How could I have known, a few short weeks ago, while enjoying the Eurasian city founded by Constantine, that life circumstances would place me today in Minneapolis at the Church of St. Helena, Constantine’s mother? Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor and, after his conversion and founding of what is now Istanbul, his mother travelled to the Holy Land in order to establish Christian churches. In doing so she discovered the True Cross of Jesus Christ.
St. Helena’s parish in the Twin Cities is nestled on 34th Street, an area once riddled with McInerny’s in their formative years who attended the parish school and played along the shoreline of Lake Nokomis. The church itself is a marvelous structure, with the alter flanked on one side by a mural of The Nativity, on the other by The Ascension. The mural directly behind the alter depicts St. Helena with the True Cross. The semi-vaulted ceiling is made not of the traditional stone and marble, but of carved and painted lumber reminiscent of the Scandinavian craftwork that migrated with the Viking’s ancestors to Minnesota a century and a half ago. Across each of the massive crossbeams are painted the Beatitudes.
Beneath the ceiling, on this day, lie the remains of Stephen J. McInerny, my father’s youngest brother. Steve, being significantly closer in age to me than my dad (such was the length and breadth of Irish families back then), always seemed more like a cousin to me, if not an older brother. I certainly idolized him on the long summer visits when my dad would drive us up to Minneapolis from South Bend to visit the relatives. It was Steve who, through those languid summer days allowed me to sit and watch the Twins on TV with him, and instilled a lifelong love of baseball within me. And it was Steve who would bring stacks of Mad Magazine up to the sweltering attic at night where the Indiana kids slept, insuring we would stay awake another hour or so. One of the great compliments of my life was when grandpa came into the kitchen while I was eating cereal and stopped to look at me. “You look like a young Steve, kid,” he remarked, and I’ve never forgotten it.
St. Helena’s is full of people for this Mass, full of people who love Steve. His wife Madge, their children – Meghan, Austin, Nora and Patrick; his siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces; friends from his boyhood, adulthood and both, friends from his tenure in the Marines, and friends from work. Steve touched so many lives in his gooey-under-the-crust Irish way, and he will not be forgotten. St. Helena, we pray, present Stephen to our Savior, and please pray for all of us. Amen.
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