December 19, 2012

By Msgr. Peter Riani
Retired priest, Diocese of Ogdensburg

With the dawning of this Love and
the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from  exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

These lines from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets describe for me, an eighty-three year old, fifty-seven year priest of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, my life of faith.

My early years were immersed in the externals of the Roman Catholic faith – prayers, the sacraments, the liturgy of the Mass, etc. The small village of Keeseville had two Catholic churches – still does – locally known as the “French” church (John the Baptist) and the “Irish” church (Immaculate Conception). Our part of the Riani family lived a stone’s throw from the Irish church (!) right next to the Pastor, even to sharing the same driveway.

One of my first recollections of the living faith was learning to read the inscription over the sanctuary of Immaculate Conception, “Where Your Treasure Is, There Also Will Your Heart Be. (Lk. 12:34)” and loudly announcing my new-found ability to the congregation. As a result I was sent across the yard after Mass to apologize to Father John Bent, the Pastor, for talking in church.

He received me kindly and said, “You know, Peter, if you want to talk in church you will have to become a priest.” I was four years old.

There were six of us living in our bungalow home. My younger brother and I were in the bedroom farthest from the one bathroom. One night as I made my way there, I passed the open door of my parents room and, glancing in, I saw my father on his knees at the side of the bed praying. That image has stayed with me all of my life.
He was a model for me in many ways and, as the oldest, I had the privilege of working with him in our family business. I never once heard him say an unkind word about anybody.

He was a choir director for special occasions at church and I remember him at Christmas midnight Mass standing me, a seven year old, up on a chair in the choir loft to sing “Silent Night” in my boy soprano.

When I was nine, a new priest, Father Francis Cornelius Aloysius Cornish was assigned to our parish. To put it mildly, this personal friend of Brother Andre and fiery preacher was the major focus of the faith for me and for many until his death at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City in 1960.

I served his early morning daily Masses for years and most of his famous 75-minute Holy Hours every Sunday evening.

Suffice to say that regular Confession with him was a valuable experience in conscience formation for a teen ager.

Between Father Cornish and the Sisters of Mercy who were my teachers in Grades 1-8 in our parish school, I was reminded regularly that I should think about going to the seminary after High School. However a girlfriend and my ambition to become a scientist distracted me and I left home at 17 to enter Union College in Schenectady where I experienced the first real challenge to my faith.

All of the familiar support systems dropped away and I was on my own.

Surprisingly, after some false starts, this situation led to a new and fresh place of faith in my life. I realized one day that I sorely missed the morning Eucharist and I began to attend the nearby John the Evangelist Church when my class schedule permitted.

I took a bit of kidding from my three roommates, especially from the Catholic one, but the little statue of the Sacred Heart, given to me by Father Cornish, that I had on my desk seemed to speak for me.

Within a couple of months I left Union and, on the advice of the Rector of Wadhams Hall, went back to High School and took the Latin courses I needed to enter that seminary-college in the fall.

Here, happy though I was in general, my faith took what I thought was a nose dive in my sophomore year. I set up a meeting with one of the priests on the faculty and I told him that I was losing my faith in the Eucharist and doubted that there was anything in the tabernacle but a few unleavened bread wafers. He told me to relax and spend extra time just sitting in the chapel every day.

It was a dark and lonely struggle for weeks but slowly it dawned on me that the Eucharist was an incredible Gift of God’s love not the conclusion of an equation!

This brings us back to the quotation at the beginning of these few thoughts. The many years between 1948 and 2012 have been for me the living out of these words of the poet that, with the “dawning of this Love” of God and the “voice of this Calling” given by so many wonderful people, I have not nor will I “cease from exploration,”
And I trust deeply that the “end of all our exploring” will indeed be to “arrive where we started” and in God’s good time “know the place for the first time.”

Msgr. Peter Riani, who retired in 2012, looks back on the growth of his faith beginning during his Keeseville childhood. He is shown, from left, on his May 25, 1955 ordination day, in a Wadhams Hall Seminary classroom, (where he spent many years of his priesthood including service as rector-president from 1974 to 1982) and in a recent photo.