Shavuot and Pentecost

Last Sunday, we left Shavuot services early, just before the Torah reading was to begin, in order to arrive on time at our eldest grandson’s confirmation ceremony at St. Augustine R.C. church in Park Slope.   It was one of those years that Shavuot and Pentecost arrive on the same day, always, of course, a Sunday.  A gothic church, both inside and out, St. Augustine’s interior is beautiful, with numerous large stained glass windows, which filtered the bright noon light.  An organist was playing Bach when we entered, looking for our daughter and our son-in-law, who had preceded us.  We had almost decided they hadn’t yet arrived, when our son-in-law spotted us and guided us to our seats.  Our grandson was seated in a separate section along with his sponsor, a first cousin once removed, the daughter of his father’s aunt.

A screaming child sat directly behind us, which meant there was much I couldn’t hear, including the presiding priest’s explanation of the meaning of the Holy Spirit.  When it was time for parishioners to greet each other, with the expression “Peace be with you, “ I told the unfortunate mother, who was holding the child, quiet for the moment, “Peace be with you” with unusual sincerity.   In spite of my not hearing well, I thought that the ceremony was a beautiful one. 

Much as I would have wished my grandson to have grown up Jewish, I had to admit that there are many routes to spirituality, no matter how strange they might seem to an outsider, and that our grandson seems committed to the faith of his father and his father’s fathers.  I also had to admit to myself that when I only a little older than he is now, I felt an attraction to the Catholic church after having read Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. Of course, that was well before I learned anything at all about my own religious heritage.

An Orthodox Jewish family sits shiva when their child marries a non-Jew, treating their child as dead.  This was furthest from our minds when our daughter chose to marry a devout Catholic and promised, as a condition of being married by the Church, to raise their children as Catholics.  Consider our beloved daughter dead?  What could be more horrible?  Lose her? Lose our wonderful grandson?  Never.  Our son-in-law is a lovely man, a decent man, a good father and a good husband, and it’s not his fault that he’s not Jewish.   Nobody’s perfect, after all. 




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