On Working Hard
After Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph, the next most important character in the Christmas drama is John the
Baptist. He was on stage last Sunday, turning down the volume on the me, me, me
chant in our human lives, and turning up the volume on a new song that sang not
of himself but of Jesus: “ I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” “ He must
increase, and I must decrease.” Now
this third Sunday of Advent John is back on stage again, no longer out on the
road preaching but now sitting in prison and bound up in chain. In a short while he will be decreased by a
whole head, when King Herod will behead him.
But sitting in prison
John has time to think, and he is having second thoughts about Jesus, and he
wants to clear up his doubts. So he
sends a delegation to him, asking whether he is the one whom the people are
expecting or whether they should keep looking for someone else. Jesus sends back this reply: “Tell John, yes
I am the one. Report to him what you
are hearing and seeing: that you are hearing and seeing me give sight to
the blind, hearing to the deaf, health to the lepers, limbs to the lame, and
life to the dead “ (Mt 11: 2-6).
“Seeing and hearing” -- for me that’s always a kind of theme I hear being struck every
now and then, as a bell, in the
Advent-Christmas season.
Scripture has the Shepherds returning to their fields and flocks
praising God for
all that they had heard and seen (Lk
2: 20). They did indeed hear something:
whole choirs of angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest.” They did indeed
see something: an infant wrapped in
swaddling clothes (Lk 2:1- 14).
The Magi too, after presenting gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh return to
their eastern palaces praising God for all that they had seen and heard. They
had indeed seen something: they saw a star, and not only a star but a
Superstar. And what they had seen and heard made such a difference in their
lives, that scripture says, they did not go back to Jerusalem to report to
Herod, but returned home by another route
(Mt 2:12). Another tradition says the Three Kings never returned home at
all, but went off in another direction, and eventually died along the trail
somewhere, and their three skulls ended up miraculously in Cologne, Germany,
where they now rest as prized relics in that city’s very famous cathedral.
Later
on when the Shepherds and the Magi with their Star in the sky are gone, and the
infant is full grown, he strikes that theme one day when he says to his
disciples, “Oh how blessed are you who see what you are seeing. I tell you many prophets and kings want to
see what you are seeing and to hear what you are hearing but they did not” (Lk
10:23-24).
That theme of seeing and hearing always flares up
in me “at this time of the rolling year,” also because it puts me in mind of my
fatal trip to Chicago on New
Year’s Day, 1984, to celebrate with relatives. It’s around noon, and I’m
speeding 20 mph in the season’s worst snowstorm, when my car leaves the road
and lands in a deep ditch but not before hitting a signpost – the only one for
miles. I climb to the top amidst snow
and wind. I wait and wait and wait.
Tons of priests and Levites pass me by on this road from Milwaukee to
Jericho. There isn’t one single
Samaritan among them. I still recall
the anger swelling up in me, and the theme of the season bursting out of my
mouth, which I shouted to the snow and wind that didn’t hear me: “Haven’t you
seen and heard something this blessed season that makes you want to make a
difference on the highway of life?”
Those prophets and kings
didn’t hear and see what Christ’s disciples heard and saw. Those travelers on
the road from Milwaukee to Jericho
didn’t hear and see something that made them want to make a difference on the
highway of life. That’s because hearing and seeing is hard
work. Seeing means first working hard at looking, and then admitting what we see. Seeing means first working hard at looking,
and then disciplining ourselves with the obedience that makes us see what’s
really there, and not what we wish were there. That’s what spiritual people
do. Hearing too is hard work. It means
first working
hard at listening, and then
disciplining ourselves with the obedience that makes us hear what’s really
being said, and not what we want to hear. That’s what spiritual people do.
The US Government
released a stumbled-upon videotape of the real Usama bin Laden. To no surprise at all, it was it was
released to the mercy of human beings seeing and hearing what they want to see
and hear. Many saw and heard a smoking
gun in it. As to be expected, many
Islamic eyes and ears saw and heard no smoking gun at all, just the deceitful
art of Western Infidels.
