HIDDEN SAINTS IN OUR MIDST

     This is about a Brooklyn priest I saw and met only once and will never forget. It's from a long lost memoir I found recently and I'd like to make it known...

     

      Father George Wilder  was the pastor and only priest at St. Gabriel the Archangel in East New York (Brooklyn), which was the parish of my Aunt Betty, who died on Palm Sunday, April 8, 1990.  It was the day of her burial.  We, the family, were waiting in limousines and cars outside the church because Father Wilder had not yet arrived for the Mass. After a time, we saw him coming  across the street from somewhere, walking fast then half running and looking anxious because he saw us and knew we had been waiting. He hurried into  the church...

     At the Mass, Father Wilder was having difficulty -- his voice was there but not coming easily, he coughed several times, he took long pauses between some words, and leaned his elbows on the lectern  for support. Most notably was the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot. I thought something was wrong, but not having seen him before, I didn't  know his speaking style or habits. Still, there was something in the realm of an emanation from him as, in his homily, he consoled Betty's daughters and grandchildren in their sorrow. 

     He was waiting for us in the back of the church as we were leaving. My recollection is of his white hair and kind face as he greeted us. I thanked him for the beautiful homily and when we were back in the limousine I mentioned that it must have been his thousandth homily for the grieving -- grabbing at any high number -- and that it seemed fresh and caring as if it were his first.

    I think it was days later that we learned he had been undergoing chemotherapy and had just come from a treatment that morning of Aunt Betty's Mass.  A few months later there was his obituary in the Tablet.  He died on July 4th, three months after Betty's Mass, age forty-seven. I remembered his lost voice, which I now realized was struggling...I  saw again his shifting feet... as Christ might have pushed Himself up the beam of the Cross to aid His breathing and relieve the pain.   I remembered Father Wilder's homily of consolations and saw again his anxious face,  so concerned for us because he was late . These are the things I know and witnessed, but there is so much more I can only imagine.     

     No one can tell me we weren't in the presence of a saint in action -- one of the many hidden ones who will never be raised publicly to the altar, but who suddenly and gently touch and shock our faith with new life by these 'snapshot' moments -- Father Wilder's half-running post-chemo steps not to keep his flock waiting, his homily easing the pain of losing a beloved...while he, himself, was dying.


      Father Jose Agustin Orellana, pastor of St. Gabriel's, celebrates a Mass for Father Wilder every July 4th.