Father Coen made it easier to keep the faith

The Boston Globe

April 8, 2007

It was easier when Father Coen was alive. His faith was strong and certain, and as long as he was here, my faith was strong and certain, too. I called him my window through whom I saw God. And he said, "God is everywhere. You know that."

I know it sometimes, but not all the time. Not enough of the time. Not the way I knew it when he was here to remind me.

I have a tape of him singing. He made if for me. He was like that, kind and unassuming and willing to make a tape if you asked him. "See the face of Christ revealed in every person standing at your side," he boomed in his big, happy voice. "We celebrate. We remember. We believe."

And I believed, too.

But lately, I'm not seeing God in everything. It's my fault. I'm out of touch. God is like an old friend who moved away, whom I haven't written or phoned or even e-mailed.

Only I am the one who moved, not God.

I didn't even observe Lent this year. I drank wine, ate cookies, gave up nothing, didn't fast. It was not a time of penance and reflection. But here it is Easter anyway, not just for all the people who prepared and looked into their souls and resolved to be better, but for slackers like me, too - a gift and a celebration.

I think how Easter was Father Coen's favorite day, dark dispelled by light, altars transformed by flowers, eternal life promised by a God who loves us all so much that he lived and died for each of us, Easter our redemption.

Father Coen made all this plausible. The Trinity. The Resurrection. Eternal life.

The priest scandal had barely begun when he had his stroke. I thought that God had spared him the shame of this, because he was a good man and guileless and it would have devastated him to see, in the words of Kipling, the things he gave his life to broken.

But he did see. He just couldn't talk about what was going on because his big voice was gone, and his energy and even some of his faith.

Faith wavers, that's what he said from the altar a thousand times. It's not steady and even like water from a hose. It swells like a stream. It narrows like a river. Man doubts. That's his nature. Even Jesus, because he was man, doubted. "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" "Thy will be done," not always the first words that come to mind.

You can't get to Easter Sunday without going through Good Friday. Father Coen preached this on Easter morning that life was hard and unfair and disappointing sometimes, but that life was good, too. And that God was good and always with us and that in the end this life is just a prelude to eternity.

He had 3 1/2 months of his own Good Friday, after his stroke, his voice a whisper, his life's work, ministering to people, over.

He was ministered to at the end, and he didn't like it. It was his agony in the garden and his crowning with thorns.

Sometimes in the quiet of church, I remember the light his faith cast and how it illuminated the whole world for me. I saw God everywhere because of him.

He said I'd be OK without him, and I am, most days. But some days I'm not. Because life is all hustle and bustle and coming and going, and time out for God and reflection is rare.

But if it is true and he was right - if we are spiritual beings only temporarily human, and this world is not the be-all and end-all - then we've got our priorities wrong. And we better stop listening to marketers and Madison Avenue and start listening to poets and philosophers.

Because the lesson of Easter morning is this: That flesh dies but spirit lives. And that God is good and loves us all.

"Go and serve the Lord and one another." That's how Father Coen ended every Mass.

And you wanted to - because he made faith that simple.