In Usama bin Laden some people see and hear
demonic evil because only demonic evil can crash a plane full of innocent human
beings into a skyscraper filled with innocent human beings, and then gloat
about it. Others see and hear in Usama
a charismatic figure, a second Prophet Mohammed, leading Muslims onward toward
the glorious globalization of Islam. Seeing and hearing is hard work. It means everybody first working hard at
looking and listening, and then everybody seeing and hearing what’s really there
and what’s really being said, and not what one wants to see and hear.
Seeing and hearing Mycal
This past week I received through e-mail an article taken from the New York Magazine. If you read it and reread it, you find yourself saying, “Yes, indeed, seeing and hearing is hard work.” The article is about a Franciscan priest, Father Mycal Judge, one of the four chaplains for the New York Fire Department. The story of his death in the line of duty was one of the first to come out of the tragedy of September 11th. It was fully covered by TV, and most of us saw at least a fleeting glimpse of it. Almost immediately legend and myth sprung up around his death: the story started circulating that had taken his helmet off to give the last rites to a dying fireman when suddenly debris came crashing down upon him. He died there on the spot, and his body was carried off to a nearby church, and there, according to the legend, was laid upon the altar.
Now that’s the legend. What we hear and see (remember, we are talking about hearing and seeing) in the article from the New York Magazine (which probably could not be read from a pulpit) is something else. We hear that the man was a recovering alcoholic; also that he was gay. We hear too that he was earthy, streetwise, and lined up well with the characters and chaos of New York City; that he was controversial and very unconventional, holding mass in the most unlikely places, and that a Monsignor in the New York Chancery frequently had to call and admonish him for this and that.
We hear too that he was more a friend to Bill Clinton than to Cardinal O’Connor, and that on one occasion he actually told Clinton that he believes that the founders of AA had done more for humanity than Mother Theresa, mind you. We hear too that he had no compunction when it came to language, that he would actually use the “f” word at times: he’d tell an alcoholic, for example, “Oh look you’re not a bad person; -- you have a disease that makes you think you’re bad, and that’s going to `f…’ you up.” We hear from the article that he opened the doors of St. Francis of Assisi Church on 3lst Street to Dignity, as organization for gay Catholics. And then to top it off we hear that last year he marched in the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade.
We are talking bout hearing and seeing. To see means first
working hard at looking, and then seeing not what you want to see, not what
others think you should see or what political correctness prescribes that you
see, but rather seeing what is really
there. To hear means working hard
at listening, and then hearing not what you want to hear, not what others think
you should hear, not what political correctness prescribes that you hear, but
rather hearing what’s really being said.
Conclusion
Hard working
people
The article about
Fr. Mycal Judge was almost more an article about a whole host of people than
about Mycal Judge himself. It was more about a whole host of people who worked
hard at looking at Mycal and then saw what was really there. It was about a whole host of people who worked
hard at listening to Mycal and then
heard what was really being said.
He had an encyclopedic memory for peoples names, birthdays, and passions; he knew everyone from the homeless to the mayor; though he was a true New Yorker, born and raised in the City, he lived on entirely different plain of priorities of most New Yorkers: he was non-acquisitive (not grabby), unselfish, and uncomplaining. That’s why TV covered his entire funeral. That’s why everyone loved him, and when a memorial was held for him, an endless flow of priests, nuns, lawyers, cops, firefighter, homeless people, rock-and-rollers, recovering alcoholics, local politicians and middle age couples from the suburbs streamed into Good Shepherd Chapel on Ninth Ave, an Anglican church, to do a memorial for a Roman Catholic priest.
Thousands of hard working people, who worked hard at looking, saw who Mycal really was (they went beyond the “gay stuff”). Thousands of hard working people, who worked hard at listening, heard what Mycal was really saying (they went beyond the “f” words). And that’s why, the article says, his death was dolled up with a bit of myth and legend because those hard working people “wanted him to die gorgeously and aptly, in a way that expressed the depth of his faith.” That deep faith in him made this Irishman irreverently protest one day, “If I’ve ever done anything to embarrass or hurt the church I love so much, you can burn me at the stake in front of St. Patrick’s.” On another occasion when a Franciscan confrere asked what he could get him for Christmas, that deep faith in him made this Irishman reverently protest, “Nothing! Absolutely nothing! I don’t need a thing in the world. I am the happiest man on the face of the earth.”