What a great personality our Lord must have had – his voice, his eyes...  He walks by this guy, tax collector, whom the Jews regarded as one of the worst sinners, giving their hard won money to the Romans, and our Lord looks at this guy and says, “Follow me” and Matthew gets right up, leaves everything and follows Jesus.  What a personality our Lord must have had.  Matthew never saw him before.  So that’s our theme – yours and mine – this morning:  “Follow me” says Jesus “Follow me.”  Now, I have a colleague over in San Francisco, and a couple of years ago he said, “I’m going to talk about priesthood this Sunday.” And I snapped over the phone, “People don’t want to hear about priests; they are sick of priests; they have problems of their own… priests…yugh!”  That is exactly what I said.  He said, “Well once a year, just one Sunday a year...maybe the shortage…” Well, I thought about it and thought about it and I thought OK, and especially with today’s gospel “follow me.”

In 1960 there were 28 of us who heard the call and followed Him.  I want to tell you about six of them.  Now I worked this out on a pocket calculator.  If I give six guys two minutes each (6 times 2 equals 12 – that’s what the calculator said) and then a minute to introduce it and a minute to sum it up, so that’s reasonable.  And I would like to divide these six guys into Mad, Scared, and Glad.

A couple of them died within a week of each other not long ago – six priests, not all of whom are still priests.

Mad – two mad.  Bill was mad – not at people, but at poverty.  He was mad at poverty and the suffering of poverty.  Bill sat next to me for three meals a day for six years, alphabetically in the seminary – you are never moved – six years, three meals a day.  I think in those six years Bill exchanged a dozen words.  I am not exaggerating; he was given to great silence.  And when he got ordained he took that anger and he said, “I want to work among the poor.” and he meant it.  And his entire life – decades – were with the poorest of the poor in the Bronx in Manhattan, helping people pay their rent, going to their apartments and cleaning out their apartments.  All the poverty and struggle and lending them money, and he was an elderly gentlemen when the Cardinal said, “All your life, Bill, you have worked among the poor.  I’m going to give you a posh parish.  No financial worries, no more going to people’s apartments and cleaning and going to jails to visit relatives.”  And Bill said, “Oh no, thank you.  I love these people, I love them.”  He did, and they loved him back.  And when he died in 1993 a lot of us, his classmates, were standing in line to go into the funeral mass and one of the guys said, “You know, Bill was a saint.”  There was dead silence, even among all of us cynics, because it was absolutely true.  He was.  It was a word we use rarely.  Bill was a saint.  He was mad at poverty and suffering and tried to help.

The other guy who was mad was Willard.  Willard came from great wealth.  He lived in Scarsdale, a kind of Blackhawk – money, looks, physique, athletic skills – I hated him! He was the one I told you about a few weeks ago.  We were getting ready for our final exam in Latin, and I’m as usual a bit nervous.  He was at the end of the dining room table “Oh, no sweat (yawn), cool it.”  I wanted to put cockroaches in his corn flakes!  Cool it?  No sweat?  Of course he passed.  Now remember he came from great wealth and comfort.  His first assignment was in a small country parish, but it was right next to an asylum for the insane, some of whom were criminally insane.  And he was there pretty much alone, a young priest.  The pastor was often away.  The pastor was an alcoholic who frequently went to Manhattan with his girlfriend to see ball games.  I know I can’t shock you at this time.  So Willard was alone, year after year, most of the day spent in the asylum as the only chaplain, and then the regular parish.  After a couple of years of this desperately lonely assignment he got a phone call from the chancery.  The chancery is where all the big shot bureaucrats in the church handle all of the money and the problems.  This was a guy who was in the seminary with us, and this guy said, “Hello, Willard?” and Bill felt so…”Oh, thank God.  Someone is calling just to say hang in or we’re for you.”  “Willard, where is the financial report?”  And Willard said, “Well, I’ve been kind of pressed for time; I should have it for you by Wednesday.”  “No, you’ll have it for us within 24 hours.” and Bill said, “OK” and he hung up the phone.  He was still a young priest, but he thought, whatever happened to all the big talk we heard in the seminary about the community of priests?  “You’re going out on a single life, but we will support each other.”  Now, maybe you are thinking that he was naïve or he was immature, but it was a long lonely haul.  When he finally got a vacation he went to India.  There he met a beautiful Italian, Catholic, female of the opposite sex who was working with people who were poor.  He went back the next summer, and a third summer, and he fell in love with her, married her, and he left the priesthood, and he left the Church and he is still gone.  He has written up his story, which I will be glad to lend you; you can read it in about 10 minutes.  It’s not a whine, it’s very clear – what happened to community?  He’s mad at bureaucracy that has no heart.  Still is.

