This morning I had the honour of presiding the funeral mass of Father David Gourlay. Again, many thanks for the prayers so many offered for him, whether in life or after his passing. Somewhere between 15 and 20 brother priests came out, and it was a nice moment of priestly solidarity.

After the burial, I headed out to visit another brother priest who is presently in the hospital. He has had multiple strokes, and isn’t doing very well. We had a nice chat, although I could see him tiring fast. Still, I am glad I went, and I will set up another special post on this blog and on Facebook for anyone who wants to leave a prayer or a word of encouragement.

Finally, this evening was the dinner following the annual priest golf tournament. I have not played golf in a few years (a couple of broken ribs really ruined my swing), but I try and make a point of going to the happy hour and supper. When I showed up some of the guys teased me, saying “Were your ears burning?” or “Look out guys, we can’t talk about him any more.” I simply replied, “I guess the saying is true: where two or three priests are gathered, the bishop is there among them.” As time went on more and more guys came in from the golf course… I think there were around 40 of us in the end. It was nice to be able to sit and relax in a time of fraternity like that… I always enjoy spending time with the brothers.

As readers of this blog know, I have recently been going shopping for speciality items for bishops. Shopping is really not my thing, but as it turns out a great many people have been following this particular element of my recent vocational evolution with great interest. One journalist told me at one point not to be surprised if people were really curious about the shopping. “Great,” I replied dryly, “I’ll be the Kate Middleton of the episcopal world.” His reply? “I wish you had said that on camera!” Um, no.

Now there is actually an official basic standard for some of the elements of the episcopal uniform. For example, the Ceremonial for Bishops says the following at paragraph 1199:

This is the choir dress of the bishop both inside and outside his diocese: purple cassock; purple silk sash, with silk fringes at both ends (but without tassels); rochet of linen or some similar material; purple mozzetta (without hood); over the mozetta the pectoral cross with cord of green interwoven with gold strands; purple skullcap; purple biretta with tassel. Purple stockings are also worn.

Purple stockings? Is this for real? And yet, it is.

And we are not talking about any old purple either: as I have recently learned, episcopal purple is somewhere between fuschia and magenta. This is far more information about “purple” than I ever thought I’d ever need. No wonder most bishops I know don’t have the special socks.

And yet, I am a by-the-book kind of guy, so I figured I should get some just in case they would come in handy. “So where the heck are you going to get men’s fuschia socks?” asked a good friend of mine recently, as we were discussing my shopping list.

A good question, and yet another reason why, when this is all over, I am going to write a “survival guide to being named bishop” for the benefit of those appointed in the future. In fact, I had gotten some socks in the mail a couple of days prior to our conversation. “Did you order them from Rome? They must have been expensive,” he wondered.

“In fact, they weren’t expensive at all,” I replied, “I got them from Florida.”

“Florida? There’s a store for bishop’s stuff in Florida?”

“Not that I know of,” I answered with an impish grin, “but there *is* a store called WeLoveColors.com.”

Yep, that’s where I got them. And yes, we had a good laugh over that. Sometimes you have to love the Internet. Next thing you know I will be buying mitres on eBay. Not!

Christoper Curtis, in his recent article on me in the Montreal Gazette, includes this quote: “The job can be a lot of things. When I worked for a hospital, I was on call and you would get everything from a multiple victim car accident to a guy who is sick and needs you to feed his cat.”

In case you were wondering about the reference to a cat, it is from an incident that took place on March 7, 2006. My older posts are still in archives for the moment, but I thought I’d fish this one out and repost it (with just a bit of editing to help it make sense). Enjoy!

I was sick, and you visited me fed my cat

Today I got a call on my pager, 15 minutes before I was going to leave the hospital to teach downtown. Calling the ward desk, I was told that a patient wanted to see me. Could it wait till tomorrow, I inquired? No, it was urgent, was the response. OK, then, I headed downstairs right away.

The nurse let me to the patient’s room. He was quite upset to be stuck in the hospital. I asked him what he wanted to talk about, and it turned out he didn’t want to talk about anything. He wanted me to feed his cat.

Excuse me?

It turns out that this unfortunate gentleman really has nobody here in the city to help him, and by now his cat was 4 or 5 days without food. He did not remember the number of the superintentant of his building, either, so he had nobody to call. Could I head over to his apartment and explain things to the super, and maybe be let in to feed that cat?

Well, this sure wasn’t part of the job description. Running through my head were the words of advice I had received time and time again: “Don’t try and rescue everybody out there! You have to distinguish between what is essential, and what is merely important! There is only one Saviour, and you are not him!”

But on the other hand, this situation involved a starving cat. And I’m a cat person, so I felt for the poor thing. So I said ok, with a rolling of my eyes towards the Lord, who by now (I am sure) was having another one of his divine belly laughs.

Things, it turned out, were not as simple as all that. The super is new there, just recently moved to Canada from Romania, and he could not find the proper key. So it was back to the hospital to get the key (and permission to use it, witnessed by a staff member), until I finally managed to get in the door and feed the poor cat. Boy, was he happy to see me!

It turns out that there is actually a deeper lesson in all of this. At one point, as I was heading back to the hospital, I asked the Lord what the point of all this was. And the Lord answered, in one of those moments of clarity that you just know is a divine response. “Tom,” He said, “if I had asked you to do something extravagently important for this man, something heroic, you would have done it without question. Yet now, when I ask you to merely show him a very simple kindness, you are full of doubts and questions and annoyance. Does that make sense?”

“He who is faithful in small things shows himself worthy to be trusted with greater things. It’s not the big things that count, but the little things, done with great love.”

So I fed his pet, and even pet it for awhile. I also took care of a couple of other things for the man (returned some rented DVD’s, etc.) Tomorrow I will see him again, and I’ll talk with the doctor/social worker/whoever about the need to help him put some structure in his life. I know I can’t take all this on as some sort of long-term responsibility — but in the meantime, I can at least feed the cat.