Sunday, April 29, 2018

Moms and Saints



May is upon us. Traditionally, May is  a month where the Catholic Church honors Mary. It’s also the month of Mother’s Day (May 13—don’t forget). I'd like to talk about both this morning. 

He was our school’s best athlete in my previous school--our starting tailback in football and point guard in basketball. He was a guy’s guy—tough, gritty, not prone to emotion. The occasion was senior night in basketball, where we introduce players with their parents, and they walk out to half court together. His mother had a stroke a week earlier, and probably shouldn’t have been there but she wasn’t about to be at home when her son was playing his last home game.

When they called out her name, his mother, sitting in the bleachers of the first row, tried to stand, wobbled, and sat down. She couldn't stand up, much less walk to half-court. The boy, without missing a beat, walked over to his mother, helped her to her feet, and stood there with her, arm and arm with her,  beaming proudly.   The tenderness by which he treated his mother was a direct contrast to the way he presented himself to others, and all the students noticed it. There were even some tears welling up in the crowd. 

But it was, after all, his mom. Mothers are special. Just look at any college football game when the TV cameras roam the sidelines. Whenever they do a close-up of a player, it’s not “Hey Dad” or “Hey Coach” from high school, but “Hey Mom” or “Hey Mom, love you”.

All of this helps us understand why Catholics seem to talk about Mary so much. We have songs about her. Prayers. Feast Days. The rosary. Why all this fuss about Mary? We call Mary “first among the saints” for a simple reason: she was Jesus’ mom, and that puts her in a privileged place in our faith, just as Moms are held in a privileged place in our families and in our society. 

And why do Catholics pay so much attention to dead people, even if that dead person was Jesus’ mom? For the same reason that we have pictures of our relatives in our homes and in our offices—so that we can be inspired by their example and can be reminded that we are called to live as they lived. There’s a picture of my grandfather in my office. My wife teases me because it’s much bigger than the picture of her. But there’s a reason he’s so prominently displayed. It wasn’t because he was a professor of orthodontics at the University of TN, or chair of that department for 37 years, or that he won 2 international awards in his field that only one other person in his profession has done. It was because every Friday, for 37 years, he went out to lunch with his graduate students, thus building a personal relationship with them. His picture reminds me of the kind of leader I want to be at St. Michael—not just a head of school, but one that gets to know the students personally—it’s the reason I teach a class and have done so for most of the 29 years I’ve been either president or principal. 

We celebrate the saints, and this month Mary, as first among the saints, because they remind us that a Christian life is not only possible, but it’s been done already. And that ought to inspire us to believe we can live that kind of life, too. 

In 1954 track’s greatest record was broken. It was such a tremendous human achievement that it didn’t just make the sports headlines; it made front page headlines all over the world. It was thought to have been humanly impossible—that if someone pushed himself that hard, his lungs would collapse. (Does anyone know what it was?) Roger Bannister, an English long distance runner, broke the 4 minute mile. It had never been done before, was thought to be impossible, and as a result, no-one ever did it. But that same summer, the world record had been broken 3 more times, and within 3 years, over 16 different runners had broken that barrier. Today the world record is 3 minutes, 43 seconds, a full 17 seconds off that once unthinkable barrier.

What happened? It’s pretty clear: Once folks saw that a 4 minute mile was possible, it empowered others to run that barrier, too.

All that happened to Mary in her life was the result of a simple prayer. When the angel Gabriel announced she was to bear a son who shall become Emmanuel, savior, she said only “Be it done unto me according to your word”. 

Let that simple prayer, and her faithfulness to that prayer, be an inspiration to all of us to live according to his word, his will. What she has done, we can also do. May we have the courage to say yes as she did. Amen.


Bad joke: I'm only friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don't know Y. 

Saturday, April 21, 2018

Pope Francis and Holiness

I called an audible in my sophomore theology class. It wasn’t part of my syllabi, but as we closed out the year, I decided we would read Pope Francis’ latest exhortation, called “Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad!). I thought it would speak to my sophomores. 

It did. 

Francis may not be the systematic theologian that his two predecessors were, but he’s great with the turn of phrase.  We’ve heard him say that “pastors should smell like the sheep that they shepherd,” and that the Church should be a “field hospital,” establishing “proximity to those it is called to heal.” 

In Gaudete et Exsultate, Francis talks about a “middle class of holiness.” By this he means not the great cloud of witnesses that the Church has canonized, but ordinary people, such as “parents who raise their children with immense love,” or “those men and women who work hard to support their families,” or the sick, or “elderly religious who never lose their smile.” He means the holiness of our “next door neighbors, who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence.”

I stopped as we read this passage and asked my students if they knew people they’d consider “holy.” Over the next twenty minutes, they volunteered answers. One girl talked about her grandfather, who was born deaf, but was happy, kind and fun to be around. Another girl talked about her parish priest, who was “always joyful.” A young man mentioned his grandmother, who grew up really poor, but was prayerful and strong. Still another said her mother, who is “the most generous person I know.” A local youth minister was mentioned, who “cares about you and listens really well.” 

It may have been the best 20 minutes of class I’ve had all year. These kids get it. They recognize Christ working through others. 


But then again, I think we all do.