The Poor In Spirit

St. Matthew gave us all the Beatitudes on Sunday morning, but the Bishop focused on only one at Mass: the first one. He called it the doorway to all the others, the requirement for the rest. Live the first one, the others become easier to understand and emulate.

It reminded me of my friend, Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine nun who died in 2020 of a brain tumor. She has a reflection on all the Beatitudes, but this one danced around in my head as the Bishop spoke.

I turned to the empty ones,
What does it mean to be poor in spirit? I asked
Is there anything good about being that poor?
 
The poor in spirit replied:
Can God fill anyone who is full?
And how sad if you should suddenly discover
That you are full of illusions
Instead of filled with truth.
 
Being poor in spirit means
Having nothing to call your own
Except your poverty
It is a joyful awareness of your emptiness
It is the soil of opportunity
For God has space to work
In emptiness that is owned.
 
Being poor in spirit means
Knowing that you are so small
And dependent
Needy and powerless
That you live with open hands
And an open heart
Waiting to be blessed.
For only then can you be blessed
If you know
That you need blessing.
 
Being poor in spirit
Means that you have time
You are not oppressed by deadlines
There is always time for waiting
For the one who is poor.
Being poor in this way
Frees you from the prison
Of having to have everything
planned and structured
As though there were no tomorrow.
 
And finally, being poor in spirit
Means being able to say
Without embarrassment
Humbly, and yet with passion:
“I need you.”

This week, may we have the courage to be empty, to be poor, to seek the assistance of others as we journey together.

Amazing Song. Amazing Grace.

The song, Amazing Grace, turned 250 on New Year’s Day.

I know that because I saw it on the news, read it in the paper, and heard it on the radio – all sources of information that, growing up, we took as gospel. Today, many of us listen and watch with suspicious eyes and ears, confident that the announcer has an agenda, a sponsor, and puppet strings he or she cannot even see.

I miss a world without the constant barrage of news. But that is another story.

When I was a child, my mother would have CBS Sunday Morning on in the kitchen. From the time I was nine years old, Charles Kuralt told stories, interviewed guests, and took us places we would never go on our own. After spending nearly a quarter century on the road, Kuralt joined Sunday Morning and had a way to tell a story that drew the viewer into learning something new  – something they never would have bothered with – were it not for his southern gentility and distinct, deep voice. He was convinced that people were generally good, that our country was an idea worthy of the messiness, and that everyone had a story to tell.

On a particular Sunday morning decades ago, I was in the kitchen with my mom and Kuralt was telling the story of Amazing Grace. Not its history, but how it had inspired people through the years. I don’t remember much of it, except that the singing was mesmerizing. We stood transfixed, my mother and I, staring at this tiny television we occasionally had to smack to get to work, listening to the words, the music, the lyrics. I wish I could remember who was singing. It was towards the end of the show and when the music faded, Kuralt came on with his signature, “I’ll see you again…next Sunday morning,”

Today, I enjoy CBS Sunday Morning via YouTube. Jane Pauley replaced Charles Osgood, who replaced Kuralt back in 1994. Mom is gone, so is Charles Kuralt. We do not have a television in the kitchen and we no longer are tied to cable or a schedule. Progress, I suppose.

So a few weeks ago, I saw the YouTube entry about Amazing Grace and quickly clicked it. Jane Pauley introduced a story about Amazing Grace and its big birthday. As reporter Ramy Inocencio told it:

Sung an estimated 10 million times each year, “Amazing Grace” marks its 250th anniversary this New Year’s Day. It was born not of American Black spirituals as some believe, but across the Atlantic, in the tiny English market town of Olney, some 60 miles north of London, with lyrics older than the Declaration of Independence.  

I suppose the song has always held a special place in my heart because of that Sunday morning so long ago. But its simple lyrics are ones that everyone can understand and appreciate. I was lost and now am found, blind and now I see. We can all relate. It can give us all hope.

Just after Charles Kuralt left Sunday Morning back in 1994, country singer Kenny Chesney sang the song at the funeral of my big brother, Jim. Years later, I got to hear the Irish Tenors sing it live. The same with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Josh Groban. Every time I hear it, it takes me back to that Sunday morning in the kitchen, fills my eyes with tears, and warms the depths of my heart, filling an emptiness I forget is there.

Yes, it has been recorded hundreds of times by hundreds of people. But for my money, no recording tops Judy Collins.

This week, find a quiet spot. Click the link below and close your eyes. Let the words written by a slave-trader turned abolitionist and the music added decades later by a Baptist minister, fill the room and warm your heart and soul.

