J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

It was Father Urban’s practice, in census-taking, to express regret when he discovered that children were not attending the parish school — not too much regret, though, since the parish school was overcrowded — and it was this, presumably, this regret expressed by Father Urban, and communicated to the young man by his wife, that had brought him to the rectory. “May I ask your religion, sir?” said Father Urban.

“Don’t have any,” said the young man.

“I see. Well, we don’t want to make one of that , do we?”

“How’d you like a bust in the nose?”

At that point, Johnny Chumley entered the office and went over to the file, opened a drawer, and stood looking into it.

After a moment, during which nothing happened, the young man got up and walked out.

“Thanks, Johnny,” said Father Urban. “I didn’t realize he’d been drinking.”

Johnny shut the drawer of the file. “Monsignor Renton called a while ago.”

“Oh no!” said Father Urban, thinking Monsignor Renton was asking for still more time to wear Phil down.

“No,” Johnny said. “No. The Pastor’s dead.”

Although the Great Plains diocese was hard up for men, no order, and certainly not the Clementines, could expect to walk into an established, going concern like St Monica’s. Those good men and true who’d coveted the parish while Phil was alive were still there, and doubtless more had joined them now that he was dead. Nevertheless, Father Urban did ask himself whether there might not be a chance, just an outside chance, for the Order. Always, after asking, he had to reply in the negative, and yet he went right on asking. How could he?

To begin with, he was chosen to say a few words at Phil’s funeral. Whether this was the wish of the Bishop (or only the wish of Father Udovic, who did the actual asking), Father Urban didn’t know. In any case, it was not an easy assignment. Phil hadn’t been popular with laity or clergy. He represented a type of gentleman-priest no longer being produced in seminaries — now thoroughly Americanized and turning out policemen, disc jockeys, and an occasional desert father. And the circumstances of Phil’s death (heart attack while golfing in the Bahamas) weren’t favorable, for it was a very cold day in Minnesota. The Bishop had liked Phil, however, and that was about all Father Urban had going for him when he began to speak. “Most Reverend Bishop, Right Reverend and Very Reverend Monsignors, Reverend Fathers, Venerable Sisters, and Beloved Members of the Laity.” Although Father Urban knew that the deepest sympathies of the most important part of his audience could be readily engaged, he spoke more of death itself than of the death of a priest. But he did say it was not too much to say that Father Phil Smith, seeking to respond to every call, had given his life for his people, that he had exercised the common touch without ever becoming common, and that his greatest earthly desire had been to erect a new church at St Monica’s — for God’s sake and the people’s. “That I can assure you,” said Father Urban.

Only that morning, he said, he’d received a post card from Father Smith (written before he died), a post card (“Thanks again. Taking boat and pressed for time. All for now. Phil.”) from which he recalled only the words “All for now.” He dwelt upon the meaning in those three little words, though not as an etymologist might, saying that only saints and children could really comprehend them, for only great saints and little children lived each moment for all it was worth. Those three little words, rightly understood, were all we needed to know. Rightly understood, they would — like St Augustine’s famous “Love God, and do what you will”—carry us safely through this world and into the next.

Father Urban then spoke of God as the Good Thief of Time, accosting us wherever we go, along the highways and byways of life. So, in light and darkness, as children, as young people, as old, we meet Him. And bit by bit we are deprived of our most precious possessions, so we think, our childhood, our youth, all our days — which, though, lest we forget, we have from Him. We try to hold back what we can, have a secret pocket here, a slit in the lining there, where He won’t look, we think, but in the end we give up everything, every last conceit. “That’s all, Lord,” we say. “No,” saith the Lord. “What else, Lord?” “You,” saith the Lord. “Now I want you.” Thank God He does! Pray God that He always will! God Almighty wants you! That is the biggest, the best, fact of life! That is the fact of life! Death! Life and death and life — eternal life! Who could ask for anything more?

Afterward, in the sacristy, the Bishop called the sermon “a dazzling performance,” this in the hearing of several mastodons who stood high in the diocese, and then asked Father Urban whether he’d be able to stay on a bit at St Monica’s.

“That’s not for me to say, Your Excellency.”

“No?”

“No, Your Excellency. That’s up to you and Father Wilfrid.”

“Is this the man I’m to write the letter to?”

“Letter, Your Excellency?” It appeared that the woman who’d made the mistake of writing to Father Urban on a post card had managed to get in touch with her group’s moderator. Father Urban was tempted to carry his show of forgetfulness further, to the point of making the Bishop explain what he was talking about, but thought better of it. He had only wanted it understood that he had many calls on his time and wasn’t to be taken for granted, and this, he believed, was now understood. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s right, Your Excellency.”

For a moment, the Bishop seemed to be waiting — as if expecting to be dispensed from the necessity of dealing with Wilf. This could not be, according to the rules of the game (any breach of which was a breach of his own authority, as the Bishop should be the first to see), and so Father Urban, though he wished he could help the Bishop, waited him out and said nothing. When they parted, as they did most amiably, it was Father Urban’s feeling that he might have distinguished himself even more by his replies in the sacristy than by his sermon.

Wilf phoned that afternoon. “I’d like to have you stay on there for a bit,” he said.

“How long?”

“I’m hoping it won’t be for too long. The brochure’s out. Three big boxes came this morning. Freight. And Wacker at the station just dumped ’em out in the snow. They’re all right, though. I put a copy in the mail for you, but it looks like it might be cheaper if we delivered the larger quantities ourself.”

“In the truck?”

“That’s how it looks. Of course, we’ll take what we need when we go out on Saturday, Father John and I, and if you’re over this way in a car, you might pick up the bundles labeled St Monica’s and Cathedral — and any others you can deliver without too much trouble. Saginaw, Bucklin, Lowell.”

“If I get over that way.”

“And maybe Webster and Conroyo. They’re not so far from you.”

“How about Arna?”

“It’d help, if you would.”

As a matter of fact, Father Urban wouldn’t, but he knew several laymen who’d be glad to do the job for him.

“Oh, and another thing,” said Wilf. “Talk to that women’s group over there, will you? You know the one.”

“Was something said about that?”

“Yes. The Bishop wants it.”

“You spoke to him?”

“No.”

“Father Udovic?”

“No, the girl in the office.”

The next day, as Father Urban was leaving the house for a luncheon engagement, he asked Johnny Chumley to call Father Udovic at the Chancery. “Father Udovic wasn’t in,” Johnny said later, “but I talked to the girl in the office and she said she’d take care of it.”