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A joke – an elderly couple were visiting the county fair. While wandering around they noticed that helicopter rides were being offered for fifty dollars. The wife turned to the husband and excitedly said, “Let’s go on a helicopter ride!” The old man just shook his head and replied, “Honey, that’s a lot of money. Fifty dollars is fifty dollars.” and they walked off. The next year the same couple was back at the fair and again helicopter rides were being offered for fifty dollars. The woman wanted to go for a ride but again her husband just shook his head and said, “Sorry, fifty dollars is fifty dollars.” The woman sighed and the old couple walked off. The next year, they were again back at the fair and again helicopter rides were being offered. Again the wife asked her husband to go up on a ride but again the man answered “Fifty dollars is fifty dollars.” This time though the pilot was nearby and overheard their conversation. He stopped the couple and said, “Listen, I will make you a deal. I will take you up and give you the best and most thrilling helicopter ride of your lives and if I hear not a single thing from you – no words, no laughing, no exclamations – your ride will be free!” The old man – always quick to get something for nothing – immediately said yes and up the three went in the helicopter! The pilot was true to his word – it was the best and most thrilling helicopter ride! The day was beautiful and you could see for miles! The pilot, to add a little excitement (and try to get some sound out of the two) even steeply banked the helicopter one way and then the other way throughout the ride. The pilot was amazed though because throughout the whole ride he heard not one sound from the elderly couple. Finally, after landing he turned around and realized that the old man was not in the helicopter. “Where is your husband?” he asked the woman. “Oh, he fell out about thirty minutes ago.” Shocked, the pilot asked, “Why didn’t you say something?!”. “Well,” she said, “fifty dollars is fifty dollars!”
Relationships are a mystery are they not? When we step back to think about it though, we quickly realize how so much of our lives – our time, our attention, our energy, our focus – is caught up in relationship! Whether it be the relationship of friendship, of family, of work, of church, of our relationship with God or (as today’s readings highlight) the very ancient and unique relationship of husband and wife. So much of all that we are about and are is caught up in this mystery of relationship. The readings for today cast some light on this deep, abiding and sometimes conflicted mystery.
The first truth shared is that we are made for relationship. God himself says, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” God – who himself is a trinity of relationships – has built within us the need for relationship. And it is a need critical for our own flourishing! We are in essence hardwired for relationship and we only become who we are meant to be through relationship. The vocation of marriage witnesses this in an utterly unique and potentially holy way. Husbands and wives are meant to help one another grow in holiness – which means comfort, support but also challenge when needed. The “two becoming one flesh” is a great mystery that God himself has written into creation that should not be passed over lightly.
The second truth is that this need and drive for relationship has – along with everything else – been wounded and warped by sin. This is a sad reality and how much pain it causes in our world and in every individual life. Angry words, sad, poor and hurtful choices, violence in all sorts of ways even over generations and whole nations wound and leave scars that last a lifetime or more. No form of relationship (including marriage) is immune from these dangers and this hurt.
I speak from my experience and what I witnessed in the lives of my parents. When I was in fourth grade my parents divorced. My father was an alcoholic who tried but was never able to overcome his disease. My senior year of high school he drank himself to death. My mother was faced with a very tough choice on how to raise her boys in the best possible way within a bad situation. They divorced. It hurts when the very real wounds of sin break a relationship. It is almost natural – a “sad natural” – that a hardness of heart sets in when there has been pain.
The third truth – and this is the saving message – is that there is one who has come and who remembers (because he was there) the truth of relationship before the hardness of heart. “Jesus told them, … ‘But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” This one who has come is neither afraid nor scandalized by suffering. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that, in fact, he has been made perfect through suffering. He is neither afraid nor scandalized by suffering and he is willing to walk each one of us back to the truth and the wholeness and the authenticity found in the beginning of God’s creation.
