A Friar’s Tale
Remembering
Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR
By
John Collins
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
Huntington, Indiana 46750
The Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright © 1965 and 1966 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.
Copyright © 2015 by John Collins. Published 2015.
20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission from the publisher. For more information, visit: www.osv.com/permissions.
Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; 1-800-348-2440.
ISBN: 978-1-61278-923-1 (Inventory No. T1702)
eISBN: 978-1-61278-924-8
LCCN: 2015952245
Cover design: Tyler Ottinger
Cover art: Shutterstock; OSV file photo; courtesy photo
Interior design: Dianne Nelson
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Prologue: Looking at the Sunset
Chapter I: A Boy from Jersey City
Chapter III: A Difference in Taste
Chapter IV: Flinging Myself Against the Sky
Chapter VI: Across from West Point
Chapter VIII: The Permanent Temporary Chaplain
Chapter IX: A Work of God in Brooklyn
Chapter X: Praying by the Edge of the Sea
Chapter XI: A Priest for Priests
Chapter XII: You Just Have to Make Time, Father
Chapter XIII: There Is a Time to Build
Chapter XIV: Something Must Be Done
Chapter XVI: Standing with Friends; Standing for Life
Chapter XVIII: Coming in for a Landing
Chapter XIX: Just Before Nightfall
Chapter XX: A Handful of Ashes
Preface
A Friar’s Tale started out as one thing but ended up becoming something quite other. It began in 2012 as a brief and rather jaunty little memoir. It also was supposed to be Fr. Benedict’s last major publication. He knew he was rapidly approaching a moment when writing would no longer be possible for him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away his pen. He wanted one more crack at doing a book, and he wanted it to be something that would be easy and that he would enjoy writing. Despite all that, his plan to do a memoir astonished those who knew him. It seemed out of character and even daring. Father, you see, was a very private man and (in the Irish way) saw no good reason to share the particulars of his life with anyone beyond a small group of intimates. He was not used to putting himself at the center of his writings. In fact, that was something he had avoided for years. But he made a commitment to do so, and then rather fearlessly he entered the uncharted territory of self-disclosure.
He made several tapes that became the basis of the first chapter before illness and circumstances forced him to stop work for a lengthy period. When he was able to begin again he was living a new life as a resident of a nursing home in New Jersey. He had little to do and was eager to pick up where he had left off, but he actually didn’t pick up where he had left off. He picked up nearly twenty years later. And that was to become the pattern from then on. He would speak about whatever came into his mind at the moment: his time as a novice, his years at Children’s Village, his coming to Trinity Retreat. There was no rhyme or reason as far as I could see, but the book slowly began to take shape as if it were a jigsaw puzzle that needed to be painstakingly pieced together.
By the time a little more than one hundred pages were done Father’s strength had deteriorated to such an extent that he couldn’t continue. He tried but could produce only disjointed bits and pieces that were often repetitive or even contradictory. The project was shelved as we prayed for better days. Those days were not to come, and so at Father’s death the manuscript consisted only of those same pages, not a word had been added in at least a year.
So it seemed that A Friar’s Tale would never see the light of day. It would remain but a tantalizing fragment. However, it was a fragment that seemed to exert a surprising pull on some of those who knew of its existence. Many of those people hoped that some way could be found to bring the manuscript to completion in a way