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Father in Citrus in more ways than one

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 4, 2007

ST. LEO - The bell rings out into the gray from the tower of Church of the Holy Cross. It is just before 7 a.m. The black-robed brothers make their way into the choir, the seats at the rear behind the altar, under the great stone crucifix where hangs an emaciated Christ.

There are 22 of them. A few are young men, but the rest are middle aged or elderly, one of the frail ones gliding in on an electric scooter. They sit on opposite sides of the altar, facing each other, because they believe they see God in one another's face.

They sit in silence in the dimness, the stained glass windows faintly lighted high above. At the stroke of 7, one of the monks stands and says, "O Lord, open my lips."

"And our mouths shall proclaim your praise," respond the others, reading from binders that contain the Daily Office, the prayers that the Order of St. Benedict recites at least four times each day. Their voices are low as they sing and chant and read, the echoes of the ancient tones receding into the dark, empty Romanesque sanctuary.

"Ora et labora," the Rev. James Hoge said later. Pray and work. It is the motto of the Benedictines, a rule followed for 15 centuries.

Hoge, or Father James, as he is addressed in the abbey, was scheduled to spend last week in Polk County, where he grew up, filling in for the Rev. Peter Mitchell at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Bartow. Hoge knows the county well. It was there that he and his family picked citrus and strawberries and were taunted for their Catholic faith; there that he developed a passion for baseball and found his lifelong vocation.

Built up six parishes

Now, at 90, Hoge has fulfilled the dictum to pray and work as few have. Living for years with a potentially lethal heart condition, he has been a teacher, a fundraiser, a pastor. He is known as the Catholic father of Citrus County, because in a 30-year span he established all six of the county's parishes and what is now known as Pope John Paul II Catholic School.

Although formally retired for more than a decade, he has continued to help in area parishes. In 2005, he returned to the abbey after 40 years of living away, because "I saw they needed help."

"I think he's invaluable as a resource. I can't put a price on it," said the Rev. David Steinwachs, the prior, or second-in-command, at St. Leo. "He knows monasticism. He's a lesson to me in humility. He can come to the monastery and not necessarily like everything but accept it."

Hoge's parish work was done mostly in solitude, living in rectories, which he says he didn't mind, but he was glad to return to the communal life of the monastery. It suited him from the beginning, he said, because he came from a large family.

"There's something comforting about praying in unison. I feel like my prayers are being answered more than if I'm praying alone. ... When I'm praying in a group, I feel like there's somebody the Lord will listen to, if not me," he said.

Hard for Catholics

Slight and balding, Hoge could pass for a man 20 years younger. He wears an imperturbable manner as if it were part of his habit - the long black outer robe worn by the monks - and shares stories with an amused expression. His first meal at the abbey had to be eaten in a hurry, he said, and he burned his mouth so badly he couldn't taste anything for a week. He chuckles.

By nature, he had virtues that would be crucial for his calling as a monk. He was an obedient child who had a good influence on other children in the neighborhood, said his older sister, Eva Donnan of Lakeland.

"He was a real good boy. And he was a good student. We were always very proud of him," said Donnan, 96.

Hoge and a twin sister were in the middle of nine children, two sons and seven daughters. His father was a lapsed Presbyterian, but his mother was a devout Catholic and saw to it that the family attended Mass weekly and made confession every other week.

In 1923, when Hoge was 6, his father bought a citrus grove in the Griffin area north of Lakeland and moved his family from West Virginia. Business soured soon after when the Depression hit, but the family survived, thanks to its strawberry patch and its generous garden.

"At least you ate if you had a farm. Drifters would come by, and my father would employ them for a little while, just to give them a place to stay," he said.

The Hoges were a Catholic island in a sea of Protestants, and under the prejudice of the day, some didn't have much use for them. Hoge was singled out by teachers and classmates because he was training to be an altar boy.

"I had a lot of fights," he said.

Finding his calling

Hoge wanted to go to college, but he graduated from Lakeland High School in 1934, the depths of the Depression.

"My family couldn't afford to send me to college. I'd been thinking of the Catholic priesthood in high school," he said.

