Pascal's Wager, Prayer & Buster Crabbe
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
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| Filomena de Irureta Goyena, the Bronx, 1920 |
I remember that it was perhaps 1950. My
best friend Mario Hertzberg and I were walking on Cramer a street in Coghlan,
not far from our houses on Melián
in Buenos Aires.
We were 9 and we were on the lookout for used condoms, usually to be found at
that edge where the walls of houses met up with the sidewalks. We knew that
they were the result of furtive events in the evenings between the
live-in-maids of the neighbourhood and their beaus. I would not have known that
these condoms were a bi-product of what I would learn in the early 80s in Vancouver from Brit
singer Peter Noon was called a knee trembler.
As we walked we were
stopped by a fat Capuchin monk. He asked us if we went to Mass. I told him that I did but that since
my friend was Jewish he did not. The monk said to us, “That does not matter as
you both believe in the same God.” I told the monk that on Saturday afternoons
Mario and I would go next to where the monks were building a new church to
watch church-sponsored (the funds went towards the new church) Tarzan movies (very old ones). The monk smiled, he blessed us and went
his way.
It was at about that
time that on Good Fridays, at precisely 1:30 in the afternoon I knew I would
have to be home. I would join my mother and grandmother in prayer. My
grandmother would read the Seven Last Words from the Cross. I remember that on
that day I could not switch on the radio.
By 1955 both my
grandmother and mother seemed to have grown cynical about prayer. They would
offer money to San Antonio of Padua (patron saint of lost things) money if a
lost earring would be found. They clearly mentioned that not payment would be
forthcoming if the earring were not found.
By the time my mother
was 59 (a few months before she died in bed in our house in Mexico City in the presence of my Rosemary
and me) she confessed to me during a moment of deep depression that she was a
young woman still who had sexual longing that had not been satisfied for years.
She told me that the constant ringing in her ears of her Ménière's, the equally
constant vertigo and her almost total deafness were making her wish for life
doubtful. It was then when she told me in a few words and in one sentence, “I
believe in God but I don’t believe in prayer.” She then added that she believed
in a God that was remote and uncaring. I saw in my mother a woman in despair.
She soon died. On her tombstone I instructed that Sursum Corda be inscribed.
Often my mother would tell me, “Alex, sursum corda, lift up your heart.”
It was then that I adapted something Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. had taught us at St. Ed's around 1957. He had told us it was our mission in life to find out what talent God had bestowed on us and to use it well. I modified it to, "Here, Alex, you have it. Now it's up to you and I will no longer intervene to help you." I made my mother's God slightly more on board.
It was then that I adapted something Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. had taught us at St. Ed's around 1957. He had told us it was our mission in life to find out what talent God had bestowed on us and to use it well. I modified it to, "Here, Alex, you have it. Now it's up to you and I will no longer intervene to help you." I made my mother's God slightly more on board.
The connection between
prayer and the definition of a perfect order of words that form a thought, a
sentence, is obvious in Spanish. A sentence is an oración and to pray the verb
is orar. An oracíon is also a prayer. I remember how so many sections of the Latin
Mass begin with “Oremus,” let us pray.
Four years ago my
Rosemary was diagnosed with a cancerous lump on her chest. We were devastated
and worried. I told my mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. in Austin and he told me that he and his
congregation of brothers would pray for her. Having been at the chapel inside
St Joseph Hall, the residence of the retired brothers at St. Edward’s
University I can attest here that during the daily Mass, they take turns, a
brother stands up and mentions the names of brothers long dead and when they
died (that day in the past) and they pray for him. Then they have special
mentions and I am sure my Rosemary is one of them.
Now here I will accept
Pascal’s wager with the idea that everything helps. Rosemary’s cancer was
stated to be in remission and she is well today.
In 2011, Rosemary,
Rebecca, Lauren and I drove in our Malibu to
south Texas. We
stopped on the way back in Austin
and stayed a few days. Rebecca soon became obsessed with being close to wi-fi
connections and took advantage of the computer room inside St Joseph Hall. When
we arrived I spotted Father Rick Wilkinson, C.S.C. and somehow the thought came
to my head. I approached him and asked him, “Can you bless my granddaughters?” Rebecca
would not be bothered and she ran into St. Joseph Hall and the computer. Father
Rick placed his hand on Lauren’s head, one finger over her right eye and
blessed her with beautiful words.
Shortly after that
Lauren who was having academic troubles started getting good grades and
congratulatory report cards. To my dismay my fine Rebecca has plunged into
idleness and a few stultifying addictions.
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| Rebecca Stewart & Brother Edwin Reggio C.S.C. |
But there is hope. Brother Edwin last year contracted a rare disease of his immune system and
rapidly began to lose his mind and memory. To make it all worse he knew. A week
before he was sent to a home in South
Bend, Indiana I asked
him, “Do you remember Rebecca?” He immediately became the lucid and intelligent
Brother Edwin I so loved. He said with an extremely serious face and with a
gesticulation of his right hand, “Of course I do. Don’t tell her to do
anything. Leave her alone. She will come back.”
I now live in the hope
that Brother Edwin may have been right and I wonder if I should not take Pascal’s
wager for another round around the block.
