Easter

Easter

The Easter Vigil Mass is to Roman Catholics as the Superbowl is to American football fans.  It’s about four hours long and is held the Saturday night before Easter Sunday.  It’s shrouded in mystery and ritual but people usually don’t bet on the outcome of the Easter Vigil like they do the Superbowl game, except that one year where we did.  My mom and I had made a wager sometime in 1971 or so regarding my father’s eternal salvation.  Like all good Catholic kids I had somehow gleaned that if you wanted to go to heaven when you died you had to be Catholic. 

So I was really worried about my dad.  He acted more like Jesus than anyone I had ever met, but alas he was a “protestant”, and a Methodist at that.  Mom explained to me when I was six years old how she and dad had not been permitted to get married in the big fancy sanctuary of St. Clement’s Church, because dad was not Catholic.  They had to get married in the grotto, whatever the heck that was.  I looked it up in my dictionary and it was defined loosely as a “cave like structure.”   It sounded to me like the Church didn’t want my parents to get married in the first place!  This stressed out my devout six year old mind.  My parents had to get married in a dungeon all because dad was a Methodist—this didn’t sound promising.  Mom assured me that the priest agreed to marry them because dad had agreed that me and my two younger brothers would be raised Catholic. 

And we were Catholic alright, as far as I could see.  I wore a plaid jumper to school.  I was taught by nuns.  We never ate meat on Friday.  We were taught that if we didn’t go to mass it was a SIN and I didn’t want any black marks against me so I willingly went to mass every Sunday and also during the week when they took us during school.  I read about the lives of the saints and contemplated that maybe I’d become a saint when I grew up.  I really liked the idea of having miraculous signs and wonders attributed to me. 

Every Sunday we’d trek out to weekly mass with mom while dad sat at the dining room table reading the paper or some scholarly text.  My dad was a brilliant man, a professor of English literature at a local college so it particularly worried me that he wasn’t Catholic like us.  It made me question my religion, as much as one can question your religion at age 6.  As we’d leave mom would address dad by his last name, hollering, “Dunn, we’ll get the blessing for you!”  At the end of every Mass the priest would offer a blessing to the congregation, and we’d all say, “Thanks be to God!”  When we’d get back I’d proudly tell my dad that I had gotten the blessing for him.  He’d thank me, and I’d smile, but deep inside I wanted him to convert and become Catholic like the rest of us.  The fact that he accepted the “blessing” gave me hope.  Maybe he would become Catholic one day.  I mean I didn’t think I wanted to go to heaven if my dad couldn’t come. 

When I shared my vision of dad’s possible conversion she laughed and told me it wouldn’t happen.  “I’ll bet it will.  I’ll bet you a dollar!”  She laughed some more.  The next year I made my first communion which made me feel very grown up.  Before my first communion going to mass had been kind of like being invited to a dinner party but not getting to sit at the table and instead having to watch everyone else eat. 

The best Easter Vigil Mass ever though was a year after my first communion.  It was now 1973 and I was eight.  One of the highpoints of the Easter Vigil Mass was that it was the one time of year when new members were welcomed into the church.  They got baptized, made their first communion and got confirmed all in one night.  It was the trifecta for adult converts to the faith.  They had to go through a year of classes and had to have a sponsor who was a member of the church-- to vouch for them I guessed. 

Easter Vigil Mass at St. Margaret Mary Church in 1973 was the one when my Methodist dad joined the Catholic Church.  It was a long service with lots of standing, kneeling, standing, singing, burning of incense, the litany of saints, a sermon, and more standing, kneeling, standing that went on for hours.  It was usually brutal but I breezed through this one.  I had prayed about something big and it had actually happened!  As I sat in the pew with my mom watching my dad receive the sacraments, she nudged me and slipped a crisp one dollar bill into my hand.  “You were right,” she smiled.   It was the closest I’ve ever coming to having my team win the Superbowl.