A Journey of 75 years

Looking back on 75 Years of the journey of Life





A Reflection by Rev. Fr. Bob Johnnene OFD
Mission Saints Sergius & Bacchus/ Franciscans Of Divine Mercy


North American Old Catholic Church
www.missionstsergius.org


At 2:30 of the afternoon of November 16, 1935 in Boston Massachusetts my life adventure began and as I prepare to enter the 76th year of my journey down the highway of life I look back on the past 75 years with wonder and amazement.


My journey at times was on smooth Super Highways and at other times unpaved bumpy roads. All the time I dared to dream the Impossible dream and some times it was achieved and at others it crashed in flames.


I have been told that I was born under the part of the sign of Scorpio that is attributed to the Phoenix and there have been times I seemed to be like the Phoenix and rose from the flames to have a new life while remembering the mistakes of the past one.


I have also realized how the events of my life have shaped my life, the ministry I am attempting to do for the greater honor and glory of God and the Franciscans of Divine Mercy.


God has most certainly blessed me with an abundance of his blessings and lifted me up and guided me onto the path He wanted me to follow especially in the darkest moments of life.


The fact I actually came into this world at all was considered a miracle since my mother had lost two other baby boys and was advised not to try to have any more but she prayed and trusted in God and I came into being.


According to my mother, there were serious doubts I would survive even when I was born as I was dehydrated and mother claimed that the first 6 months was touch and go and required me to have round the clock attention including being bathed in warm Olive Oil three times a day.
Since then I have been blessed with relatively good health and even though the last few years have had me making many trips to doctors and hospitals with bouts of cancer and serious stenosis of the spine limits how long I can stand and how far I can walk, I consider myself greatly blessed, especially when I see people much younger than I with far more serious illnesses unable to get around at all or sometimes remember their family and friends.
I was blessed to have parents that exposed me to all the fine and performing arts. I was at the 1939 Worlds fair, saw the original production of THE KING AND I with Gertrude Lawrence. By my 13th year I had traveled and visited 44 of the contiguous United States.
I received an excellent education from devoted nuns and priests and eventually entered the seminary in my junior year of High School. I was on the verge of being ordained a Josephite priest in 1957 when they recommended that I take some time off to be sure of my vocation, so, I followed my second love, Theater.
I never became famous, but I did get to work with people like Julie Andrews, Liza Minnelli, Hal Prince, Carol Burnett, Elizabeth Montgomery Jean-Claude Van Damme, Robert Mitchum, Peter Graves, Jan-Michael Vincent, Richard Burton, Shani Wallace and so many others on stage in New York, on Television and Films.


I actually got to write, produce and direct a show that was in the 46th Street Theater in New York City.
In 1960 I met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of my three children. Even though the marriage did not last for many reasons which are not worth covering at this time, I believe now that it was all part of God’s grand plan for me.
When ever I thought the gifts and talents I had were of my own doing and started to wander away from the principals I had been taught, God found a way to get me back on track.
The desire to serve God as a religious existed as far back as the first grade and I even had an altar complete with tabernacle in my room.


I was devastated when the Josephite’s told me to take time off to contemplate my perceived vocation and even though I was no longer in the seminary I continued keeping up on my theology, the changes of Vatican 2, taught in Catholic Schools in Boston and California often serving as a DRE (Director of Religious Education) in the parishes I lived in.
There were times I became upset and depressed and it was in those moments that God saved me from doing something drastic and gave me proof of His infinite love, mercy and healing power.
On one of those occasions when I was in deep depression and contemplating suicide, I tossed the Bible on the floor in anger but was compelled to read the pages that it opened to; It was the book of Job.
I realized then that if I kept my trust and faith in God and did not give up or blame Him for the trials I was having, He would lead me where He wanted me, and He did.
I often pray the prayer I said then, “God, what is it you want from me? I am not good on subtle hints God, I need you to push me, no shove me where it is you want me”
I was led back to teaching in the Catholic schools, from there I became fully immersed in parish ministry and in 1980 was ordained a Deacon just after my mother had come to visit me in California and she decided to stay there until the day God called her home in 1987.
Throughout the past 75 years I have been witness to many joyful events of history such as the end of WWII, the inauguration of the first Catholic President, Mans first landing on the moon, The signing of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the election of the first African American President Barack Obama.
Unfortunately I also have vivid memories of some of histories darkest moments since I was born at the end of the Great Depression and will never forget that December 7th Sunday when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and the words of FDR echoing from the radio “Today is a Day that will go down in Infamy”.


