Fr. Bert Richman

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle, but in my heart I celebrate the feast of a saint who I had the joy of knowing personally: Father Bert Richman, who died on this day in 2000. He was the Pastor of my home Parish growing up, and the reason why pursued a vocation to the priesthood.

A Priest's Priest

Father Bert was stationed at my home Parish in Tiverton toward the end of my time in Middle School. My father fondly remembers how when he pulled up to the Church to meet the new Priest, he found what looked like a frustrated linebacker, whose car was stuck in the mud. Welcome to Tiverton, Father! He was tall, with a large frame to house his equally large heart. He wrote a note in the bulletin his first weekend there, and signed it “Father Da-New-Guy”, which drew a chuckle from all of us.

Although I always wanted to be a Priest, Father Bert is the man who taught me about what a priest truly is meant to be. He was easy to reach if you called the rectory, and wove fellowship into everything that we did. He instituted coffee & donut hour on Sundays, which quickly became as obligatory as Mass. His mind never stopped spinning, as he spent countless hours cooking up ways to save the Parish money, to make the Parish more money, and to engage the many folks out there who had walked away from the church in frustration.

He was hands on in his constant efforts to make the Liturgical life of the Church mean something in the lives of the Parishioners through the ever changing decorations and creative symbolism he wove into different Masses.

He loved the Eucharist.

He loved the Blessed Mother.

He loved the Church.

He loved the Saints.

He loved Liturgy.

He LOVED Christmas.

He did everything that he could to make all of us love all of these things as much as he did. He made the faith come alive in our hearts, and was always able to make it relevant in our daily lives.

He was truly, a priest’s priest.

When his body was ravaged by cancer treatments (and the cancer itself) he pressed forward each day to the sanctuary, determined to celebrate Mass. We literally held him up at the Altar when his feet had gone numb from his treatments. Some mornings my father would find him slumped over the back pew in prayer; no doubt asking God why he had been asked to carry this heavy cross. He truly lived by the sentence he quoted so often; “celebrate each Mass like it’s your last Mass” – and he lived it by making every moment of his own life a sacrifice for others.

He died at the end of my first year of studies, and his final days were spent confused and heavily medicated. During those last days, in the depth of his suffering, you would find him in his hospital bed working his Rosary beads through his fingers: silently praying those words he had known since his youth. On the day he died, I sat with him in his room, and he suddenly said, clear as day, "She's here." I will never forget the feeling in that room…she was indeed there. His beloved Regina had come to take home one of her beloved sons.

When the Church Cried

Father Bert’s life taught me many lessons, but this year in a particular way I am inspired by the lesson his life taught about the Church.

I remember walking into the sacristy one day to find Father Bert crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he simply handed me the paper, and the headline was about a priest who had been arrested for assaulting a child. We prayed for the priest at Mass, and the people cried too. That’s how it was in the early days of this horrific scandal: we cried.

We all cried.

Do we cry anymore?

The horrific truth of the extensiveness of this scandal would come out as the years went on, and when Father Bert went home to the Lord in July of 2000 we had only seen in some ways the tip of the iceberg. His message to our people that morning was clear: pray for priests…pray for our Church…and may we all strive each day to truly BE the Eucharist we receive.

In those days when one member of the body suffered, we all suffered. That was what it meant to be the Church…and so many have suffered due to this scandal.

Equally sick are those who use this scandal to justify their own agendas. These victims have suffered enough! Every time that suffering is used by someone to justify their anti-Church attitude, they are further victimized. They continue to be used.

One of the most important things Father Bert taught me is that “we are the Church.” We all say that all the time, but what does that really mean?

We Are the Church

It means that we ARE the living body of Christ in the world today, and it is in this body that he presents himself – risen and glorified- to the world today. It means that we are bound together in the every depths of our being, forever marked for Christ, with him as the head of this mystical body. It means that the Eucharist we share is the necessary food that nourishes this body to keep it healthy and thriving in the world today. It means that we are in this together, and we need to stick together, IN Christ!

Sometimes I think we treat Church much like we treat everything else in the world. We evaluate what “we get out of it”, and if it satisfies the things “we are looking for.” We use it to satisfy our egos with titles, jobs, roles, and a thousand other things.

Church is not about you.

Church is not about me.

Church IS Jesus Christ in the world today, and we are all called to live that reality at every moment of every day. That means we suffer together with him, so that we might one day also rise with him.

If everyone left the Church because of someone else’s sin there would be no Church today. It wouldn’t have made it out of the gates because its only perfect member rejoices body and soul in glory with its head…and there hasn’t been another perfect one since.

Father Bert knew the Church was not about him, and he found within its embrace the call to a life of selflessness and service. That call is not just because he’s a priest: the priesthood was how he lived that life of selflessness and service, because by our Baptism that call is burned into our very soul.

The Church is not about us: it is not about your or my ego, desires, or needs for fulfillment. It is about us only in terms of our ability and willingness to image God in the world through our total gift of self, and to receive the saving grace offered in the Sacraments.

Father Bert: rest in God's peace. Pray for me...pray with me...pray for the Church you loved so dear, and of which you are still very much a living part. I look forward to seeing you again, when we are (as the Eucharistic Prayer says) "saints upon saints in the halls of heaven."