On New Year’s Eve Day, I joined my friend Ali and her mom,
Donna, on a trip to New Smyrna to visit Father John Barry, a 90-year-old
Redemptorist Catholic priest. When Ali was little, Father Barry had served as a
priest at her church, but her family had lost touch with him after he retired.
For both Ali and me, getting pregnant isn’t coming as easily
or quickly as we would like. Thankfully, we have each other for support, and
we’re constantly comparing notes, sending each other articles, and laughing and
crying our way together through this whole shitty process.
One day in December, Donna suddenly remembered that back in
the day, when Ali and her brothers were kids, Father Barry used to bless women
who were having trouble getting pregnant, and it seemed to always miraculously
work — soon after each blessing, the women would conceive. It became a joke to
say, “I’m pregnant because of Father Barry” — something Father Barry would
discourage them from saying, albeit with a twinkle in his eye. Father Barry was
so confident in God’s power flowing through him that Donna remembered being
present once when he was blessing another woman, and Father Barry insisted
Donna leave the room, so she didn’t conceive by proxy!
So Donna got to thinking, if she could find out if Father Barry
were STILL ALIVE, and track him down, maybe he could bless Ali? When she
discussed this idea with Ali, Ali was all about it — and instantly thought of
me too. So we talked about all going together. Donna made some phone calls and
discovered he was living in a retirement home just an hour away, and he was
happy to welcome us. I figured, what could it hurt to spend time with a lonely
old guy who had committed his life to the service of the Lord? We set the time
and date — the very last day of 2011, a year painfully devoted to
unsuccessfully trying to conceive.
The night before, I was nervous. I didn’t know the right way
to feel or think about what I was about to do. I flipped open my Bible to the
book of 1 Samuel and read about Hannah, one of the two wives of Elkanah. His
other wife was called Peninnah, and she had kids, but Hannah didn’t. One
troubling verse in this passage says, “the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb,”
and as a result, Hannah’s rival harassed her to the point that Hannah would break
down in tears. And this went on “year after year.” It got so bad that Hannah
was in “deep anguish” and prayed God, “weeping bitterly.”
I had been wanting to study this story for a long time, as
while I wouldn’t say I’m exactly to the point of deep anguish, I’m pretty sad a lot. I
also have been wrestling for months with the idea that God opens and closes
wombs; it seems kind of cruel and unfair. But Hannah’s situation put mine in
perspective some — at least Philip doesn’t have a super-fertile second wife who
throws it in my face!
So anyway, Hannah prays desperately to God and makes an
extreme vow: “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and
remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give
him to the Lord for all the days of his life.” She then has a brief interaction
with the priest at the temple where she’s praying, who says, “May God grant you
what you have asked of him.” Hannah feels majorly cheered up. She goes home and
gets it on with Elkanah, and the Lord remembers her. She has a son and names
him Samuel, which means “heard by God.”
There’s a beautiful prayer by Hannah in chapter 2 (I
encourage you to check out the whole story
here),
and then she does a very hard thing: She gives up Samuel to God, literally
leaving him at the temple after he’s weaned from breast-feeding. So Eli says to
her, “May the Lord give you children to take the place of the one you prayed
for and gave to the Lord,” and Hannah goes on to have three more sons and two
daughters.
I prayed Hannah’s prayer a bunch of times that night. I
don’t know what it would mean for a modern couple to give a child to the Lord,
but I prayed it, and I hoped that someday we’d find out, but that it wouldn’t
be as extreme as dropping the kid off at a church for good. And I prayed I’d
have the right attitude when visiting with Father Barry — that I would have the
faith that God could use him to
miraculously help me conceive, but also that I wouldn’t demand that of God, and
that I would still love and trust God if it didn’t “work.”
I felt at peace the next morning when I headed over to meet
Alison and Donna. The drive went by quickly, and before we knew it, we were
sitting around a kitchen table in a common area at the retirement home, waiting
for Father Barry to arrive. He approached us slowly, with a cane, tall and thin
but frail. We introduced ourselves; Donna tried to jog his memory as to who she
and Ali were, but to no avail at first. We searched for topics to discuss —
common acquaintances, the pool at the retirement home. Finally we hit on
something that made his eyes light up — the golf course at Bay Hill; apparently
Father Barry loves to golf.
Then I asked Father Barry to tell us his story. Where was he
from? How did he know God was calling him to be a priest? Father Barry spoke
slowly and raspily. At times he would pause for long stretches, and we couldn’t
tell if he was just searching the remote corners of his brain and would resume
talking, or if he had totally lost his train of thought and given up. He was
from Boston originally, second to youngest of seven children. His father died
in a tragic factory accident when young John Barry was only four, and his
mother had told him he was going to be a priest from the earliest he could
remember.
