Sometimes the Holy Triduum is as simple and gut-wrenching as the years-long journey from the slow death of being a smelly, overweight drug and alcohol abuser and dealer to the sometimes-painful, gradually dawning resurrection experience of becoming a decent father, loving husband, reporter for the New York Times, valued mentor, and friend.
David Carr, born into a loving Irish Catholic family, believed he was born hard-wired for addiction, and used every drug imaginable: peyote, pot, amphetamines, opium, LSD, valium, mushrooms, cocaine, - as well as every liquor. He used his considerable verbal gifts to manipulate and sweet-talk money from friends and acquaintances to buy his stash, and get high. In his end-stage addiction, he recounts (in an article for the Times entitled "Me and My Girls" and his book on addiction and recovery "Night of the Gun,") that "End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame."
He would talk to his dog: "When am I going to cut this stuff out?"
In his head his dog replied "Apparently never."
"Does God see me right now?"
"God sees everything," he imagined his dog replying.
David had relapse after relapse, girl friend after girl friend. Life began to change when he and his latest drug-dealer girl friend had twins, born very premature - Erin and Meagan. At first, life didn't change much: the house was full of drug paraphernalia, and dirty clothes. He'd call a friend, high, asking the friend to bring them diapers and milk. One night, he took the babies in their snow-suits to a drug house, intending to go in for a few minutes to shoot cocaine. When he came out, it was hours later. He opened the car door and could see his daughters' breath. He felt this was a transgression that God would not soon forget. He knew it was time to give the girls to his parents and later foster care so he could enter detox and re-hab.
During his long period of re-hab, which took place in various centers, he petitioned one of the counselors at Eden House, a six month inpatient drug program, to attend a family wedding. The counselor, seeing he was on the verge of a relapse, said "no," asking him if he planned to go and get his daughters high.
He didn't fight the decision, didn't attend the wedding. Later, as his former girl friend, who had the girls, kept relapsing, he sought custody of both girls, eventually married a new woman in his life, and the New York Times took a chance on him and hired him as media columnist, introducing him to a much-loved workplace where he mentored young reporters.
David's family and friends never gave up on him; neither did his friends in AA. When his twin daughters were infants he brought them to a Church to be baptized, telling the priest that he might be a bad son, employee, and friend, but he didn't want to be a bad father. The priest simply said "Welcome Home."
Once he addressed a group of Bishops on the Church and addiction: "The unconditional love of the Church could possibly mean the difference between somebody living or dying....By demonstrating a willingness to minister to those afflicted with this disease, the Church becomes better."
Our addictions and our sins are our crosses, and we fall under them daily. Yet daily we can also see signs of the coming of new life: the birth of twin girls; friends bringing diapers and milk; counselors saying "no;" parents saying "yes" to taking care of grand-children; a priest saying "Welcome Home;" a loving wife; and the daily, willing crucifying journey of practicing being dead to oneself and one's sins and addictions and being alive to the wondrous new life, the power of daily resurrections that God promises us.
This is what it means to truly be another Christ! Christ in us carries us through death to the power of resurrection, a resurrection that begins here and continues into eternal life.
"For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." (Galatians 3:27.)