By Rev. Patrick Hannon, C.S.C.
The following is from The Long Yearning's End, a new collection of essays by the Rev. Patrick Hannon, C.S.C., '82. He teaches theology on The Bluff, and is the author of The Geography of God's Mercy and Running into the Arms of God. See www.actapublications.com for his books.
Every Saturday morning at exactly 7:28 a.m. Big Ben would appear at the doors of the church, waving his arms and jumping up and down like a child crammed with ice cream.
At 7:29 I would unlock the doors to let him in. He would always wrap his arms around me and bless me with a bear hug and press his head against my chest and cling to me as if we were long-lost brothers. Then he would mess up my hair and giggle as he bounced into church, leaving me in his redolent wake made of Aqua Velva, cheap wine and mildew.
How I loved Saturday mornings.
Big Ben was five feet seven inches tall and weighed maybe a hundred pounds.
Like most of the people of Saint Vincent de Paul parish in downtown Portland, Ben suffered from a broken heart, a broken mind and a broken body.
He looked to be in his fifties, but might have been much younger.
He hobbled around on arthritic knees, laughing at ghosts, talking to trees, chasing pigeons.
But mostly Big Ben went to church.
He hung around the Downtown Chapel, as our parish was more commonly known, and did odd jobs for us.
He sorted donated clothes and canned food items that we distributed to those who came to us asking for help.
He swept floors and washed windows.
But most of the time he just sat in the back of the chapel and prayed.
And when the weekday noon and evening Masses started, Big Ben would always drop whatever he was doing and bounce into church, his step lightened by the prospect of receiving the Body of Christ.
He went to Mass every day, sometimes twice a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and received communion every single time.
Lord knows we tried to explain to Ben why he shouldn't receive communion more than once a day.
Two years of arguing, cajoling and pleading failed to make a dent, and in the end it seemed that the greater mistake would have been to turn this lovely man, this child of God, away from the table of the Eucharist.
The only meal I ever saw Big Ben eat, outside of the Eucharist, was the meal we offered every Friday night to the hungry of the neighborhood.
We'd open the church doors and set up tables and chairs enough to accommodate 30 people at a time.
Candles lit the night, lending our humble makeshift Brother Andre Café a Parisian feel.
Volunteers from the parish would bring sandwiches and donuts and hot bread and the occasional pot of soup straight from the oven.
Students from the University of Portland would come down and help serve meals.
Every now and then someone would bring a guitar or a violin, prompting us all to song and dance.
And there in the corner, every Friday night, hidden in the throng of hungry people, was Big Ben, laughing and giggling, lapping up his soup and devouring his ham sandwich, filling his empty belly.
It would take him all of five minutes to finish his meal and then he would bounce out the doors and into the night, not to be seen until exactly 7:28 the next morning.
One Christmas Eve we decided to have a special Brother Andre Café evening. Of all evenings, we felt, it made the most sense to open the Café on the night we celebrate the birth of Jesus; recalling how He came into this world, and saw it through the eyes of a poor infant born to peasant parents, and slept in straw, warmed by the caressing breath of cattle in a barn.
That evening we had an unusually large number of people in the Café.
As the evening unfolded the line grew longer. Pots of soup emptied one after the other. At nine o'clock we were down to the last pot of soup, though the hungry line still wove around the block.
By 9:30 we were down to the last bowl; and there was Big Ben, his face alight with his toothless grin, holding it as like priceless china.
We filled it to the brim, much to his delight, and that was the last of the last of the soup.
As Ben made his way to the table in the corner, a tiny teenaged boy whom none of us had seen before appeared.
He looked like he had slept in mud. He was shivering for lack of a coat and his left eye sported a nasty bruise.
Seeing that the last of the soup was served and that there was no more, his eyes grew large and it seemed he was going to cry, but he didn't.
Life on the streets had toughened him up.
God knows how long he had waited in line only to find no soup.
Some of us were reaching for our wallets when Big Ben appeared, with his bowl of soup, and silently handed it to the boy. He then put his hand on the boy's cheek and caressed it as a father would caress his son's, and then he mussed the boy's hair, and giggled, and wandered off.
It was a tender moment that stood in stark contrast to the steel and concrete and cold that too often embraces those without hearth and home.
It was a moment that knitted us all together a little more tightly, that made me proud of my species.
And it made me see, maybe for the first time, why God wanted to be human like us.
People noticed. Applause echoed down alleys and off skyscrapers as the throng of homeless men and women and children gave Big Ben an ovation you would give a king.
It made him laugh and giggle all the more as he skipped down the street, as if he were the keeper of a great secret that none of us was privy to.
All he did was applaud back at us until he disappeared into the night.
He showed up for Christmas Mass next morning, at 7:28 exactly, bouncing and giggling like a child.
When he came up for communion and held out his hands to receive the Lord, he looked down in wonder as I placed the host in his hand, like he was witnessing a miracle, and I thought of the night before, when I witnessed a miracle -- when I saw God doing what God does best.
The Rev. Patrick Hannon, C.S.C., is a theology professor and pastoral resident in Christie Hall. This article appeared in the Portland Magazine
