Physically, Father Greer wasn't a giant, but spiritually he was

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

(The column that follows originally appeared on September 21, 1990.)

I expected him to be larger, a Paul Bunyan in clericals, because a man of average height and build couldn't carry the burdens he carries.

I expected him to shimmer, like a glossy photo of a saint, because of the things I carry.

But there he was, a latter-day Pat O'Brien in a white golf sweater, strolling around the sprawling grounds of his church before Mass on a flawless September Sunday, looking remarkably calm and untroubled as he greeted each of his parishioners by name.

He came back from the dead to attend to these people, to pray with them and bless them and baptize their babies and hear their confessions and counsel them in their need. He came back from the dead to oversee weddings and funerals and the remodeling of a church, to restructure, to renovate, to lead and to inspire, to work harder than most healthy men.

A visitor to his church - and there will be many, now that "In Mysterious Ways: The Death and Life of a Parish Priest," by Paul Wilkes, has hit the bookstores - will be surprised to find Father Greer looking so fit.

For the book that chronicles the day-to-day life in his role as pastor and only full-time priest at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Natick, also follows him through a bone marrow transplant, where the priest gets stuck in the shadow of death for what seems like forever.

Wilkes describes Father Greer's pain.

"He would vomit three, four, as many as seven or eight times a shift, gagging, almost suffocating as he forced air down his swollen windpipe. He had constant diarrhea. His temperature soared to over 104. When he rolled over - painfully - clumps of his fine hair were left behind in the indentation of the pillow."

To rid the then 56-year-old priest of multiple myeloma (cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow), doctors had deliberately exposed him to 1,200 rads of radiation. At Chernobyl, workers and firemen who absorbed the same amount of radiation were dead within 10 days.

The procedure in print, a bone marrow transplant, sounds clean and clinical, and almost bearable. In fact, it was a procedure that rocked the foundations of a man's faith.

"He needed desperately to pray, his beclouded mind commanded him to, but he could not. His body was crying out so loud no voice could be raised above it. God was far away."

I look at him now two years after the operation - another word that glosses over the pain and isolation and despair - and except for his eyes, which seem to hold the memory of it all, he looks remarkably well.

"People are always saying, `You look great, Father.' And I say, `I'm like a Cadillac with a Model-T engine. I look great standing next to the curbstone, but I can't get away too quickly. But I've been fortunate," he said, smiling. "I thinks it's made me a better person. God touched me in a special way. Sort of a cross punch, but . . ."

As his voice trails off, he smiles again.

On the altar at Mass a short time before, he talked about the importance of forgiving. All of us must learn to forgive, he told his parishioners.

It is this ability to forgive, this lack of affixing blame - blaming God, the world, his doctors, the church, himself - that distinguishes Father Greer.

"I don't think I'd go through it again, though," he admitted. "I'm one who likes to be in control and I lost all control. You're clinically dead. You have to depend on so many people. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I didn't. I couldn't imagine how bad it was going to be.

"But that's life, I suppose. I went through a little passion and I rose again."

He used to run 8 to 10 miles a day; now he can't run 50 yards. "But I walk 3 1/2 miles a day," he said.

He's in and out of the hospital regularly with hepatitis, staph infections and pneumonia. He has trouble concentrating and "runs out of gas" easily. He depends upon blood transfusions to stay alive.

"But it's not all that bad. I'm like Humpty Dumpty. They keep picking me up and putting me back together again.

"Five to 10 years, they say I have. That's probably enough for me. I was hardly ever sick until I was 55. I've been very fortunate."

Physically, Father Greer is not Paul Bunyan. But spiritually, he is a giant of a man.

(Fr. Joseph Greer continued to serve his parishioners as pastor of St. Joseph's until his death Wednesday of multiple myeloma. He was 60 years old.)