Handlebars: Hog Heaven: A Helmeted Priest and a Choir of Harleys May 14, 2006
Outside the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Patterson, N.J., last Sunday, Msgr. Mark Giordani walked vigorously, sprinkling holy water on motorcycles, their owners and bystanders.
THE drops of water, when they landed, were shockingly cool on skin heated by the midday sun.
Some of that skin was leathery from exposure to sun and wind, some of it was tattooed. It was the skin of motorcyclists whose bikes, most of them Harley-Davidsons, lined three blocks. Outside the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist last Sunday, Msgr. Mark Giordani walked vigorously, sprinkling holy water on the motorcycles, their owners and bystanders.
The event was the 37th annual motorcycle Mass and blessing of the bikes, started by the priest in 1969. As he navigated the sea of chrome and leather, Monsignor Giordani, 63, greeted owners, hugged old friends, posed for photos and shifted seamlessly from English to Spanish, an acolyte with a water vessel scrambling to keep up.
If the bikers were angels, they were closer to heaven than to hell. Before the motorcycles were blessed, even the children had sat with relative patience through a full Mass, with prayers and multiple readings of Scripture. A bluesy rendition of “The Lord Is My Shepherd” was played on an electric keyboard.
“I had only been ordained a few months,” Monsignor Giordani said of the first blessing. “It was at Lady of Lourdes, my first parish. I loved bikes.” In 1987, the event moved to the cathedral, where Father Mark, as he is known locally, is pastor.
More and more bikers attend the event each year, veterans of the blessing said. “More and more people feel a great thirst for God,” the monsignor added. The annual event is on the first Sunday of May, a modern-day version of the old church tradition of blessing fishing fleets.
When Monsignor Giordani established the blessing, he was reaching out to a tough town in tough times. It was an era of war, riots ? and the introduction of the rock ‘n’ roll Mass. His field is the sacramental, imbuing physical things with the spiritual. What better warm-up than imbuing metal and rubber with soul?
“I remember when we only had a few bikes, maybe a hundred,” said Vincent Scolaro, one of the original members of the Christian Riders, a club Monsignor Giordani founded (its motto: Spreading faith, dignity and brotherhood through motorcycling). The Christian Riders organize the blessing; their yellow banner decorated a flatbed truck that held a temporary altar.
The imagery of motorcycle club “colors” ? on helmets, vests and jackets, bikes and skin ? constitutes one of America’s great visual vocabularies. Each year adds another layer to this palimpsest of obsessions.
Together, the images are an inventory of the American psyche, its obsessions and aspirations, a Boschian swirl of eagles, skulls, crosses and angel wings. Malevolence and benevolence mingle; militarism and ministry coexist; the sacred meets the profane and the obscene ? like Betty Boop in an off-color cartoon.
About 1,500 bikes arrived this year, said Bobby Bampec, vice president of the Christian Riders. His club is small, with about 15 members.
While some clubs have favorite bars and watering holes, the Christian Riders go their own way. “Where do we hang out?” Mr. Bampec said. “At the rectory.”
Public celebration is a welcome relief in Paterson, a long-troubled city where recent immigrants lead hard lives. Celebrated in verse by the poet William Carlos Williams, this once-grand city was the offspring of America’s first industrial park, founded by Alexander Hamilton at the falls of the Passaic River.
Monsignor Giordani arrived at the mass on his bike, a 2003 Harley Road King Centennial Edition. Airbrush decorations trace shapes halfway between smoke and flame on the gas tank. Jesus rears up triumphantly on the front fender ? an inscription reads, “King of kings, Lord of lords Rev. 19:15″ ? while depictions of a madonna and a crucifixion, complete with lightning bolts in a sinister sky, hover on the rear of the saddlebags above dual exhaust pipes.
He slipped off his helmet, decorated with stylized eagles, and shed a denim vest adorned with pins and patches ? one of which read, “Life is short/Pray hard” ? to don white and gold vestments.
Starlings squabbled in the air and children scurried on the pavement while Monsignor Giordani took up the theme of the good shepherd. “He takes us in his arms, in all our brokenness and suffering and woundedness,” he said.
The shepherd has many flocks and many folds, he said. The names of the clubs suggest some of these flocks: Blue Knights (police), Wanderers, Rusty Nuts, Jesters, Dirty Dogs, Wingmen, Pioneers, Riding Divas, Dangerous Curves.
A “motorcycle prayer” the monsginor wrote and distributed at the blessing invoked the “thrill of the open road and the marvel of the motorcycle.” But there was also a protective side to the blessing, as Father Giordani reminded the gathering that “last night, one of our biker friends was killed, Danny Rivera of the Knights of Fire.”
After the service, some bikers wanted more personal blessings.
A man approached as Monsignor Giordani talked to a reporter, and asked, “Could you bless me?” The man wore a ripped vest and sunglasses. He was thin and wiry with a mustache like a western outlaw and his arms were wreathed in red and blue tattoos like veins and arteries in a diagram of the circulation system.
Without a pause, the priest placed his hand on the man’s head, spoke a few sentences in a lowered voice and returned to his conversation.
Others had their special concerns. “I want him to bless my father,” said Siobhan Fitzgerald Martinez. “I have him right here.”
She clutched a clump of white tissue. Much unfolding revealed a small hollow cross attached to a necklace that held some of her father’s ashes. After every bike had been blessed, the group dispersed. Engines fired up. Sidewalks trembled. One by one, with a great burbling and burping, the bikes roared off.
Monsignor Giordani was one of the last to leave. The streets had almost emptied by the time he removed his vestments, slipped into his denim vest again and sped off alone.
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- Author : arnold
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