Zec 2:5-9, 14-15A; Jeremiah 31:10, 11-12 AB, 13; LK 9:43B-45
“This could be the beginning of the end.”
When my mother said those words to me, I felt a lot like the apostles in today’s gospel. I wasn’t sure what she meant by her statement and if I were to be completely honest with myself, I was too afraid to ask.
It was no secret that the woman had been fighting an uphill battle. After living with Leukemia for eight years, she was tired and her muscles were weak. She’d been in the hospital three times in as many years, weighed 99 pounds soaking wet and had fallen in the parking lot of her oncologist’s office just that morning forcing me to wrestle her dead weight into my car as though she were little more than a bag of bones.
In spite of all the evidence, I refused to believe she could be dying. I scoffed at her words and dismissed her feelings outright responding with the kind of inappropriate comment one tends to come up with in situations when they don’t know what else to say. “Don’t be silly, Mom. Five hundred things have to happen before the end gets here and you are currently on Number 2.”
However my mother knew what she was talking about. Like the man in Zechariah, she had measured the final steps of her journey and had made peace with what was to come. A week-and-a-half later, she was lying in a hospital bed, drugged, comatose, and being cared for by hospice personnel while I sat nearby riddled with guilt.
Looking back on this moment in my life, I can’t help wondering if the apostles experienced the same kinds of emotions I did during the events leading up to and just after the crucifixion. Did they analyze every conversation in search of clues they might have missed? Did they dissect every scenario in hopes of finding an eleventh hour solution that would turn the situation around? Did they make excuses for their actions or merely fall into a deep despair over the coulda, shoulda, wouldas like I did? And at what point did they absolve themselves for being human so that they could get on with life and the mission at hand?
In reading today’s gospel, I understand that my mother forgave my actions long before I forgave myself. Perhaps there was nothing to forgive. Like Jesus, she knew the path was set and she knew where she was heading. As she paused long enough to prepare me for the reality of life without her, my only sin was being a scared child who didn’t understand…and who wasn’t ready to face it yet.
