Dear Family,
It’s hard to believe that is has been 15 years since “9/11.” Everyone knows what that means. Perhaps a teenager wouldn’t have the same reaction as we do. For them it becomes an event that’s in the past that people talk about, but for us older than 20 something, it is a real memory of our lives.
I’m writing this last Tuesday but I’m sure that by the time you read this there will be much in the news to bring alive the sorrow and sense of terrible tragedy that made 9/11 a seminal event in our lives. But then I think to last Sunday and the canonization of Mother Teresa. That event celebrated a person who we twenty-something-plus also remember very well. Her canonization even made the news reports.
Still, disaster sells more news than accomplish-ment. Watch the presidential race. It seems as though only the missteps matter.
For a brief moment I found myself wondering what it would be like to be dogged 24/7 by reporters looking to cover my every breath. Maybe more to the point, how would that change the way I lived? Then I thought how grateful I was that only the Lord dogs me 24/7. He knows my heart in sun and wind, in heat and cold. That’s what matters.
Somewhere over the years I remember the line, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” The first piece of evidence for the trial ought to be, “Did I let the Lord love me?”
If you need a little prompting, go back and listen to today’s Scriptures again. Psalm 51, our response to the Word, says it so well:
A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
(vs. 12-13)
In other words, ‘Lord, let me be healed so that I can let you love me.’ Today’s readings spend a lot of time on negotiations from the appealing Moses to the rebellious son of the gospel. God relents to the entreaty of Moses and a grateful father embraces a wayward son. In the middle of it we hear St. Paul say to Timothy,
...Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost.
But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost (sinner),
Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example... (1Tim1:15-16)
It gets even better. To steal a thought from Fr. Richard Gabuzda of Creighton U.’s Online Ministry,
“...imagine that we are the object of God’s search, ... we are invited to the embrace the truth that we are the source of God’s joy, the cause of that joy, ... What do we feel and think as we allow ourselves to be in that gaze? The answer to those questions makes all the difference in the world!”
I like his thought about making all the difference. Now when I think of today’s sad anniversary, I also can think about the impact of the saints in our lives. I think of that childhood memory of Daddy saying, “How much do I love you? THIS much!!!!” And arms fly open as far as possible, and I laugh and try to imi-tate him. (Actually, it got better when I watched him and Mom do that with my siblings.)
For years I’ve had a picture of Mother Teresa stuck in the corner of my bathroom mirror. She is gazing off in the distance. The first thing I see in the morning is that image of seeking the good of God that lies beyond the eye’s vision, but not the vision of the heart.
Speaking of reaching out to God’s promise, have you ever prayed for the people who flew the planes into the twin towers? I never have, until now...
In Jesus,