Though many dangers, toils and snares... let the echos of the grace that is all around you each day, carry you away.

Let that grace fill you with hope and lead you home.

Ready?

Let us pray.

Click here.

 

Skipping Nothing

Some theologians tell us that Easter is the most important feast of the Church year. In some ways that is true. However, people, believers and nonbelievers alike, celebrate Christmas far more widely and with far greater joy.

Is this simply because Christmas is about motherhood, the birth of a child, innocence, and love? After all, these are at the heart of human life. Yet most of us would find it hard to identify with rising from the darkness of the tomb. Maybe that is the difference. But perhaps there is more, a lot more. Perhaps we are more deeply in touch with an abstract idea we call the Incarnation than we realize. It could be that something deep inside us knows what “the Word made Flesh” really means.

From the moment God breathed God’s life-giving spirit over the darkness of the void and brought creation to life, God spoke to people. Through giants like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Deborah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, the psalmists, God gave us the words of life.

But, on Christmas day, the living Word of God came into the world. Mary gave birth to the Son of God. In this Jesus, God communicated most eloquently with God’s people. In this Jesus, God held children. God met with skeptics and dined with outcasts. In Jesus, God talked, listened. God wept over the dead Lazarus. God touched the leper. God put mud and spittle on the blind man’s eyes and healed him. Through Jesus, God entered the cycle of human life and unswervingly walked its path to the end.

Perhaps Christmas is so touching because God skipped nothing, not the frantic eruption of birth nor the numbing moment of death. God came to be one of us.

Perhaps the gift-giving of Christmas, the outpouring of love we lavish on one another, echoes the final message this God-Made-Man spoke through human flesh: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Maybe this feast opens the door to some inner cell of our hearts where we imprison the Word that tells us that now we must be the arms of God surrounding the little ones; that we must be God’s voice to speak and God’s ears to listen; that we must weep God’s tears; that we must be God’s healing hands; that we must be Jesus in our times and in our culture. the power of this truth escapes and, at least for a few moments, warms up the coldness of our world.

It is indeed up to the twenty-first-century Christians to give birth to Jesus in their own time, their own culture, their own families. This is the heart of faith and life. And deep within us, we know it.

We feel it and so we celebrate.

Waiting

Amid the chaos, God is there.

When we realize the length of our lists and the clutter in our mind and souls, God is there.

When we miss those who are not here and hold the hands of those who are, God is there.

When we laugh and cry and improve and grow, God is there.

When we feel empty and lonely and wonder if anyone else feels the same, God is there.

When we hurt for our children and our families and care for one another, God is there.

When we look at the world and shake our heads in despair, God is there…

Waiting for us to be people of peace.

On Your Side

One of our priests gave a presentation the other day at an all-employee meeting. I didn’t pay attention to most of it, to be honest. My mind was on the list of things I had to do and the many things I had failed to do. But at some point, I must have paid attention, because I heard him say that, as a priest, he spends a great deal of time telling couples that he is on their side.

“As a shepherd, a guide, a companion… I am on your side. That is why I became a priest.” It struck me that there are some priests and deacons who have forgotten that, some faith formation leaders who have forgotten that, and many, many others who may never have thought of it.

As a parent, it shook me. I wanted to leave that place and run home to my children to let them know that I was on their side. Always.

When I fuss at you for leaving an assignment to to the last minutes.

When I yell because you have a pile of dishes in your room and we are out of forks in the kitchen.

When I tell you to turn off the lights and go to bed.

When I wake you up to go to Church, even though I know you babysat until after midnight.

When I tell you, “no.”

When I ask for your help and it is a rhetorical question.

I am on your side.

When I question whether something you think is the end of the world is actually that big of a deal.

When I look at your social media posts on your phone and ask you to edit or delete them.

When I challenge you, encourage you, comfort you, and conspire with you,

When I ask about grades or missing assignments, or how your day was,

I am on your side.

Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a teenager in this culture, with your access to excess in the palm of your hand, can be overwhelming. Life is hard. Love is messy. And telling you that it will all be okay sounds like a myth when you feel the world closing in around you.

But through it all – in the darkness and the light – I am on your side.

That’s my job. That’s my blessing. That’s my reality. It happened the moment we discovered you were on the way and the center of my life suddenly existed outside myself. It’s a basic change in position, St. Paul would say. A shift in focus. From inside to outside to your side.

Always.

 

Learning to See

This morning in Luke’s Gospel, we hear the story of the man born blind.

There it is, the great and powerful question that Jesus asks us all: “What do you want me to do for you?”

On behalf of all of us, the man replied, “Please, I want to see.”

