I met Aunt Dorothy fifty years ago when I married into my husband's family. She had seven children at home. The oldest was in middle school; the youngest, in diapers. It wasn’t hard to spot Uncle Jim and Aunt Dorothy and their kids in the parking lot at our parish, St. Mary’s. They were the only family riding in a black Cadillac limo bought used from the local undertakers.
Before she married Jim, Dorothy worked as a secretary in the office of Father John J. Cavanaugh, the president of Notre Dame. That’s where Jim and Dorothy met, on the Notre Dame campus, she a local Mishawaka girl and he a Texas boy far from home. They were formed, deeply, and for life, by their experience in the American Catholic Church of the 1940’s and 50’s.
Their family prayed the rosary together every night. (If we needed a babysitter from among their brood, we knew to plan our outing post-rosary.) Dorothy and Jim were the first people we knew to make a pilgrimage to Medugorje. (And, yes, their rosary turned gold there, under the Marian sun.) If they ever disagreed with the Church teaching on artificial contraception — the burning issue for many of their childbearing years — there was no evidence of it. The children came, one right after another, for thirteen or fourteen years.
So when I tell you that her impromptu liturgical gesture at our wedding shaped — and continues to shape — our marriage, understand that Aunt Dorothy saw no need for the reform of the liturgy. The rites of her childhood sustained her, and continued to sustain her, until her death. But if the bishop told her the Mass would now be celebrated in the language of the local assembly, Dorothy would put her away her Latin missal and buy an English version. Her orientation was always towards the church and its teaching.
At our wedding, Aunt Dorothy approached the altar, where the chalice had been placed, ready for those who wished to receive from it. We were seated nearby, watching the procession of those who had gathered to witness the beginning of our new household among all the households of faith. She carefully accepted the cup and, slowly, she turned and raised the cup to us. It was a toast, we saw at once — wordless, and, without question — the best toast of our lives. Dorothy smiled and then she drank the Blood of Christ. She returned the chalice, and, making the sign of the cross, went to her place in the pew.
We have spoken of it often through the fifty years since. Dorothy was both solemn — her measured taking of the cup in her hands, her measured turning to us — and joyful. She smiled at us, glad for us and for the family grown through this rite. When she raised the chalice to us, we understood that she was bidding us everything good: the wine of everlasting joy given by the One whose bounty never fails, whose care never falters. She was bidding us a life lived in the Body, grafted to the Vine, and so always filled with life. She was welcoming us along a journey she and Jim had undertaken years before us, a journey into which we, in turn, would welcome others.
Weeks after our wedding, we were back in school. One Saturday night we went to Mass in Dillon Hall on the edge of the Notre Dame campus, where Father James Burtchaell regularly preached and presided. It was his first time to see us as a married couple. We stood with other students in a circle around the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist. At communion, Father Burtchaell walked around the circle, going from person to person, stopping before each one and saying, as he raised the Host, “The Body of Christ.”
Father Burtchaell came to Martin, standing by me. He took two Hosts from the paten and said, “Martin and Melissa, the Body of Christ.” He handed both Hosts to my newly minted husband, who then turned and gave me the Bread of Life. We had been recognized for what we were, and are, one flesh.
Aunt Dorothy and Father Burtchaell, a highly unlikely pair, contributed those two gestures we have kept — like talismans, like relics — to be taken out and touched again when the journey grows long and the way weary. Now both Aunt Dorothy and Father Burtchaell are gone before us in faith
I have cause to remember them when I began to chafe from the irritants of household routines, of daily life with too many chores and too little conversation, of habits that grate away and grind against patience. (Why does he plant his elbows on the table when he eats? Why doesn't she ever turn off the lights? Why are we talking about this again?) I remember the Cup of Salvation raised towards us in hope and promise, of the Living Bread come down from heaven feeding us, and sealing us, to one another, and to Christ.
Here’s to you, Aunt Dorothy, and to you, Father Burtchaell, you who helped us see who and whose we are.