Then he began telling a story. When he was little, the
neighborhood priest would come to check on the family several times a week, and
he would always line up the children and ask them, one by one, what they were
going to be when they grew up. My heart started to pound as he shared these
details — it was just like what Samuel, the biblical priest and son of Hannah,
did with David the shepherd boy and his brothers, to choose the next king of Isreal! The
parallel was uncanny!
“I was second to last,” Father Barry said. “The priest would
ask me what I was going to be, and I would say, ‘A priest!’ ‘Ah, a priest!’ he
would say. ‘That’s good!’ Then he would get to my brother Paul, the youngest.
Now, in our neighborhood, there was a black cop who would direct traffic. And
when the priest got to my brother Paul and asked, ‘What are you going to be?’
Paul would say, ‘A n****r cop!’” Father Barry smiled mischievously and continued, “That
priest would always line us up and ask us that question, just so he could hear
Paul say, ‘I’m going to be a n****r cop!’”
Donna, Ali and my jaws all hit the floor. Turns out Father Barry
is a funny guy! Yikes! So much for my beautiful biblical parallel. At least his
off-color story lightened the mood, and we saw we could joke around with him.
We talked awhile more, Father Barry all the while perking up
and remembering more and more. He explained what it meant to be a Redemptorist
priest versus a Diocesan priest. In
addition to taking a vow of celibacy and obedience, Redemptorist priests also
take vows of poverty, living in community and never having their own
possessions. He shared how he had wanted to be a foreign missionary, and then a
chaplain in the military overseas; he clearly had an itch to travel. But no.
His superiors told him God was NOT calling him to those fields, and instead,
Father Barry became a professor in Pennsylvania. It was humbling to see a man
who had sacrificed so much to follow his calling.
After chatting for a while, Father Barry wanted to show us
his room. It was a simple space with a bed, a desk and Catholic artifacts
sprinkled around. Several old photographs hung on the wall, one of which,
Father Barry told us, was his brother Paul. Donna cocked an eyebrow. “He’s
still white,” she deadpanned. “Did he ever become a cop?” We laughed again, and
Father Barry said no, Paul was a bus driver, but he had died in his 60s.
Father Barry dug out some more old photos, as well as a
newer Christmas-card picture of his great-great nieces and nephews. He showed us some
drawings of Jesus that he liked, and then he lifted up a photo of himself as a
younger man in his priestly robes. “St. John of the Cross,” he said.
“That’s not St. John of the Cross,” Donna replied gently.
A pause. Then Father John Barry said, “It was a joke.”
After another laugh, Donna approached the subject of the
fertility blessing, asking Father Barry if he remembered that he used to bless
women who were having trouble getting pregnant. Father Barry thought for a
moment, then said yes, he did remember. (Interestingly, she had asked him this
same question at an earlier time over the phone, and he said he didn’t
remember.) She explained that Ali and I were having trouble, and asked him if
he would pray for us. He agreed, and we stood in a circle with his hands on our
shoulders. He prayed that God would bless us with the privilege of bearing
children, in the name of Jesus and St. Gerard, the patron saint of motherhood.
When he said amen and we looked up, tears were streaming down Ali’s face.
From there, Father Barry wanted to show us the home’s
chapel, a welcoming room with brown paneled walls and red carpeting. He
wandered slowly to a table against a wall and said a figure of St. Gerard used
to sit on it, but was no longer there. Then he slowly made his way to a side
storage room, which held vestments and other supplies for the services. He
began reaching for something on a high shelf, shakily moving bottles and candles out of
the way, and we couldn’t work out what he was up to. Finally he asked for help
to reach a small statue pushed far back on the shelf. I got on my tiptoes and
pulled it down — it was the missing figure of St. Gerard. I handed it to him,
and he used it to bless us again, holding it toward us one at a time, crossing
us both with it, and touching us each with it on the shoulder.
Our visit was drawing to a close, so we shuffled toward the
door. We thanked Father Barry for blessing us and telling us about his life,
and he thanked us for visiting. He seemed truly touched that we had come and
sorry to see us go. Donna told him we’d come back, and he said, “Please do!” We
waved good-bye, all encouraged by the time we’d spent together.
Donna, Ali and I stopped for lunch in New Smyrna, rehashing
the experience and debating whether it’s OK for a 90-year-old retired priest to
use the n-word. We laughed that we’d both get pregnant with twins since we were
blessed twice. And we shared stories from our lives of God working in
mysterious and miraculous ways.
I’m so thankful we went. Regardless of if God will choose to work through Father Barry’s blessing
or not, it was a lovely afternoon spent with a good friend, her caring
mom, and a lonely, kind old man who has no kids or grandkids of his own. And
the lesson I tried to take away from all of it — the experience, the story of
Hannah — is that God is in control. I’m still having trouble making peace with
that truth, but it was one more really good reminder.