INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 5th Thursday in Easter is, “Remain.”
I noticed in today’s gospel that the word, “remain” is
used three times.
Jesus tells his disciples 3 times to “remain in my love.”
MARRIAGE IN THE
NEXT TEN YEARS - REMAINING IN LOVE
You are all just around 17 years of age - juniors in high school - just
at the edge of your last year at St. Mary’s.
Most of you will be married in the next 10 years - most
closer to 27 years of age - if the current trend of when people get married
happens.
Most of you will take it for granted you’ll remain in
love for the rest of your lives.
Some of you will; some of you won’t.
And one of the toughest experiences in life - is broken
love.
And some of you will experience broken love.
One of you will break it off. Sometimes the gal does it; sometimes the guy
does it.
One is usually more crushed than the other - torn, hurt - and then there are the others in your
lives - those who love you - and how they deal with what has happened to both
of you.
BACK TO THE
GOSPEL
So when Jesus tells his disciples to remain in his love -
he’s talking about heavy stuff here.
And Jesus gives his motive for his message, “I have told
you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy may be complete.”
200 MEN IN
DENVER
Years ago I flew out to Denver to do a wedding.
I went to the downtown church where the wedding was to
take place.
It was around noon - lunch time - on a Friday when I came
to the church.
I noticed this line of about 200 men - all men - heading for a door to what
looked like a school building next to the church.
They looked scrubby - homeless - burnt out.
I went into the rectory to introduce myself - and say I’m here for the wedding tomorrow,
Saturday, and the rehearsal, later on that Friday at 5 PM. Then I asked the receptionist at the church,
who were the men on line outside.
She said, “Oh, they are here for lunch at noon. We get
about 200 men every day.”
“Wooooh!” that hit me.
I thought about them - 200 husbands, sons, fathers,
broken men - with families all over the United States.
I imagined the 1800’s. These would be the cowboys, drifters,
miners heading for the Gold Rush, outlaws - all those men I have seen in 200
Westerns.
I imagined there were families in Boston, Chicago, Chattanooga,
wondering where their dad or husband or father was.
I didn’t know anything about any one of these men - but I
pictured them as broken men - in whose lives - love did not remain.
SUITCASE STORY
Here’s my suitcase story. I can tell it now. My mom is
long dead.
I’m 30 years of age. I’m visiting my mom at her house in
Brooklyn with a classmate. My sister
Mary is sitting there on the couch with my mother.
Something triggers stories about when we were kids.
My sister starts to kid my mother about her suitcase trick.
When the four of us kids were fighting - and my dad was
at work - my mom would get up and head for the closet and take her coat off a
hanger - put it on - and grab a suitcase and tell us she’s leaving us - because
we were fighting. I was the youngest so
I would grab my mother by her leg to stop her at the door.
“Well,” she would say, “Okay. I’m not leaving you - but
next time you are fighting - I’m leaving.”
Any my mother and my sister on the couch were laughing.
At that moment - at 30 - I found out that was play
acting. I thought it was real back then - and it remained in my sub-conscience
that way.
Being a tiny kid, I thought it was real - that I was about to lose my
mommy.
As I thought about that - I realized I was every little
kid I have ever seen - clinging to his
mother or father - when they see a dog or a stranger.
I was every kid screaming, “Remain with me!”
I was every kid screaming, “Don’t leave me.”
That was a life moment at 30 and a life moments when I
was a tiny kid.
I’m sure if my mother realized one of us might be taking
this for real - she wouldn’t have done it.
It was a mistake - and looking back I obviously forgave her.
Jesus said, “Unless you be like little children, you
won’t see the Kingdom of God.”
When it comes to feelings - deepest feelings - we're touching childhood experiences - revisited.
Revisit the work of Eric Bern and Thomas Harris - in Transactional Analysis. They did work in describing the theory of the 3 human states we can find ourselves in: parent, adult and child.
And the child state is when we are into deep emotions and feelings.
Every human being needs people to cling to - hold onto -
to scream to others, “Remain with me.”
Every couple is relying on the other remaining in love
with them.
CREMAINS
There is a new word that has come out in the past 25
years. It’s “cremains.”
It’s the cremated remains of someone who has died.
For a funeral, the cremains are often in a beautiful box or
urn made of wood or ceramic or marble or metal.
The Catholic Church stresses that people be buried in
sacred places.
I’ve seen people bringing the cremains home.
I’ve heard of people putting a tiny bit of the cremains
of a loved one in a locket and they wear
it around their neck.
I’ve heard of people waiting a while before they bury the
cremains of a loved one.
Thinking about this, I see that one advantage of a casket - and not cremating
a love one - keeping the whole body of the deceased for burial - gets people to bury the dead. It would be
very odd to keep a casket with a loved one.
Jesus was touching on human behavior when he said, “Let
the dead bury the dead - and move on.”
It’s tough enough dealing with death.
We need grieving time and slowly letting go time - and
people do what they have to do - sometimes odd or different - sometimes doing
something that they learn from in time. I realize the church has practises
about all this - but I’m into the school of hiding, that is, letting people figure out and work out how they are going to deal with death. However, if asked - I advise
people to cry, walk, and bury their dead - and give themselves time to mourn - from a distance.
WHAT REMAINS
I love to tell the story of a rose petal.
I was in our living room as a kid and my dad was in his
favorite chair reading the paper.
I opened up one of my dad’s favorite books, The
Best Loved Poems of the English Language. I discovered a dried up delicate
red rose petal on one of the pages.
I’ve told this story several times.
I brought the book over to my dad - wide open - like an
offertory procession - with the red rose petal right there on an open page.
I asked my dad, “What’s this?”
He looked at it and said with his rich smile all over his
face, “Memories.”
What remains?
For starters memories.
For starters stories.
For starters all the things our parents did for us.
My dad would take the 4 of us down to Bliss Park in
Brooklyn when we were kids or to the football games down along the shore
or to the Staten Island Ferry.
He was giving my mother a break for a few hours every
Sunday after we came home from Mass and after breakfast.
I noticed my brother did the same thing: taking his kids
to Washington D.C. to see the museums - to give his wife Joanne a break.
What remains - how our parents raised us.
CONCLUSION
Father Matt Allman is with us today. He has the job of
trying to invite young men to join the Redemptorists.
I have become a Redemptorist and remain one - because we
need priests to preach good values and Good News to people.
A priest came into our classroom in grammar school. He
was a Redemptorist working in Brazil and he told us what he did and he invited
us to think about becoming a priest.
I heard his message and
it remained with me.
I invite you to become priests.
Father Matt knows a priest friend of mine, Tom Barrett.
We worked together for 8 ½ years before I came to St. Mary’s. I remember Tom
telling folks his vocation story.
He saw a Redemptorist priest preaching and praying the
Our Lady of Perpetual Help Novena in our parish with that name in Brooklyn. Praying there he said to himself, “I could do
that.” Then in time he said, “I would
like to do that.” Then in time he said, “I
choose to do that.”
That experience - that dream - remained with him for his
whole life.
I ask you on this retreat to get in touch with what’s remaining
with you - your dreams, your hopes, your visions, your family values. Amen.
