Living Monstrance

A few years ago, I was volunteering at a Boston hospital as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, and one day I was making visits with the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I came into one room and met a young woman Dana who was suffering very much but was very friendly. I noticed that she walked with a cane, and at that very weakly.

“I’m very weak,” she said courageously. “The disease I have is very rare. I only have a few months to live. But it’s also taken my sight.” Then she said, “I have a bible here – could you read some of it for me?”

Let me tell you, that’s like asking Pavorati if he wants to sing, or LeBron James if he wants to play hoop. “Sure – what would you like to hear?”

“I like John chapter 6.” So I opened the scriptures and read the chapter to her as best I could.

She received the Lord in Holy Communion, and afterwards, before I left, she stopped me and said, “I’m going home in a few days – could you call me and read the Bible once in a while?” Ummm … weell … I don’t normally cross those boundaries, but something about this time … OK. She put her name and number in large letters on a piece of paper.

About a week later or so, I called her up, and began to read the Bible to her. She experienced a great deal of pain and anguish over her disease, which was slowly but painfully taking her life. The Lord Jesus had brought her back to the Church only a few years earlier after a half-broken life, and she had requested that she might be a victim soul for Him. A few months later, she was diagnosed with this painful, rare, terminal illness.

But Dana had great wisdom and spiritual insight, a great and personal love for Jesus, and just listening to her, even in the midst of her periods of discouragement, was inspiring to me. It was just such a privilege to be able to know this suffering saint.

I knew that this young woman was so especially precious to Jesus, and I knew that my visits that day I met her were all about her.

How Jesus loves those who believe in Him! What a privilege it is to share in His love and service to His little ones!

If you give yourself entirely to Jesus, if you follow Him, you will be with Him in His greatest works. “If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” (Jn 12:26)

But you won’t just be an observer, not just a passive fly on the wall. No, He will send you in His name, and your hands, your feet, your face, your voice, your words, all these will be His.

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.” (2 Cor 5:20)

And He will do His greatest works of mercy through you.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk 4:18-19)

Yesterday in the morning I was in the Back Bay of Boston looking for internet access. So, I went off to the library where I usually go to connect. I got up to the door: locked. No life inside. I thought, the hours say it opens at 9am… oh yeah, Columbus Day.

So, I went to the local hotel lobby. They have wireless access there, and they’ve let me use it in the past. “Could I use the wireless internet access.” Sorry, guests only. Has something changed? We’ve just started enforcing the policy. I would have to pay $200 and become a guest to use their internet access.

So, I went off to Starbucks. I bought a coffee and asked, “Is there wireless internet access here?” The young woman checked with another employee, another young woman Eva.

Eva came back to me.

If you have a Starbucks card, you can use the internet for a fee. “Yeah, it’s not a good system,” she said. “It’s totally not free, whatsoever.”

Then another employee chimed in, “But you can get the first two hours for free.” “But, you have to register with the Starbucks card, and that costs money,” she said. Then she looked right at me and said, “Totally not free, whatsoever.”

Then she leaned in a little closer and said, “But you know, there’s a Starbucks in the Borders across the way in the Prudential Mall. Borders just started free wifi throughout their entire store.” The whole store? Yup. “Thank you very much!”

Starbucks lost out on some money, but I did find out about a free internet spot.

That young woman saved the day for me. How did she do it? She freely told the truth. She didn’t pipe the company line, she didn’t keep things harmonious and comfortable, she told the truth. The truth – and me – was more important to her than Starbucks. I appreciate that, and I am very grateful to her.

Remember the parable of the unrighteous mammon? It’s a parable that the Lord told about a rich man who had an employee who was “wasting his goods.” Well, you know what, I bet that the rich man was not very generous with his goods. I bet he was a tightwad with his money. We know he had people in debt to him, and this was against the Hebrew Law. I think that he had “not a good system”, a system that was totally not free, whatsoever, for anyone. I bet it was unrighteous mammon.

How did the employee waste his goods? I bet he gave customers the heads up. I bet he freely told the truth. I bet he didn’t pipe the company line and make things harmonious and comfortable. I bet the truth – and the customer – was more important to him than the rich man’s property.

