Don't Worry Baby
He called her “Baby” from the night they first met at a CYO dance in a bland cinderblock parish gymnasium on the outskirts of the city. Back in 1960-something, these Friday night events were all the rage, and boys and girls from all over the county would come seeking possible future romance. When 14-year-old Timmy from St. Hedwig’s asked shy Barbara from St. Elizabeth’s to dance to a Beach Boys’ slow song that evening, she reluctantly agreed. He was a little nerdy-looking, after all. But then, as they awkwardly swayed to the music, he sang into her ear: “Don’t Worry, Baby, everything will turn out all right …”
She was hooked. Five years later, they were married. Raised 5 children. Moved to the northern Wilmington suburbs. “We had a beautiful life,” Barbara said, as she now found herself sitting beside the bed of her beloved husband, who for more than five years was suffering from extreme dementia. He failed to recognize her, and would often get highly agitated when she would gently respond that she was his wife. “No, you’re not. Get the hell out,” Timmy would often yell (or cry) in response.
In time, Barbara learned to soothe him by asking a simple question: “Who do you think that I am?” In some way, it gave her Timmy some power and control in a world that must seem so dark and frightening to him. Some days, in response, he would call her his nurse, or a long-deceased aunt, or a complete stranger. But she was never Barbara from St. E’s, his first-and-only love.
It had to have crushed her, his non-recognition of her … or so I thought.
When I visited the couple to bring Communion on First Fridays, Barbara was very candid: “Oh, it’s hard most days, no doubt about it. But love is hard. And yet, I know in the depths of his soul, my Timmy knows I am here and I love him eternally. Isn’t that right, dear-heart?” she asked, kissing his hand.
I often think of Barbara and Tim whenever I hear Jesus ask his disciples, and Peter specifically: “Who do you say that I am?”
It may very well be the most important question he ever asked of them. It was raw, and it was risky. What if, like Timmy with Barbara, Peter responded that he didn’t really know who Jesus was? What if Peter, like so many others, thought that Jesus was nothing more than a good rabbi or powerful prophet? What if Peter didn’t know that Love – that God – stood before him, offering him everything?
It may be the biggest risk in life: to reveal one’s heart and soul, waiting for a response of trust and love in return. Too often, an open heart gets rejected and spurned, ignored and mocked. And yet Christ, knowing this, asked anyway: “Who do you say that I am?”
Love stands before us, waiting for a response from each of us.
Who is Jesus to you? How would you answer that question?
Peter answered it, guided with the power of the Father at work in his life: “You are the Christ.” Christ -- meaning Savior and Anointed One, the Messiah sent by God. He didn’t always think that way, though. Sometimes, for Simon-Peter, Jesus was only his rabbi; sometimes a miracle-worker and a cause for personal bafflement; occasionally – as at Calvary -- he was one to be denied.
St. Paul, meanwhile, would have started out (as Saul) by calling Jesus an imposter; a phony savior. In time, after his conversion, Jesus was for Paul his Lord and the Son of God. In his letter to Timothy, Christ is the just judge and his rescuer, the entire reason why Paul was willing to run the race and fight the battle.
Both apostles whom we celebrate today came to know Christ as Savior because they were willing to open their hearts to the Most Sacred Heart that poured itself out for them. They were willing to allow their lives to be radically transformed by grace and mercy. They were never afraid after Pentecost to proclaim to the world who Christ is because He first told them who they were: beloved, redeemed, saved, forgiven.
When we know those things – really know them – we begin to know Him, live in Him, and authentically begin to love ourselves and others as He does.
The question always seems to come back, though: “How can I really begin to know and love Jesus as the Christ? How can I have a real relationship with him?”
Each journey to God is unique, of course, but the Lord certainly gives us the keys – the roadmap – to entering that Heart of Love and Mercy that holds itself out to us and asks: Who do you say I am?
First, according to today’s Gospel: listen to and follow the Church. Jesus made it clear: “Peter, you are ‘rock’ and on you, I will build my Church. God knew we need a shepherd willing to guide and protect and lay down his life for the sheep, just as Christ did for us. Peter, the first Pope, and all successive popes are that leader-shepherd for us, and as St. Ambrose once said: “Where Peter is, there is the Church.” Has she made mistakes throughout the centuries? Of course she has. The human side of the divinely-instituted Church hasn’t always gotten it right – as is true of any marriage – but at the end of the day, a true spouse is always ready to lay down his life for his bride.
Many think, of course, that we don’t need a church to reach God. Organized religion is corrupt and nothing but an institution of archaic laws meant to oppress, they say. We who stay with the Bride hear this quite often. And yet, the Bride is also Mother – and what Mother doesn’t do whatever she can to protect her children and keep them safe, loving them and guiding them through the sacraments and precepts she offers to help her children become the fullness of love they are called to be.
If there are rules and sacramental guides that the Church offers with which you struggle right now, perhaps reexamine them through the lens of the Heart held out to us from Calvary, the Heart that says to each of us: “Before you were formed in the womb, I knew you.” Meaning: I have loved you from all eternity. Come and live in my love. I only want to keep you safe on your way back to Me.
And therein lies the second-piece of the relationship equation: receive the mercy. Jesus tells Peter: “What you lose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Accept the forgiveness that Christ offers from the Cross through His Church, through his shepherd. It is only when we receive the mercy that we then become His forgiveness for others. When we allow our sins to be taken (loosed) from us, then we can help untie others from theirs.
Perhaps when all is said and done, we answer Jesus’ question: “Who do you say I am?” by the way we live our own lives, willing to run the race and be poured out like a libation. We become authentic disciples of Love when we allow ourselves to be guided and protected by the Church, the Spouse of Christ built upon Calvary and the rock of Peter’s affirmation and shepherding-leadership. We are love when we stand before that Love, ready to offer mercy and unbind the chains that keep our hearts and the hearts of others bound to fear, hate and whatever other human emotion keeps us from being Christ’s Light.
We say who He is by how we live our lives in love.
I have in these intervening years lost touch with Barbara and her husband since I met them on my parish Communion visits, but I often think of the love I witnessed that day in the care facility where Timmy struggled to remember his wife. Day after day, Barbara stayed right by his side, always gently asking: “Who do you say that I am, dear heart?”
Once – out of the blue on a Tuesday afternoon in late November – he opened his eyes from an afternoon nap and said: “Hi Baby.”
He still knew her, deep down, and that gave Barbara great peace amidst the daily Cross they now carry together. That kind of love never dies.
It’s now she who sits by Timmy’s bedside and sings sweetly and quietly as he sleeps: “Don’t worry, Baby, everything will turn out all right …”