Actually, everything would stop before Lent, for Father Urban was to top off his stay by preaching a mission. This, however, was moved back a week, after Monsignor Renton called from Florida to say that he and Phil were thinking of returning to Minnesota by the way of the Bahamas.
“You’re not waiting for warm weather, I hope,” said Father Urban.
“Has it been cold up there?” inquired Monsignor Renton — as if he hadn’t been reading the papers and subtracting eight or ten degrees from the Minneapolis readings to arrive at the temperatures in Great Plains.
“How’s Phil, Monsignor?”
“About the same.”
This could mean that Phil hadn’t yet been talked out of building a new church. “Is Phil there now? I’d like to say hello to him, if he is.”
“No, as a matter of fact, he isn’t.”
Phil could be in the next room, though, within easy hailing distance. This seemed more than just a possibility to Father Urban. “Did you call Father Udovic about this, Monsignor?” he asked, knowing that it irked Monsignor Renton to have to call Father Udovic about anything, and that he preferred not to hear the man’s name.
“I called the Chancery.”
“And Cox and Box?”
“It won’t hurt if they think I’m coming back earlier.”
“Well, O.K. then, as far as I’m concerned. But if I hear from Father Wilfrid to the contrary, I’ll call you back — collect. By the way, where are you staying now?”
“We’re checking out now. So long.”
Father Urban phoned the Hill. “I’ll be back in time for Lent, of course,” he told Wilf, who, however, seemed totally uninterested in the subject of his return. “Anything new?”
The brochure had gone to the Novitiate, Wilf said, but not to the printer. “Maybe it’s just as well. Maybe we should shoot for Holy Week, or late spring — or early summer. Lucky we don’t have retreatants here now.”
“The cold, you mean?”
“Weatherwise, it’s much like last year.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Father Urban, though what the weather had been like there — or anywhere — he didn’t know. “But otherwise?”
“Trouble in Parlor A. That north wall. We can’t get a bond.”
“A bond?”
“Paint won’t dry. Wall’s too cold, and you put heat in that room, and the wall sweats. It’s the roof. It’s coming down through the wall.”
“The roof?”
“Moisture. Melt and freeze. Melt and freeze. That’s where your roof goes.”
“Suppose it does, yes. Well…”
“Suppose it’s nice and warm where you are.”
“It gets pretty chilly here sometimes,” said Father Urban. This, though untrue, seemed the decent thing to say.
“You’re on a hill, don’t forget. You’re getting the same wind we are.”
“I didn’t think of that.” Father Urban, not wishing it to be thought that he’d forgotten them, inquired after the less fortunate ones at home, asked that they be given his best, and then he said good-bye to Wilf.
Later that week Father Urban arranged for Johnny to drive Jack over for the opening night of the mission (not to preach, of course). It was nice for Jack, just being there, away from Wilf and the Hill for a few hours, and he made a third for benediction. Nobody preached on opening night, Johnny announcing that Father Urban begged the people to pray for the success of the mission, since their prayers were much more powerful than any words of his, after which came the rosary led by Jack, who had trouble with the mike, and then benediction by Father Urban wearing a cope by Blaise of Bruges. Attendance was excellent. Even though Father Urban hadn’t been heard on the first night, attendance was better on the second. Thereafter, and this was the mark of a mission preached by Father Urban, it got better and better. On Friday night, closing night, there was standing room only in the church. This on a night when the stores stayed open until nine! Jack was on hand again, and somebody in Men’s Club had considered it advisable to bring in a tape recorder. The last night of the most successful mission anybody could remember began with the rosary (Johnny), was followed by benediction (Jack), and closed with Father Urban preaching his heart out.
“Each soul, then, a little world of its own, with its peaks and valleys, its prairies, rivers and lakes, and sometimes, yes, alas, its dismal swamps, its lightless deeps. Special, unique, known only to God, for better or worse. Only God knows the true nature of the spiritual universe that is this parish, of the little world that is your soul. God alone, the Great Cartographer, could draw it down to the tiniest detail. And if He did, and perhaps He does, what would we see, you and I? A world where God would care to dwell? Or a world too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry? Next to God, we are the best judges of that, you and I. Yes, for you cannot know my soul, and I, though skilled in this and skilled in nothing else, can only guess at yours. But as a priest, as one of God’s poor surveyors, I beg you keep your rivers and lakes unpolluted. If swamps there be, drain them, for God’s sake and yours, and do not wait. Where swamps were before, let there be gardens and orchards. Gardens and orchards and parks! How does your garden grow? With the silverbells and cockleshells of faith, hope, and charity? Rid your gardens of the ragweed of covetousness, the dandelions of pride, the crabgrass of indifference! And clear your orchards of the rusty tin cans and broken glass of avarice, the old rubber tires of self-indulgence! If necessary, plow up your gardens and orchards! Plant your gardens and orchards with the good seed and the green saplings of pious works, attendance at Holy Mass, regular confession, frequent reception of the Sacrament of Sacraments! Do these things, and leave the rest to God! Do these things, and the warm sun of God’s merciful love will shine upon you and yours! Do these things, and the gentle rain of God’s loving mercy will fall upon you and yours! Now and for all time! Now! Forever! If!”
Forty-five minutes earlier, Father Urban had begun with those three little words, treating them, he said, as an etymologist might—“Now don’t let that scare you, it only means wordsmith”—and, having made no great demands on the three little words then, he’d left them, had entirely forgotten them, so it must have seemed to the congregation, but he hadn’t. In the end, he’d come back to them, and those three little words, two shouted and one whispered, had gone off like fireworks, like two bombs and a pinwheel. And thus another mission had ended — almost.
Still in the pulpit, Father Urban, eloquent in silence, stared out over the heads of the congregation and saw what nobody else in the old church could see so well, the clock on the choir loft, which said eight-forty. Making the sign of the cross, which rippled through the congregation, he turned and, for a moment, was invisible to the people. When he next appeared to them, he was down on their level, leaving the pulpit, walking, kneeling before them — for this purpose a prie-dieu had been placed in a central position in the sanctuary. After an interval noticeably longer than on previous nights, he rose, genuflected before the main altar, and, head down, made his way slowly to the sacristy. Then, when he was again invisible to them, and only then, did the people begin to stir in the pews.