melissa shook

About Fr. John

On Krissy’s last day of high school, when she stood on the front stoop of our apartment building and said, “No more pictures,” I honestly didn’t know what I would do. Her graduation represented a marathon that I had been running, trying to support her for those eighteen years, and I felt as if I’d fallen flat on my face at the finish line. I was exhausted and depleted. Though I was then teaching full-time, my position was in no way comfortable, much less secure. And I had no other subject matter for my work.

Fortunately, I had a friend who had once been a topless dancer, but had become a joyful Christian. We had nothing in common, but she laughed at all her predicaments, never complained and acted as a conduit to charismatic Christianity and to the healing services of Fr. John Lazanski.

This Franciscan conducted a Mass and then prayed over his parishioners for two hours every Sunday afternoon down on Arch Street at a church that resembled a bus station and catered to hurried workers and a large contingent of homeless folks. Though I was raised as an agnostic, I found the services fascinating. How many people, I wondered, are not touched by anyone during the week. Fr. John walked the aisles sprinkling holy water over clusters of people, listening to, praying for and with, touching individuals.

He allowed me to follow him with my quiet Leica. No one seemed to mind my presence. He used the color photographs and some of the black-and-white images on the bulletin board that advertised the healing services down in the lobby.

Though I amassed quite a collection of prints, they were only shown once, at the Episcopal Divinity School library in Cambridge.