In a recent Gospel, Our Lord tells St. Peter, “You will be catching men” (Luke 5:10). The homilist told us we must all be catchers of men.

It’s the start of a new school year and I praise teachers and parents of young children who pass on the Faith, who are catchers of men.

A short time ago, I awoke at 3:30 am from a bad dream. I went back to sleep and woke at dawn from a good dream. You will understand better how good this dream was if I give you some background.

At the start of first grade, my family moved from California to Park Ridge adjacent to Chicago. The parish, named “Mary, Seat of Wisdom,” had been established the previous year. While the church and school were being built (convent and rectory would come later), we attended Sunday Mass at a public elementary school, Merrill School (1951-1980s, razed for lack of children), the same school I attended for first grade. My first religious ed classes were in a section of seats in an auditorium. I vividly recall a number of pages from a large Bible picture book. I didn’t know how to read yet so the captions must have been read to me by my first religion teacher. Since I can recall them so well, this book must have been read to me a number of times. I imagine I must have asked the teacher to read it to me over and over again, as young children do. I remember studying every detail.

In the book there was: Lot’s wife turned into salt (Gen. 19:23-26; see Luke 17:20-37); brazen serpents biting people (Numbers 21:4-9); Absalom on a mule hanging by his hair from a tree (2 Sam. 18:9-15); and Elijah’s chariot of fire (2 Kg. 2:11-12). I heard the phrase “land flowing with milk and honey” (which occurs more than 20 times in the Bible); there must have been an image associated with it, but I don’t recall it. I only remember one New Testament scene: Friends of an invalid pulled him up to a roof, opened a hole in it, and lowered him on a mat down to Jesus Who was speaking to a crowded room (Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26). I tell you these details because it shows the importance of visuals and because it demonstrates the vital role of adults who share the Faith.

The parish school opened for the start of my second grade. I had been in five public schools for kindergarten and first grade (a saga to be sure, and endured by my siblings as well), and I was so excited at the prospect of being in this Catholic school — which turned out to be through eighth grade graduation. (Please see my piece in these pages about the Day of Recollection for us eighth graders.)

Now, as for my dream. I dreamt I was an adult at my current age and was walking on a sidewalk. I walked by Mary, Seat of Wisdom church and went in to pray. There was a First Communion preparation session going on. A priest was there and I asked him if I could pray quietly out of the way. I volunteered to him that I had been in the first First Communion class of the parish. When I awoke, I realized that I had never before characterized my class in that fashion.

It was the spring of 1958. Our class of second graders had about 100 students. We were split into two classrooms of 50 each. My teacher was Sister Alexia, R.S.M. (1927-2021; R.S.M. is Religious Sisters of Mercy), later known as Sr. Ruth Mutchler. (See a report of a celebration in her honor in 2017.) I purposefully identify her, and others in this essay, by name out of respect and gratitude.

In preparation for our First Confession, Sr. Alexia taught us the Ten Commandments. I asked her the meaning of “adultery,” and she quickly responded (she must have been prepared): “It is dirt in a sandbox.” I knew right away it was not the most accurate answer but something adults didn’t want to talk about to a young child.

Sr. Alexia taught us to say, after the host and wine were consecrated and raised, the words of St. Thomas the Apostle: “My Lord and my God!” To prepare for our First Communion, Sr. Alexia taught us the prayer Soul of Christ. This is the English version of Anima Christi I use:

Soul of Christ, make me holy.
Body of Christ, make me a saint.
Blood of Christ, flow in my veins.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within Your wounds, hide me.
Never permit me to be separated from You.
From the malignant enemy, defend me.
At the hour of death, call me and bid me come to You
That, with Your saints, I may praise You, forever and ever. Amen.

It must have taken quite some time for all of us to memorize such a long prayer.

I have recited this prayer each time I have received Communion. In recent years, I have often replaced “me” with “us” (except in the phrase “O good Jesus, hear me”). When I do this, I begin by telling Our Lord who constitutes “us.” It can variously be my wife and me, my siblings and me, my children and their husbands and children and me, my fellow parishioners and me, and so on. For the years I taught Latin (discussed in these pages), I used this prayer to teach the imperative mood. Indeed, every prayer can be used to teach the imperative mood. For example, ora pro nobis and orate pro nobis mean “pray for us.”

