Making Friends with Futility

The idea of "making the best" of things has, in our pragmatic English, a grudging, second-best connotation.

There is, however, a way of understanding the knife-edge between passivity and fruitless agitation that opens the eye of a needle threaded with complex and fruitful joy. It hypothetically requires a formation of reverence, virtue, and devotion to something besides circumstance, though.

Here is a man whose life seems, only seems, thwarted by others before he could really get on with it.

Margaret Roche Macey writes in America (sub. only)

In the summer of 1975, I met Paul Dent, S.J. ... looking forward to [a "Jesuit"] informal celebration at [afternoon Mass at Loyola University] ...I was amazed and disappointed when in walked a skinny old man with a crew cut, wearing every sort of vestment permissable and carrying a chalice covered by an old-fashioned liturgical veil.

[During the service]...the experience began to change....The priest told us his name and said this was to be his last Mass at Loyola, that he was leaving in the morning to return to India. He had joined the Jesuits because he had felt called to the missions in India; he had, in fact, studied theology and been ordained there. But not long after he arrived in Patna, a city in northeast India, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had been sent back to Chicago for surgery. "Get Well and Come Back Soon" had been written on a banner at his farewell dinner.

The success of the surgery was questionable, however, and the doctors suggested that he remain in Chicago for observation. After a year, his condition was unchanged, so he petitioned his provincial superior for permission to return to the missions. This was denied for reasons of health. He petitioned again the following year, and again the one after that. This continued until he heard that the provincial was himself dying. Father Dent managed to get in to see him, and again asked that he be allowed to return to his people in India. Again he was told to wait another year. And another year. Each new provincial responded the same way. As crazy as it sounds, this went on for what must have been over 30 years. And still he waited.

... [In that homily I] watched a man grow old so far away from the center of his life. He never told us what he had done for all those years in Chicago. I hope it had some value for others. But from what he said that afternoon, it seemed that for him, on some essential level, time had pretty much stood still. The life he had always planned had ended just months after it had begun.

As a product of the 1960's, I knew what I would have done...And then I suddenly realized: This man has been obedient for longer than I had been alive. But what a stupid, old-fashioned, useless virtue. ...Hadn't we grown beyond ["obedience"]? ...

The ultimate irony of his story was that his doctors had recently told him that he did in fact have inoperable brain cancer; and, in a totally irrational reaction, his province had agreed to send him to India to die. But even that was not simple. He could not get a visa, so he was flying to Turkey in hopes that he would somehow be allowed into India through Pakistan. Get well and come back soon.

He spoke simply, softly, without the slightest hint of drama. ... What moved us was not the waste of a life or the impending death of an old man. What so caught us, I think, was a recognition that in that simple old man there was a force that was palpably real and totally beyond us. ...As we all stood during the consecration of the Mass, this priest raised the host and said, "This is my body which will be given up for you." And he held the elevated wafer there [60, maybe 90 seconds], looking at it.

...I got just a glimpse of the implication of those words. This is my body which will be given. This is my life, which will be spent, used up, thrown away -- not in glory, but in useless, meaningless sacrifice. For that period of time, no one, nothing else, existed for him except that host, and in his face I saw the recognition of what that reality meant. He too had been obedient even unto death,...to the pain that living a life centered on something beyond reason would exact. ...I finally looked away.

After Mass, I saw him walking outside and went to meet him. ... He constantly prayed....And he asked my name and told me that he would pray for me....

30 years later, I still think of Father Paul Dent.... Somehow, in the total irrationality of his life, he touched a tremendous truth.

Paul E. Dent, 2.19.1901, Salem Mo.
Missouri Province of the Society of Jesus, 1920.
Ordained, Jesuit theologate in Kurseong, India, 1931.
Epileptic seizures forced him to return to the United States, where he remained for more than 30 years.
Died India (Patna) 3.25.1980.

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And here is one who, hungry for companions on his way, persuaded no one of his objectives, and lost his health in the meantime.

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Here's to us all: Get well, and come home soon.

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The Anchoress found this for us.