I Never Got The Call
I never got “the call.”
At this writing – at the insistence of Father Tobin – and approaching 18,262 days – fifty years - since my May 22, 1976 ordination to the priesthood, I’ve still not received “the call.”
In 1967 and 1968, we had landlines and answering machines; there were phones in the office of the newspaper where I worked full-time while going to UM Law School at night and an answering machine at home.
But never “the call.”
Change?
Yes! But never “the call.”
Change began when my Sigma Chi Fraternity pledge brother Douglas Graham Magruder was killed in action in Vietnam on November 18, 1967, while assigned as the Artillery Forward Observer with Dog Co, 4/503rd Bn (Abn), 173rd Airborne Brigade, operating in the vicinity of Đăk Tô.
Weeks later, as the funeral procession – with his infant son carried behind Doug’s coffin - moved up the aisle of St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church near campus, I had an obscenity- laced conversation with The Divine. Really, more a monologue because God remained silent. The only “answer” that ever came was the early 20th Century prayer of an unknown French priest: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”
Law School and grades lost their importance. Despite the dare of Miami’s Father David Gleason Russell to “give the seminary a whirl,” I knew I’d never survive the stifling and clerical diocesan seminary and, at that time in the U.S., it seemed every church-going Catholic knew about the Maryknoll Missioners.
Days before I left Miami, my “recruiter” called. He was direct: “Based on your psychological testing and background, you probably won’t last two weeks before you tell everyone to ‘go to Hell’ and get kicked out. But…:” You get the idea!
I almost didn’t make it through my second night at Maryknoll’s college seminary, where I had been assigned to “learn Latin” and get some basic background in Philosophy. After dinner (and like any good UM Sigma Chi), I walked to the nearest 7-11 for a couple of six packs – icebreakers with my new roommates.
The first of many no-nos!
Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Headquarters
Thrown into a class of college seminary seniors, I didn’t realize there were “rules of the game” and, if you don’t understand the rules, you break ‘em. One Saturday, classmates invited me to join them teaching catechism classes in one of Chicago’s inner-city parishes. At lunch, I casually asked if the guys wanted to see O.J. Simpson and USC play Northwestern. I suggested we “stop by” the NU Sigma Chi house and see if the Sigs could get us into the game; the seminarians and the Sigs did. That night my reputation - “the dumb fraternity guy from the University of Miami” – was carved in stone.
I was surrounded by young men theologically and philosophically way more educated and far smarter than I would ever be. More importantly, it was the beginning of realizing/accepting I’d never quite “fit in” and that was okay; I’ve only got the smarts God gave me and all I can do is the best I can do with what I got.
That may have been the most important of all my seminary lessons: Accept the weaknesses and strengths God has given me; try to move beyond the weaknesses but understand the strengths are God’s gift to me – not for myself but for all God’s people.
+++
During the summer of 1970 and after Novitiate (sortta like pledging a Roman Catholic religious order), two classmates – Michael Burkhart and Michael Townsend – and I worked a makeshift “drop-in center” to help kids avoid drugs. Seeking the support of Scituate, Massachusetts community leaders, one Sunday we waited for the pastor in the choir loft of the Baptist church. Randomly opening Sacred Scripture, I stumbled upon what would become the master plan of my life:
This alone, O Man, does the Lord ask of you.
This, my son, and nothing more.
To act justly,
To love tenderly
And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
During a seminary lecture, a prof quoted a nun of centuries ago writing about humility. I can’t recall her name and the best I can offer is a paraphrase:
Humility is the knowledge and acceptance of the truth.
The truth is that whatever strengths or weaknesses
I possess are gifts from God.
I might exercise and strengthen them.
I might even become very good at some things.
But ultimately, I will always be working with God’s gifts.
+++
After his death, the Maryknoll Fathers published a 790-plus word obituary for Father Frank Higdon. Beginning his mission career in the Amazon jungle region of Bolivia, the New Haven, Kentucky native was one-hundred percent hillbilly and a missioner’s missioner.