The impact of Sr. Alexia on my faith, on my prayer life, is obvious, eh? And so it is with every adult, parent, and teacher, who teaches the Faith to young children. My siblings and I would be home for lunch on schooldays. There were many lunchtimes when our mother, Rosemary (1918-2004), would speak of God and Mary and the saints. And she’d also tell us of her love for our father, Ivan (1913-2010), saying, “I love every hair on his head.” Some time after school and before dinner, she’d sit in a chair in the living room and recite her daily Rosary. At dinnertime, after grace before meals, she’d add, “We pray that your father gets ahead.” He’d chuckle and say, “I already have a head, Dear.”

On Holy Thursday night, in the days when there was all-night adoration, he would sign up for the hour he thought people would find most difficult, 3am or 4am. He’d invite his children to join him, but it was an invitation, not a command. And we did. We knew indeed that it was one of the holiest nights of the year when our father would drive us in the middle of the night, one time sleeting, to stay and pray for an hour.

Toward the end of fourth grade, Sr. Winfrida (O’Rourke, 1916-2006) at last agreed to my multiple requests to train to be an altar server, even though I was about a year younger than those she normally trained. She asked me to come to the gym after school. I can still picture the scene. I walked into the gym and saw a figure on the far side in black and white, but I was squinting to see if it was Sr. Winfrida. (It was soon after that I got my first pair of eyeglasses.) Fortunately, Sr. Winfrida called me by name and waved me to come over.

She would gather a small group of boys around her in the gym and we’d recite the Latin words of servers, and then memorize them at home. Servers had two schedules. One was for Sundays (before there were Saturday vigil Masses). The other was for weekdays. We were scheduled for particular Sunday Masses and about one week a month for weekday Masses, Monday through Saturday, 6:30, 7:30 or 8:30 am. The older boys would get the 6:30 am Masses. We had three colors of cassocks: black, red, and white. We had two kinds of surplices: cotton and lace. And we had capes, I think in the three colors again of black, red, and white. We wore only dress shoes and long pants, never gym shoes or shorts.

There’d be wedding Masses on Saturdays. I recall the moist eyes or quivering lips of the brides. There were solemn high Masses, with priest, deacon, and subdeacon. There were funerals, with the priests wearing black chasubles. Many of the funerals were in the middle of the school day. I can hear the woman organist sing Dies irae (Day of Wrath). Once monthly was Holy Name Sunday, and the organist, Mr. Baranowski, would play Holy God, We Praise Thy Name so loud you couldn’t hear yourself sing. I likely served First Communions and Confirmations but don’t recall them. In that parish, boys older than eighth grade were no longer allowed to serve, but my family moved after my eighth grade graduation to Kettering, Ohio, where high school freshmen and sophomores were allowed to serve. And I did. And that is where and when the revised Vatican II Mass started. For example, there was now a procession at the start of Mass with an altar server carrying a processional cross.

Before the Vatican II changes, there were Prayers at the Foot of the Altar before the priest ascended the steps to begin Mass. These started with

Priest: Introibo ad altare Dei (I will go to the altar of God)
Server: Ad Deum qui lætificat juventutem meam (To God, Who gives joy to my youth)

This prayer at the foot of the altar prompted me to say to family and friends at my wedding that, referring to my bride and me, “God has given joy to our youth.”

For the first few years, the church at Mary, Seat of Wisdom had no air conditioning and I could see up close the effect of this on Father Edward M. Dowling (1906-1969), our pastor. (Here is a picture of him in his office in 1963.) A visiting priest gave the following sermon on a hot summer Sunday: “This will be the shortest sermon you will ever hear. It’s hot. There’s a place that’s hotter. Stay out of it!”

Only the priests could distribute Communion, could touch the consecrated Hosts, or drink from the Cup. There were no Masses after noon, including nuptial Masses, because people wishing to receive Communion fasted, even from water, from midnight. The fast was reduced to three hours, and I’m informed that that change occurred in 1957, but people were encouraged to keep the former rule… until the fast was reduced to one hour in 1964.

In the early days, before O’Hare was used as a commercial airport, and before the Northwest Expressway (renamed “JFK Expressway”) was built, there were stables and planted fields in the area. (Indeed, there were planted fields along the JFK till at least 1980.) On a visit with my wife and children in the 1980s to the room of Mother Cabrini (1850-1917) that had been preserved at Columbus Hospital (1905-2001), and is still preserved, on Lakeview Avenue, Chicago, I learned that the hospital owned vegetable fields in Park Ridge to provide food for staff and patients and that Mother (St. Frances) Cabrini used to visit those fields.

