Failure

Have you ever failed at something? I was watching star trek today and Wesley crusher was trying to apply to Starfleet Acadamy, due to his stopping to assist a fellow applicant he failed entry, and the kid he helped got in. He expressed at the end of the episode his feeling of failure to Captain Picard who comforts Wes by telling him that he too failed the exam the first time he applied.

I thought about my own life, and my relationships with people along the way. I think the only time that I was in a mentor setting was in Seminary. I had Priest friends who I knew put alot of faith in me, who saw in me a hope for their life and ministry to continue. Much like the Military, in the priesthood those who are already in the program put a significant emotional investment in those who are coming up behind them. Seasoned priests see in seminarians hope for the future of the Church. Its more then just a stroke to the ego. It's more then just "Oh this kid wants to be like me." There is a familial pride among them.

I mentioned in a previous blog Father Bert Richman, my pastor while I was a senior in High School. Our relationship was like a Father and his son. He was the finest priest to ever serve this Diocese, and I would argue that point with the Pope himself. He taught me what it meant to be a priest. He listened when my family life began to fly apart at the seams. He listened to my fears, my dreams, and my concerns. He beamed over my every accomplishment, and always kept me on course. I would visit him in the hospital when the cancer would fire up again. I remember helping him put his hospital gown back on when it had fallen off, because he was so out of it from all the drugs and Khemo that he had lost his sense of touch. I was with him at his death bed. He mentioned me in his final testiment...but he never knew I was gay. It was the one thing I never shared with him. He is the one and only single person in my life who never knew, and had to find out by looking down from heaven.

He was so proud of me in life. He was delighted that I was the first person from our parish to ever enter the Seminary. I was the youngest Seminarian for the Diocese, and I was a hope for the Parish and the Church, and he could not have been more proud. He died at the end of my first year of Seminary, and when I knelt as his Casket I remember clearly touching my Collar and thinking that it would not have been around my neck if it werent for him. I vowed that my priesthood would be a living testimony to him. Every year I would visit his grave on the day that he died. Every year I make sure that Midnight Mass at Christmas someone says Mass for him, or at least remembers him at the altar.

Years after he died, I left the Seminary, and today his picture still sits in a frame on my beuro. I remember a few days after he died, way back while I was still in the Seminary I remember sitting outside of a Pizza Place in Dartmouth and crying. I remember turning to my best friend who was seated next to me, and telling him, "Now he knows that I am gay. I wonder what he thinks of me now."

To this day I wonder. I didn't have the fortune that Wesley Crusher had...to be re-assured by his mentor that he was not ashamed. Its a wound that can never be healed. Not only did leave Seminary...but I'm gay. I have no idea how he would have handled that. That feeling that people have about their parents and their sexuality is the same feeling I have with him.

I guess I can only hope that he views my sexuality through the filter of Heaven. I pray he understands that it's the way God made me, and that everyday I try to live my life the best I can.

The many priests who were a part of my life then still are. They have moved from a feeling of that I was the kid trying to be like them, and they were the accomplished grown ups. Now there is a feeling of equality. Although I didn't finish the program, they recognize my many accompishments from those days, and the work and ministry I did. Today when we go out for dinner we do so as two adults. My life today is obviously very different, but I can't help but always wonder...if Father Bert were alive today and we went out for dinner what would he say? How would that dinner go?

Father Bert, I did my best. I love you, and pray that you rest in peace...