Who We Are

By Brother Gregory

 

        When I was a teenager growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston, I asked my father one day, “When did we come over from Ireland?” I thought that my father would be happy to tell me about the Tobin ancestors’ journey from Ireland. Instead, my father brushed aside my question and said, “Why do you want to know that?” I was very surprised to hear his response. Years later I asked my father again about our Irish ancestry, and he began to tell me about his own father suddenly dying in 1928 when he, my father, was just 17 years old. Dad was the second oldest child, and he had to leave high school, go to work, and begin to support the family—his mother and five other siblings—during the Great Depression. My mother, a registered nurse, died in 1995. Dad, who was in the Navy Seabees during World War II and an auto mechanic by trade, died in 2004. I was the one who took the family photos after we closed the house, and I can remember my mother spending many hours writing on the back of family photos, telling the story of each photo and stating, “No one will know the story behind these photos, so I’m going to write something on the back of each picture.”

 

            The box of pictures came to me, and these photos do tell a story, not only of my mother and father but of others before them. This box of photos put me on a journey to piece together the story of who I am and who helped make me who I am as a person. The photos tell a story of people who came from Italy, Canada, and Ireland. With the help of stories from aunts, uncles, and other family members, these pictures came alive. They helped me understand those others who gave me the DNA to make me. I am the product of a family tree whose branches spread from Ireland, France and western Europe, Sweden, the Iberian peninsula, the Italo-Greek region, and even to northwest Russia. On my father’s side, in 1846 Moses and Mary Tobin landed in America at Castle Garden, New York, before the days of Ellis Island. Moses was 18 and was listed as a butcher; Mary was 20 and a dressmaker. On my mother’s side, her father came here from northern Italy in 1906; he was a tailor, eventually becoming the tailor for the Kennedy family in Hyannis, MA. Her mother came here from St. Malo, Quebec, Canada, in 1903; she worked in a jewelry store in Brockton, Massachusetts.

 

            Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, everybody went to church, no matter what church you attended, and all the churches thrived. I was raised Roman Catholic, went to parochial school until the 10th grade and then attended Newton High. With help from the Sisters of St. Joseph, I learned that I could sing Gregorian chant in a boys’ choir at Sunday High Mass, the Latin Mass before the changes took place after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. In those days when I was growing up, there were nuns in full habit and priests everywhere. My brother Walter went to Boston College, and my aunt was a Sister of St. Joseph of Boston, so I lived in a very Catholic world. Years later someone told me that growing up, I was programmed to be a priest or monk—so here I am today at New Skete, still on a journey. I was imprinted with the Catholic faith by my family, attending Sunday Mass with my parents, taught by nuns in religion class with the Baltimore Catechism, and with an aunt who lived 74 years as a nun. 

 

July 1955... Roy Tobin, Sister Yvonne Bossi, Edna Bossi.  Charlestown, MA

 

        In 1979, I read that there were monks who had joined the Orthodox Church, so I borrowed my sister’s VW, filled up the gas tank for $3.00, and drove on Route 2 from Boston to New Skete. I sat in the Transfiguration Church for about one hour and then drove back to Boston. Little did I know that I would become a monk of New Skete in 1996 after making some retreats in the 1990s. I would say that my faith was forged into my mind, heart, and DNA, and that I still live out my life today from others who helped to build me, teach me, guide me, and put me on a life journey with my faith as the walking stick that keeps me on a life journey to the very end. We are all the product of others, and I was filled with love from Mom, Dad, family members, and so many more. I am so blessed to be still walking on this life journey as a monk of New Skete, with my faith as the walking stick.