Dear friends in Christ,
“I wonder as I wander out under
the sky…” We’re all familiar with that Christmas carol that
has its origins in the hills of Appalachia. During these days of the
lockdown, I find myself doing a fair amount of wandering during my
daily walks around the neighborhood. And as I wander, I
wonder. Mostly about you.
I wonder how you’re dealing with the
extraordinary situation we find ourselves in. I wonder about
you senior parishioners (I know—I’m in your number!); I wonder
especially about those of you who live alone and have no family
nearby. I’ve been able to connect with many of you by phone,
but in other cases it’s been frustrating to find that the phone
number we have on file is no longer good. And so I do wonder about
you and I pray that you are doing okay, staying safe, and getting
what you need.
I wonder about all of you who are working
from home. For some of you that probably works pretty well; for
others, especially those of you with kids, it may not work all that
well at all. Kids climbing the walls and acting out as kids do
can hardly make for a productive work environment! Even so I hope
that the time you’re spending together as a family is a blessing and
something you’ll remember with gratitude when life goes back to
normal.
And I wonder about you whose work is
essential and who are still heading in to work each day. Some
of you are nurses, doctors, medical techs or hospital support staff;
some of you are in law enforcement or first responders of one sort
or another; some of you are checkers at the supermarket or you staff
our pharmacies or drive buses - and I know that list doesn’t begin
to exhaust the possibilities. Many of you are putting
yourselves in harm’s way each day and I want to acknowledge the
selflessness and the heroism involved in that. Each morning at Mass,
I find myself praying for you in a special way, asking God to keep
you healthy and safe and to give you the physical and emotional
strength you need in order to deal with the situations in which you
find yourselves.
I wonder – and I worry – about all of you who
are out of work either because you’ve been laid off or furloughed.
I can only begin to imagine how scary this is for you. And
then there are those of you who own small businesses – or big
businesses. I wonder how you’re dealing with this awful
moment. In many cases, your employees were like family and
when you have had no choice but to lay them off, it must have been
heart-wrenching for you.
I wonder, too, how those of you who
have lost loved ones during these days are handling your loss. Death
at any time is exceedingly painful to deal with, but when – in some
cases – you have not able to be there when your loved one was dying,
and then, when you were unable to receive the grace-filled
consolation of the Church by celebrating the funeral, the pain must
be unbearable. My heart goes out to you.
And then I wonder about all of you young
people of the parish. Do you miss going to school (hard to imagine,
but possible!). How are your online classes going? How are you
doing not being able to have real time – as opposed to Face time --
with your friends? And how about you graduates who have been
looking forward to all the rituals of graduation – proms,
Baccalaureates, the graduation itself? This has to be really hard to
deal with, so I not only wonder about you, I pray for you.
And I can’t help but wonder about all of you
who were preparing for special sacramental moments: I think of you
engaged couples who have long been planning to celebrate your
wedding during these beautiful spring days. To have your
dreams and plans suddenly evaporate has to be heartbreaking, to say
the least. I think of you parents who have been looking
forward to the baptism of your child; or to celebrating your child’s
First Holy Communion. I think of our wonderful young people who have
been preparing for confirmation. This much I can tell you: when we
do get to celebrate these great moments, it will be a very happy
day!
As a kind of parenthesis, I find myself
wondering about people who seem to be in denial regarding the crisis
we find ourselves in – those who seem reluctant to practice social
distancing and who refuse to wear masks when in public. I
wonder why they would choose to put themselves and others at risk.
And I also wonder about people who think Church leaders made a great
mistake in not allowing us to gather in our churches to celebrate
Mass and the other sacraments. They are convinced that fulfilling a
Church law has greater moral weight than observing the Law of Love
which, at this time, is best lived out by taking every possible step
to ensure the safety of others. I do wonder about their line
of thinking and I pray for them, too.
And then I suppose it’s possible you wonder a
bit about me and what I’m up to these days. Well, as I
indicated at the start, I’m doing a fair amount of wandering each
day. Happily, the uncommonly beautiful Spring weather has made
my daily walks not only worthwhile, but very enjoyable. And as
I wander, I have a lot of time not only to take in the beauties of
creation but to reflect and to pray. A good deal of my prayer
centers on you as I ask God to use these strange days to strengthen
your faith, deepen your love for your family, prompt you to reach
out to the lonely, and to give you the patience you need to deal
with squirrely kids and touchy fellow family members.
In addition to my wandering, I start each
morning with prayer – including the celebration of Mass which,
though ‘private,’ is anything but private since it’s the prayer of
the whole Church and embraces the entire human family. Each morning
at Mass, I pray for the people I talked with on the phone the day
before and I bring to mind the needs of all of you in the parish as
well as the needs of our world which, as you know, are endless.
And then there are the emails and text
messages! To be honest, I receive a lot of them and,
compulsive as I am, I feel obliged to respond to them. And
that takes time. Maybe too much time! Added to doing
those, there are the Zoom meetings with staff members and other
groups and committees. To tell the truth, I had never even
heard of Zoom before the coronavirus crisis, but now it has become a
household word and a near necessity. Believe it or not, I attended a
Zoom funeral the other day for our good friend, Father Peter Ely,
SJ, who died suddenly and unexpectedly on Holy Saturday.
Father Ely was part of our Cathedral family thanks to the turn he
took over many years in preaching at Sunday Masses (and preaching
very well!). Because of the lockdown, the only funeral that
could be celebrated for him at this time was a virtual one and,
although it was far from ideal, it did bring healing and comfort to
his family, his brother Jesuits, and his many friends at a difficult
time.
Part of each day I devote to working on
homilies and writing things like this. One day recently I did
a video for a virtual prayer service for the O’Dea High School
students; another day I did a video for the local
ecumenical/inter-religious observance of the 50th anniversary of
Earth Day. As this thing drags on, I find myself getting less and
less spooked when I look into a camera and I guess that’s a good
thing.
And I’m spending a good deal more time than
ever before in my kitchen (which I have sometimes jokingly described
as ‘virginal!’). Some of you have generously reached out and
spoiled me with wonderfully prepared meals, but for the most part,
I’m learning to do things in the kitchen I never thought I’d do.
And sometimes I even enjoy it!
So there you have it, my friends: my
wonderings and my wanderings, and maybe a few of yours, as well.
It’s been good engaging in this little ‘conversation’ with you but,
of course, it doesn’t hold a candle to being with you in person.
With you, I long for the day when we will again be able to gather in
our beautiful Cathedral to celebrate Mass together and to experience
in ways other than virtual what it means to be a community of faith,
what it means to be the Body of Christ. In the meantime, let’s stand
in quiet wonder at all the ways God gives us to keep connected and
to strengthen the bonds of love that make us the strong community of
faith we are!
Father Michael G. Ryan
|