April 8, 2022
Editor’s note: This reflection was originally published on Fr. Mark-David’s Facebook page.
“Have you prepared your conversation?”
asked the priest sitting across from me my first week in the rectory.
He looked like an owl with blue eyes and wavy silver hair.
“Have you prepared your dinner conversation?” he asked again
In his clipped aristocratic New England accent.
I thought he was kidding, more hazing for the baby priest.
He was not kidding.
Fr. Walter J. Sullivan CSP., a published Shakespearean scholar,
was not about to waste time on my babble.
When in conversation, as he quoted a line from Shakespeare,
if I could not identify the Act and Scene, much less the play,
the next morning leaning against my door,
would be a brand-new paperback edition of the play,
Certainly, a topic for a future dinner.
It was like living with the headmaster!
Don’t get me wrong, he was a gentleman,
and when it was preached at his funeral
“I don’t think in his life Walter ever scolded anybody”
It was the truth.
One conversation surprised me.
He was reminiscing
about his years as a chaplain during World War II.
From 1942-1946 he served as a chaplain
to the 379th Bomber squadron
Stationed in England at Kimbolton airfield.
He talked about, ‘the boys.”
He celebrated mass, heard confessions,
and before a mission
Blessed each one, Catholic or no,
as they climbed in a B-17 bomber.
He talked about searching the skies waiting for planes to return,
And for the planes that would never return.
In one short stretch, 80 planes-each with a crew of ten,
were shot down.
Fr. Walter was blessing men climbing into planes,
both priest and airmen knowing
they may not come back.
He celebrated a mass for the dead for each soldier,
Catholic or no,
He personally wrote a letter to each family
Writing of their boy’s bravery and kindness.
As Walter spoke, the pain of writing those letters,
Of blessing those boys,
that pain continued to live in his eyes.
Fr. Sullivan’s memories make real to me this scripture:
“If Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us
from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand,
O king let him deliver us. But if not,
be it known to you, O king,
that we will not serve your gods.”
The trust it takes to pray to a God
who may not deliver you out of evil hands
may not deliver you from whatever fiery furnace faces you,
but you are going to live as you believe anyway, that’s faith.
I often pray for success-and safety, that’s okay.
I need to pray for the courage to live what I believe,
whatever happens.