The Man in the Front Pew

                                                                   By Robert R. Schwarz  

             Though he's been sitting in that front pew for more than 10 years, chances are many worshippers in the back have never met him nor know his name. He's known by some as that broad-shoulder man—six-foot-two tall—who sits almost motionless, his attention fixed on the looming Christ figure behind the altar. He arrives before anyone else for the 7:30 a.m.  mass and, for ten, sometimes fifteen minutes, remains a solitary figure   in the early dawn light. Monday through Friday in the St. James Catholic church in Arlington Heights, Illinois, you'll see him in that front pew, praying and reading his "Magnificat". People wonder—but never seem to ask—what life journey this man has trekked and continues to trek.

            Being a retired newspaper editor and still a nosey soul, I talk to him, Brad Jenkins, and learned that his journey has been a lifetime of   searching for truth and love, a journey not without devilish attacks and perilous walks down rabbit trails leading nowhere. Mr. Jenkins is no stranger, so he told me, to spiritual combat. 

            Describing himself as a once  " poorly catechized cradle Catholic,"   Brad  was born into music, to  a father who was a trombonist with the Stan Kenton and Louis Prima bands  and a mother   classically trained to sing opera so well that her singing in church embarrassed her son.  “And , at home, all the neighbors would hear her," Brad reminisced with a chuckle.  At age l4 he formed his own rock'n’roll band and was  singing melodies and playing bass guitar with a latent professionalism that one day would bring him gig after gig in northwest Cook County.

  In 1969, Brad and family moved from St. Louis to nearby Crystal Lake and, later, to Arlington Heights, where soon, he said, “I was dabbling in things I he shouldn't have”.  He experimented in drugs ( no arrests, he said )  and got "things sort of messed up"  by  getting too deep into Eastern religions and  Evolution and by  reading New Age books, including one on astral travel.  “I was a truth seeker," he said. “I always wanted to know the truth. I knew there was more than just this life I was living. "          

            At age 23, Brad married.  Two children followed: Katy, now a 27-year-old actress living in Manhattan, New York, and John, 24, studying to be lawyer.  “My wife was Catholic, too, but neither of us wanted anything to do with the church. We never really had much of a faith life." Seventeen years later, the couple was divorced over "irreconcilable differences,” which, Brad points out, had a lot to do with money.  "When you don't have Christ in the picture, things fall apart,” he admitted.

            Towards the end of the marriage, Brad started to attend mass at St. James. He was  also attending the Willow Creek Community church in South Barrington ( he still thinks it's got some of the very best contemporary church music ), the Moody Bible Institute  ( which ostensibly appealed to his charismatic sense ),  and a Promise Keeper rally , a national Protestant event  after which, l8 years ago,  inspired him to  join—and later help  facilitate for eight years-- the Saturday morning men's faith group at St. James.

But Brad, like the ancient Hebrews fresh out of bondage, had a long trek ahead before reaching his River Jordan. "My goal of knowing truth and love remained.” It would occur to him later that the essence of both was in Jesus Christ.

 Not only did Brad discover he had to put on that full armor of God—which included prayer and Bible study—if he was to ward off the Flesh, World, and Devil, but equally critical to his very spiritual survival, he had to surrender something.  

            This "something"—the “Big One", Brad calls it-- occurred one night in a grove of Oak trees outside the Bellarmine  Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington, Illinois.  Preoccupied with his pending divorce, Brad approached a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary and knelt.   “She just came alive," Brad recalled. “I poured out my heart to her. It was at that moment, when I completely surrendered my will, that the door was opened. My shell was broken. It was through this brokenness that the Holy Mother allowed me to come in and lead me to her Son. "

            Brad soon ensconced his 230 pounds in that front pew on weekday mornings and, on Sundays, with his children and new wife, Bonnie, a high school special education aide he had met through mutual friends. " It was the Eucharist that brought me back into the church," he said,  his voice a full octave.  Now, for the first time, he was believing in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  “This was the ‘something’ that had been missing in my faith life," he said.   “I saw that the church is Jesus and without Him, the whole thing would fall apart.”

Brad continued his thoughts  with a reference to Christ's words which proclaim that  whenever two or three  people come together in Christ's name, He is in their midst. “You can pray the Rosary by yourself but it doesn’t have the power like when you say it with another person or group. You know, the wolf attacks the stray sheep."

            Asked if he believed that he had now crossed his Jordan that maybe his exodus trek had ended, Brad paused, took off his glasses and thoughtfully moved a finger across his brown bearded chin.  "You know, everyday is a constant barrage. I put on that full amour of God all the time.  I go to confession once a week, and if I don't, things just start to happen. "

            In McDonalds over breakfast, I asked him how he copes with that "favorite" sin we're all prone to repeating despite resolutions and promises.  Brad put down his coffee and sighed.  "Well, you just go to confession and pick yourself up and start again.”  He quickly added: "The act of going to confession doesn't automatically make everything all right. But it gives us the grace to change.  Without God's grace, you're going to repeat that sin over and over again." 

