaphor
   Like undertakers, they look best in black
   Melchizedek replaced the bloody slaughter
   With tidy bread and wine and had a knack
   For sacraments and sermons--holding forth
   On Right and Might, Omnipotence and Wrath.

   But all we've ever heard from you is love:
   "God loves you. To love God, love one another."
   You've told us that in dying we will live;
   And life's a gift; (you learned that from
   "Keep it simple; to really get it, simply give."
   (No doubt you got that from your blessed Father.)

   So bless us, Father, for we have surely sinned
   We're quick to curse and slow to say our thanks
   We're great begrudgers, holy hypocrites,
   Tight-fisted givers, gluttons for that grace
   That saves us from our own worst enemies.
   We don't forgive. We're stinting in our praise.

   Still after all these years you've kept the faith
   That we are worthy somehow of no less
   Than all your gifts; though none of us's a saint,
   We're worth the sacrifice, your very best.
   Thus we proclaim the mystery of grace:
   You bless us and in doing so are blest.

THOMAS LYNCH is a writer, poet, and funeral director. He lives in Michigan and is the author of Bodies in Motion and at Rest (W.W. Norton and Co., 2000).