On April 15, my 101 year old mother died in a nursing home from end-stage dementia. On April 16, during the 10 PM Mass, Fr. Ron prayed for my deceased Mom; then later in the Mass he called Paul and I forward and he and our parishioners gave us a quick, heart-felt blessing on the anniversary date of our wedding 50 years ago. After Mass, parishioners crowded around us, saying "We don't know what to say - we're so sorry about your mother's death - and, happy anniversary?"
"It's surreal, we know," I responded. We were both numb, in shock, unable to process our simultaneous and overwhelming grief and joy.
Life arrives in gentle breezes and thunderbolts, in gradual ascents of faith and precipitous falls into confusion, doubts, and depression. What stabilizes us and our faith, we've found, is the constant, steady, unassuming support of family (both biological and Church) and friends. During the ordeal of the last week or so, our family has received condolences and congratulations from family and friends, in the mail, on Facebook, at Church, at the wake, at the funeral. Our family and friends are a microcosm of the world: white, black, brown; old and young; married and single; Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and searchers for truth; straight and gay; clergy and lay and religious women. Every loving word, spoken and written; every visit, hug and kiss; every donation of food; has been healing, energizing, steadying our insides and outsides. For every gift is a gift of self and is the gift of God's loving Presence to us, as it is for everyone.
Family and Church family are built around the gift of self, the gift of time, the setting aside of what "I" want so that I can go beyond myself to reach out and give what the other needs, to be "other Christs" who rejoice with those who rejoice and who weep with those who weep. The story of the wedding feast of Cana highlights Jesus' first miracle, the changing of water into wine for a young couple's wedding reception to be a success. The even simpler message there is that Jesus took time out of his busy life to simply Be With this young couple on the most momentous, amazing day of their lives.
Jesus also took time out of his busy schedule to Be With those who grieved over illness, sin, or death:
"Jesus was upset at human pain and suffering. What else do all the healing stories mean? They are half of the Gospel!... Jesus went where the pain was. Wherever he found human pain, there he went, there he touched, and there he healed. (St.) Francis, who only wanted to do one thing - imitate Jesus - did the same. But you cannot do that, or even see it, unless your first question is something other than "What do I want?" "What do I prefer?" or "What pleases me?" In the great scheme of things, it really does not matter what I want. We are not free at all until we are free from ourselves. It is that simple and that hard." (Fr. Richard Rohr.)
In today's world, the ability to travel rapidly, to communicate via Internet, has speeded up our lives and added to our responsibilities. Inventions that were supposed to de-clutter our lives instead have us at the mercy of a complicated bureaucracy and social life. Employers can contact us 24/7, and send us across the state, country, or world to do business. Sports team managers schedule practice times and games on days of rest and so destroy family time. Friends have been "programmed" by mass media to become aggravated if we don't respond to their latest Facebook post or Instagram message. Life is so frenetic that it's a speeding roller coaster, going too fast for us to adequately process our thoughts or our emotions - or our faith! - when momentous events happen.
Where is the time we need to celebrate IN PERSON with others, to listen to others, to mourn with others? To Be With others? Our society gobbles up time for a myriad of less important activities. Is it any wonder that couples often choose to live together rather than celebrate their marriage with a community when it's less time and money-consuming than planning a wedding? That families bury loved ones without taking time for wakes and funerals? That babies go unbaptized and children/teens don't celebrate Reconciliation or First Communion or Confirmation because who has the time for preparation classes? That nursing homes are empty of visitors? Yet if we believe that all human kind is spiritually, organically connected, we're not "built" to do anything important in our lives alone. We're not "built" to let the important markers and passages in our lives go by without noticing or ritualizing them.
When society does not want to give us time, we need to reach out and take it. To carve blocks of it free from the crazy weeks so that we are free to tend to our souls and our community life. To use the gift of time to grow rich in self-understanding and compassion for others. To recognize the gift of days spent ritualizing and celebrating the peak moments of our lives and our families' (Church included) lives.
Every spiritual community celebration is also a way to recognize as individuals and communities that our lives are permanent sermons. My mother was not a perfect woman and not a perfect mother (are any of us?!) But she also was a great example to us of how anyone - she was an amputee - could overcome weaknesses and disabilities to build a fulfilling life. At her funeral, the family spoke of the great life lessons we learned from her: to be strong, to advocate for herself, to have faith, to love, to not complain, to love the gift of the English language (she was an avid reader and English teacher.) We'd privately forgiven the less-than-perfect mother; we'd seen her grow old and sick and suffer like gold tried in the furnace so that by the end of her life she smiled at everyone, at peace with the world. At her funeral, we publicly remembered and praised the mother and woman whose life was a great sermon of endurance, faith, and hope.
The Baptisms of the babies of young single mothers are great sermons to the community on the gift of faith being courageously passed from generation to generation in spite of the difficulties the parents may have endured or are enduring. The marriages of widows and widowers are sermons to the community that life continues and love can triumph over and over, resurrections following deaths. The Confirmations of young adults herald youth as vitally important members of society, Spirit-driven to give their best to re-animate and rebuild this broken earth. All of the young, the old, the not-so-old, need the love, praise, prayers, and support of their community - and need to give their individual witness, their sermon, to strengthen the community.
Every Church community celebration, every sacramental celebration, is a gift to the community of Christ still among us, taking time to Be With us, taking time to heal and re-sanctify his people through their words and actions and sermons of love to one another.
Every Church member taking time to visit others at a wake, funeral, baptism, or wedding, at a hospital, nursing home, or prison, is Christ among us, taking time to Be With his people, to heal, energize, and save his people once again. In this roller coaster of life, we need Christ along for the ride, in the person of one another, in the Great Sacrament of his Presence in the Eucharist, - to steady us, energize us, carry us up into the ascents of faith and down into the falls of darkness and depression. In Christ alone, in Christ's Body, our hope is found, the safety harness to hold us secure and at peace.