 We talked about Brad's move at the end of 2010 to Austin, Texas, where he and his wife will eventually retire. It's a move he and Bonnie have prayerfully considered.  Why Austin? Most importantly, the region’s climate will be healthful for Bennie’s rheumatoid arthritis. Then, there's the economy. It's much better there than around the Chicago area, Brad maintains. He'll be working for a large national firm, selling insurance to seniors. Bonnie and he also have friends in Austin. And it's no small bonus that Austin, according to Brad, is the world's music capitol, where Brad, of course, will be contributing his share of music. He's also visibly excited about the reverence he perceives exists among Austin's Catholic parishioners; he will introduce himself to the bishop as a first step in re-activating his St. James ministries of facilitating faith groups and leading adorations of the Blessed Sacrament.

Our conversation turned again to Bonnie. “She makes me happy. She makes me smile." Brad intoned the words as if they were a lyric from a favorite song.

A parting word came from a Eucharistic Minister who has worked with Brad for years. "He's been a wonderful fixture, and we're going to miss him.”

THE END

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

©2010 Robert R. Schwarz

           

           

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Early Greeter at Mass

           
            By Robert R. Schwarz
           On weekday mornings, one or two souls enter our sanctuary around six-forty-five and prayerfully embrace the silence before the seven-thirty mass begins.  With votive candles flickering on both sides of the altar and the sun or early morning light illuminating the eight stained glass windows and the huge, multi-color Rosetta window high above the altar's crucifix, this silence is golden.  You might, however, hear a dangle of Rosary beads upon one of the 22 hardwood pews or a clang of a metal walker being pushed down the aisle.

At ten after seven, no matter the weather or season, most of the dozen or so "regulars" are in their usual pews at the 4,000-family St. James church in Arlington Heights, Illinois.  Here, a man is praying for his spouse with severe rheumatoid arthritis; behind him are three nuns—one 95 years old — from a nearby convent; across the aisle, a retired dentist and his wife; also, an unemployed chauffeur with an injured back, a CPA who is an Opus Dei member, a church deacon, a retired newspaper editor, and a financial consultant.  Occasionally, you will see in the rear pews  a "homeless" man or woman  or a teenager—you can't help but wonder what brought either of them here— or a pregnant woman near her time. And for several weeks the first to arrive was an itinerant Catholic evangelist—she had just returned from knocking on home doors in Nova Scotia—whom you might have seen outside, in winter, kneeling before our Blessed  Mary statue before entering the church to pray at length before the tabernacle. 

The silence is now pierced, as on most mornings, by Tom Adams entering through the rear door after a brief walk from the home in which he has lived alone since his wife of 60 years died four years ago.  He is an outgoing, feisty 85-year-old with a daily mission.   Tom, a balding,  blue-eyed man whose clothes and  mannerisms are both youthful , doesn't break stride as he  approaches the pews and begins to scan faces with a broad, good-morning smile.

Like an attentive hospital physician making morning rounds, Tom begins to weave in and out of pews, greeting the regulars (and now and then a stranger) with a hand on their shoulder and a humorous or comforting word.

In an interview with him at a McDonald's, Tom is asked why he does this: "Why not?" he replies with curmudgeon tones. “These are your own people. Most of them have got problems or they wouldn't be here. Grieving widows and widowers, men out of work, women who want to get pregnant . Thing is, nobody talks to each other. Some have sour faces but they're praying. So, why not say 'hello' to them? Make them feel good they're in church and that there are people who think about them once in a while. They're glad to see me."

It’s nearly seven-thirty. The church has been quickly populated with perhaps 90   worshipers. Tom senses he’s got time for one more pew visit until someone tells him to muffle his voice. "How's the wife?” he asks a senior.  The man replies that she is still alive, and Tom pats him twice on the back.  

Sure enough, Tom hears a commanding “hush!”

In McDonald's, Tom is asked if he thinks his behavior distracts people who are praying.  He seizes some humor:  " Hey, look: I'm helping them to pray harder!”

The young altar server rings the bell over the sacristy door.  Tom goes to a pew (he seldom sits in the same one), kneels and takes out Rosary beads…

In McDonalds this morning after mass, Tom excuses himself from his coterie of coffee-drinking parishioners to join this reporter to answer questions about his past marketing and sales careers with the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and Boston Herald before publishing a weekly newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, and, finally, the Penny Saver shopper in nearby Buffalo Grove and Mt. Prospect.  Currently, he works 22 hours each week operating the freight elevator at the Arlington Park Racecourse.  

It isn't easy to get him talking about those eighteen B-24 bomber missions he flew as a 17-year-old waist gunner over Romania during World War II, including the raid over Ploesti in which our Air Force lost 660 crewmen and 53 aircraft.  “We got hit pretty hard by flack and I had to jump into Yugoslavia," he says.  (He was rescued later and flown back to his unit by the Russian military.)  One of his regrets about the war was that he never went to see Padre Pio, whose church was only a mile from Tom’s base in Italy. Was there anything for Tom to confess to the famous saint?  “At my l7 years of age? Are you kidding?"      

Asked what he does for fun besides walking four miles daily (twice around Lake Arlington), Tom says: "Not much. I talk, laugh. I've been with people all my life who laugh."

And with that, Tom gets up and returns to his friends.  Soon everybody is laughing there, Tom the loudest.

THE END

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

©2010  Robert R. Schwarz

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