Happy childhood memories are in my memory bank, like
most kids: lots of friends down the block, spending the night
at your friend’s house, and playing all day long, or so it
seemed; summers that would never end; and childish,
naughty things that your parents did not know about. You
see, I could never have imagined, as a young boy, that my
life would come to where it had come.
My parents put me in an all-boys’ Catholic boarding school called St. Boniface in a suburb of Winnipeg, Canada, where I had been born in 1947. Even then (and even though I only saw my parents once a month for about an hour), life was fun. Recess was my favorite. Playing in the sandbox every day, swinging on the monkey bars, and learning to play baseball filled my days.
The dorm was huge, as all things are for young children. There must have been dozens and dozens and dozens of single-spring, mattress-type beds lined in row after row after row. The nuns taught the classes; the priests conducted the Masses every morning and heard our confessions every week. I had lots of fun and very little trouble or sadness in my life.
My parents put me in an all-boys’ Catholic boarding school called St. Boniface in a suburb of Winnipeg, Canada, where I had been born in 1947. Even then (and even though I only saw my parents once a month for about an hour), life was fun. Recess was my favorite. Playing in the sandbox every day, swinging on the monkey bars, and learning to play baseball filled my days.
The dorm was huge, as all things are for young children. There must have been dozens and dozens and dozens of single-spring, mattress-type beds lined in row after row after row. The nuns taught the classes; the priests conducted the Masses every morning and heard our confessions every week. I had lots of fun and very little trouble or sadness in my life.
Speaking French, thinking in French, and hearing the
church services in Latin and in French was normal and common for me. Staring at Jesus upon the cross up behind the
altar was an everyday thing for me. Little did I know that
calling out to Jesus was what would happen the night when
that gun was pointed at my head. “Jesus Christ” was something my dad seemed to say often (along with other words
that I knew were not right to say) and meant that he was
very mad about something.
In all those Masses and other religious services, I had no idea that Jesus was even alive, that He was someone I could know, who truly died for my sins and then had been raised from the dead; no idea that heaven was truly a place where a person can go once they leave this world; and most of all, I had no idea of the events that would lead up to that gun being placed right between my eyes.
In all those Masses and other religious services, I had no idea that Jesus was even alive, that He was someone I could know, who truly died for my sins and then had been raised from the dead; no idea that heaven was truly a place where a person can go once they leave this world; and most of all, I had no idea of the events that would lead up to that gun being placed right between my eyes.
Coming Monday, Chapter 1 Part 3
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