This past Sunday and the following Monday and Tuesday evenings, I’ve been up at my church taking part in a ‘mission’. I’ve heard about these before, but never went simply because over the past few years, I have been disillusioned with the Catholic church. The sexual abuse, the ‘holier than thou’ bishop who threw so many people under the bus to save his own hide, and there being no change, no upgrades to keep the kids of today interested. Let me qualify that by saying I don’t think we need to cater to todays’ youth, but I think we need to get past the ‘don’t bend, don’t break’ view the church has, which is slowly changing with Pope Francis. I get it. For hundreds of years, the church was corrupt in some cases, but always remained steadfast in their ritual and hierarchy. Priests were put on pedestals, Bishops were considered royalty, and anything above that was a step away from learning how to walk on water.
For the past few months, I’ve been taking my folks to church on Sunday morning. At first it was so Mom could actually enjoy mass. She is big on tradition, prays her rosary, and reads the same prayers out of the same book daily. Having to help my Dad was not conducive to her rituals. I decided that although I was dealing with my own struggles at mass, it was the least I could do to offer Dad a shoulder to sleep, or help him get back to the bathroom. After all, it was more for Mom’s peace of mind anyway. As the months went on and Dad’s health deteriorated to the point we had to have him use a wheelchair, my views of our church started changing. I listened to the sermon more intently, and although I’ll admit I didn’t necessarily pay my best attention during the ritual parts of the mass, I did spend a lot of time thinking about what the priest was preaching and building my relationship with God. I still don’t do it necessarily in the Catholic sense – I don’t sing the hymns and I don’t repeat the ritual out loud, but I do so in the silence of my heart.
This past Sunday there was a priest who was putting on this mission I mentioned earlier. I wish I had known this guy a few years back, I think my views on church and mass would have changed significantly. He was that good! Relevant and real. That’s what he was.
Tonight’s mission discussed the stations of the cross. For those non-Catholics, it’s simply a set of statues hung on the wall of any Catholic church that tells the story from when Jesus was sentenced, to when he was pulled off the cross. As a kid, it was scary. It was also boring reading the same content the prayers every Friday during lent. The only good part about it was that we had shortened classes those days. Stations was solemn, and focused on Jesus’ pain. The priest who gave tonight’s mission explained it all in a very different way. A way that he showed Jesus teaching each of us a lesson. Don’t judge – leave that to God. Don’t complain – no one likes a complainer, and most people just complain to get attention. What do we really have to complain about? Never ever give up, referencing Jim Valvano’s epic speech given at the ESPY’s when he was full of cancer and near death. Find God in your suffering and pain. He mentioned how women are the only people who can truly do this. They can take on immense pain in childbirth, then suddenly feel overwhelming joy when they hear that baby cry for the first time. All God wants for us is to walk with Him.
I thought of my walks with my Dad. We had moments of judging – I know I did. Dad, not so much. We both had moments of complaining, but again, Dad was angry with his Parkinson’s, so maybe it wasn’t complaining and instead just pointing out a horrible fact? Never give up, or as Dad would say, he had to keep walking. When it got too hard, we found a way to keep it moving. He never gave up. And finally, I somehow found the joy in the pain that I felt watching Dad in the last two weeks of his life. I found new music that helped me gather more memories of what Dad meant to me. I saw moments where he was Dad again, even if just for a few seconds. That was the other part of the mission last night, learning how to pray. Not reading out of a book of prayers, but making an environment right for God to come alive. Dad did that for me. In the days before he died, I spent a lot of time in the room with him in silence, talking to God and trying to listen to him. I asked for him to take Dad’s pain and let him start his new life in Heaven. I learned to be more observant, which I found some solace in seeing a cardinal land outside the window in the middle of winter. That just doesn’t happen, and I believe the tale that cardinals are the souls of loved ones who come to us when we need them. Seeing that cardinal the day Dad died was, in my belief, Dad letting us know all was well.
I do look forward to the final night of the mission tomorrow, and to be honest, I’d be okay if they skipped the mass and just let the man talk for an hour. But as the priest pointed out, the greatest gift God has given to us in the eucharist. The sharing of Jesus’ body and blood. Am I a better Catholic for this? The jury is still out. Am I a better Christian and a better person? You betcha. It’s time to be cognizant of this. It’s time to recognize the gifts we receive and the gifts we can give to others.
Maybe a little more preachy than normal, and yes, I fit Dad into the discussion, but I hope if you read this far, I hope you got something out of it.
I wish you enough…
Random Thoughts of an Ordinary Average Guy 