Wheat That Springeth Green by J. F. Powers

First published: 1988

Type of plot: Philosophical realism

Time of work: The 1940’s to the 1980’s

Locale: The American Midwest

Principal Characters:

• Father Joe Hackett, a Roman Catholic priest who struggles to find a spiritual life within the confines of the church
• Father William Stock, a money-oriented priest who is pastor of St. Francis and Clare’s, the church that the young Joe Hackett attends
• Father Bill Schmidt, a curate at Joe Hackett’s church who moderates his early radicalism and becomes a hardworking parish priest
• Father Lefty Beeman, a priest who has trouble attending to the business and pastoral affairs of a parish
• Monsignor Toohey, a brusque administrator of the archdiocese who is the boyhood and clerical enemy of Joe Hackett

The Novel

Wheat That Springeth Green traces the spiritual development of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Joe Hackett, from an adolescent display of the outward manifestations of saintliness at the seminary, through a middle period in which he sinks deeper into the ways of the world, to a final and sudden transformation in which he achieves a true and unassuming spirituality.

The novel is divided into three sections. The first section covers the main character’s youth, his time in the seminary, and his early years as a curate in a parish. The early years of Joe Hackett are ordinary, with little to suggest any deep yearning for a religious life. He says that he plans to be either “a businessman or a priest.” He is the only child of parents who own a local coal company, so business is a natural career for him. He also seems to be attracted to the life of a priest, however, since it appeals to his idealism and desire to help the poor. His youthful days end with a similar division in his career choices; he experiences a sexual initiation but then confesses that sin. Joe will not overcome this division between the body and the soul until the end of the novel.

At the seminary, Joe has a yearning for a fuller spiritual life, in contrast to both the majority of students and the faculty. This desire, however, is more a matter of pride than holiness. Joe seems to equate spirituality with wearing a hair shirt; he wears the hair shirt even after the rector has asked him not to. As a result, he becomes isolated and is in conflict with nearly everyone in the seminary. Ironically, when Joe becomes a priest in a parish, he finds that the pastor, Father Van Slagg, spends all of his time in the church pursuing the spiritual life that Joe has desired so fervently. As a result, Joe is forced to deal with the everyday events of the parish; he has no time for prayer or contemplation. He then spends five years at Archdiocesan Charities working as an administrator. He has more time for prayer but little desire to engage in contemplation. He moves further from a spiritual life with each office he holds.

In the next section, Joe is a pastor of his boyhood parish, St. Francis and Clare’s, and he has abandoned all desires for a fuller spiritual life. He drinks and eats too much. He is portrayed as watching baseball on television with a drink in his hand, and he is never seen praying in the church. He is, instead, engaged in parish projects such as building a rectory or searching for the proper bed to purchase for his new assistant priest. When that assistant, Bill Schmidt, takes up his position, he is contrasted with Joe Hackett; Bill has some of the same spiritual pretensions that Joe had in his younger days. When the young curate and his friends discuss problems in the church, Joe takes the conservative position he scorned at the seminary. Bill and his friends make Joe uncomfortable; this helps to prod him out of the passivity and comfort into which he has fallen. There are other assaults on his role as a priest; he gets telephone calls from an unidentified parishioner calling his saintliness into question. This unidentified voice is providential, since it challenges Joe to alter his worldly life and stirs him from his spiritual sloth.

A deeper conflict develops in Joe’s parish when the archbishop of the diocese sends out a high monetary assessment to all parishes. Joe has prided himself on not turning the pulpit into a money-making operation as his former pastor, Father Stock, did. He decides not to appeal to his parishioners but to badger delinquent parishioners to pay their share. The search for the necessary funds exhausts both Joe and Bill, but his conflict is providentially resolved when Father Stock dies and leaves Joe a legacy of ten thousand dollars. Joe uses the legacy to meet the assessment of the archbishop. It also enables him to spare his parishioners. Joe’s determination not to turn the church into an institution that is more concerned with money than the Gospel suggests that Joe still has a desire for a fuller spiritual life. The title of the novel is from a song that describes the emergence of green wheat after it has been buried for many days in the dark earth; Joe Hackett is about to emerge from his spiritual slumber.

A change in Joe comes about in the last section of the book. He takes a vacation and visits a religious house of the Blue Friars, where he refuses both food and liquor, a clear indication that he is changing his life. He spends the rest of his vacation working at a Catholic Worker house for derelicts in Montreal, a pastoral activity that Joe never considered in his role as a parish priest and pastor. In the last episode of the book, there is a surprise party for Joe, and it is revealed that he is leaving the parish to become a Catholic Worker. He is abandoning his life of ease and his obsession with material things. He discovers a true spiritual life as he ends his life of ease and accepts the “cross” that is the lot of those who follow Christ.

The Characters

Joe Hackett is the protagonist of the novel; the point of view is limited omniscient, and everything is filtered through his consciousness. He is a man and a priest with many faults. His early attempts at spirituality come more from pride than love of God. He wears a hair shirt to show his saintliness, but it is merely an outward sign. He is closer to the Pharisees of the New Testament than to Christ. He soon discovers that he has no time to develop his spiritual side; he must spend all of his time attending to the business of the parish. When he becomes a pastor, all spiritual thoughts seem to vanish. His life as a pastor is marked by visits to the liquor store and by watching television with a drink, and his pride has been replaced by an acceptance of worldly things. His one heroic moment is ironically linked to the world; he prevents a robbery at his local liquor store. There is, however, a yearning in Joe for a fuller and truly spiritual life, which he finds at the end of the novel.

