My First Jesuit

The first Jesuit I ever met was about eight feet tall and weighed 400 pounds, and his robe alone was so vast that probably it could cover a small state like Delaware if necessary, as another one of us altar boys said, awed.

He wore sandals even though it was stone-cold winter when he was visiting our parish to do some sort of secret mysterious spiritual retreat with all the fathers in the Nocturnal Adoration Society. The Nocturnal Adoration Society was a secret group that only fathers in the parish could belong to. To be a member of the society you had to spend one night by yourself adoring the Blessed Sacrament on your knees and smoking cigarettes in the foyer of the church near the photograph of Fulton Sheen——a famous television actor, I think. Also you had to drink so much coffee during the night to stay awake to adore the Blessed Sacrament that when you came home at dawn your hands shook as you read the newspaper to see if the blessed Mets had egregiously punted away yet another eminently winnable tilt, as our dad said. Sometimes instead of tilt he said ostensible contest or competitive misadventure or theatrical pratfall.