My father was the fourth son of a Swiss farm family (so he didn’t get the farm) and while still very young his mother (whose maiden name he took) introduced him to watchmaking at the Eterna watch factory in his home town where he started as a jewel setter for excellent wrist watches.  Not content with that, he set out for America to retrieve a thousand dollar loan from a previous migrant.

While here, he learned all of the watchmaking art at the Bulova watch factory in Astoria, NY, and became a citizen.  Now successfully independent, he met a mysterious damsel at a New Year’s masked ball in Switzerland.  She wouldn’t give him her name or telephone number.  She turned out to be the eldest daughter of Alfred Kurth, the famed watch manufacturer.

Providence smiled on him (he was a handsome guy), and he married her, Frieda, who gave him three sons.  He came back to America, where he had a good job, to prepare a place for her, and she and his sons joined him in 1942.  By the way, his friend repaid the thousand dollar loan.

I don’t fool myself.  If I hadn’t had nuns for teachers during my formative years, Loretta, despite her principles, might be suing for divorce.  She’d be doing that on the basis of adultery.  Life is rough.  And a few lovely young ladies, being taken advantage of, would have their reputations ruined.

But never mind what might have been.  Let us rejoice over what is.  Those sainted ladies who taught me laid the foundation for a right and noble life.  God gets the credit.

I don’t spend my days conjecturing.  But once in a while I get an insight.  I share it, as is my duty.  I am still a teacher.

My boys had a friend who lived up the block who had a baby brother.  Whenever they visited Jason they sat in the same room with his baby brother.  The mother was on the phone.  Finally they said to my wife, “I think she wants us to babysit Jason’s younger brother.”

“You don’t have to go there if you don’t want,” was my wife’s reply.  Kids soon catch on to ulterior motives, and it may be that they have to learn the art of giving, but every day?  So they had fun skateboarding, far from Jason’s house.  I tried, with my wife, to give them a balanced upbringing.

They learn best from example, so I was ready for that, but I never verbalized it.  I just didn’t think of explaining it.  Instinct comes into play for human parents as for Robins who feed their adolescent offspring on the run.

Sometimes people forget why Christ came.  The pharisees accused him of associating with sinners, and even the evangelists never mentioned that Mary Magdalen may have been beneath the cross, standing there.  He said he came for sinners, and we can see that today.

Don’t let that deter you.  St. John, who stood beneath that cross, said Christ is the God of love, and love covers a lot of ground.  It even includes you.  So cheer up, and live in the kingdom which begins now!

I don’t care about being popular with the crowd; the Savior wasn’t.  I have other goals in mind.  The possibility of eternal life beckons me.  What good is a moment of glory  versus  ten moments of bliss?  That’s the kind of questions I’m asking.

Do I have a guarantee?  Only the word  of a man who rose from the dead after raising others from the dead.  That’s kind of hard to do.  Good actors or otherwise.  Especially after a crucifixion, that’s not plausible.

Stay with me.  What have you got to lose?  Misery?  Faithless friends?  Use your head.