The depiction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has never been one of my favorites, I will admit. It has always seemed a little over the top for me. But it brings to mind a quick story from my own life that has nothing to do with the parish but has to do with someone who means a great deal to me.
When my parents settled back in St. Louis for an extended engagement (that would be 3 1/2 years), we attended church at St. Bernadette's down at Jefferson Barracks. I went to school there for three years (I want to say "to no avail" for some reason) and my parents had a very nice, very drunk, group of friends. The parish priest was Fr. Jerry Keaty. He was a family friend, through my aunt Gracemarie, mostly.
A few years before our marriage, his heart gave out. Three days before I was supposed to do some pre-teaching at St. Margaret of Scotland's, where he was pastor, he was admitted to the hospital. This resulted in a heart transplant soon after and a long convalescence. He became a priest-in-residence out in west county and took it kind of easy. But he was never exactly ok after the transplant, and, for instance, after our wedding, he went home instead of going to the reception, where he would have been most welcome and would have known half the room anyway. He was just too tired.
He died 3 years later. Gracemarie told me that doctors had put him on the list for a another heart but he had declined to be on the list again and take a heart from someone else.
I wrote on the day of his funeral:
Fr. Keaty died on Monday. He married me and Mike, gave my first communion, and baptized my sister Colleen. He was loosely intertwined in my family's life since I was 7 years old. He was pastor, advisor, reference, and friend. I spent a couple of Thanksgivings with him, especially the one after his heart transplant in 1994. He was a good man, a good priest, a holy person.
Forty priests were at the funeral, some I knew. My grandmother was there, my Aunt Sarah, my aunt Gracemarie and her family. In a few minutes, I'm heading to lunch with my grandmother, and she'll probably tell me long boring stories about St. Louis in the old days and "this neighborhood really fell to shit in the seventies" and "can't believe you put up with traffic nowadays. When I was a girl..."
But something about this funeral, or funerals in general, makes me want to listen today. I want to sit and listen and sift through the stories for the forgotten lore of how to care for begonias or trim roses or know if your dirt is good dirt. Listen and glean information about family and acquaintances that my father would remember because he once went to History class or Navy League with them. I know my father won't remember them, and I won't care to hear their stories of divorces, birth traumas, diseases, and death, but I need to listen today.
It's hot in St. Louis. It's going to rain. Fr. Keaty has died, but I know that if there is any justice in this cosmos, he is well, wherever he is. I may have misheard, but I think the bishop said today was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sacred, sacred heart. Nice synchronicity there.
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