In the most recent issue of the Arlington Catholic Herald newspaper, a news article appeared which properly celebrated 50 years of ordination to the holy priesthood of Fr. Joseph Francavilla, who serves the Melkite community at Holy Transfiguration parish in McLean, Virginia.

There are ironies to me in this article that  are breathtaking. They are ironies to me and not to the general world because they involve looking at my life and choices vs looking at the life of Fr. Francavilla, whom I have met and whose parish I attend from time to time when there are special feast days which our parish does not celebrate due to our lack of a full-time priest. They are ironies of place, time, and choice. To me, they show the true importance of not only the choices we make, but the places, times, and people we have in our lives. To me, the article provided a stark contrast between fifty years in two lives which went in entirely different directions.

It is ironic to me that at the same time in 1968 that Fr. Francavilla was joyfully being ordained to a life of service to God and man, I was setting out on a journey of selfishness, sin, and wicked living. Two lives, two different paths. The article made me reflect sadly on what could have been.

Now, had you suggested to me in 1968 that I could spend my life as a priest, serving God and others, I probably would have laughed in your face. But the irony of this is that as a young boy, I had been very active in the Episcopalian Church, serving as an altar boy all the way through to high school. In the summer of 1966, a year before my graduation in 1967, I began to think seriously about the coming of  college and then, my life as an adult. I had for many years thought I wanted to practice medicine, but by this summer, I was not so sure. Interestingly enough, a new thought began to appear to me – becoming a priest.

One day, I ran that thought by my mother. Her response was less than enthusiastic.

“Oh, you can’t become a priest.  Then I wouldn’t have any grandchildren.”

I suppose she forgot that we were in the Episcopalian Church, which has married priests.  She was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, but trashed the faith in 1941 and went elsewhere. Perhaps though the strong memories of unmarried Roman Catholic priests went forefront to her mind. Her response was a large bucket of cold water poured all over my fledgling interest. Those thoughts soon faded away and I turned to other pursuits in the next two years – drugs, alcohol, and pornography. Looking at the scandals in the Church which broke out at the turn of the century, perhaps it was a mercy of God that I didn’t take my disordered life into the priesthood. My name could have well been among that published roster of men held up for the disgrace they rightly deserved for the heinous acts they committed. I was a confused young man, seeking fulfillment in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways. Psychologists state that things such as sexual addiction, drug use, and alcoholism are the person trying to fill an emptiness in their lives. That emptiness is usually a lack of love and a sense of self-worth, of which I had plenty. I still struggle with it today.

Yet for all my disordered passions and my bad acts, which started quite early in my life, there was something there, a love of being in church on Sundays and being at the altar, that unfortunately no one took the time or interest to foster in me. Even being saturated in the promiscuous living of the “Hippie Movement” of the 1960’s, I went to various types of religious meetings such as Buddhist gatherings and Christian coffee houses, looking for something that I had not found in the truncated and watered-down religion I experienced as a child.

I find this the second irony. In the article about Fr. Francavilla, it appears that he had good family encouragement from a family that practiced the faith, rather than just showing up on Sundays to assuage some social construct that was expected of them. My godfather, “Chief” Lawton, never once in my memory asked me about Jesus or church or did I read and understand the Bible. “Godfather” was an honorarium to him, and nothing more, something he did not take seriously. But to give him a break, most godparents don’t.

Neither did my Sunday School teachers have an involvement in my life, other than to teach and disappear at the end of class. In the Episcopalian church, there is no such thing as a Sacrament of Confession, therefore, there is no instruction on sin and the examination of conscience. And examination of conscience, a bit of preaching on the reality of sexual sin, would have at least made me confront and be aware that my behavior was evil. I don’t remember ever hearing such.

Father Francavilla spent the next four years after his ordination growing into the spiritual leader he would become at Holy Transfiguration. I spent the same four years wandering around aimlessly. No, I shouldn’t say that. While Father Francavilla was seeking God and serving others, I was seeking whatever pleasure I could find – drugs, boozy parties, fornication – all the pleasures of life that the sick culture of the 1960’s brainwashed me into believing would make me happy.  The only similarity in our lives is that after four years, the grace of God led Fr. Francavilla to Holy Transfiguration. The same mercy led me out of the wicked life that had almost killed me and brought me to repentance and a fresh start. In looking back, I am deeply thankful to be here, for I do not exaggerate to say that I came close to killing myself more than once in the frenzy of wickedness in which I lived.

“I am fortunate to have been able to baptize the children, and in some cases, the grandchildren of parishioners whom I, as a young priest, baptized as infants and to have seen our parish family grow beyond expectation,” Father Francavilla said. “People come to us attracted by what we offer: a faith community, the beauty of Byzantine worship, a vision of the holiness of life, the mystery of God beyond human kind, an entry into the transcendent.”

Here is yet another irony to me. A single man, Father has raised generations of children. He has seen the joy of watching them grow into the Christian faith and into healthy and productive lives, both spiritually and physically. To my sorrow, the six children I was blessed with are far from Christ, want nothing to do with Christ or His Church, and have gone through very difficult lives themselves. You see, the sickness of dysfunctional behavior and sin passes down from generation to generation. Even though I was delivered from the scourge of evil living, the emotional scars remained in my soul. It wasn’t until long after my children were grown that I came to learn, from Saint John Paul II’s incredible teaching on THE THEOLOGY OF THE BODY, what true love is and how to manifest that love to others. The short story is this: I was still a self-centered jerk, even as a father. The churches I attended for so long were of the Fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, judgmental kind produced by graduates of Bob Jones University. Long on judgmentalism and short on Christian charity. Everyone is going to hell but us, and I’m not so sure about you. While I found something that appealed to me in this dysfunctional hellhole of a religion – dysfunctional people have an built in radar for other dysfunctional people and organizations because they understand and can operate within that context – innocent children don’t take well to toxic religious practices. They want to see the love of Christ as exemplified by men like Father Francavilla. Assemblies putting out messages akin to those of Westboro Baptist Temple are not the place to find that.

I could probably find a few more ironic parallels to mention, but it would be flogging a dead horse. I think I’ve made my point. At sixty-nine years of age, I have a tendency to do a lot of looking back, much of it with regret. I find myself wondering “what if…”  and some days in near tears at all the harm I did to others,  as well as the knowledge that I could have had a much better and more fulfilling life. The cruelty of life is that there is no opportunity to have a “do-over.” Once chance.  Screw it up, as I did, and you get to live your last years in days of regret.

I think it best to close on a positive note. The journey of each life is different. Some are hard, some are more easy, but life is difficult for all. Even the rich have their share of sorrows for which money is no alleviation. But for the last fifty years, while Father Francavilla has been pastoring Holy Transfiguration, God in His mercy has been slowly repairing the damage I did to myself. The borderline psychosis I had from using LSD is gone. Slowly I have learned that love means service to others and not pleasing myself first. I have been led to the Church which Christ established upon the Apostles in the Byzantine Catholic practice. I have come to know how to care for people. And my three oldest children and I have talked about my failures. They have forgiven me and I have a good relationship with them. Most of all, I am alive today and in fairly good health, an amazing fact seeing how I abused my body in the 1960’s.

I will always have those fleeting moments of regret over what could have been, but I am thankful to be here, and to this I say “Glory be to Jesus Christ.”