Normally, I'm out there
with you, so I just want to spend a minute looking at you from the front. One of my close friends tells me that we
should see Jesus in everyone we look at, and if we can't see Him, the problem
is with us, not them. So I just wanted
to take a minute where it's so easy to see Him in each one of you.
Today's Gospel speaks of
love. A word we hear a lot. In fact we may hear it or use it frequently
enough that perhaps it doesn't have the impact that it should. I didn't verify this, but one source I read
said that in the first half of John's Gospel, the word love is used twelve
times, but in the second half, beginning with this chapter, it's used 45
times. So maybe just by reading John we could
lose the impact of love that the Gospel writer and Jesus is intending to
convey, but clearly it is important.
Like many times when we
preach, the context of the Gospel is important.
What happens just before the Gospel passage we hear at Mass can be an
important piece to the context of what we hear.
In this case, just before this passage, Jesus identifies his betrayer
Judas, by dipping the morsel and handing it to Judas. I thought a bit about the symbolism of Jesus
dipping the morsel and giving it to Judas, the intimacy of Jesus doing that for
the man about to betray him. And it struck
me that Jesus' perfect love even applies to Judas. And then he instructs to rest of the
disciples to love one another as I have loved you. I'd guess for the disciples, and for us, that
applies to how he even loved Judas, although they may not have recognized it at
the time. And that reminded me of a
story.
This story is true, so
I'd like to say it was a friend of mine, but the truth is, embarrassingly, it's
about me. A few short years ago, I was
driving home from shopping with my wife and children. My daughter was telling us about a girl in
high school that she knew. This girl had
moved to the south junior year and returned just after senior year had
begun. When she returned however, she
was pregnant. Her boyfriend had abandonded
her when he found out she was pregnant, so alone with no help, she moved back
to New Hampshire. I remember not
thinking to fondly of her situation and her in particular. And then it hit me. What was I thinking? Here I was judging this girl, whom I didn't
even know, based on her choices. Worse,
as I thought about it, had she done what many teenagers might consider, I and
her friends may never have known she was pregnant. Instead, faced with a difficult decision and
without any support, she made the correct decision, choosing to have the
baby. One of my bosses once said
"feelings aren't right or wrong, they just are." So I realized I couldn't necessarily help my
reaction, but I certainly could choose not to allow it to influence me about
this girl and her circumstances.
I couldn't stop thinking
about this girl, her predicament, my reaction and how she was probably
perceived by her classmates in high school.
But she had persevered through High School and graduated. When we got home, I followed my daughter to
her room and began to ask more questions about this girl. I learned that she had grown up in an abusive
family somewhere in the South and sent to NH.
When she arrived in NH at the airport, her foster family failed to show
up to pick her up. She ended up living
with another foster family in Derry.
Shortly after aging out of foster care, she was able to stay in the
basement of a friend and his family.
After some time there, the family decided they were moving to Florida,
leaving her just a few weeks to find a place to live for her and her son. She ended up finding an apartment for her and
her child that she shared with a roommate. Neither of them had anything - any furniture,
plates, pots, pans, utensils.
Nothing. Things we take for
granted in our homes, they had none of it.
Around that same time, we
were moving my mother-in-law out of her home and into an assisted living
facility. It dawned on me that we would
have many essentials that she would need.
Working with my daughter, we were able to provide her a great amount of
assistance. We gave her furniture. We gave her plates, pots and pans. We bought her silverware. We also helped guide her in where she might
find some additional assistance. And, we
occasionally watched her son when she went to work so that she could keep her
job.
In the midst of all this,
I looked at this like God had put her in my path because I was able to help her
due to our circumstances. And it made me
reflect again on my initial reaction to hearing the story. I don't tell you this story to make myself
sound great for the help we gave this girl.
Instead, selfishly, I tell this story to remind myself of how I almost
missed God's call to love one another because of my blindness. How many times in my past had I judged people
and their circumstances instead of searching for what I could to help. In our parish just this past weekend, we had
our annual Catholic Charities appeal.
Many of you may have had the same thing, or will have it in the coming
weeks. Each year since this happened,
whenever I hear the annual appeal, I think about how I and many others respond
as we should monetarily. But we may never
really get exposed to what Catholic Charities does. Sure we hear the stories, but we're not
really engaged in the actions they take on behalf of the Church. Ever since this happened, I'm much more aware
of how alert I need to be of those that God puts in my path because I can do
something. I may be able to love them as
Jesus loved his disciples.
We're almost halfway
through the Jubilee Year of Mercy. For
most of it, I've been struggling with the word Mercy and what I'm supposed to
do. I've heard it defined plenty of times,
but only one has stayed with me.
Somewhere, someone equated the work Mercy with Compassion. And they defined compassion as
"immersing yourself in someone else's chaos." As an engineer I really have a tough time
with chaos. So that definition worked
for me. So immersing myself in this girl's life wasn't
easy for me. But it opened my eyes to
what God is asking of me and what Jesus refers to in this Gospel passage. She eventually moved away and I've learned
from my daughter that she met someone and got married.
In the end, maybe God
didn't put her in my path because I could help her. Maybe he put her in my path because she helped
me. I like to end my homilies with
homework each week. Who has God put in
your path that is meant to help you?
Look for that person God has put in front of you to help you get closer
to him and work on following the commandment he left us in today's Gospel -
love one another.
