Bear Mountain

FATHER PAUL DROVE US in one of the two parish cars. There were five of us boys. The parish cars were Buicks, and they were huge and black. It was late September. All five of us were 13 years old.

Now that we had achieved the age of reason we were allowed to visit the seminary to begin the process of discernment. Father Paul had high hopes but low expectations. If even one of us expressed serious interest in a second visit to the seminary, he would count the weekend a roaring success and no mistake, as he told the pastor.

They were leaning against the car as we climbed in. The pastor was a monsignor. A mon-signor was halfway between priest and bishop. We had a choice of seminaries, said Father Paul to us as we drove off. We could visit the Capuchin seminary or the Franciscan seminary. They were in the same town up on the river, and both in his experience were excellent in shaping good priests.

One of us voted for the Franciscans because he had a dog and Francis loved animals, and three of us voted for the Capuchins because the word Capuchin was cool. I voted for the Capuchins because my dad’s best friend was a small hilarious Capuchin, so as far as I knew the Capuchins were small and hilarious and cool.

We drove through the Borough of Queens, through the Borough of the Bronx, and then north along the mighty Hudson River, which is not its original name, of course, said Father Paul. The first people here had many names for it, among them the Shatemuc, the River of the Pelicans, and Mohicanhitheck, the River of the Wolves. I have seen pelicans here but I have not seen wolves as yet. We stared out the window at the river and saw gulls and crows and herons and ducks and maybe a hawk but no pelicans or wolves.

Father Paul had started to talk about vocations while we were still in the Bronx, but then he had wisely turned the conversation to the Mets, who had great pitching this year, for once. At Dobbs Ferry the river grew wider, and you could hardly see across it to the steep wooded cliffs of the Palisades. Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow. Where the headless horseman roamed of old. Ossining, Croton Bay. Bear Mountain. The first European explorers, said Father Paul, all remarked on the particular sheen of the black bears in this area; my theory is that it had to do with their diet, perhaps a rich crop of beech nuts. The staff at the seminary tell me they see a great number of bears when their apple trees are ripe, and that they do not rake up fallen apples, but leave them for the bears. Perhaps you young men will see bears this weekend.

We saw a great many things that weekend, and the staff at the seminary was kindly and courteous, although much taller than the Capuchin I knew, and while one of the Capuchins in particular was refreshingly honest about the priesthood, which he said was unrewarding financially but rich in meditative opportunities and unexpected friends, none of the five of us were able to discern any inclination to explore our potential vocations, and Father Paul drove us back home on Sunday afternoon. We listened to the Mets on the radio. The Mets beat the Phillies to go up eight games with two to play, and not even the Mets can lose the pennant up eight games with two to play, as Father Paul said. When the Mets got the last out we were in Yonkers, and Father Paul was so pleased at the victory he stopped and bought us ice cream.

I NEVER DID discern the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood that weekend, or any other time in my long life, but there were two moments that stay with me even now about that trip—I think because they were my initial glimpses of the deeper lives of priests.

The first was when one of us shyly asked the honest Capuchin about celibacy. We were sitting at a picnic table near the apple orchard, the five of us boys and the honest Capuchin, and he was silent for a moment, and then he said, In my experience celibacy is not the terrible cross to bear that everyone thinks it is; loneliness is the much heavier burden. Sometimes you do feel awfully alone. We talk about being close to God, as priests, and devoting ourselves to God’s work, and consciously giving up one sort of life so as to be able to devote ourselves to another with our whole heart and mind, but to be honest there are a lot of times when you are just really lonely. I don’t want to mislead you about that. You try to face it straight, is all I can say. I try to stay active. I walk in the woods a great deal when it comes. Sometimes I drive down to Bear Mountain and walk there for a while. Indeed there are bears on Bear Mountain, and a remarkable number of owls. An enterprising naturalist would study the owls on Bear Mountain to see how the mountain can support such a population. But every priest has to develop his own way to grapple with the loneliness. I think sometimes that’s what the story of Jacob and the angel is about, myself. I don’t want to scare you off about this, but I do want to be honest. For every additional grace a priest is granted by virtue of his vocation there is a price to pay, is what I am trying to say. But then I have only been a priest for 10 years. I often think only a priest with 50 years of experience can say anything true about being a priest. Although interestingly it’s the oldest priests who are usually the ones who smile and say they don’t have anything wise to say about being a priest. Humility is the final frontier for us all, as a friend of mine says. Not even Jesus thought He was cool, as he says. Something to remember. You guys hungry?

The other moment was in Yonkers, at the ice-cream shop, when we got back in Father Paul’s car, and we all sat for a moment working on our cones, and making sure they didn’t drip on the pristine interior of the parish Buick. It was late afternoon and it had been a hot day and we had rolled down all the windows. Father Paul had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and he was happily working on a strawberry cone. You could tell he was genuinely pleased about the Mets and his ice-cream cone and the way the river was glinting with sailboats. Just for a second you could see that he was a regular guy who couldn’t believe that the Mets who had been so comically awful for seven years since they were born as essentially a joke were about to win the National League pennant by eight games, beating all those old famous teams, and that he absolutely loved strawberry ice cream from a place that made it fresh themselves, and that he loved driving along the river and talking about bears. You could tell that he actually liked driving guys up to the seminary and back and that while he vaguely hoped one of us might have the itch he knew it was unlikely and he wasn’t overly disappointed that he was zero for five with this group. You could see that he actually liked being a priest, and that to him it was a cool thing to be, but he didn’t think it made him holier or more important than anyone else. You got a sense that he was priest because he wanted to try to reach some deep thing that he couldn’t explain, a thing that he could only get at by saying yes to a job that was rewarding in some ways and really hard in some other ways.

On our way through the Bronx one of us said something about the Yankees, who played in the Bronx, and Father Paul laughed and said, The poor Yankees are going to finish about 30 games behind the Orioles this year, boys. In fact even the Senators are going to finish ahead of the Yankees. There are college teams that are better than the Yankees this year. This is a great year. I cast no aspersions on Yankee fans, because it would be wrong to revel in the bitter disappointment of your fellow beings, but we can certainly enjoy the rare treat of a great year for the Mets, and this beautiful afternoon in New York, and the fact that there is strawberry ice cream in this world. I’d stop for more ice cream, because there’s a miraculous gelato shop in Queens, but I promised your parents we would be home by dark, and so we will, boys, so we will.