This reading always makes me chuckle. The man was blind. The people on the side of the streets knew it (they had to tell him what all the fuss along the road was about). My guess is the townspeople knew it. The man certainly knew he was blind. And Jesus likely knew it too.

Still, he asked the question, “What do you want me to do for you?”

I always imagined Peter, who struggled to understand so many things, slapping himself on the forehead at the question and then leaning in to whisper to Jesus, “Dude, he’s blind. You really had to ask?”

But yes, Jesus has to ask – for two reasons, I think.

First, in Jesus’ time, the sick were the way they were because of sin – the sin of the lame or of their parents. That’s how sickness was explained. The person who was sick or those who brought them into the world, must have done something wrong to deserve such animosity from a God that was sometimes very distant.

Jesus restores not just his sight, but his dignity. By addressing the man directly, he raises him up as an equal, treats him with respect, and shows the crowd how we are all to treat the ill.

The other reason is more simple. Then – as now – the question demands an answer.

“What do you want me to do for you?”

Show you how to love? Check.

Show you how to forgive? Check.

Show you how to heal one another? Check.

Show you want it looks like to love hatred to death? Just watch.

The challenge for us is to answer the question Jesus poses so that in our blindness, we might come to see the presence of God in our midst.

Seeing People

A friend of mine died last week. She was a Sister of Mercy for 73 years and, aside from my mother, was probably the most influential woman in my life when it came to ministry. At her funeral, the priest told a story I had heard before but long forgotten.

A family goes to a restaurant for dinner and mom and dad order steak. The child orders a hot dog. “No, no,” Mom says, “Bring him a steak, potatoes, and carrots.”

Ignoring the mom, the waitress asks, “Would you like ketchup and mustard on your hot dog?” The child answers and the waitress departs.

Stunned, the mom and dad stare at the child. “See,” the child says, “She sees me.”

That’s what Sister did for everyone she met. She saw them. Each person was real to her and when you spoke to Sister, you were the only person in the room.

So that is my challenge this week: to see people. Put the phone down, resist the temptation to look at the watch, ignore the email, focus. See people in a way that gives them dignity.

Sister would appreciate that.

Something New

There is a hallway in the chancery where the sun shines in at a certain time of day that is just beautiful.

There is no furniture in this hallway. Just some plants along the windowsills. The walls are white and the hallway is wide.  The sun hits the wall in a way that is welcoming and friendly, and makes me think that it would be a great hallway to do a cartwheel.

With your legs flying over your head and your hands hitting the carpet, you go over and then up again. The ceilings are high enough. The walls are wide enough. The sunlight calls to you: run, and jump, and flip, and twirl.

And as I stand in this hallway, thinking about the cartwheel and how cool it would be, and how good it would feel, only one thing keeps me from breaking out in the short run required to get airborne.

I do not know how to do a cartwheel. Not even close. Never could. Never will. The thought of running, throwing my hands to the ground and tumbling out the second story window keeps me from doing anything.

Another missed opportunity. Another moment of my childhood I will never recover.

I thought about doing a summersault instead, but that would just be silly.

This week, I will try something I didn’t think I could do before.

But I am pretty sure it will not be a cartwheel.

The End Of An Era

I actually yelled out loud when I got a text the other day. The receptionist at the cemetery where my parents are buried called to tell me the marker was in for my mom, who died in December, (which isn’t what made me yell). As I was looking at the picture of my mom’s new marker, I received a text from my little brother announcing the news that Angela Lansbury had joined mom and dad. I called out, “No!!” And eventually started laughing as my coworkers came running, thinking something terrible had happened. 

It had, but not in the way they expected.

Let me explain.

I grew up in a family that loved movies. My parents were the first to get a Betamax and, though it was the size of a small car, the quality of the video tapes was great and we enjoyed watching movies together every Friday night and Sunday afternoon. When the local theater hosted Sunday showings of all of Alfred Hitchcock‘s movies for a semester, we were there. One of my mothers favorite movie stars was Angela Lansbury. She loved the music from Mame and would start playing – and singing, “We Need A Little Christmas” long before Thanksgiving. She could watch, The Shell Seekers again and again. 

I was 26 years old when I moved out of my parents’ house. I stayed an extra year or two because I could not rationalize paying rent for an apartment and I wanted to buy a house. Plus, my parents had requested that I stay while my brother was sick. I think we all knew how that story might end and it I do not think my mother was ready for any more upheaval. So, a year and a half after my brother died, I bought a house and went out on my own. I made a deal with my parents that I would come back every Sunday night to watch Murder, She Wrote. It was a habit that had started several years earlier and, as busy as I was with work and ministry and graduate school, it was a promise I kept until the series ran its course.

