Always a place for ministry of mirth
People
Every Saturday morning Father John Vildzius sits down at the computer in his study at home in Mount Barker and sends out a group email.
There are about 75 people on the list and the entry for the first Saturday in June this year says simply, ‘Welcome to winter!…it’s so bracing, energising’.
Standard enough, but it’s the next line that captures the attention, a quote from Pope Francis: ‘If one doesn’t have a sense of humour, it’s very difficult to be happy.’
Fr John has been sending out comical cartoons and memes for more than 10 years as part of what he calls ‘The Ministry of Mirth’.
“It’s about promoting the Holy Spirit from another point of view and about seeing what the other (side) would experience,” he says.
There are 11 jokes or anecdotes in his June 7 missive, starting with a comic strip and running through to a series of signs plucked randomly from supermarkets.
There is a picture of a row of pink Domestos bottles with the sign on the shelf below reading ‘Perfect gifts for Mother’s Day’ while another shot features a five shelf Back to School supermarket aisle promo, only instead of lunchboxes or pencils and pens, the shelves are stacked full of bottles of wine.
It is a photo that will make every parent laugh and grimace simultaneously.
The Mothers Day photo likewise will strike a chord although, as with the best of humour, it totters on the edge of the truth and is all the funnier for it.
Raising a smile without offending is a fine art and one Fr John is always conscious of.
Has he ever offended anyone?
“Not that I know of,” he says immediately, adding they’re not intended to make people laugh out loud, rather to bring a smile from inside.
“Bad news is not what we’re all about, there is more, and people connect with that.”
He points to funerals where humour can be present on even the saddest of occasions and a good eulogy can make people smile.
But where does he get his content from?
There is a big grin but he is not telling. Some are sent in to him, and a bishop in another diocese is known to forward the collection to his priests.
His sense of humour comes through his own back story and the ability to differentiate the truly serious from the not so bad.
Fr John was two years old when he arrived in Australia from Lithuania with his parents in 1949.
“Towards the end of the war, they were taken to a displaced persons camp in Germany. People were told they had to go on from there and mum and dad came to Australia. We arrived on May 5 1949.”
The family stayed in Inverbrackie’s Nissen huts initially.
“Dad said it was a very hot summer and very cold winter,” Fr John recalls.
After attending Christian Brothers College he entered the seminary in 1964 and was ordained in 1971. First assigned to the Cathedral, he then held the role of parish priest at Goodwood, St Mary’s and Colonel Light Gardens.
As his meme output indicates, he has long had a flair for catching the mood and is it is little surprise to discover that Fr John had a three-year stint in the Catholic Communications Office from 1988.
“Most of my work was in radio, which included producing the Sunday night talk-back program with Fr Michael Rodger as presenter at 5DN. I took a turn presenting when Fr Michael was away,” he says.
“I also represented the diocese in what was then the Christian Television Association, which included producing Christian spots for our local television stations.”
He initiated the Archbishop of Adelaide media citations which for many years acknowledged the good work of journalists.
Recently retired, he is catching up on non-theological reading with best-selling authors Clive Cussler and Lee Child top of his reading pile.
There is also a much more personal piece of reading to get through.
When his father died, he left behind his diaries with much of their content pertaining to life in Germany.
“It was too painful for my parents to talk about, I’m currently translating them from Lithuanian to English,” says Fr John.
Such a task is hugely demanding, and important, but also a reminder that we should all take time to smile while we can.
