In The Imitation of Christ I read: ‘If you would understand Christ’s words fully and taste them truly you must strive to form your whole life after His pattern.’ My earlier Mass serving and displays of piety had placed me at the centre of my fantasies: the young hero saint. Now I was no longer the single and exclusive focus of my religious life. I was beginning to be interested in the person of Jesus for his own sake, as the admirable father. I saw him as he was depicted on the front of Mum’s prayer book, The Key of Heaven, which she had possessed since her wedding day. It showed Jesus as a beautiful, mild-eyed, bearded man, pointing to his fiercely burning heart. Protective, understanding, generous, he was a father who loved us more than his own life. In The Imitation of Christ I sensed his concern for the poor, for the sick and the dying; his love of the meek and the peacemakers. I felt his love for children: for me. This image of Jesus merged with my memories of Father Malachy Lynch with his flowing gestures and soft reassuring voice. As I knelt in prayer in Saint Augustine’s church I had the feeling that Jesus was calling me to himself, just as Father Malachy had described the call of Jesus: the invitation to spend my life seeking to know him; the call to imitate him.
One morning, as I knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, the world of my imagination and the world of daylight reality came together. I heard a low, kindly voice. I thrilled to the sound of the voice, which was even more real than the motor of a passing car on the high road outside. ‘Come, John,’ said the voice. ‘Follow me. I want you to be one of my priests.’ It was the voice of Jesus.
I cycled home in a glow of happiness; it was as if the whole world was bathed in warm light. I was filled with the love of Jesus: me for him, and him for me; it was as if I was shedding a warm glowing light on the entire world. As I cycled back to the Peel, past streets of terraced houses, past suburban avenues of little semi-detached houses with their privet hedges, storm porches, bird baths and garden fixtures, this entire Godless world seemed bathed in sacred radiance.
It was the next day that I crept into the sacristy before Solemn Benediction and grasped that sacred chalice, as if I were taking possession of my future calling, only to be scared out of my wits by Father Cooney, perched on a stool behind the door. Then came that morning, when as if by providence, Father Cooney turned to me at the end of Mass: ‘Wisswiss…now then, John…What is it that you want to be when you grow up?’
I told him, confidently, that I wanted to be a priest at Aylesford. I expected his joyous approval. I was not prepared for his retort: ‘Wisswiss…There are far too many monks and friars…Our Lord needs priests for our city parishes, not more Carmelites.’
I was thrown into confusion by Father Cooney’s response. His world was a milieu of church building debts, primary school catechism classes, vagrants at the door, hospital visits, Barkingside High Street, the Ford and Plessey factory plants, troubled parishioners like Mr and Mrs Cornwell at the Peel. When I thought of the priesthood, I was thinking of Father Malachy Lynch and a life within Aylesford’s cloisters and monastery gardens.
Then he asked me whether I had thought about applying to enter a minor seminary. I had no idea what he meant. But he was telling me, earnestly, that to delay would be a mistake. I must not miss my chance, he said.
‘Sure the boy’s not got a word of Latin…wisswiss…wisswiss,’ he mumbled, as he took off his vestments. Now he attempted to explain in a halting fashion that a minor seminary was a college for boys who wanted to be priests when they grew up; where they got themselves a decent education.
That day I went to see Miss Racine and told her what Father Cooney had said. Her hand shook with excitement as she handed me my rattling cup of grey tea with its sour milk globules. She seemed to know a lot about minor seminaries, and their histories and locations, and she painted an enticing picture of life in those places. The minor seminaries, she told me, were the best schools in England and they were situated in beautiful locations in the distant countryside. The boys there lived the lives of monks. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘You surely have a vocation for the priesthood.’
She told me that the word ‘seminary’ originally meant a garden plot where seeds were grown, protected from harsh weather. Then it came to mean a college where ‘seminarians’ grew sturdily in their religious lives while being protected from the world. God would be my guide in his own good time, she assured me, whether it was to be a monk or a diocesan priest with a ministry in the world. ‘But now that Father Cooney has suggested it, it is a sign. You must respond to his call.’ She clapped her hands like a child: ‘Oh, this is too lovely for words. How happy you will be, John.’
Convinced by Miss Racine that the minor seminary would be a kind of Aylesford for boys of my age, I informed Father Cooney the very next day and without reference to my parents that, yes, I would very much like to go there. He had just turned and bowed to me as we entered the sacristy after Mass. He held his head to one side. ‘Ah, do you say so!’ he said emphatically. ‘Do you say so! Wisswiss…’
On that basis, and without further discussion, Father Cooney took action. The day soon came when he arived on his bicycle at the Peel with a letter for my mother, wishing to talk with her alone. I was sent upstairs to the boys’ bedroom, where I sat looking out at the passing traffic. They must have talked for an hour. After he had gone, she called me downstairs and handed me a letter. It contained an instruction for me to meet the bishop. Mum looked at me with a mournful smile. Then she said with tears in her eyes: ‘If only my mother were alive to see this day. Fancy, me having a son a priest. It’s surely an answer to her prayers.’
Mum did not see fit to mention the matter to Dad, nor did I think to raise it with him. So it was that I came to be riding on the bus to the pleasant suburb of Woodford Green, destined for recruitment as a minor seminarian of the diocese of Brentwood.
THE SEMINARY CLOTHES LIST with a letter from the Very Reverend Wilfred Doran of Cotton College, North Staffordshire, caused uproar in the house. Shaking the list above her head, Mum reckoned it equivalent to a month’s wages. She accosted Father Cooney after Mass on Sunday. He arrived the next day on his bike, looking gravely askance. Ensconsed in Dad’s armchair, still wearing his cycle clips, he slurped his tea to the bottom of the cup. The two little ones gawped as if a giant scorpion sat ready to strike.
Father Cooney snatched the clothes list and began crossing out items and altering numbers with a pencil stub. ‘Wisswiss…five pair of stockings [that’s how he referred to what we called socks]. Tree’s more than enough! Tree pair of trousers? Wisswiss…One pair. He’ll be growing out of them anyways.’
It was still a whopping prospective bill.
Mum challenged him: ‘Well, where did your parents get the money when you went to the seminary, Father?’
‘Oh, I was brought up in poor old Ireland, Missus. Not a penny in the house. My dear old Mam went out the back and killed the pig.’
After he had gone, Mum stood by the kitchen sink watching him cycling away up Woodford Avenue. ‘“Me dear owld Mam went out da back and keeld da peeg!”’ she mimicked. ‘Wish I had a peeg out da back.’
Assistance came from the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. Four crisp five-pound notes, the white ones of those days large as jumbo-sized handkerchiefs. So began the process of purchasing my seminary wardrobe, mainly at the Cooperative Society store in Ilford.