Bill Schmidt is Joe’s curate, and he begins as a typical young priest who wishes to overturn all the rules and practices of the church. His rebellion is a mirror image of the earlier stance of Joe, and he helps Joe to see himself more fully. In addition, Bill acts as a goad to challenge Joe’s life of ease. Bill’s friendship with a dropout from the seminary creates conflict between him and Joe, but Bill gradually changes as he sees the irresponsibility of his earlier views, and he begins to work selflessly in the parish. In a sense, he is acting like the true pastor of the church, as the unidentified caller keeps reminding Joe.

Father Felix is a monk who comes to St. Francis and Clare’s every Sunday to say Mass. He loves the life of the monastery. In contrast to Joe, he has little need for material things. He also is not as conservative as Joe is in church matters, as he displays some sympathy for Bill and his friends, especially their anger at the stress the church places on money and business matters. He is used as an ironic foil to Joe, although he is comically represented in the abstruse sermons he delivers, which are filled with allusions to the medieval world and seem to produce unexpected results.

Father Lefty Beeman is another comic character. He is an incompetent priest who has twice been appointed as a pastor and has twice failed. He is interested in the politics of the church, although he always seems to be wrong about new developments and appointments. He is, perhaps, Joe’s closest friend, and he repeatedly joins him for drinks. At the end of the novel, he is given another chance at becoming a pastor as he takes over St. Francis and Clare’s.

Father William Stock is the antagonist in the novel. He spends all of his time raising funds for the church. Every sermon is a demand for money, and he is called “Dollar Bill” by his exasperated parishioners. He changes at the end of his life, however, sending Joe a note admitting his guilt and giving him a legacy to right the wrong.

Monsignor Toohey is an amusing character who manages to enrage everyone in the novel with his irritating style as a diocesan administrator. He is a boyhood enemy of Joe Hackett who continues to plague him in the priesthood.

Critical Context

Wheat That Springeth Green is J. F. Powers’s second novel, and it continues his investigation of the life of the American priest. The earlier collections of short stories, Prince of Darkness and Other Stories (1947) and The Presence of Grace (1956), dealt with the problems of the Catholic priesthood. In stories such as “The Valiant Woman,” Powers suggests that salvation is an outgrowth of daily annoyances and problems. A life of calm and ease is not, to Powers, a Christian life; the worldly priest at the end of “The Prince of Darkness” is given a letter informing him that Christ gives people “not peace but a sword.” For Powers, the enemy is not Satan but the spiritual sloth that a life of ease creates. The fuller portrait of an American priest in Morte d’Urban (1962) is very similar to that in Wheat That Springeth Green. Both characters are captured by the wiles of the world but reverse their course suddenly at the end of the novel. Father Urban becomes the saintly leader of his community of priests, and Joe Hackett joins the Catholic Workers. Powers’s vision is essentially comic both in its representation of the absurdities that come with the priestly life and with his optimistic resolution of the spiritual struggle of those priests. Divine providence is still there to redirect his wayward priests who have lost their way on the path to Christ.

Bibliography

The Atlantic. Review of Wheat That Springeth Green, by J. F. Powers. 262 (January, 1988): 15. A brief, unsigned review of the novel that stresses Powers’s elegant writing and humor.

Clark, Walter H., Jr. “A Richter Scale Can Be Handy.” Commonweal 115 (November 4, 1988): 592-594. Includes a discussion of the theological implications of the novel. Clark sees the spiritual change within Joe, and he credits Bill Schmidt with helping to bring about that change.

Iannone, Carol. “The Second Coming of J. F. Powers.” Commentary 87, no. 1 (1989): 62-64. This essay presents a brief overview of Powers’s work and a fuller discussion of Wheat That Springeth Green. Iannone criticizes what she sees as the sudden and unconvincing ending of the novel.

Long, J. V. “Clerical Character(s): Rereading J. F. Powers.” Commonweal 125 (May 8, 1998): 11-13. This article first presents an overview of the Catholic themes in Powers’s writing and then offers character analyses of Father Urban Roche in Morte D’Urban and Father Joe Hackett in Wheat That Springeth Green. An appreciative assessment of a writer whose “work reminds us that grace is never as remote as the devil would have us believe.”

Moynihan, Julian. “Waiting for God in Inglenook.” The New York Review of Books (December 8, 1988): 51-52. Moynihan stresses the balance of joy and sorrow in the novel, and he points out the effectiveness of the comic scenes.

Sullivan, W. “J. F. Powers and His Priestly Company.” Sewanee Review 98 (Fall, 1990): 712-714. Sullivan’s essay addresses the curiosity that people have about the lives of priests, an attitude that Powers deals with in his novels. The perception that the lives of priests are similar yet dissimilar to the lives of ordinary people is discussed and the character of Joe Hackett is examined in the light of this perception.