Television allowed us to watch in horror the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the atrocities of the Vietnam war, the slaughter in Rwanda and genocide in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In 1986 Cardinal Roger Mahoney founded a ministry within the Los Angeles Diocesan offices for the Lesbian and Gay community and Divorced Catholics, I began working in it while also teaching and parish duties.
In 2001, at age 67, I decided that it was time to stop teaching teen age children and move back to Massachusetts closer to my family and children.
When I returned here I found there was not much being done ministering to the LGBT community or Divorced Catholics and felt that a ministry to them was badly needed but no parish in the area that would sponsor one. While on retreat at the Weston Priory in Vermont I came across the Icon of Saints Sergius & Bacchus and upon reading their life I felt it was God’s way of telling me to start a ministry even without church approval.
Since 1980 when I was ordained a Deacon I had been submitting my records for consideration to various religious orders but always received rejections because; “You are over our age limit for admission” “You are still married and would need to get an annulment” ( I was divorced in 1973 and neither of us ever remarried); but I still continued my quest.
I began Mission Saints Sergius and Bacchus as a ministry to those who have been rejected by the church because of their being divorced or sexual orientation or other reasons.
Shortly after starting the ministry I received an acceptance letter from the Servant Franciscans of the Immaculata which has since become the Franciscans of the Annunciation of the Infinite Love of God and is based in Canada.


They had reviewed my records and transcripts, conferred with bishops and decided that I was worthy, not only to be a member of their order but also to be ordained a priest.


What I did not know at the time was that they were an Old Catholic Franciscan Order not Roman but that did not matter as I again took it as God’s plan and on August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady, I was ordained a priest in Washington DC.
My first public Eucharistic Liturgy was on September 17, the feast of my patron Saint, Robert Bellarmine and of The Stigmata of St. Francis.


Again I believed this was a sign of Almighty God’s blessing and acceptance, especially since I always had a deep affection and devotion to St. Francis from the time I was a child and often visited the Franciscan church here in Boston. I even remember a psychiatrist Franciscan Priest, Fr. Fulgence, my mother dragged me to when she discovered that I was Gay.


He told her that I was well grounded and living my life in a wholesome way, not being promiscuous, and had respect for the gift of sexuality that God had given me.
Now here I am, entering my 76th year of life, realizing that every thing has been a part of God’s grand plan. I also realize that all my past life experiences have made me better able to be an honest and better servant of God than if I had been ordained back in 1957.
I have to admit that my heart becomes heavy when I see and hear children of God being turned away from participating in giving God glory and praise within a faith community, being denied the Eucharist because they are divorced or have been created by Almighty God with a same sex orientation.
Sadness fills me when I see dedicated men and women being rejected to serve God because they are married, or worse still, just because their gender is female.
I thank God daily that I have been given the opportunity to be his humble servant and especially that he led me to be a follower of St. Francis whom God told “rebuild my church”.
I realize that I would not have been prepared to minister to all those that I am encountering in this ministry if I had not had the life experiences I have had.
What ever time God gives me to remain on this earthly plane, I totally give over to him. As the prayer I wrote back in the 1980's says; “Let Your will be done in me, I ask no more than this” or as Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane “Not my will but your will be done”
I pray that I may be able to be a small part of reunifying and rebuilding The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church as it was in the beginning, welcoming and serving everyone who asked to partake of and know the infinite mercy and love of Almighty God.
I pray I may be able to reach out and bring back into the Mystical Body of Christ all those who have felt rejected, unwanted and alienated from Almighty God by the dictates of mere humans who act like those Christ admonished with these words; “But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men” (Matthew 23:13)


As I enter these Autumn days of my life I pray for forgiveness for all the mistakes I have made and I pray that any that I may have hurt along my journey down the road of life will forgive me.
I ask God for the strength, courage and the resources to go where I am needed and to be a humble servant to all those that seek to know, love and serve God.
I give myself totally over to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, His Almighty Father our creator to proclaim the Good News of Salvation and always do their will with the grace and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
With the words; “Your are a priest forever like Melchizedek of Old”, a person goes from being a simple follower of Jesus Christ to an individual whose live must be totally dedicated to serving God and all His children as Christ would have..
It is an awesome responsibility, shepherding all God’s children. You need to be there to give solace and comfort to those in pain even when you yourself are not feeling well.


You need to remember to always affirm God’s love, mercy and forgiveness even when confronted with distain lies and vitriol.
This can only be achieved as St. Padre Pio said; "Pray, hope and Don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayers. Prayer is the best weapon we have, it is the key to God‘s heart”
So with that in mind I ask everyone who reads this reflection on my 75 years of the journey here on God’s great planet earth, please pray that God will continue to bless me and give the ministry what it needs to be of service to all those that have looked to our humble mission for spiritual enrichment, solace and hope.


I sincerely hope that my experiences of the last 75 years help you understand my faith, trust in God and the perseverance with which I have pursued these last 6 years attempting to proclaim, to all who would listen, how much God really loves us and why we need have God at the center of our being allowing Him to work His way with us.
Please remember me often as you pray and remember also that this ministry and all ministries are not the work of one individual but the work of the entire Faith community, their family, relatives, friends and friends of friends who believe in the objectives and work the ministry is attempting to achieve and who desire to be a part of the service to Almighty God.
May God continue to bless this ministry, all the Bishops, priests, brothers, benefactors, and all who read this story of my life excursion and this most humble simple servant as the journey continues. AMEN