He wore an ordinary T-shirt, but the printed matter on it was very eye-catching indeed! I was looking at his back first and thought, “What a gruesome picture to wear on your shirt, especially when you are (and he was) a Christian young man!” But then I saw the front of the shirt; it had a similar picture on it, but with a small difference – which made a huge difference!
It happened in the early 1900s that an altar boy accidentally dropped a glass of wine during mass. This happened in a small church in Croatia. The priest became upset, slapped the boy and told him to leave the altar and never come back. The boy never came back, but grew up to become Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia.
About the same time another altar boy, Peter John, was assisting a priest at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria, Illinois. He likewise dropped the glass of wine during Mass, and years later wrote of the experience. Peter John recounted, “There is no atomic explosion that can equal the intensity of decibels in the noise and explosive force of a wine cruet falling on a marble floor of a cathedral in the presence of a bishop; I was frightened to death.” Presiding over Mass that day was Bishop John Spalding. Bishop Spalding looked at the broken glass and kindly said, “Someday you will be just as I am.” Peter John became Archbishop Felton Sheen later in life.
Continue reading “What a Picture! What a Message!”
