Fr. Bill: a Busy Pastor of Many Colors

By Robert R. Schwarz

Humankind fully alive is God truly glorified .

 St. Irenaeus, 130 A.D. , bishop of Lugdunum,  Gaul

                             

               William J. Zavaski—known as Father Bill or simply "Bill" by many of his fifteen thousand parishioners—is a priest of many colors. His  primary colors are button-down black (for CEO ), sparkling burgundy (for showman ), and of course, Tide-clean white (for pastor ).

               Considering his 25-year tenure at the St. James Catholic church in Arlington Heights, Illinois and for lots of other reasons, his other colors will not soon fade after  he retires this July .  

               Let's  elaborate on  some of that showman color….If you were a newcomer watching the parish  production of " Annie" two years ago, you were probably surprised—or shocked,  if  prudish—when you realized that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt now on stage with wheelchair , monocle, and cigarette holder  was your pastor. The audience, though expecting  another one of those  dozen or more past  cameo appearances of  their beloved 69-year-old pastor ,  howled with delight . The newcomers agreed: Hey, this priest can actually sing and act pretty good !  

     This once-again  show-stopper was another payoff to Bill Zavaski's encounter  in 1969 with his first pastor at St. James.  "I came to him one day saying we ought to do a community play to keep the kids busy, and he supported it ,  " he said in a previous interview.

           

In the role of "Sir" in the l968 Mundelein
Seminary production of " Roar of the
Crowd, Smell of Grease Paint "

   His personality is as winsome offstage:  ebullient and  prone to humor  even during a homily and a staff meeting . But notice the  balding brown  hair turning white and look into the blue eyes (from which two cataracts have been removed) ,  and  you sense that his CEO responsibilities have taken a toll.    " Trying to keep the parish staff happy here is my  biggest challenge ," he says during our upbeat  interview in his parish office. He  enjoys talking and never has to  mull over a question, even those sensitive ones  some pastors might want to evade.

 A Typical Day

      When asked to describe a typical day, Fr. Bill says   "all seasons" are rough.  "It never lets up, and that's why I'm looking forward to retirement. " ( When he returns later this year after doing some studying in Rome, he'll likely be moving into one of the parish-owned houses , several  blocks from his current residential home adjacent to St. James; he lives alone with his  constant companion, Merton, a Tibetan terrier , now relaxing inside his master's  office.

     I asked Fr. Bill if it’s  difficult to be both a likeable priest and an effective CEO . (His parish has two other  priests, five deacons, a paid staff of more than ten,  and scores of volunteers who run 80 ministries . ) "Well, " he muses, " you can't be a micro-manager here.  I trust the      people who work for me. The wonderful thing is that I've kept friendships with many of the families I knew 25 years ago. "

               His associate pastor , Fr. Joji Thanugundla ( he's from India ) described his boss as a "great and dedicated priest and good friend, caring and compassionate. " Always ready with a gentle tease, he added : " We have worked so wonderfully together with only a few arguments, which I  let him win most of the time. "  Fr. Gilbert  Mashurano (he's from Tanzania and came onboard a year ago ) , said  his pastor has been an encouraging mentor with whom he enjoys praying. "He's accessible and you can ask him anything  " he said.  He finds it "powerful " that    eHFr. Bill attends all the diocese meetings and  often  asks  Fr. Joji   and him to come along, "Not all priests do that . "    

                      I throw Fr Bill the cliché about not being able  to keep everyone happy.  " And I haven't,"  he says. "I'm sure there's a lot of people happy that I'm going. "   Why?  "Money," he replies. " There's a number of people who think I talk about money all the time .   ( The current parish debt is about $880,00 , most  of it  from  the new school additions, new parish office, and remodeled parish center ; current  operating budget is a little over $ 4 million . )   I have been asking for money , and the people here have been incredibly generous.   Generosity is one of the outstanding characteristics of this parish. They are not afraid to give up their time or their treasure. "  He tells me to make sure I quote him on this.

His Typical Day

     On a typical day , Fr. Bill is up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. . " I  spend the first 15 minutes just focusing , " he says . Whether preparing or not for a mass, he prays, meditates, and reads from the "Magnificat"  missal.  He usually skips breakfast—"I should have a healthy breakfast , but I don't "—and then , after praying as he walks Merton,  he  heads to the church. " I'm a morning person when it comes to praying. "  He prays the   Rosary while walking, but finds  it too cold in winter to hold it in a bare hand.  After the 7:30 a.m. weekday mass, he'll return to his home for morning prayers with Frs.  Joji and Gilbert , who share the house next to his.   

