Rev. Robert Ketcham

Today is the Feast of Saint Robert Bellarmine, an always joyful day for me.  I said to the children in school this morning: “Now, Saint Robert Bellarmine and I are probably exact opposites; he was very short and very smart!”  Some thought it was funny.

I had the idea to write to you this week about the sounds that I hear during the day so that by reading about the things I’m hearing, you may be able to imagine better the life of a diocesan priest.  

I’m actually sitting outside as I write this and off to my left I can hear the labor of the umpteenth different group of contractors working toward the construction and completion of a three-story apartment complex not 100 yards away.  They hammer.  They scrape.  They drill.  And all the while they yell, for safety’s sake of course.

There is also the JFK flight pattern that today is using whatever runway heads northeast, sending the planes directly over the church steeple.  They sound lower than they look. 

There is Sunrise Highway to the south and Merrick Road to the north joined by Rockaway Avenue where someone is always accelerating after having been stopped at a light that they seem to have considered too long.

I hear children yelling, and so I hear parents yelling too.  I hear a truck, which is probably big, backing up.  And I hear the train approaching and departing the station just beyond the giant, three-story concrete wall built between the tracks and the new apartments.  The structure is so massive that I sometimes wonder if it would have been easier to move the tracks.

 When I go into the church I hear some of the parishioners “catching up”, a sound always accompanied by the murmurings of those who wish they weren’t.  I hear the sacristan preparing vessels and jingling keys.  I hear Michael, a most beloved parishioner, playing the first few notes on his saxophone of what will later become the opening hymn of the Mass.  And then, the bell.  Mass begins.

I hear the Word proclaimed and I hear the people respond.  Sometimes I think I can even hear their hearts.  I hear my own voice; that’s for sure, even to the point of getting tired of it.  Sometimes I wish the priest didn’t have to say so many things out loud during Mass.     

Just now I am hearing the deep bellow of a large dog that I’ve gratefully never seen, and who is instigating such response from two smaller dogs across the street that one might think he was barking profanities.  Those other dogs I do know; one loves me and the other hates me.  The owner asked me to bless them not too long ago; I did, but suggested that another of the Church’s rituals may be more fitting for the little chap with the big yap.

Going into the school, I reach for my keys but am buzzed in before I find the right one.  Once inside, I hear the business of the women who mother the school, while Mister Moscola yells from within the gym, “Go!” “Stop!” “Go!” “Stop!” while the children laugh and laugh, from the belly.  The voices of the children in the hallways and classrooms sing out, “We are bound by something greater than ourselves! and so we raise our joyful strain in response!  We are trapped! but we are together!  They have imprisoned us! but they have not separated us!”   

Before going back to the Rectory, the resonance of the Holy Spirit prompts a visit to some parishioner who has asked for company in a voice that makes a sound sometimes difficult to hear; you have to listen closely for it; it’s usually embedded in pleasantries.  In the car on the way: the lovely music of the only Ecumenism I have ever known.  And once in the parishioner’s home, one of two expressions of the same sound: either the deadening silence of loneliness or the chaotic turbulence of loneliness. 

Back in the Rectory, the phones ring while the secretaries and brother priests confess their locations with their footsteps.  The front door bell is followed by the two-fold buzz of the double door entrance and will likely bring news that is unrelated to anything that has preceded it or will follow it.  Someone is in the kitchen.  “Could they be eating?  What time is it?” 

In going upstairs to my room to pray for a bit, I hear the unpleasant voice of guilt coming from within – a parting gift from Adam – accusing me of seeking silence with some dishonest motive.  But, I don’t like him; he’s not nice, and so I ignore him and pray anyway.  I kneel at my prie-dieu and Je prie a Dieu.
 Evening will bring the most welcome dinner conversation of my pastor, as well the broken-but-perfect English of Maria, the mother of our Rectory.  How I love them both for making this place a somewhat of a home. 

Later, there will be phone calls to return and some meetings with people, e-mails of course, and some preparation for tomorrow’s homily.  I take the on-call cell phone into my hand and pray most earnestly, “Lord, unto whom thine angels fly in honor, and whose revelation doth exhaust nothing of thy greatness, let come unto thee my plea for assistance, and letteth not this cell phone interrupt my slumber.  Amen.” 

When night falls – and it does fall hard – the sounds of the day rush at me from within my memory, as if I could forget them.  But, they fade.  And then, something of the silence I have read about in books creeps in.  It is strange; it is unfamiliar.  “This”, I say to myself, “must be the mother of sanctity, for I do not like it, although I long for it.”  Then, my body lays my will down to sleep, but I get up quickly to turn the fan on, not because it’s too hot, but because it’s just too quiet!