(1 Thes 5:1-6, 9-11; Ps 27: 1,4, 13-14; Lk 4: 31-17)
Today, September 1, 2015, Fr. Damian Dietlein, OSB will leave St. Meinrad Seminary where he has taught students to love the Old Testament for 47 years. He will retire to his home Benedictine Community in North Dakota. Fr. Damian taught me and thousands of others to love the Old Testament by having us read multiple perspectives on a text, summarize each one in 300 words, then put them together for comparison and synthesis. He read every summary and commented in ways that his students both knew he attended to their work and that there was even more to consider. His gentle, nurturing attention to detail brought out the best in his students. He adapted his usual program in a prophets class I took to teach me how to both study scripture and pray from it. The process that mixed lectio divina with scholarship I learned from him is the foundation of how God feeds me each day through scripture. It is the foundation of what I write here.
Today, September 1, 1876, my grandmother was born. She grew up on a shanty-boat on the Kentucky River. After her mother died, she spent her adolescence cooking for her brothers. Once they were married and on their own, she, too, married and raised six children on a small farm near Swallowfield, Kentucky. She had a gift for hospitality. Her simple, yet special cooking was known for many miles. She fed everybody, including any neighbor who might be ill. Extended family members who were weak or distressed came to her house to heal…or die…surrounded by love. Children of extended family who were troublesome came there to learn the discipline of farm work in a loving family.
Today, September 1, 2015, my friend (who prefers to be unnamed) will again take communion to a member of our parish who is dying. She takes our Lord every day to parishioners who are on their way toward God. This parishioner’s final illness is extended. While all wait for the time of passing, my friend’s consistent, tender expression of God’s caring is bringing God very close to each person in that home.
Today, in the readings the Church gives us, St. Paul ends his first letter to the Thessalonians. He reminds them that they are “children of the light and children of the day.” They had no need to be concerned about “times and seasons”—whether Jesus would return soon or not, what that end time might look like. They were to walk in the light of the Truth and Love of Christ’s death and resurrection.
That Christ’s life, death, and resurrection cause us to lead a different life (and lifestyle) is the last part of the kerygma, the Great Story of Salvation. We Christians are different because our understanding of life and of the world is different. Christ arose. He conquered death—the worst of evil. Love triumphed. God triumphed in a way that makes a difference for EVERYONE. We, too, are called to imitate and share in Christ’s suffering—but ALWAYS WITH AN AWARENESS that the important thing is that “God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live together with him.”
I’m pretty sure Fr. Damian got tired of reading 300 word summaries. I know my grandmother was often exhausted by all the cooking and caregiving she did. It can be hard to take time day after day to enter into a person’s dying and a family’s grief. But that work, that effort, is not what is important. What is important is living a life that enables the Lord to come through that work we are doing. And living it “in the light” so others recognize the joy which is at the core of Christianity and the Light of the Gospel which is the cause of the joy.
Some days it is easy to be joyful in my faith. Some days it is hard. Some days I’m tired and worn down. I want to quit—or at least hide for a while. My faith is a burden for me.
But that is about darkness, about the culture of death and hopelessness. When I give in to that, that is a thief in the night for me. It robs me of not only my joy, but also of the picture of life in light of the resurrection that is necessary for me to live in Your Light.
Fr. Damian, my grandmother, and my friend give me paths of light to follow. They are children of the Light. When I see their lives, I have “light” to walk my own path, maybe to be a path of light for others.
Prayer:
Lord, thank you for all the people who have been children of Your Light in my life. In the darkness of much of my history they made a great difference. They call me to goodness, to Truth, to Love—to You. Let me relish now the goodness You send to me in this season of my life through people who are children of Your Light.
Lord, please, today, show me how to walk in the Light. Let there be the joy of knowing and loving You in my heart and on my face. Help me to attend to detail and call out the best in others. Give me gifts of hospitality that I may reach out to embrace whomever You send into my life today. Give me the eyes and hands of mercy to be with each person today as You would be with them.
And Lord, bless all those who have been—and are—a Light of Your Love. Help them to stay alert and sober. To remain Children of the Light. Guard them. Embrace them. Strengthen them. Let them know Your gratitude—and mine. And Lord, especially bless Ella McDonald, my grandmother, for showing me ways to walk in Your Light. Mammy, pray for me. Pray for all our family.
Amen.
