The Messenger - November 2007 - Editorial Nov 07
By John Looby, SJ - 01 November 2007
A number no one can count: I was startled to find him standing by my desk. I had not heard him come in, but what immediately struck me was that he looked exactly how I imagined John the Baptist. He was not tall. Indeed he was small, but gaunt and his eyes looked at you intently. He wore army fatigues with the markings of a chaplain.
His first words were, ‘Why have you not visited the Catholic soldiers who are stationed in the outlying sites? They have not seen a priest in months!’ He seemed not to hear my reply, and asked, ‘When are you coming to see them?’ I chose the following Thursday. ‘We leave by jeep at 4.00 a.m.,’ he said as he walked out.
It was still dark when we set out in a jeep, and still dark when we reached the first outpost. He offered to search out the Catholics while I prepared for Mass. About a dozen soldiers arrived. Some wanted confession. We celebrated the Eucharist together, drank a cup of coffee afterwards, and after a few words, we chaplains were on the road again. There was only one Mass but they had received Holy Communion at each of the other outposts. I do not remember how many we visited; maybe there were five or maybe seven stops.
We had lunch in one camp in the mess and when I was alone with the driver, he told me that he and the chaplain had made the same journey to each of those outposts on the previous Sunday. The chaplain had held a service in each place. Nobody came. As what the driver told me sank in, I marvelled at the faith of this man who preached the word of God faithfully even when there was nobody to listen. But when I considered the generosity of spirit of that chaplain, I truly marvelled. If he could not bring those young enlisted men to God himself, he had gone out of his way to find the Catholics for me, and bring them to the chapel so that they - as one of them put it - might ‘touch base’ with God.
I was a young priest then and for a while acted as a part-time chaplain with the U.S. armed forces stationed in Germany where I was continuing my studies. Each November when we recall the ‘number no one can count’ (Apoc.7:9) who are in heaven, I recall that chaplain. Christ said of another man he met that he was not far from the kingdom of heaven. I have been convinced that that chaplain too, was not far from the kingdom of heaven. Like John the Baptist, he was content to decrease while Christ increased.
John Looby, SJ