Several weeks ago, Stephanie and I spent a couple of days in Savannah, GA, staying at the DeSoto Hotel on Liberty Street in the downtown historic district. Through the years, splendid work has been achieved, particularly with the help of SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) in historic preservation, including renovation of the DeSoto. The original hotel was a Victorian structure built in the 1890’s, which I remember visiting with my parents in the early 1960’s. At that time, the Catholic Diocese of Savannah held annual Altar Boys Awards at Camp Villa Marie out on the Isle of Hope, with the “honorees” spending the night at the camp, and my parents staying at the old Victorian version of the DeSoto.
The old DeSoto had a musty smell, as I recall, and was soon to be demolished, as happened all too often, with a newer hotel, named the DeSoto Hilton, which opened in the late 1960’s as a midcentury designed structure. This same hotel building stands today, having undergone a multimillion-dollar restoration in recent years, featuring several of the original chandeliers in the main lobby and several terra cotta pieces from the former Victorian structure.
While visiting Savannah, we went to Tybee Island, formerly called Savannah Beach, to see Stephanie’s aunt’s old beach cottage, and enjoyed some great seafood at the Stingray restaurant on Butler Avenue.
As always is the case, the Savannah trip brought back memories of the three years spent as a student at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary on Grimball Point Road on the Isle of Hope, sharing the same grounds as Camp Villa Marie. Being a faithful altar boy brought with that an invitation to consider a vocation to the priesthood, which my mother saw as an opportunity for her son, that’s me, to join several of my classmates from Sacred Heart Catholic School in Augusta, in making the trek to Savannah to start out freshman year in 1965. My experiences and reminiscences of St. John’s are recorded on several other writings preserved on my blog. Unfortunately, St. John’s closed in 1968, and I had to complete my senior year at Aquinas High in Augusta.
Back then, young Irish priests from All Hallows Seminary in Dublin came to the Savannah diocese to help fill the priest shortage in South Georgia. Today, All Hallows in no more a seminary, and we now rely on your priests from Nigeria and other African countries to help fill the void of priests. The Catholic Church in Africa has become the standard for adhering to Catholic Church teachings and doctrine, serving as a counterbalance to the European and American churches, which have tended to drift away from doctrine.
Through the years, the quest for priestly vocations has shifted from emphasis on boys in their early teens to your men completing college and older aspirants to the priesthood, which tends to work better in overall staying power. In a world filled with distractions and truth often being left to the whims of the beholder, many are adrift in their faith life, seeking gratification in all the wrong places. What is needed is a revival among Catholics and all Christians to a simpler focus away from self and keeping more of a gaze on God. We all want to know our purpose in this life, with prayer and contemplation being a more reliable method to opening our minds and heart to the truth, which starts with serving God and neighbor as our focus. A child-like faith can and will emerge, having an unquestionable trust in God, whose only Son, Jesus, came into this world, suffered, and died on the cross, and then rose from the dead, making salvation possible for all who believe in Him. Those who faithfully follow this path will eventually find life, a more abundant life, and experiencing a peace and joy that defies understanding. A visit to Savannah reminded me of this fact.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengths me.”
Philippians 4:13
-Joe
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