Frankie Corcoran lifted the collar of his overcoat against the wind whipping up Park Avenue, lit a Marlboro, and checked his appearance in the reflection from the window of a nearby children's clothing store, the one with $50 anklets for the perfectly groomed infant. Everything was in order: Brooks Brothers suit, cashmere overcoat, Giorgio Armani double-ply Egyptian cotton shirt, Ben Silver silk tie, Allan Edmonds shoes. A perfect gentleman, except for the slight sway to his walk brought on by one or two more Jack Daniels than his mother would think proper for attending Mass. But it was only one or two more. He could maintain his decorum for an hour or so if he decided to go to the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St. Ignatius Church, the Jesuit Church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
He had just walked the two blocks from the 86th Street subway station after taking the train north from the office party at Merrill Lynch. A floor trader still in his early thirties, there were days when he made, and some times lost, more money than he expected to earn in his lifetime when he was a student at Regis, the Jesuit scholarship high school just around the corner from where he stood.
He had three choices: head straight to his apartment just across Central Park and get some sleep and go to Mass tomorrow morning, or settle in at one of the local bars for some more Christmas cheer — or Midnight Mass. Each had its appeal for Corcoran. No question, a few hours on a bar stool was high on the list. He had been a bar guy since his high school days, more at home in the flirtation and raucous laughter among the lounge lizards than any place on earth, except for when he was at Mass. He understood the irony. St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, once said, "Give me the boy, and I'll give you the man." That was as good an explanation as any for the quirks in Corcoran's character. St. Ignatius was fighting it out with the lure of the hooch and the thirty-something, unfairly divorced Manhattan ladies his bosses' wives were always introducing him to. They called him a "catch."
Their lofty perception of him could be explained by the fact that he dressed like old money, understood the difference between Monet and Manet, and knew what wine to order with the salmon meuniere. That and his net worth. It made up for how much he smoked and that he never went to college. His looks helped a bit too. He was tall and just a tad overweight, with lots of sandy brown hair. Someone once said he looked like Nick Nolte in the years just before he fell to complete wrack and ruin.
How did he get the job on Wall Street without going to college? Corcoran would not have hesitated for a second if you asked him: the Jesuits at Regis. His grammar was faultless when he wanted it to be, his math skills top-notch, he had manners when he cared to employ them, he was well-organized, and used to long hours of hard work and getting assignments completed on time. It took him just a few years to rise from the mailroom — his first job right after high school (he was the only member of the graduating class at Regis that year not to go to college) — to the trading floor at Merrill Lynch. After that, the money poured in.
But Midnight Mass was definitely in the running. The Jesuits (and his grammar school nuns) were responsible for that too. His boyhood in New York City was filled with Mass and the sacraments, incense and candles, holy cards and statues in some of the most beautiful churches on earth. He still went to confession and received Communion regularly. He would ignore the wisecracks of his colleagues and drinking buddies about whether he really believed the priest could forgive his sins and that he was receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. He did believe those things. He couldn't put it into words, but was convinced that receiving the Eucharist had something to do with Jesus coming to earth and transforming human nature, which he also believed without being able to put it into words.
His mother, born Margaret Mary Flanagan in County Clare, Ireland, was part of the story too. Corcoran would not have hesitated to admit to that either. She baptized him Francis Xavier Corcoran, and his brother Leo Corcoran, after Pope Leo XIII. His childhood apartment in the Inwood section of northern Manhattan featured prominently displayed statues of the Blessed Virgin and a portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, along with a glossy photo of John F. Kennedy. Corcoran knew he had disappointed her when he took the job on Wall Street rather than go to college, and because he spent so much of his life in the bars and in the company of the trendy ladies-about-town. He understood perfectly well that she wasn't kidding when she teased him once that she would have preferred to see him a priest or an officer in the Marines with a few million less dollars to his name than the wheeler-dealer he had become, even though she said it with a smile. He knew that she prayed for him.
He walked closer to the front doors to St. Ignatius. It was 11:30. Worshippers were beginning to file into the church. He made his choice. He flipped his cigarette to the pavement, stomped it and followed them in. He would go to Mass. It made sense. If he went to Mass tonight, he could sleep late tomorrow, before taking his mother to his sister's house out on Long Island for Christmas dinner. Besides, the bars would still be open after Mass. There was no — as the economists phrased it — "opportunity cost" to ponder.
He attended Mass at St. Ignatius a couple of times a year, but every time he walked through the padded leather doors from the vestibule and entered the nave he was struck by its beauty. He had been told that it was modeled on the Gesu, the Jesuits' church in Rome. He had never been to Rome, but he thought St. Ignatius the perfect church. His eyes were drawn to the clerestory, the huge expanse of stained glass windows along the roof line. The windows were not as striking as during the daylight hours, when shafts of color poured down from them to bathe the sanctuary and frescoes stretching from ceiling to floor around the altar. But they were impressive nonetheless, like dark jewels nestled in their display case.
It all worked: the expansive domed ceiling supported by soaring marble columns, the richly painted Stations of the Cross, the bold marble statuary and Baroque filigree that once served as backdrop for the pre-Vatican II altar, the glow of the Christmas candles nestled in every nook and cranny of the church. It combined to create a space that was at once overwhelming and welcoming. The message was clear: there is more to life than the physical world around us, something better, loftier, more profound, and you can be part of it; that mankind is meant to worship, to be lifted emotionally and spiritually to an encounter with the divine.
The church was about three quarters full, and filling. Corcoran slid into a side pew near the back of the church. He crossed himself and surveyed the congregation. It was what you would expect on Park Avenue: more mink, cashmere and silk scarves than at an opening of the Metropolitan Opera, but also a sprinkling of florid-faced men in windbreakers who looked like cops from the neighboring precinct house, as well as Hispanic women who may have been domestics in the wealthy town houses in the area. This was a Catholic church. No one questioned whether they "belonged." Social class may have a lot to do with why Protestants are Baptists or Episcopalians, but the Kennedys and the Buckleys have to stand in line with their scullery maids to receive Communion.
Corcoran was caught by the irony of his two worlds. Less than an hour ago he had been in a room filled with masters of the universe congratulating themselves for their rise to the top, where sophistication was measured by a condescension toward traditional morality and the ability to discern quality in consumer goods — a setting charged with alcohol and sexual excitement. There were wealthy people in the pews with him at St. Ignatius, but they seemed transformed, even if just for the night, by an understanding that the most meaningful elements of life were rooted in the spirit. You could see it in their faces, quiet and at peace, experiencing what Winston Churchill called the "broad sunlit uplands of life."
Corcoran experienced what the ancient Greeks called metanoia, a flash insight. He intuited that the good and decent things he saw around him, the ceremony of innocence, were a consequence of what happened in Bethlehem 2000 years ago; that this is what is meant when people say "Jesus saves," at least a part of it. Jesus gave us a way, a truth and a life separate from the pursuit of earthly pleasures that gave meaning to the world he had left to attend Mass.
Corcoran knew himself. He was not going to renounce that world. Not yet. He liked its works and pomps too much for that. He might even stop at one of his favorite saloons on his way home from Mass, the one with the bar maid who looked like Rita Hayworth. (Well, sort of, at closing time.) But he understood as well that, if only for the time-being, he had chosen the better part. Adeste Fidelis.