                  

Bill and Merton on their morning walk 

Back in his office that morning , Fr. Bill heads for his desktop  P.C. and  the usual 70-plus emails waiting to be answered. Every three days  he tries to check in at the Wellness Center next to Northwest Community Hospital, where   her rides an exercise bike, lifts weights , and does some stretching exercised to keep his blood pressure down . ( "It was either that  or start taking another kind of pill. " )

     Then more office work:  emails and preparation for the  routine night meeting , often with the parish council , finance committee,  school board or one of the several liturgy committees.  Before lights out, usually at 9:45, Fr. Bill  will dip into a novel  or other book such as his current read, a Winston Churchill biography ,  The Last Lion ,  or The Vatican Diaries  ( "If you read that book you will understand why Benedict retired " ) . A parish member now and then gives him books.

     Thursday is  his day off. Sometimes he'll spend it at a house  near New Buffalo, Michigan ,  walking or  playing golf or cards with one or more of the  six former high school classmates—now priests— who , along with Fr. Bill , purchased this  home  40 years ago.  "It's my hideaway,"  says the pastor.    

      Our interview now sails  through a litany of words and phrases  which he wrote in a church bulletin article to describe what he thought are  "12  characteristics of a    contemporary disciple" . Some of these 12 beg for  Fr. Bill to expand on,  like what is  "being a loved sinner" ?    His  reply is  quick and again confident:  " I am a loved sinner. "   And  "tremendous  freedom " ?  " That means," he says,  " I don't have to always  worry about whether I'm following  all the rules, asking myself, 'is this the right thing ? '  My basic intent is that I'm going to  follow Christ and to do the best of  my ability and so I'm not hung up on some of these things. " 

     Then we dip into "simplicity of life" and " tension and struggle. "   About the first ,  Fr. Bill opines:  "Looking at materials things is not what gives me satisfaction in my life. It's nice to have them,   but the priority in my life is my  relationship with Christ. "   As for " tension and struggle",  he explains he endures both of these every day  by "dealing with people who have a lot of problems or who don't like what's happening   in a parish program. "  He has more to say:  "Part of my struggle is dealing with people who are very sick   ( he had earlier this  day visited a Eucharistic minister in hospice care). "  He admits that burying  a child or comforting the  parents of one  is really painful for him.  

     Pastor Bill goes to confession once or twice a year. " I see confession as an opportunity  to start  all over again, and you can't be doing that every month. " He explains: " I tell people ' how often do you have to see a doctor ?'   So it all depends on the person. " Does he have a spiritual director?  " Not now. I used to have one [ at the Bellarmine  Jesuit Retreat Center in Barrington ]  but he got sick and died. It's hard to find a spiritual director.  I do read a lot of spiritual books. "  (We shared positive opinions of the five-volume work, In Conversation with God ,  by the noted Spanish priest and member of the Opus Dei prelature , Fr. Francis Fernandez. )

His Formative Years

                                   " I always had a desire to be a priest, " Fr. Bill says . He was an altar boy at age  10,  and in high school he  helped clean his  St. Bartholomew's church in Waukegan. He often thought then  of the changes he'd make if ever he were  pastor of his Lithuanian immigrant church.  ( It was one then of seven national churches  in Waukegan. )  He got his wish when his first pastorate as an ordained priest was his hometown parish,  where he remained  for eleven years.

                

With his office buddy

    His father  was an iron foundry worker who had once lived two blocks from the famous comedian  Jack Benny.   Fr. Bill describes his father as " a very quiet man who never graduated from high school  and was a devout Catholic who supported my mother's active church involvement. "  

                  For  four years Fr. Bill rode the train from Waukegan to attend the  Quigley preparatory seminary  in Chicago . ( He takes a moment during the interview to tell—with relish—of his nightmarish first train ride into Chicago. It was a comedy of errors; first he got off at the wrong stop in a neighborhood completely alien to him;  then , boarding a return  train to the original  seminary station, he wound up stranded and penniless in Mundelein, miles from home , and had to call his parents to pick him up.       

      Fr. Bill's mother died  during his first year at Niles College.   " That was very painful for me." And it was the first time this young seminarian questioned his long-held desire to be a priest.   But that decision was validated soon during  a dinner one night by  an 85-year-old priest  whom Fr. Bill had known since childhood .  " He was very energetic and engaging with people ," says Fr. Bill,  who considered   him a role model . "At this dinner I told him he was my hero ."  The  elderly priest replied with ,  "Your mother was my hero. "   The words went straight to Fr. Bill's heart, and soon he was earnestly  preparing for the priesthood.