On my first assignment to the Maryknoll language school in Cochabamba, Bolivia, during a postprandial promenade (seminary talk for an “after-dinner walk”), Frank announced, “You’re coming with me on Saturday morning.” Days later, he dropped me off in a way-past-nowhere pueblito, declaring that I was to spend the day making adobe bricks with the indigenous Quechua community.
Frank’s words still ring in my heart: “Once, as a missioner, you fall in love with the People of God, you’ll never been the same.”
In the John’s Gospel, Jesus recognized the approaching Nathanael: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” In mismatched (both plaid) shorts and shirt, with muddy feet and sandals, Frank could casually move from the construction site of a community school to standing in the door of the Guayaramerin church to bless a coffin being carried to the cemetery and go right back to the mud and building. (I swear! I watched it happen. He just threw a white priest’s stole over his shoulders, said the appropriate prayers and sprinkled holy water. The procession moved on. Frank went back to mud and heavy lifting, and my senses of dignity and ritual and liturgical propriety were rocked.)
Frank’s words still resonate in my heart: “Once, as a missioner, you fall in love with the People of God, you’ll never be the same.” At St. Joseph’s Parish and High School in West New York, New Jersey, at St. John of God parish in Chile, in the Florida prison system, at Our Lady of Divine Providence Parish in Miami, teaching in Xi’an, China, counseling at the University of Miami, I have fallen in love with the People of God.
The great joy, the great privilege of priesthood (and celibacy) is the freedom – “the call,” if you insist – to constantly fall in love with the People of God – as individuals and as communities, especially the communities of the “poor in spirit” and the broken of soul.
+++
“Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit.”
“Man proposes, God disposes.”
Thomas a Kempis (1380 – 1471)
The Imitation of Christ
As many know, on September 16, 1973, a Maryknoll Brother and I were arrested by agents of the secret police and army in Santiago, Chile (The American CIA deserves special credit for their role.) and held for eleven days in the infamous Estadio Nacional. (The story is told on AuthenticHealers.org posts of 7/18, 7/28 and 8/1/2025. If you haven’t already, please go back and read them.) During an interrogation that evening, I was told I would be “put in front of a firing squad in fifteen minutes.” A cocky son of my father, I responded, “I’ve just been to Mass and Communion. Do whatever you want.”
Fifty-three years later, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That’s not a still have. PTSD doesn’t go away. I explain it two ways.
First, trauma – no matter how long ago - lodges somewhere in our bodies just waiting for an opportunity to break out and mess with our heads and our lives. It ain’t ever gonna go away! Whether the trauma hides somewhere in the billions of neurons of the brain or a nerve cell in our elbow, I don’t know. I just know, it ain’t goin’ away.
Second (and I know this for certain): If the Lord God walked through my front door right now and said “Hey, Skip. I have a great idea. Let’s go back and repeat those eleven days,” I’d tell the Lord God to “Go to hell!” [That’s the clean version.] Yet, if he asked “Are you grateful for those eleven days?” I’d exhaust myself saying “Yes.” I am – and will forever be – grateful to the incredibly kind Greg Mueller, a seminarian at Maryknoll when I returned from Chile, who just allowed me to talk and was a genuine friend, and Dr. Thomas Stauffer, the psychiatrist who opened his schedule and allowed me to work through so much of the trauma in those late 1973 and early 1974 days.
But I am also grateful for my – my(!), not anyone else’s – PTSD. It is a part of who I have been and who I am. A war vet, a cop or firefighter, the survivor child of parental abuse. Those eleven days have enabled me to hear and see their trauma and accept them – trauma and all.
Yes, God, I’m grateful.
+++
Of course, in the 1970s we didn’t understand trauma and mental health as well as we do today. The bosses at Maryknoll didn’t understand it and, because they didn’t understand, they kept putting off – actually, “denying” is a better word – my ordinations as deacon and priest.
