A Father’s Day Story of Devotion in Wartime and Peace| National Catholic Register

This story is about my father’s crucifix.

I was around 4 years old. I remember kneeling at my bed, my father at my side, looking up at my blue-colored wall, where hung a crucifix between pictures of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart. 

I remember my father telling me, “Someday you are going to be an altar boy, and you will need to know your prayers in Latin.” 

And so, my father taught me the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and other prayers, including the Pater Noster — the Our Father — in Latin. He would nightly kneel with me before that crucifix, praying and teaching me my prayers in Latin.

That crucifix made a lasting impression on me. There is a moving, true story behind that crucifix. This is that story.

It was sometime in the early days of 1945. My father had been in the second wave at Normandy; he was able to crawl out of his foxhole chiseled out of the frozen earth after the Battle of the Bulge was won, and his capture of several Wehrmacht soldiers on the American side at the Bridge at Remagen was still in the future.

My father — an artillery soldier — was ordered to scout out a village in Belgium that had been devastated by artillery shells.

He was overwhelmed by the devastation he saw. He knew that it was likely the shells from his artillery that caused so much devastation in this town. Then his eyes were drawn to a house that had only a single wall, with remnants of a second floor, still standing. On that wall, probably a bedroom wall, hung a crucifix.

My father’s eyes were immediately drawn to that crucifix. He often told me about his childhood, being an altar boy kneeling and staring at the crucifix over the tabernacle, feeling so close, physically and spiritually, to God — but this was Belgium in early 1945. My father felt something that every soldier feels in war — he felt all alone, yet now simultaneously felt a presence near him. He sensed God was nearby when his eyes were drawn to that crucifix.

My father told me he wanted to climb to the second floor and retrieve the crucifix for himself. But he didn’t. He knew that this crucifix belonged to a Catholic family, and maybe this family who owned this house, injured by one of his artillery shells, was still alive. 

My father’s legs were paralyzed by respect — a virtue learned from infancy. “That crucifix belonged to a family,” he would tell me over and over again. And so, on that first day, he could do nothing but stand and stare at that crucifix in awe and with reverence. “It was not mine to take,” he told me.

My father returned the next day. He went around town stopping every villager he saw. He tried to learn who the owners of that house were. Understandably, the townsfolk were suspicious — even though he was an American soldier, not Wehrmacht. The war had taught these people to trust no one but God and his priests. The townsfolk acted reasonably, and they guarded the secret. This second day ended in failure.

Third day. My father remembered what he was taught as a child: Whenever you need help, always seek out a priest. Growing up in an Italian parish in Philadelphia (in those days Philly had scores of ethnic Catholic parishes), my father’s pastor was like a godfather (in the good, not the mafia sense), taking care of each parishioner’s material, not just spiritual, needs.

And so, this my father did: He sought out the local Catholic shepherd. The priest he found was the pastor of the Catholic church in that Belgium village. The priest understood only a modicum of English but seemed to trust my father. Something in my father’s face told this priest that there was something holy about this soldier; he could be trusted. He and the priest walked to that house with only one wall still standing. My father pointed to the crucifix. The priest understood immediately what he was asking.

The priest, in broken English, said that the family who owned that house — and who prayed before that crucifix — were good Catholics. “But they are no more,” he added solemnly. My father sensed that the priest already knew what was going on, probably being informed by the local town folk that there was an American soldier who kept returning to this house with eyes glued on that crucifix. 

It was clear to this Belgian priest that this American soldier was not a vandal and that his fixation on this crucifix was pious. 

The priest said to my father, “You want that crucifix, yes? You are Catholic, yes?” Before my father could answer, this Belgian priest said those words that always filled my father inside, bringing tears to my father’s eyes: “That family wants you to have their crucifix.”

With permission granted, the priest bearing witness that this soldier was not stealing, my father retrieved that crucifix that traveled with my father throughout the remainder of the Second World War.

This is the story of the crucifix that my father brought home at the conclusion of the war. Oh, holy crucifix from Belgium — my father’s crucifix — bless that family from Belgium.

Today, when I go to Mass, and it is time to say the Our Father, I pray the Our Father — the Pater Noster — in Latin in memory of my father, whether I am at a Mass offered in English or Spanish. And after the Pater Noster, I add my own prayer: “Thank you dear Lord for giving me the most wonderful gift that any son could want — the gift of a good father, like St. Joseph. This gift that is my father.” 

The perfect gentleman in war as a soldier and in peace as a citizen and family man, my father is my hero and my inspiration in all walks of life, especially fatherhood. Dear Lord, please bless my departed father with the mansion in Heaven that you promised in the Gospels.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Joseph Cascarelli, a semi-retired catechist and former trial lawyer, writes from Pennsylvania.

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