302/365 Ian and Bishop Fiorenza

I went to high school in Houston, to a small co-ed Catholic school originally ran by the O.Carms (I often thought of it as an Irish family, the O'Carms). It was on a grungy side of the city; there were bullet holes in the front doors. But I was valedictorian and had a good time there.

My brother Ian started his freshman year the autumn after I graduated and headed up to SLU. He was following me, and I know certain folks, like my Russian teacher, wer disappointed by Part Two. But there were new folks who took to him just fine, like the new campus minister who made sure he got confirmed while he was there. And rooked him into serving at mass.

I had been an altar server, part of the first wave of girls, in 7th and 8th grade; then we moved to Georgia where that was unheard of, and by the time I got to Houston, I can't tell you if girls were serving or not. I'm thinking not, but I can't think of any of my male classmates serving either. It was always underclassmen when I was there (my junior and senior year only--we moved to Houston when I was 16).

But Ian served at mass with his friends. They were even chosen to serve when the bishop came to our school for a visit. When I was there, we usually were visited by an auxilliary bishop, Enrique San Pedro, and in fact my class gave him an honorary diploma because he often preached that not finishing high school was one of his deepest regrets. He was a Jesuit and did just fine (I read that he's in the process of being beatified, but I don't know how that's going), but he mentioned this again and again. We rarely saw Bishop Fiorenza, but San Pedro was given a promotion to become the bishop of Brownsville and left Houston right before my senior year of high school, so Ian's high school years were blessed by Fiorenza.

Compared to San Pedro, Fiorenza had a soft handshake and boring homilies. When I sat through mass with him, it was like watching it on TV. So I didn't really bother to engage. But Ian served mass when he came to our school, and got to know him better than I would have. I will say that he had pledged to the O'Carms that he would keep my high school open, and that he did. Once he retired, it was right on the chopping block for the new bishop. So I guess I owe him that much.

But back to Ian. Sometimes he just says things that make me shake my head at him. And we got into this discussion of eating contests. You know, how many pies, how many hot dogs, and so forth. And he mentioned that back in high school, he and the other servers used to have (unconsecrated) host eating contests. They'd try to see how many in a minute, or how many in your mouth at one time.

"Oh Ian," I sigh when he tells me things like this. I could envision Steve and John Paul and those other guys stuffing their mouths with those dry communion wafers until they couldn't chew anymore. He elaborates, with sound effects and pantomime, how many and how fast. I'm laughing and then there's a pause in the conversation.

"Once when the bishop came--"

"You did not!" I interrupt.

"That Bishop Fiorenza? Now he could eat some host."