Scottish Catholic Observer

Over the past few years November has gone in for a makeover of sorts. Alongside prayer for the Holy Souls, so beloved of Catholics, and the remembrance of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, there has been an annual campaign to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Under the banner of Movember, men are encouraged to let their facial hair run free and bring in some sponsor money in return for putting up with the ensuing itchiness.

I don’t ‘do’ Movember, although, naturally I support the cause and happily sponsor those who take part. I do, however, sport a beard (of sorts) and have done for just over a year now. The decision to grow it was not without a measure of controversy here in St Joe’s. For the first couple of days I was on the receiving end of some quizzical looks from the regular weekday Mass-goers. Then, when it was obvious that an actual beard was in progress, I was summoned to appear before a disciplinary panel of The Ladies of the Parish. They had been tasked with finding out ‘just what has happening with the beard,’ and whether this might escalate into further signs of mid-life crisis, such as tattoos, piercings etc.

After pointing out that lots of saints (not to mention the Good Lord himself) had beards, I was able to reassure The Ladies that I did not anticipate it going beyond the facial fuzz. After some deliberation, they somewhat reluctantly allowed me to keep it. Yet, even as they granted me permission, they landed a couple of low blows. “You look dirty,” one said. “It ages you,” said another. And another, perhaps cruellest of all: “Your Mother would never have allowed it.”

That much is true: my Mum, God rest her, disliked beards with a rare passion and I’m fairly sure that she would not have allowed me over the threshold in my present unkempt state. Or, if she did, she would have waited until my guard was down and attempted to rub the beard off with a damp facecloth.

I however, like my beard. I like it even though, as the critics observed, there is more grey and white in there than brown. Still, as Scripture says: “The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendour of old men is their grey hair” (Proverbs 20:29). The slow march of the grey follicles is also an intimation of mortality. I am only a couple of years shy of my father’s age when he died (for the record, he didn’t like beards either). His anniversary falls on November 9, this year a Wednesday as it was on the day he died in 1977.

As a priest, I celebrate his anniversary on the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the Pope’s Cathedral in Rome. There is, in my mind at least, a beautiful symmetry—no pun intended—between this birthday of a Church and the anniversary of my Dad’s death.

It all goes back to that morning nearly forty years ago. When it was obvious that something was very wrong with my Dad, I was packed off to a next door neighbour. Some time later—it felt like hours—I was collected by an uncle who broke the news that my father had died and that I was now the man of the house and had to be brave. On entering the living room of our house, I struggled to find my Mum: all the furniture had been pushed back to make room for the large group of women who had already descended on us to offer their sympathy and help. I’ll never forget that moment of disorientation as I took in this familiar space which had suddenly become so strange, so wrong.

On some level, the displaced furniture was a good visual metaphor for the emotional displacement which had occurred at the heart of our family. In the space of a few hours, everything had changed and would never really be the same again. And so it is with death. It comes into our midst, usually unwelcome, and rearranges the furniture of our lives without our permission. We are often left at a loss as to why we don’t quite feel ‘at home’ as we used to.

That’s where the Church comes in. And by that I mean ‘the Church’ in the sense of both the community and the building. I once asked a class of Primary kids what ‘holy’ meant and one said ‘with lots of holes.’ Maybe they were onto something quite profound! The more holes death leaves in our lives, the ‘holier’ we need to become, the more we need to seek sanctuary in those sacred spaces in our parishes where death itself is displaced.

That is why the Feast of the Lateran Basilica can be approached not just as a celebration of a beautiful and historic Church in Rome but as an act of thanksgiving for our own more modest churches. Even with their leaks and draughts, they stand as a reminder to us that God has pitched his tent among us. In our moments of joy—but especially in our times of sorrow—we can enter and simply be ‘at home’ in God’s house.

It is for that reason that, for me at least, this feast is so closely bound up with the wider themes of remembrance in this sombre month. Whenever we are lost, our churches offer us a place of reorientation: by facing the cross, by entering the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, we are drawn into what Margaret Visser calls the ‘geometry of love.’ There the stones themselves speak to us of life eternal and light perpetual.

Among the many things we remember this month, whether as greybeards or ‘holey souls,’ let us not forget that.