Picking up the priest from Sacred Heart

Book of Serenity, Case 8: Baizhang’s Fox (Gateless Gate, Case 2)

Once, when Baizhang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained behind. Baizhang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day, a monk asked me, ‘Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this, I was reborn five hundred times as a fox. Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Baizhang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”

Baizhang said, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.” Hearing this, the old man was immediately enlightened.

I don’t know exactly why, but after meditating a few mornings ago, my mind was engulfed by the memory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I was driving my Veterans cab. Late, very late one evening, I received a call from the dispatcher to pick up the priest at Sacred Heart Church on Fillmore and Fell Streets. It was a ghetto parish, not a Jesuit Church, though the devotion to the Sacred Heart was inspired by the visions of the seventeenth-century French mystic Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, who had been guided by her Jesuit spiritual director and confessor, Claude de la Colombière. They are now both saints. I was never much drawn to the devotion, as it felt too saccharine, but I did admire Blessed Claude.

It had to be about 1990. The Church was abandoned in 2004. It had been home to San Francisco’s largest African American Catholic congregation. The San Francisco Black Panthers served breakfast there, and it had been one of the centers for the Catholic anti-war movement, which I’d been part of in the late 60’s. My kind of church.

Originally, we were told the Church was being shuttered because of the huge cost of a seismic retrofit and condemned as too dangerous for public worship. But then it was repurposed as a roller-skating rink called “The Church of 8 Wheels.” Apparently, we don’t care if wild, wacky skaters lived or died. The Convent across Fell Street had already been taken over by a very small Tibetan monastery that’s now gone. 

But that night, I had been called to assist at one of the holy sacraments, a mission of mercy, anointing the dying.

The priest was waiting for me on the church steps rather than the next-door rectory. He was wearing his soutane, with a narrow purple stole beneath a cheap parka. He probably greeted me, but I just remember that he said, “Saint Mary’s Hospital.” Nothing more. At first, I took him for distracted, but I realized that he was carrying the Blessed Eucharist. “Recollected” would be a better word.  

The hospital was about 20 blocks away, across the Pan Handle, very close to Saint Ignatius, the Jesuit church. Under 10 minutes at that time of night. I am almost certain that I blessed myself; I may have even said, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I was now part of a holy rite. The immediacy forced all the Jesuitical arguments about the Real Presence into the background. In that moment, the Lord was real, even his Heart of Compassion. 

As we turned up Stanyan Street, past the ER, the priest said, “main entrance.” I knew the pedestrian door closer to Shrader. He was visiting one of his parishioners, perhaps an old friend, not a gang stabbing victim. One of the Jesuits would have been called for an emergency. I knew for certain that I was present for an intimate moment, the passing between our world and the universe of the Unseen. 

He tried to press a five-dollar bill into my hand. I refused. I watched him quickly climb the steps and ring the nightbell. I waited until the door opened and he disappeared. 

I may have paused for a few minutes to reflect, but not long. I had to pay more than $60 in “gate” fees for my cab before I actually put money in my pocket. There were many nights that I barely paid for dinner. I had to stay alert for my next fare.