                    After Quigley and the two years at Niles College, there were  four years of study at the Mundelein Seminary  ( also known now  as the  University of St. Mary of the Lake).   His first assignment  after  ordination was St. James, where  the young cleric with the Lithuanian name remained  for seven years before moving on to St. Zachary church  in Des Plaines for three years.   

      Now he was  back in his home parish as pastor of St. Bartholomew's and living alone in the rectory,  a 14-room house . "My prayer life was beautiful because I lived like a monk," he recalls now in his office and points to a painting of that rectory on the wall. A burglary of the rectory  led to his first dog, an Airedale he named Higgins. A second burglary of the rectory brought in another  Airedale, Maurice.  When  Fr. Bill  moved to Wauconda in 1990, the two Airedales moved with him and were buried eventually there by a shrine.  

Changes  Since His  Arrival Here in 1969

     While most of the changes in the St. James parish have been welcomed by     Fr. Bill since his return in 1995 after serving  there earlier  from 1969 to 1976,  one change—the growth of 2,000  to the current 4, 000  families—had an unforeseen consequence. In contrasting the attractive and traditional church building seen across the street with the  school gymnasium in the parish center  (where  Masses are  also held ), Fr. Bill sees two churches in his parish . As he puts it, "We have the church crowd and we have the parish center crowd. Some people prefer one  over the other.  We do have a spectrum of everyone, and our parish welcomes  everyone. "

     It's no secret that this pastor considers himself a moderate  progressive. When once asked by an inquiring parishioner if he might become a bishop after his retirement, Fr. Bill quipped,  " Are you kidding;  I'm too progressive. "  The future need for a new church comes  to his mind and, perhaps sensing some irony  he chooses not to express, he says with a dim smile, " that will be very interesting." 

            

Playing the owner of a slave market in the 2011
St. James production of " Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat"

  He is obviously quite pleased with the change in the way people are involved in the church's 80 ministries.   " There's a lot more talent here now. These people love the church, but that's always been the case. "  He is candidly displeased, however, with the "number of families today who don't take their faith life seriously, their lack of desire for a spiritual life.  "  He blames this on  "the culture we live in" and the lack of early  religious formation  that should have been but wasn't  " strict, strong, and solid."  (These three qualities may be the drumbeat of his successor,  Fr. Matthew Foley, currently a U.S. Army chaplain serving in Afghanistan . )

               Other questions and answers:

               What makes you sad?   " When people are hurting from very bad things that have happened to them, and I can't do anything about it. "

               And happy?  " When people around me are happy and all things are going well. No complaints and all my emails get answered. "

               Any lessons learned the hard way?   " The importance of visiting the sick.                   I never liked to go to the hospital after my mother died. I'm far more comfortable with that now. But it's still not easy for me to visit someone who's dying. "

               Milestones in your life ?  " Becoming a pastor and being appointed dean [ an assistant to the bishop ] of Lake Country.  I felt very affirmed by that. But the ultimate milestone was coming back to St. James as pastor. "

               Your biggest challenge ?   " Trying to make Jesus relevant for people. "

               Goals ?  " I'm  going to try to be the most productive pastor emeritus I can be.  I want to work on my spiritual life, because, you know that the older you get, the closer you get to those gates. "   He also says he wants to work on hand-gun legislation.  He raises his voice in anger: " Get rid of handguns ! " 

               What about recreation ?  "  I love English novels,  especially Dickens,  and the mystery writer, James Patterson .  "   He likes stage dramas, symphonies, and has seen the movies " Crimson Tide ,"  "Lincoln ,"  " Argo, " and " Life of Pi " , which he recommends  high school students see.

               When you arrive in heaven and are greeted by Jesus, what would you to hear Him say to you?   " Well done, good and faithful servant . "  

               We closed our interview  with two other  questions :

Is he  aware that he often—and quite naturally— wears a genuinely happy smile whenever he enters the church and strolls by people, no matter how many are there  or how early or late the hour.  "How can you not be happy if you're  connected to the Lord every day," he says.  Then I told him he was the only priest I ever knew who, with  more than a hundred people in the communion line at Mass, takes that extra few seconds to look straight into the eyes of every individual to whom he gives the host—and never settling  for just a mere, quick  glance at a  face or for  no eye contact at all. I asked how he's able Mass after Mass,  year after year  to remain that attentive.  

               " They are the body of Christ, " Fr. Bill says.  "I meet Christ in that person. I'm  giving them Christ and they become the Body of Christ. "

               Said Fr. Gilbert, "He likes being a priest. "

The End

comments welcome 

 rrschwarz7@wowway.com                                                                                                            

©  2013  Robert R. Schwarz