Pay What You Can - Arab and Jew Walk Hand in Hand

When money becomes a sacrament

That first morning my father drove us to the local parochial school we could hear his stomach churning. Was he really going to do this thing? Could he afford to send us here? After all, he was an immigrant trying to make it in this new world called America.

He parked, then pressed through the knot of parents & kids surrounding the tall man in black. “How much will your monthly tuition be, Father?”

Monsignor John Bishop (yes, that was really his name!) looked long at my bald-headed nervous father. Suddenly he put out his hand. A fervent Greek Orthodox, Dad had never approached much less shaken hands with a Catholic priest. Then, as if on holy cue, clouds separated and a warm sun streamed onto those hands gripping each other --enough to rattle the old bones of the long dead in Rome & Constantinople.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Azar. Pay what you can.”

After that, while bagging groceries in his little store, Dad couldn’t restrain himself. “You Catholics are a voice for the poor!” Was it sheer coincidence that more Catholics than ever were streaming into Azar’s Market?

Now it was my turn to shake the Monsignor’s hand each month: Dad trusted me to deliver the tuition check and the nuns never objected to my leaving class for that errand. All watched in silence as I grabbed my little brown purse and marched out, skipped by shimmering Orlando’s Lake Eola, and up the four steps to the rectory.

There she stood, apron pulled tight around her ample middle, severe & crotchety. The Irish housekeeper greeted me with a scowl as if I were some reprehensible orphan with no possible business there. It didn’t matter how many times she opened that door for me, the greeting was always the same. “What do you want?” “Katie dear, let the child in!” faithfully assured my welcome each time.

I sat across from the broad-shouldered man draped in black, his one hand calmly laid over the other, amusement in his eye, and with all the time in the world to give me. I felt so safe.

“How is your father doing?” And again, “How are you doing in school?”

Who could guess how that man’s simple kindness would flower in me, how it would bond me to the church and eventually to a religious calling of my own? Who could begin to trace such a path from my dad’s humble tuition checks?

Years slid into decades. I’m happily married. Orlando is no sleepy town. I drive down Robinson Avenue and pass a revitalized Lake Eola and onto Orange Avenue where the old clapboard church once stood. It’s St James Cathedral now, home to the diocesan bishop (a real one!). And it covers every inch of what used to be thriving green lawn. My memory visits that old green parlor and I thank God for the good fortune of a child so gently, wisely steered into a world of money’s holy reality.

In any talk I delight in telling this story about what I’ve come to believe is money’s genuine and holy purpose. We are linked in the giving and receiving of it, whether in a vast and otherwise impersonal marketplace, or in a little family business --or in a tiny, blue-walled Catholic church parlor. We are linked and we are changed.

Adele Azar-Rucquoi is the author of Money As Sacrament, Finding the Sacred in Money, A Book For Women, Ten Speed Press/Celestial Art, 2003. Her book can be previewed at www.MoneyAsSacrament.com This article, in a longer version appeared in America mag, 2003.

By Adele Azar-Rucquoi