The next is Scared.  Pete was scared – first-rate heart, first-rate mind…scared.  We began at the age of 14 together to study to be priests and by the age of 32 he was still scared.  What was he scared of?  Sin, not yours, but his.  He was so scrupulous.  Scrupul is a Latin word meaning a pebble in a shoe.  You don’t have much scrupulosity anymore.  But it is a real mental disease.  Everything he did he thought was wrong or a sin.  He was a good guy, but he was very intellectual.  He would go off into abstractions.  He taught a marriage course to senior girls and he would go off into abstractions about the Bible.  I peaked in once and the senior girls were doing their nails and brushing their hair.  They revered him, but he was too off in the clouds, and when he wasn’t in the clouds he was steeped in guilt.  I once said, “You’ve got to read this novel, Pete, Brideshead Revisited.” (The best novel I ever read – still is.).  “Mike, isn’t there a passage there where a couple who are not married to each other go into a bedroom?”  I said, “Yes, it’s one of the best chapters in the book.” And he said, “No….” And I said, “Oh, Pete, they shut the door, the chapter ends there.”  He said, “No, I can’t…” – he’s in the last year of college – “No, I can’t.”  Never said no; worked all day at the school and at night volunteered at the adult education.  Finally, at the age of 32, he had had a full tiring day and he came home and said, “Oh God, I just remembered I have to give a talk tonight!” And for the first time in all those years he hauled off and he kicked the door.  And I used to look at that shriveled door with pride.  All that impacted rage and guilt – pow! – smashed the door.  But he left; he was just so quivering with guilt and fear that finally he left.  He fell in love with a former nun and got married.  I know it sounds like a movie.  I saw him last summer; he’s at peace, he’s relaxed.  Still loves Christ, has a respect for the Church, but he is never going to be back.  Whose fault?  Can’t blame anybody.  He was hounded by guilt; it almost killed him.

The other scared is I.  Scared of rules and authority figures.  In all my life, I never broke a rule.  That’s not boasting; that’s a statistic of mammoth neurosis.  I never broke a rule from the age of 14 until I was ordained – still haven’t, I’m very careful.  In the seminary I was with a guy in the same room.  We were packed in those days, packed two guys to a room in the seminary in New York.  His name was Daily; mine is Dibble and I heard later that the big joke was the “Daily-Dibble” in Room 217.  I didn’t even get the joke; I was so out of it.  I kept the rules.  After night prayers you had magnaum silentium, great silence; you did not talk after night prayers.  And Daily and Dibble are sharing the same room.  Here is his desk; here’s my desk.  One night he turned to me and said, “Michael, could you and I…” I said, “Shhh.”  (He’s rolling his eyes.)“What is the matter?”  I said, “magnaum silentium; you’re not supposed to talk.”  So he went to his desk and wrote out: “Can I borrow your philosophy notes?” and handed it to me.  That is not sane or spiritual; it is just scared.  At the end of 12 years of study I had never gotten a reprimand, a detention, or a harsh work.  I had a perfect record, and my nerves were shreds.  Scared, scared.  But I did hear the words “follow me” and in Christ you can get un-scared in time.

