October 9, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I’ll never forget the day, decades ago now, when I went snooping in my father’s study. I was four years old and bored, and I soon found myself digging through a tall filing cabinet. In it was a manila folder with four navy blue booklets wrapped in tissue paper. One—I discovered to my delight—had a baby picture of me inside of it, followed by a lot of big words I couldn’t read, followed by several pleasingly blank pages. I couldn’t help myself; I was a doodler. Grabbing a pencil, I sat down at the desk and began to draw.

I don’t know how many minutes passed and how many pages I desecrated before my father walked into the study. “What are you doing?” he cried, snatching the booklet out of my hands and flipping frantically through its pages. It’s only when he set to work erasing my drawings with trembling hands that I realized he was not angry; he was frightened.

“What are those?” I asked him.