He needed a sponsor, and on Labor Day in 1935 - the day the great hurricane struck the Keys - his mother and a sister drove him up to St. Leo. The skies were forbidding; the four-story white stone abbey looked like a prison to the 18-year-old Hoge and he wanted to turn around and return to Lakeland, but the car had already gone.

That evening, he was put on a train for Alabama to attend a minor seminary - a Catholic junior college for prospective priests. He would go on to earn a degree from St. Benedict (now Benedictine) College in Kansas and was ordained a priest in 1943.

Hoge's prayers had been answered, but now it was a matter of labora - of work. He taught English and science at all-male St. Leo Prep School, coached the rifle team and was adviser to the school yearbook. Teaching didn't thrill him at first, although he grew to enjoy it, he said.

He tried fundraising for Saint Leo University, which adjoins the abbey, a job he disliked. So he jumped at the chance to become a parish priest and found it was a relief.

"I began to enjoy life again. The greatest reward was accomplishing what you set out to do, doing the work of the Lord," he said.

Hoge threw himself into his parishes, establishing a new one and then moving on to another, raising funds and building sanctuaries and parish halls. But his health was steadily declining. From childhood, he suffered from a chronic condition, an irregular heartbeat that would leave him weak and exhausted. On Labor Day 1961, Hoge had a heart attack as he was celebrating Mass and collapsed.

"When I woke up, they were giving me the last rites. I simply caved in. ... In the ambulance, I said a prayer, 'Lord, if there's anything left of the rest of my life, I dedicate it to you.' I guess I became more spiritual. I felt I wasn't long for the world," he said.

But Hoge resumed praying and working, living with uncertainty for 20 years, until a pacemaker finally relieved the condition. It was, he said, like getting a new life.

"People ask the secret to my longevity. I have to say it's my pacemaker," he joked.

Baseball and golf

On a typical day, he rises at 6 a.m. and eats breakfast before morning prayers. Afterward, he makes his way to a common room, where he reads the paper and does crossword puzzles. Then he is off to his small office, full of papers and memorabilia.

Hoge is an amateur historian who readily holds forth theories of Spanish incursions into what is now Polk County. He's especially interested in the trains of early Florida, and toy trains sit on various shelves.

Officially, he has been assigned to handle donations to the abbey, but other duties come his way. He has a cell phone clipped to the black leather belt he wears around his habit, and it goes off periodically. It is someone wanting him to fill in for a vacationing priest; or it is the public relations office at Saint Leo University; or it is someone wanting to discuss a donation. On this particular day, Hoge is the celebrant at noon Mass.

During the afternoon, Hoge is able to relax. A vow of poverty doesn't necessarily mean a life without enjoyment, and Hoge has been a lifelong baseball fan. He relishes the tale of how, in the spring of 1936 while on break from school, he went to a Detroit Tigers spring training game and collected the signatures of five future Hall of Famers, including Hank Greenberg and Mickey Cochrane. He still makes an annual trek to see the Tigers' spring training games in Lakeland, cadging tickets through an old friend.

Hoge also has been an avid golfer since high school and remembers playing the old Carpenters' Home course in Lakeland, where the retired carpenters would sit around watching people play.

At one time, he scored in the low 80s, but now when he plays the golf course across the highway from the monastery, he shoots in the high 90s.

Near the golf course is a grotto with two small shrines, and leaving his habit behind, he walks over in a polo shirt and slacks. It is, he said, a good place to meditate.

Need for prayer strong

"If we've learned anything after 9/11, it's that the world is not expanding, it's shrinking," he reflected. "Our options are becoming less and less as long as terrorism exists. We're not as free as we used to be. We can't go just anywhere.

"There's a need for prayer in a society like that. We need a higher power we can turn to from the enveloping darkness."

Dusk is settling fast over the low hills as the monks gather for vespers at 5 p.m. They will return after an early dinner for Compline, the last office of the day, at 7 p.m. Hoge will return to his room after that, where he will read for awhile before retiring about 9 p.m. Lately, he says, his recreational reading is a history of the Crusades.

The Church of the Holy Cross is almost dark, and the lights are turned on in the choir. Hoge and his brothers chant the familiar 23rd Psalm, their voices rising and falling in the gloom.

"Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit. ... In the Lord's house shall I dwell forever and ever."

After prayer and work, rest.

[Last modified January 4, 2007, 01:38:48]