And finally, Glad.  Chris Daily (the one I just talked about) was glad from the beginning, full of love of people – a priest of one’s dreams – love of people.  He was generous, kind, but he was wise.  When a vacation came he took it.  He was going blind even as a young priest.  Now he is completely blind, but he keeps in touch with people whom he can help by the phone.  He reads articles in brail that we don’t get time to read and he calls us.  “Did you read this great article?”  You know, Catholic articles about this or that.  He once came to my family’s house when we had big trouble, when we were in the seminary, on holiday, and he knocked on the door.  ”Michael,” (he had a big envelope with money) “I hear your family has financial embarrassment.”  He was always so tactful, “financial embarrassment” and as I reached a predatory paw for the envelope, he said, “Michael, this is for family needs and it’s not for books or movies.”  I said, “thank you, Chris.”  I still hear from him; he calls every week and brings me up to date on people who are sick, who need prayers.  Glad to be a priest and he is blind as a bat, and yet he sees so much.

The other glad guy is Jim, who is my best friend as a priest.  But he was another one who never took a day off.  He would find his checks – he never cashed his paychecks, never turned down anyone, so finally he had a breakdown – a mammoth breakdown.  All the filaments in his light bulb when “pht.”  He had no money, but he decided to become a pilgrim.  He traveled all over the world, sleeping under bridges, (I’m not making this up) especially to India.  He joined every cult he could find, because he always wanted to find some new insight into the spiritual life.  He went to Escalon, here in California, where he sat in his underwear on a rock and looked at the sun – tried everything.  A few years back, he came back.  Obviously I’m giving you guys who are a little out of the ordinary.  But he said, “You know, the Catholic Church, we have it all.  Sometimes the Church emphasizes this or that, but we have the mysticism, we have the spirituality, we have the breathing, we have the gospels – we have everything – it’s just that the Church doesn’t always emphasis what I am interested in at this time.”  I said, “Ya, the Church has always had it all.”  So now he’s back, deep into meditation, living alone in a little room in Santa Monica.  He goes to mass, he doesn’t say mass, still loves the Church.  But boy when he heard “follow me” he traveled all over the world and now he is back.  He goes to mass.

Anyhow there were 28 of us ordained in 1960.  Within a decade 14 had left.  Again, pocket calculator – that’s half – had left the priesthood – fourteen, that’s half.  “Well, that’s because you got this wishy-washy liberal Catholic training.”  No, 1948 to 1960 we had the crème de la crème of conservative Catholic training – we did – excellent, by the way, superb teachers, superb courses, but rigidly conservative.  So with all that background, how come 14 guys left? “Well, they discovered women!”  Oh, well yes, but half the class?  Even I had heard of women by the age of 20!  And some of them aren’t even in the church.  Maybe the training was a little too strong.  Ten minutes before I was ordained, a faculty member said, “Dibble, get in line.”  They never call you by your first name.  The seminary was called the West Point of American seminaries.  If we had all of that cream of the crop, conservative Catholic training, why did 14 guys just split?  They weren’t wishy-washy, they weren’t ill trained.

OK, the guy I told you about at the beginning out in California, he says, “I think the Holy Spirit is whispering in the Church ‘Let the women and the men in the pews take over the Church.’  We aren’t getting any more priests, we aren’t.”  And I thought, “whispering?” The Holy Spirit is yelling the roof down all through the Vatican and in every parish in the world.  I’m not the most socially gregarious priest around, as you know.  In fact, maybe the least one in North America, but even I have met people in this parish who knock themselves out for the Church and people and the needs of the parish.  So maybe the Holy Spirit is saying, “You people, will you take over?  You’re sane, you’ve got humor, and you know what the real world is.”

I’ve got one last favor.  I’m going to shut up in a minute and walk over there, you know, how we usually do, in silence.  And would think of one priest who made you either mad, scared, or glad?  See his face, and just for a minute say a quick prayer for him.  Because at one point he did heed the words “follow me.”  And I’ll do the same.