FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 21st – 28th MAY
 
This past week, along with many others, I have been recovering my memories of the 1966-67 Scottish Football season, which culminated in Celtic becoming the first British team to win the European Cup – just in case you hadn’t heard! I was 15 and enjoying the best feeling ever after following Celtic through some very barren years previously. I don’t think me and Hugh, who was 17 at the time, missed a home game all season, including the European Cup games. Most of all I remember the quarter-final against Vojvodina when Billy McNeill rose to meet Charlie Gallagher’s cross in the last minute to send us through to the semi.
 
It just so happened that on television that night they were showing the final episode of the long running series The Fugitive, which millions of people, including myself, had followed avidly for 120 episodes over 4 years. In those days before mobile phones and video recorders it would have been common to get on the bus after a big match and for people on the bus to be asking “what was the score?” The same happened that night, but I could also hear the Celtic supporters asking the people on the bus “was it the one-armed man?” For those who don’t know the one-armed man was the real killer of Doctor Richard Kimble’s wife, a murder for which he had been falsely accused. The detective in pursuit of him throughout the series, like Javert in pursuit of Valjean in Les Miserables, was Lieutenant Philp Gerard, and there had been rumours that he might in fact have been the killer – so all was revealed that night – but there were far more important places we had to be.
 
On the day of the final in Lisbon, we were let home early from school. Hugh went to watch the match in a cousin’s house; and while my mother hid in her room, and Patrick read his comics, having no interest in football whatsoever, I was on my own in front of the television going through the whole gamut of emotions as Celtic conceded a penalty early on and then pummelled Inter Milan for the rest of the game until Tommy Gemmell and Stevie Chalmers scored the goals that gave us the victory and sparked off delirious celebrations. Magic!
 
As an aftermath to that there is the true story of one of our priests, Father Celestine, who one day in 1968 walked down the avenue of the Passionist Monastery at Mount Argus in Dublin, and took a bus into town. For all anybody knew he was going shopping, but in fact he was on his way to Argentina for a football match. In his younger days he had lived, and was in fact ordained, in Argentina, and so he had offered his services, and somehow had them accepted by no less a man than Jock Stein, who later became a great friend, as a translator to Celtic for their World Club Championship match against Racing Club of Buenos Aires, which they were playing in as a result of having won the European Cup the previous year. Now, Father Celestine hadn’t asked permission of the Provincial to go, probably because he wouldn’t have got it; and he might just have gotten away with it except that the match was televised, and who at one stage did the camera zoom in on only Father Celestine, and who happened to be watching at the time only the Provincial, Father Valentine, and so when, at some later date,
Father Celestine came home, he had to face some serious music. I think what saved him was that the Provincial was also a big Celtic supporter. So, you never know who’s watching you!
 
Let’s finish with this footballers’ prayer:
 
Dear God, Thank you for this day. It is such a privilege and a blessing to play football. Please fill us with energy and passion as we push ourselves to do well. Help us all to compete with fairness in our hearts and minds and give us the grace to accept success or defeat. Protect our health and bodies as we challenge, tackle and run. Watch over all those present, the spectators young and old, and our nearest and dearest families. May this game and every game celebrate sport, and be enjoyable for everyone. Amen.
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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 30th APRIL - 7th MAY
This Sunday, 7th May, is Vocations Sunday, and so I thought I would share with you, briefly, my own vocation story. Some of it you will have heard before.
 
My life began in Glasgow on 24th June 1951 and, even though it was the Feast of John the Baptist, I was called Francis, after my father. My childhood, as the middle of three boys, was unexceptional except that my father died before any of us had reached double figures. That made life a bit of a struggle, especially for my mother who held down three or more jobs at a time to keep us housed and fed and clothed. I was bright enough at school and mad about football. I was put back into short trousers because, being a goalkeeper at that time, I came home too often from games in the playground with holes in the knees of my long trousers and my mother couldn’t afford to get new ones. Better to have bloody knees than torn trousers.
 
There was a strong Catholic ethos in the family and I served on the altar from age six. I found secondary school lonely and tough as by then we had moved to Drumchapel, and I attended St. Mungo’s, a school which was a long way from my home and a long way from my friends, but I do remember that it gave me my first encounter with the Passionists when a priest came to give a school mission. His name was Fr. Herman Nolan, a wonderful poet and a man of great creativity, even if a little eccentric. He was very dramatic, using sounds and symbols of the Passion to great effect, and he made a big impression on me. (In later years, when I was his rector in Mount Argus, I journeyed with him through his own passion of serious sickness unto death, and he was just as impressive then).
 
I did just okay in my exams and left with average qualifications. I had quite an ordered mind in contrast with my disordered life, and I was good at maths, so I drifted into accountancy, working by day at Singers in Clydebank, and then at Olivetti on the Queenslie Estate; studying by night, and on day release at the Glasgow College of Commerce, now the City of Glasgow College, and the Glasgow College of Technology, now the Caledonian University.
 
I was heavily into music, playing double bass in a folk group and touring at one stage with Billy Connolly to raise funds for the families of the Upper Clyde shipyard workers who were having a sit-in to try and save the yards. I felt an affinity with the cause as my father had been a shipyard worker. I was reacquainted with the Passionists in my late teens through Coodham Retreat House in Ayrshire, and, after a few years involvement as a layman on the retreat team, I felt I might be more drawn to religious life than to accountancy and I decided to give it a go, and so, in 1975, I joined the Passionists.
 
I was 24 when I entered and I had rarely been out of Scotland. I had never flown. However, in the 42 years since entering the Passionsts, I have lived and studied in Ireland and Rome and, as a Passionist priest, I have worked in various ministries, taking me throughout most of Europe and to parts of Africa and America as a preacher, teacher, director, novice-master, parish priest, and various other things besides, finally arriving back in Glasgow as parish priest and rector of St. Mungo’s, where it all began. It has been a decent life, wonderful at times, a struggle at other times, sustained by family, friends and colleagues who provided friendship and love, and sustained by the Lord himself through prayer and mercy. An ordinary life really, and all too human at times, with no doubt more twists and turns ahead, but lots to be grateful for, and I wouldn’t discourage anyone who wanted to give it a try.
 
Passionist Vocation Prayer
 
Jesus, you gave your life on the Cross so that we could share in God’s own life and know his love for us. May the love that flows from the Cross transform our hearts, so that we can bring your love and compassion to those whose lives we touch, especially those who are suffering. Give the light of your Holy Spirit to those young people who have received the grace of a Passionist vocation. Inspire them to give their lives as Passionist priests, brothers or sisters, keeping the Memory of your Passion alive
in their own hearts and in the hearts of others. May Mary, who stood by the Cross, be their example,
and may Saint Paul of the Cross, our founder, be their guide. Amen.
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