Football

His long white robe puffed up as a gust of wind rushed across the football field kicking up dirt and dried leaves and grass and a plume of sand that spiraled ominously skyward. Marching up and down the sideline, shouting out instructions and gesturing widely he tried to perk up the team that had become a bit lethargic in the sweltering summer heat. “Veejay” he yelled out, “come on now, move up, tighten the gap, move, c’mon move.” Just then, a shot by the left winger, whizzed past the outstretched hands of the opposing keeper, and thundered against the goal post. The crowd behind him gasped and then broke out into a raucous applause. As he looked behind he saw the school children in their khaki uniforms, crammed in the small stadium, a thousand eager faces, cheering the team on as one cohesive unit. It momentarily took him back to his own youth, Berlin, 1936.

He was representing Austria in javelin throwing, but the more than hundred thousand people packed in the Olympiastadion, awash with flowing Nazi banners and Swastikas seemed focused on the four hundred meter race that was about to start. The Nazi movement had infiltrated Austria and many of his own team mates were rabid Hitler supporters. Growing up in the shadows of the Jesuit Church in Vienna, he had come to admire the selfless priests who served the communities schools and orphanages. It had saddened and angered him to see them increasingly vilified and harassed by the Nazi youth, egged on by Hitler’s proclamations that there was no room for religious orders in National Socialism.

He remembered Anna Wietzen. Anna, with her warm brown eyes, her dark curly hair tied up in a bun, her short, stocky legs and her cherubic, kind face, her beautiful smile. They had bonded over music, music by Bach and Beethoven and Mozart, and the poetry of Goethe, the philosophy of Kant and Nietzsche and the many many walks they took along the Danube Canal. With her hand intertwined in his, their shoulder grazing against each other, he, taking short steps and she, taking long strides so their steps could stay in sync with each other. He was in love with Anna. He wanted to marry Anna, buy a little cottage in a village by the Alps, raise a family with her, grow old with her. He remembered the day he had gone to her apartment to check up on her, because she had missed several days at the University. The door was locked. Her neighbor said the family had left hurriedly several nights ago. Good riddance, the neighbor had said, we don’t need their types here, as she spat on the door. He had asked if she knew where they went. She didn’t. Poland, may be? America? He still remembered the void he felt. Like his heart had been ripped out. He thought about how hard it must have been for Anna. He had cried the night away. He had cried for Anna. He had cried for himself.

When he finally made his way back home, there were fires all around his neighborhood. There was no place for Jesuit sympathizers in Austria, a sign planted on the church lawn read. In his sadness and in his rage he tore up the sign and threw it into the fire hurling abuses at the Nazis. A brother from the church came rushing out and took him inside. He prayed with him, for calm, for forgiveness, for hope. Eventually the raw anger and anguish he felt burning inside him was replaced through service and prayer, with a love for God, for Jesus. A few years later he was ordained as a priest in the Jesuit society and through a series of what he now considered fortuitous circumstances he had ended up in the sleepy little town of Poona, in India.

The tall defenders had gone up for the corner. The ball curved in to the near post and the keeper fisted it out. One of their midfielders, a short but fast kid, was the first to get to the loose ball and sped past the retreating defense. He feigned a kick and sent the keeper diving one way and then gently tapped the ball the other way. And just like that, in a moment, they were down one goal. And that’s how the game ended. He knew the team would be devastated, this was a game they were expected to win. But he’d been in this situation many times before and he knew what he’d say and he knew the team would be just fine. You learn from your mistakes he’d say. Rising up from defeat is what makes you strong, he’d say. This is why he loved sports. Why he was so invested in ensuring that the school took sports as seriously as study. As a twenty something, when he had lost Anna, he thought his life was over. And here he was, almost fifty years later, in a different part of the world, in a role he would never have imagined, trying to mold naive, impressionable children into strong, purpose driven youth.

Sometimes he wondered how he would be remembered, if indeed he would be remembered, but then the years of training and learning as a Jesuit would kick in and he’d push down the hubris and carry on with God’s work. It will be as He wills.