In Excelsis Deo
Gloria was the sacristan at the parish where I was first assigned as a priest eight years ago. Five-foot-two (in a shoe with heels) and a convert to Catholicism, she was a spitfire. What she thought, she said aloud … sometimes with gentle tact. And I will never forget her words to me the first time I preached this Gospel, focusing on the need for priests and the vocational call: “Father, this isn’t about your collar, you know.”
I must have looked at her dumbfounded, for she added: “It’s about us, not just about the need for priests.”
Gloria is right, of course: this Gospel is for us and about us – all of us. It may very well be the detailed roadmap we need to make our way through this life back to our eternal home. Should we take Jesus at his word here, we will find everything we need to become the Church of saints we are called to be.
Notice immediately that Jesus sends his disciples in pairs, not solo. As Americans, that’s hard for us to hear. “We are independent. I can do it myself. I don’t need you.” All mantras that we are taught to say to ourselves from a young age. And yet, Jesus reminds us: we do, in fact, need each other. Finding God and bringing His love to others requires selfless partnership, as do all good things in life -- from marriage to the friendships that sustain us when the road is rocky.
Just the other day here at daily Mass, I met a parishioner who was married for nearly 64 years before her beloved husband passed away. His love for her brought her into the church when she was 20, and their faithful, Christ-centered love for each other produced children and grandchildren whose own lives continue to light the way in a world that can sometimes seem so challenging and lost. Their witness as a faithful family are the very ones Jesus speaks of when He seeks out laborers for the harvest.
Now don’t misunderstand me: we need priests as harvest laborers. God knows we do. We must pray and sacrifice for future Church vocations, and I challenge you (and myself) to recommit ourselves to praying every day for ordained and consecrated religious to come from these very pews. Holy priests, deacons and vowed-sisters come from families willing to embrace the Gospel in their homes and hearts – both the domestic home and the parish home where we worship and gather as a family of disciples. If we don’t encourage our young people to sacrifice and love in this way, the sad reality is that there will be fewer churches, fewer opportunities for expressions of faith, and fewer women and men willing to help us carry our crosses and celebrate our graced milestones.
But again, Gloria’s voice resounds in my head here: “Don’t just focus on the collar and habit, Father. It’s about us being Church.”
Being Church for the world – being laborers for the Harvest Master – involves a Spirit-filled boldness that requires a letting go.
When Jesus tells the 72, “Carry no money bag, sack and sandals, and greet no one along the way,” he is not being impractical and anti-social. That’s certainly no way to increase the harvest. Rather, he’s reminding all of us who are up for the challenge: be single-minded (and single-hearted) on living the Kingdom of God with holy boldness. Let nothing or no one distract you from the task at hand: serving the least; being mercy-bringers; loving with abandon; carrying the cross – our own and that of others.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians hammers this point home to a co
mmunity that was struggling to be Church for each other and the world: We can’t be Church, nor can we call ourselves true disciples, unless we embrace the Cross of Christ. The Church isn’t just about our social programs or great music ministry. It isn’t found in our capital improvement projects or inspiring preachers. It’s not even about our growth as a parish. All of this is important, for sure, but none of it truly matters in the end: except that we are willing as a Church to carry the Cross with and for Jesus Christ.
When we embrace His Cross, we share in His mission of healing, hope and resurrection. When we don’t run from the Cross, hell loses. Satan and his angels fall like lightning from the sky every time we don’t run from the very remedy that makes us whole and holy: the Cross of Christ we share in for others.
The Cross you and I are carrying right now – whatever that is – our Lord is using in this present moment to make us whole and holy. The Cross we carry with grace, even if and when we struggle under its weight, helps others find Him as we make our way Home together. It is the true and lasting way we can offer His peace to each household we enter, wherever that may be.
In every parish, no doubt, there is that one person we all know who has been invited to share in Calvary in a profound way, and that very same person is uniting his pain or her struggle as a gift for the rest of us.
Growing up in a suburban parish on the outskirts of Philly, I came to know an older Italian woman who came to Mass each morning at 6:30, walking the mile there and back in order to spend time in prayer and receive our Lord in the Eucharist. To the unknowing, she looked like every other sweet Grandmom who occupies a pew in the corner of the church, silently running her beads through her fingers as Mass is offered. But to those of us who really too the time to get to know her, she was in constant arthritic agony, lived alone after having lost her husband in the war when he was 23, and suffered the isolation of an immigrant who left her family behind to begin married life in America. Her English was poor; her income meager. And yet, despite all this, she would pour herself out for others, never focusing on her own pains. Toward the end of her life, nearing 90, she would take the trolley to the mall, where she was able to get day-old Auntie Anne’s pretzels for free (so she claimed) in order to treat the girls at a local home for children with special needs and intellectual disabilities.
I would often see her walking to the transit stop carrying a bag of pretzels, off to feed others with her time and her love. It was never really about Auntie Anne’s, after all. Every step caused her pain, and yet she never complained. She would say to anyone who took the time to really see her and engage her: “I tell God to use me each morning, and He does. He always puts me where He needs me, and I trust Him.”
I one time asked Mrs. Mori: “Isn’t it hard sometimes with all that you have been asked to carry in life?” To which she responded, smiling: “Jesus doesn’t think so, and He’s never left me to face it alone.”
And with that statement, I saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky. The dust of hatred and selfishness was shaken from her sandals. The peace of the Kingdom had won in a small little Italian lady who spent her life riding SEPTA carrying bags of stale pretzels.
On the morning Mrs. Mori was buried from her beloved parish church, scattered throughout the pews of daily Mass “regulars” were the disabled girls who she visited each afternoon, as well as some of the employees from the mall’s pretzel shop. Even the conductor of the Route 101 trolley was there to pay his respects to a woman whose life – and Cross she faithfully carried – radiated Christ.
In her own little corner of the world, she labored for the harvest. She build-up the Body of Christ and showed all of us what Church is really all about.
The harvest isn’t just about the priesthood and the collar, as important as that vocation certainly is.
It’s about us. You and me – embracing our Crosses and finding God’s Kingdom right on the spot where we find ourselves.
No doubt, Gloria and Ms. Mori would be happy to know we are willing to continue laboring for our God with holy boldness, thrilled to watch Satan fall from the sky.