Pope John Paul II has called our modern global culture a “culture of death.” Pope Benedict has explained that the economic system we have now is essentially unrighteous, unrighteous mammon. And it’s dying.

We’ve all been given a gift of being stewards of unrighteous mammon. So, here’s the question: Is the Lord more important than it all?

Do we join ourselves to the dying culture and go along with it? Do we try to stand outside of it and resist it? In other words, do we serve it? Or, instead, do we enter it and use it to love and make friends with its debtees, “so that when [the unrighteous mammon] fails they may receive you into eternal habitations” (Lk 16:9)? Do we serve the Lord with it?

It’s then that we enter into the Lord’s work of saving people’s days and producing love. And storing up our own inheritance.

“He who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then, you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Lk 16:10-13)

Yesterday was the memorial of St. Therese of Lisieux, who is a saint whose understanding of living the Gospel she called her “Little Way”.

Her Little Way has been so recognized by the Church that she is one of only three female “doctors” – or master teachers – of the Church. But not only that, she developed it without much formal training, and at a very young age, dying at 24 years old.

So what is the Little Way?

Yesterday I picked up the local paper and poked through the section on the Red Sox. There was an article on Theo Epstein, who is one of the main guys in the Red Sox who makes the management decisions. “Theo Epstein confident” was the title. He is one of the youngest of these managers in all of baseball, but he is confident because he has a certain process, a little way, of managing that is new to baseball and considered genius. He relies on objective truth as much as possible, and not emotions and gut feelings. He is a big reason for the Red Sox winning two World Series over the past 5 years.

So, the reporters asked him, how about the trades they made to help the team? Trades are 50-50, he replied. Hit or miss. It’s all about the process. “Really we look back at the process. I like our process.”

Then the reporters asked him about his gut feeling for the team, if it was like the other teams that won World Series. “I try not to have too many gut feelings about the roster, because then if you rely solely on your gut, your gut changes,” he said.

He keeps his eye on the only thing that matters for the General Manager: “All that matters is: How good are we and how are we going to play in October? And I think we’re good; I think we’re really good.” The only important moments are right now and the final test.

In Therese’s Little Way, we recognize that our own opinions and decisions turn out 50-50, some good, some bad. It’s the best we can do. It’s all about the process we are in, about relying on Truth Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (Jn 14:6) We don’t rely on our gut feelings, because those change, and so we are free to abandon ourselves to the only two important moments: now and the hour of death.

Therese’s Little Way is the Lord’s Way. When you are in this Way, you’ll like the Process and love to rely on the Process.

Then, you’ll always be confident.

Happy belated memorial of St. Therese!

If you don’t live in Boston, you may not know that there is a Dunkin Donuts on almost every corner. OK, a little exaggeration, but not by much. At Back Bay station in Boston, yes, inside the station, there are two Dunkin Donuts within 50 feet of each other. Where I live right now, there are three different Dunkin Donuts all within the same block. There is one on its own, there is one in the gas station, and there is one in the supermarket.

Why so many? Why do people want coffee – and Dunkin Donuts – so much?

Well, the other day, I drove up to the Dunkin Donuts in the gas station and went inside to get my usual decaf coffee. I went up to the counter: "Could I have a medium decaf, milk and sugar?" The young woman taking my order asked, "Was that milk and sugar?" Yes.

"Everybody wants milk and sugar."

Remember the promised land? When God saw that the Israelites were severely oppressed and enslaved in Egypt, He came to bring them out of that place and He promised to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey:

“I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Ex 3:7-8)

What does that mean, a land flowing with milk and honey? Well, you can’t have milk without cattle, and you can’t have cattle without a lot of land, and you can’t have property like that unless you have prosperity. And, you can’t have honey without bees, and, well, imagine trying to keep beehives when you’re always fighting wars. So, God was promising the Israelites in their own language a land of peace and prosperity, a true home.

The Lord has sent His Son to come down and deliver us from our own oppressions and bring us to our own true home. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (Jn 14:6)

He is everyone’s milk and sugar.

“Everyone is searching for you.” (Mk 1:37)

Are you overworked, oppressed and feeling enslaved by life? Do you look for your coffee fix, your Dunkies fix, your milk and sugar each day?

He is always in the tabernacle at church, in the Eucharist. He is always waiting to be found: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Mt 11:28)