He ‘finally arrived,’ desiring the Eucharist after years away from the Church
By Deacon Bob Hunt
I was raised in a Sunday Mass and sacraments Catholic family. By that I mean that my parents took us to Mass every Sunday and made sure we received the appropriate sacrament at the appropriate age. But there was no prayer or discussion of the faith at home.
We attended St. Joseph Church in Alexandria, Va., an African American Catholic parish in the majority African American neighborhood where we lived. The only white people in the parish were the eight of us and Father Arthur O’Leary, a Josephite priest who hailed from Boston. I recall distinctly every Sunday we would spend an hour upstairs at Mass and then an hour downstairs, where the adults would drink coffee and discuss whatever it was adults discussed in the mid-1960s, while we kids ate our doughnuts, drank our Kool-Aid, and chased each other around the pillars that held up the fellowship hall. It was delightful.
While still at St. Joseph, I prepared to receive my first Holy Communion along with my brother, Edward, who was two years older than I. We received together on April 14, 1968, and I remember knowing that the Eucharist was the body and blood of Jesus. I was 6 years old, almost 7, and I knew it was the body and blood of Jesus. I don’t know why I knew. Of course, that’s what they taught me. But you can teach a child anything without the child accepting it. Somehow, I accepted what they taught me. For the next two years, I would go to Mass with my family, and I would receive the Eucharist, knowing it was the body and blood of Jesus.
Then we moved to rural Maryland, and it all stopped. I had just turned 9, so I wasn’t privy as to why we stopped going to Mass. Perhaps my father was too ill or too uninterested by then. Perhaps we went to the nearest church once, and Mom and Dad didn’t like it. All I know is that our practice of going to Sunday Mass stopped. As such, so did my formation in the Catholic faith.
But I still prayed as a child, as best I knew how. One night, I went onto the closed-in back porch of our house to kiss my father good-night. He was reading a book about how to fix refrigerators so he could get yet another job to support his family. I kissed him good-night and told him I loved him.
He told me he loved me. Then I walked out of the porch, closed the door behind me, and burst into tears. I don’t know why. Some dread overwhelmed me, and I burst into tears. I saw my mother and siblings in the living room. Happily, their backs were to me. They were watching “The Carol Burnett Show.” I knew if they found me crying terribly, they would ask me why, and I wouldn’t be able to say. So, I hurried past them to the stairs, to my bedroom, to my bed. I prayed that everything would be all right, until I fell asleep, still praying and still crying.
The next morning, my brother, George, woke me up and told me that Dad had died.
I didn’t believe him. I got up and looked over the balcony that looked down into the living room. There I saw my mother with a bunch of aunts and uncles who had already arrived. I knew it was true. I threw myself on my bed, screaming and crying. That caused a ruckus, and everyone came upstairs to comfort me. But there was no comforting me. I was 10 years old.
Over the next several years, I continued to have no formation in the faith. We moved back to Virginia, but Mom continued our new habit of not going to Mass. Then, when I was 17, Edward joined a church that taught no salvation outside the red brick walls thereof. I mean, everybody else was going to hell. One afternoon, we were walking past a Baptist church on our way home, and Edward pointed out the “SBC” on the church’s sign. He told me it stood for “Southern Baptist Convention,” and, yep, they were going to hell. Ed’s church even taught that Church of Christ Christians were going to hell. Let me tell you, a church in the South that teaches that Church of Christ Christians are going to hell is one serious “go to hell” church. But Ed’s church had a special antipathy for Catholics. And Ed figured, since progress begins at home, he would begin with me. So, he taught me that I needed to stop being Catholic and join his church.
Of course, I was hardly Catholic at the time. But I didn’t want to join Ed’s church, largely for three reasons. First, it struck me as odd that Jesus had come down and given His life just so the people in Ed’s tiny church could go to heaven. Seemed like a lot of sacrifice for so little return. (I’m 17 at the time, so no great theologian, but still …). Second, Ed told me that Catholics didn’t have the Holy Spirit. I remembered the Catholics at St. Joseph and the love and warmth I experienced there. If those people didn’t have the Holy Spirit, no one did. Finally, I knew Ed’s church didn’t have the Eucharist, and I knew that the Eucharist was the body and blood of Jesus. I wanted the Eucharist.
So, Ed didn’t get me to join his church, but he did get me to thinking that I wanted Jesus. For that, I’m forever grateful. I knelt in our dining room one evening and prayed to Jesus that I wanted Him in my life. Then I looked for the nearest Catholic parish. Ed had arranged for me to meet one of the ministers of his church. I ditched that and walked to St. Anthony of Padua Church in Falls Church. I rang the doorbell, and a bald priest named “Hair” answered the door. Well, he spells it Hehir, but it’s pronounced “hair,” and he was bald, so too good to be true, but it was.
I had been going to Mass there for a few weeks, but I didn’t receive Communion because I hadn’t been to Mass in years and had never been to confession. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Church flipped the sacraments for two or three years. Don’t ask me why. I was 6. Not my call. But such was the case, so I had never been to confession.
Being a good priest, Father Hehir dropped everything and took me into his office. I told him my story, and right then and there he heard my first confession and gave me absolution. The next Sunday, I attended Mass, received Holy Communion, returned to my pew, and wept. I felt that I had finally arrived home. From that day on, I have thought of the Church as home. And I never left home again.
Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.
Deacon Bob Hunt is a husband, father, grandfather, and parishioner at All Saints Church in Knoxville. He is author of the book “Thy Word: An Introduction to the Bible for People in the Pews.”