My father would have to watch Murder, She Wrote in the other room. I think it’s actually how his den became his den. He would appear in the doorway within the first ten minutes of the show with a grin on his face like he had just eaten the last piece of pie. He had already solved the murder and wanted to announce the results of his brief investigation. My mother would, sometimes playfully sometimes forcefully, yell at him to get out and go back to his cave. He would chuckle to himself as he walked away, sometimes muttering, “I know who did it.“ He was almost always right.

If I could not make it home for a particular episode, mom would tape the show so we could watch it another time. Invariably, she would miss the ending or tape over something someone else wanted to see. In those days, if you missed a show, you missed a show. To this day, I do not know who killed one of the ladies at Loretta’s beauty parlor.

When my wife and I started dating, Maureen invited me to go to a special event at the Kennedy center. The city of Atlanta was hosting a night with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, as a means of enticing meeting planners to choose Atlanta for an event. Maureen was invited and it seemed like a great opportunity for a free date and time to spend together, so I drove from Delaware to Washington for the evening. (The thought of doing that now makes me want to take a nap.) It turned out the evening with Sarah Ferguson included a special guest. The special guest was Angela Lansbury.

The two formidable women sat on stage and talked about family and the struggle of living in the limelight, something about which both knew well. Angela Lansbury‘s husband, Peter Shaw, had recently died so that was a topic of discussion, moving the audience to tears. The great star of stage and screen told stories of finding work in Hollywood, being a woman in a man’s world, the stars with whom she had shared the stage, the influence of her own mother, and the decision to move her family to Ireland so that her two oldest children could get clean from their use of drugs. They moved to the town in Ireland that my great grandfather had left nearly a century before. Another connection.

At the end of the evening, we were invited to a VIP reception. Maureen and I walked in and sat down at a table for three in the corner, leaving one empty chair. We were not quite sure what to expect and the food had not yet been delivered to the reception, an ironic scene considering the attendees were all meeting planners. Shortly after we sat down, Angela Lansbury walked through the door. She was much taller than I thought she’d be. She was unaccompanied and, spotting us in the corner, and for reasons I will never understand, walked directly to the table and sat down with Maureen and me. 

At first, there was silence. I remember Maureen and I looking at each other, wondering what to do. Then I decided to jump in. I took the chance to tell her what she meant to my mother and my family and me. We talked about my father having to watch Murder, She Wrote in the other room, to which she playfully replied, “Well, dear, we tried not to make it too difficult.”

We joked about why anyone would ever hang out with Jessica Fletcher because, as my dad always pointed out, “Everywhere she went, someone died” and she laughed when I questioned why the townsfolk never made her the sheriff. 

We talked about my coming home after leaving to go out on my own. We talked about family. We talked about parents and I got to thank her for creating a connection between a mother and her son. It wasn’t a long conversation and just before one of the hosts came to whisk her away to sign autographs, she took my hand and thanked me for sharing the stories. She signed my program and off she went. It was not as much of a brush with fame as it was an encounter with an old friend. Though we had never met before that moment, she had been a part of my life for years.

Murder, She Wrote, that cute little television show is now available to stream and it seems so quaint given everything else that’s available online. Still, it will always remind me of a simpler time, the love of parents, the meaning of home, and a brief encounter with a great lady. 

Rest in peace Mrs. Fletcher. Give my love to mom and dad. 

Doing More

Their mothers and fathers gave them names. Hugged them. Fed them. Carried them. They sent them off to school, packed their lunches, corrected their homework, and signed their tests. Their brothers and sisters shared their rooms, inspired them, fought with them, borrowed their clothes, and protected them.

They had friends, co-workers, bosses, employees, partners, husbands, and wives. They drove cars, took buses, checked books out of the library, and rented movies.

They lived in Columbine, Ft. Hood, San Bernadino, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Buffalo, Uvalde, and too many other cities to name.

So we cry and wear ribbons, light candles and say prayers. We will remember them and care for those they leave behind. And these are good things. These are appropriate actions.

But will we learn anything?

Will we stop to talk about how this happens? Will we talk about guns? Will we talk about the bullets? Will we talk about the hate, the indifference, mental health, or the banality of it all?

We have to resist the urge to let the talking heads on television reduce it to allegiance to a foreign movement. We have to talk about it, even as we talk about the victims.

It’s not enough to say that love wins.

We have to act as though it really does.

And that requires action, conversation, and maybe even change.

The headlines will list the number of victims. Headlines always do.

But the numbers had names.

And they deserve more than headlines.

Our Lady of Humility, Pray for Us.