The ordination of a priest has two critical – impressive – moments. After the Call to Orders – “Let those who are to be ordained to the order of presbyter come forward!” – the ordinands lie prostrate on the floor of the sanctuary, while the congregation sings a litany over them, imploring the help of the saints and the blessing of God on the about-to-be priests. Then, one by one, the ordinands kneel before the bishop, who imposes hands on them. At that moment, the man is a priest.
After one of the – hopefully well-intentioned – denials, I decided not to wait any longer. Probably that same night – certainly soon after, about three in the morning I went down to the Seminary chapel and lay prostrate on the sanctuary floor and internally declared “Here I am, Lord. Do with me as You will.” After that, I simply decided to spend my life being a priest with the certainty that, in the providence of God, ordination would come.
+++
Shortly after ordination, I was asked to preside at the funeral of my home parish’s decades-long third grade teacher. Greeting the family, friends and Mrs. Jones’ coffin at the front door of the church, I raised the aspergillum (the “holy water sprinkler”) and began the ritual: “I bless the body of….”
Choke!
I returned the aspergillum to the holy water bucket and explained, “The ritual says I’m refer to Mrs. Jones by her first name, but all my life she has been ‘Mrs. Jones,’ and, with your permission, today I will refer to Mrs. Jones as Mrs. Jones.”
From the assembled crowd came the voice of Mrs. Massey: “That’s alright, Skipper. We understand.”
WHAT A LESSON! Above all, from the day I was born and the first moment my father laid eyes on me I am “Skipper.” Skipper – by God’s grace a priest. A priest – by God’s grace Skipper.
+++
When I was a seminarian at Maryknoll, the Maryknoll Sisters’ Cloister was just that – cloistered. Surrounded by a red brick wall, it sat at the very peak of Sunset Hill; you spoke with the Sisters through a wrought iron grill and heavy curtain; there were turnstiles through which everything from their food to mail and packages was passed without every seeing the – ten or so - Sisters.
Fifty years later, the Sisters have moved to their own private wing of the Motherhouse; their numbers have shrunk to only four or five; they answer their own phones [No! I will not give out the number and extension!!!!!], and they are now the “Maryknoll Contemplative Community.”
The Sisters of the Contemplative Community – “the Cloister” – are an extra backbone of my spiritual life and my priesthood. A counseling client clings unrelentingly to his anger or addiction… I call the Sisters. A friend is going through an unspeakably difficult separation and divorce… I call the Sisters. Something painful is happening in my personal or spiritual life and I can’t pray any harder or longer… I call the Sisters.
[A little secret. My brother Michael has two huge heirloom mango trees that produce hundreds and hundreds of mangoes every year. I send “the Cloister” somewhere around fifty pounds each year. After receiving text messages that my 2024 FedEx shipment was at the Maryknoll post office (Yes, Maryknoll has its own post office.), I called the Cloister to let them know their mangoes were at the front desk of the Motherhouse. Sister Grace assured me the mangoes had arrived and “Two were a little squishy and we are licking our fingers right now!” Ya gotta luv that image.]
Always, always, Sister Grace or one of her companions will end our conversation with “Tell (the person about whom I have called) we will place him or her in the heart of Jesus” or “Skip, we will place you in the heart of Jesus.”
On Friday, May 22 I will celebrate a quiet, personal Mass of Thanksgiving for the grace of fifty years as a priest. The following day, family and friends will join in a special celebration of that fiftieth anniversary. At every moment of that Mass – elevating the host and the chalice, in the Commemoration of the Living, in the quiet moments – I will pray for you. I will place you “in the heart of Jesus.”
I hope you will pardon such a personal post. But Father Tobin has insisted “Write it!”
If, during these fifty years, I have ever failed to serve you as an instrument of God’s peace, I beg your forgiveness.
If I have been an instrument of peace, please pray for me (and maybe ask God what happened to “the call”).
Please pray that I may act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with our God. Please pray for me.