The pastor, Father Dowling, would preside over our Christmas celebration in the gym. Each child would come up, greet him, and he would give something to each child. In fourth grade, the gift was a statue of Mary which is on my desk now as I write. His assistant, Rev. Hugh O’Brien (1913-1997), would come to the classrooms on occasion. There is an online report that, during his visits, he made the children laugh hysterically. Father Greg Sakowicz, in my brother’s class, related that he wanted to grow up to be just like Father O’Brien. Indeed, I recall that, on one of Father O’Brien’s visits, he asked if a guy and a gal, both with the last name of Smith, were married, and we all giggled. He told us that MSW (the acronym for the parish title of Mary) stood for “marvelous Sister Winfrida” or, backwards, “wonderful Sister Maris” (our principal), Sr. Maris Mularkey (1915-2005). It was Father O’Brien who took all the altar boys on annual all-day field trips. Twice it was to Brookfield Zoo. Once it was to Maryknoll Seminary in Glen Ellyn, where I discovered handball.

When our teachers would escort us into school to start the school day or to start back into the building after lunch, they would lead us in the recitation of The Angelus. Inside our classrooms, we’d start the school day with the Morning Offering and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Here is a picture of the teachers for the 1958-1959 school year, my third grade. Unfortunately, Sr. Alexia is not in it; she had probably been transferred. Pictures of Fathers Dowling and O’Brien are on the table. We had only grades 1-6 that year, with 12 teachers, before we added to the building to accommodate grades 7 and 8. My classmates have helped me identify the teachers. They are: (the sisters, left to right): Sr. Regina, Sr. Gilmary, Sr. Honore (later known as Sr. Honore Quinn (1911-2009); Sr. Maris, and Sr. Winfrida; (the laywomen, left to right): Miss Rezutko (sp?), Mrs. Langony, unknown, Miss or Mrs. Pitt; Mrs. Petersen, two more unknowns. It is possible that the unidentified women are Ms. Guy or Mrs. Krebs. Teachers that came later included Sisters Alberta, Julie, Eileen Marie, Agnella, and Damien, Mrs. Loomis, and Messrs. von Dran and Woods. The last was an older man (in his 60s) who was said to have been in business in Cuba before the 1959 revolution forced him out.

Yes, my seven years at Mary, Seat of Wisdom in Park Ridge with these men and women and my parents meant a great deal to me. I was a parishioner again for two years in the late 1970s when I was in my 20s, with my wife and first child. In 1980 my second child was baptized there and in 1983 my youngest sibling was married there. Also in 1983, I was visiting Misericordia Homes in Chicago and I chatted with Sr. Honore who was cutting hair. (This is the place where Sr. Rosemary Connelly, R.S.M. (1931-2025), was executive director (1969-2021). Please see my 2023 three-part series on her in these pages, resulting from my three years’ residing and working there.) In 1988, I was living in Park Ridge, which reminded me of my time at the school, so I called and spoke with Sr. Maris and Sr. Winfrida to see how they were and to reminisce. I learned that Sr. Winfrida had grown up in Park Ridge. In 1993, my parents celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary at the church. I am in touch with over a dozen of my classmates.

In the late 1990s I was in my 40s and was an Extraordinary Minister of Communion at my parish in northern Virginia. After distributing Communion to a homebound person, I would sit down and, after a quiet time, pray out loud the Soul of Christ. On one occasion, an older couple told me it was a beautiful prayer and added that they had never heard it before. I thought, “I’m sorry they didn’t have a Sister Alexia.”

I was going to restrict this essay to my grade school years, but I must praise my wife, Ann. For twenty years (2000-2020) she recruited, trained, and scheduled altar servers for our parish in northern Virginia. There were times that she had 125 servers, grades 5-12, on her active roster! She would choreograph entrance and exit processions for Christmas, Holy Thursday, the Easter Vigil, with 40 or even 50 servers. Her motto for them was “precision and reverance.” Servers were always welcome to serve even if not scheduled. She called them “adorers.” She arranged for “master servers” to train new ones. She enlisted very young boys and called them “the Paraclete Squad.” She welcomed high school graduates back to serve whenever they were in town. She gathered a group of girls to train as sacristans and taught them how to pray while they were going about their work. The group was called “Rosa Mystica” (Mystical Rose).

I wish every Catholic child could have parents like mine and could have teachers, religious and lay, like I did. May we all be catchers of men, women, and children.