Hold On, Keep Going, Trust and be Trustworthy.
At the Sacred Heart Catholic Church last week, at the Saturday evening service, the priest said a few things that I have been thinking about. I sometimes attend the five o’clock mass with my friend Teresa, but she is in Italy going to church with, well, who knows? The new pope, maybe? A baroness? (Teresa can smile her way into just about any place), so I was there alone this time.
Not exactly alone. There were about eight of us.
The regular priest is a missionary from South Korea. He is away for back surgery. The fill-in priest was from Juneau. He had a strong Indian accent and an even joyfully stronger way of delivering his homily, clearly aware that it was a challenge for some of us to understand every word of it.
He smiled a lot and repeated his three main points at regular intervals. With hand signals. “1.Hold On, 2. Keep Going, 3. Trust in God.”
The Trust in God part is the hardest. Especially if you are doubting God is paying much attention lately to the big picture, not to mention your brother-in-law’s new medication complications.
Trust in God, the priest said, and then explained why.
Call it coincidence if you want to, but I’ll choose providence: this time I clearly heard him say that when our prayers—pleas for help, peace, a cure — aren’t answered the way we hope, that makes us more compassionate and more empathetic towards all the people we know and don’t know whose prayers are dashed daily.
I’m not a priest, so I can’t really explain why that matters intellectually , but my heart knows it’s connected to love and kindness, and not being a jerk on Facebook. No matter how you phrase the lesson, teaching our children ( and ourselves)– one or eight at a time– to better care for each other and this world we share, dearly, kindly and a lot more bravely, can save it.
Hold on. Keeping going. Trust and be trustworthy.
