Remembering Fr. Julian in 1,000 Words

93 years ago today, a mother was cradling her first-born son in her arms at St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic, NJ.

She had been told her newborn had only days to live or, at best, would spend his life in a wheelchair.

She was a woman of strong Catholic faith, and she offered both their lives to the service of God, if only He would spare her son.

Her name was Rachel Varettoni. She was my grandmother, and I called her “Nonna.” She lived a long, devout life of service – raising and supporting a family of three boys, and instilling in them a profound faith in God’s goodness – and she died 22 years ago on the eve of her 100th birthday.

I called her first-born son “Father Julian.” He fully recovered, albeit (as his beloved nephew Bill reminds me) with one leg shorter than the other, resulting in chronic back pain later in life. As his mother had vowed, Fr. Julian indeed devoted his life to God. He grew, both physically and spiritually, to be the strongest man I ever knew.

That’s us in the photo, after he carted toddler-me around the grounds of his parents’ home in Budd Lake. It was a modest farmhouse on a fair-sized plot of land, purchased during The Depression, where Fr. Julian was its lifelong caretaker. It’s where he suffered a seizure that led to his death last Thursday night on the literal eve of his 93rd birthday.

 

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Fr. Julian with my sister; Budd Lake, circa 1969;
he chopped all the wood in the background.

Most people remember Fr. Julian at the altar. He was pious. His sermons were thoughtful and eloquent. They didn’t come easily to him since he was uncomfortable as a public speaker. Few people realized this because he practiced diligently – and enlisted the aid of my father with some of his words – to give sermons that would make his mother proud.

He accomplished so much as a parish priest in service to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson. You can read about this in his obituary: his devotion to music ministry (which he also inherited from his mother); his progressiveness in the service of those in need; his lifelong joy in building and fixing and refurbishing… most often with his own capable hands.

Fr. Julian at the altar at my parents' wedding in 1955.
Dad waited to propose to Mom until after his brother
was ordained so he could officiate at the Mass.

He was also the priest at every family wedding, and present at every family gathering. Decades ago, before cell phones, he would record family events with a video camera perched on his shoulder. He also chronicled details of vacation trips on a portable tape recorder.

Fr. Julian was an adventurous traveler: once taking my mother up in a hot-air balloon over Colorado, and once taking my sister Sue and me on his parish’s pilgrimage to Rome. He led us up the centuries-old stone steps of an otherwise closed parapet so we could see a breath-taking, God’s-eye view of St. Peter’s Square.

He married my Mom and Dad. He was the priest at every family funeral. He buried his parents and my Dad. Later in life, he said Mass for my wife and children and me around Nonna’s dining room table every Christmas Eve.

But here’s what I remember most about Fr. Julian. I remember him most in Budd Lake, where he returned for decades every Wednesday on his day off and on Sundays after Masses, to take care of his mother and their home.

When they were young, Fr. Julian and his brothers used to sit on the brick steps by the front porch and harmonize in song. The house faced Route 46, which was a country road back then, and the brothers tried to identify each car by the make and model as it passed. Fr. Julian always won this game, because he could identify the make and model of every car by the sound of its engine, before it was even in sight.

Nonna with her three sons on her 99th birthday.

When I was a boy, I watched Fr. Julian effortlessly perform tremendous feats of strength. He was a carpenter, like Jesus. But he was also an electrician and an architect and a plumber and a gardener. He could fix anything. He could build anything. He would always buy whatever he needed at Sears.

In the summer, he shucked freshly picked rhubarb with the same sure and graceful hand movements of a concert violinist. In the fall, he loved the solitude and repetitive grace of roaming his land on his tractor to collect the fallen leaves.

I once visited him in his basement workshop and heard him, alone, giggling like a schoolboy. Fr. Julian had taken apart his car’s carburetor, and he was reassembling its hundreds of intricate pieces… simply for the joy of it.

Fr. Julian enjoyed jigsaw puzzles; here's the one
he was working on before he died.

As the years went on, and some of the property was sold, Nonna’s garden and grapevines shrank in size, and now lay barren after her death. All the bottles of her homemade wine are empty, but the small greenhouse Fr. Julian built for her still stands. So do the remnants of a path that he cleared behind the old garage. He had installed Stations of the Cross in that small patch of woods, where he and his mother could wander and pray.

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Now this extraordinary life has come full circle.

I learned the sad news about Fr. Julian’s death in a phone call from my sister. They were especially close, and my strong sister Sue was in tears. I had taken my Mom to visit with Fr. Julian just days earlier, and it was such a happy, life-affirming visit. Sue was happy to hear this. My wife, when I told her about Fr. Julian’s death, remarked that it was “the best birthday present he could have gotten.”

She said this because Fr. Julian had a profound, unquestioning faith handed down from his mother. My own mother told me that during their recent visit Fr. Julian said he was ready to go “home.” So this is what I believe, without any doubt:

Fr. Julian woke up on his 93rd birthday in Heaven, with Nonna holding him in her arms once again.

Mom, me, and Fr. Julian this past Monday