The fourth, and final truth for today – wherever you are in life allow Christ to walk you back to that wholeness and authenticity of relationship we were made for by God before the hardness of heart. If you are in marriage – allow Christ to continually walk you and your spouse back to that wholeness of relationship which existed prior to the hardness of heart. Every day! Every day, allow Christ to walk you back. Every day do the work that is needed! Do not take anything or anyone for granted. If you are in the brokenness of divorce realize, please realize that Christ is not put off, he is not scandalized. He is the one made perfect through suffering. He meets you there in the suffering – he heals what needs to be healed, he strengthens what needs to be strengthened. Allow him to walk you back to the wholeness and authenticity that God wants for you before the hardness of heart. Allow him to walk with you.
Christ remembers, he remembers before the hardness of heart.
Christ, help us to remember.
Christ, walk each one of us back to the life that was before the hardness of heart. Walk each one of us into the fullness of your Father’s Kingdom.
It is helpful to know some of the background to today’s first reading. Eli had two sons but neither were fit by their actions which were sinful to receive the blessing of God. When Eli finally realized that God was calling Samuel this would have been in his awareness and he would have realized that God’s call to the youth Samuel was also a judgment on his two sons. They would not receive the blessing; rather Samuel would. Eli could have tried to thwart what was going on in favor of his two sons but he did not. When he realized what was occurring he instructed the youth (who was not his son) to respond by saying, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”
(In light of the recent news events demonstrating the danger of false stories, I am reposting this article originally written in 2014. We need to be discerning and prudent in all things media-related.)
No analogy is perfect but I would like to offer one in regards to Pope Francis’ latest apostolic exhortation, the context of marriage in our world today and what the Holy Father is calling the Church to through his words.
My father was brought up in a Presbyterian household although how staunch it was is open for debate. A story I once heard was of an exchange which occurred sometime after my father’s conversion when my two great aunts from Mississippi made a visit to my grandfather and grandmother. Noticing a little dust on the family Bible one aunt is said to have remarked, “Maybe if that Bible was not dusty, Jack would never have converted.” A number of years later my own aunt (my father’s sister) would tell these same two great-aunts, “Michael has decided to enter Catholic seminary and we are very proud.” The southern equivalent of drawing a line in the sand!
My mother did not grow up in affluence as my father did. Her childhood was spent in a small town in North Carolina. Nominally, I believe that she was raised Baptist but it seems that church was not a major factor in her younger years. She did once tell me that for a while she worked at a local Methodist retreat center frequented by the young (and then single) Billy Graham. “All the young ladies would swoon over him,” my mom once confided. She never said if she was one of the ones swooning. Right out of high school my mother left Brevard to work in book-keeping for a man who owned a number of hotels scattered around the southeast. Mr. Faw was a good man. He looked like Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and for the fun of it would sometimes dress like the fast food icon just to see people’s reaction. Mrs. Faw was of Eastern European descent and she once gave my mother an eighteenth century lithograph of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. My mother treasured this gift and today it hangs on my wall.
At one point (prior to marrying my father) my mother was sent to a hotel owned by Mr. Faw in Oak Ridge, TN. At that time it was the only hotel in the city and therefore the temporary residence of visiting scientists from all over the world who came to do work and research in the government-run laboratories. My mother met a wide variety of people those years and at one point was approached by the FBI to help keep tabs on a visiting couple that the government thought had Russian connections. For this effort my mother received a signed letter from J. Edgar Hoover thanking her for her service to her country. One scientist my mother met and became a good friend of was a Franciscan nun from the Northeast. She taught at a university and had come to Oak Ridge to do some research. She and my mother remained friends for many years and I do believe that her friendship and that of Mr. and Mrs. Faw were what helped my mother in recognizing the beauty of the Catholic faith which, in turn, enabled her to make the choice to become Catholic.
My father and mother each walked their own journey of life and of faith (like we all do) but through their journeys and their own reflecting on experiences (i.e. use of the illative sense) they both came to belief in God and in the Church. I do not know all the experiences that added up to their each making their choice for faith. I never will and that is probably for the best. There are some things rightly left between the soul and God alone. These are and will remain the missing jigsaw pieces of their own journeys but I must admit that I do take great delight when I hear a story or memory shared that sheds a little more light on the journey each one had. These insights bring me joy and, I believe, are gifts given to help us who remain to continue our own journeys of life and faith.
The Alternate Path 