step, moods, laugh, idiosyncrasies, stories, hurts, favorite cream flavor, cereal, fears, friends, gripes, TV programs, buttons, and
yes, oh yes, what we hate, broccoli, cauliflower and talking about __________________________.
[This Sunday the Church celebrates the Family - calling each family to be a Holy Family. Here is
a list of 10 blessings - amongst others - that a family ought be giving to each
other. If I see at least one of you reaching [GESTURE] for a ballpoint pen to
jot one of these down, that would make my day. I’ll put this on my blog - which you can access
from the parish web site. If you check out and reflect upon all 10, that too
would make my day, but only if you would
take and make at least one of these 10 blessings a challenge and a call for you
to put it into practice in the New Year - because you want to make your family
even better - holier. Amen.]
Number One: A
family is a place where one learns one’s first words, first language. “Ma Ma” -
“Da Da” - “Look!” - “Want” - “Need” - “Help” - “No” - “Yes” - "More" - “Love” - "Please! Please!" and
“I’m sorry.” May the words and language
spoken here in our home - be words of love and kindness, gentleness and joy,
giving and forgiving. Number One: The words we learned and the words we use.
Number Two: A family is a place of memories and stories -
history, herstory, moments, incidents, time together, experiencing the twists
and turns of life - where one is creating one’s unwritten autobiography - and
reading the unwritten biography of those with us on the same shelf - the same
house - that we are together in. As
someone once said, “When an old person dies, it’s as if a library burnt
down.” Number Two: We are history books - in process -
becoming who we are page by page. We are talking books - hopefully taking the
time to read - to listen to - to talk to each other.
Number Three: A family is a place where not only mom and
dad are honored, so too grandparents, visitors, the little ones - teenagers - and ourselves as well. Number Three: A place
of honor.
Number Four: A family is a place where people know the
difference between an argument, a
disagreement, a spat - compared to an angry tirade that can leave acid spill at
the table, the bedroom, the heart - where kids know the difference between a
pillow fight and a real fight. Number Four: There are
fights and there are fights.
Number Five: A family is the starting place where one
learns the ability to compromise, readjust, reconsider, renegotiate, recalculate - because one has seen
these attitudes and qualities in the ones above us - instead of experiencing
others who are unwilling to adjust or change or recalculate. Number Five: Learning to compromise.
Number Six: A family is a place where members learn to
laugh and love - love being with one another - wanting to be with each other - not just on
Thanksgiving and Christmas - but 365 days a year for those in the same house -
52 times a year - for those who have moved into new families - new homes - using
“techie” stuff well - for communication at a distance - and turned off when up
close - like at the dinner table. It’s a place where people eat with other -
and eat up each other - seeing the sacredness of the family table - receiving
in communion the other - if Christian, seeing each other as the Body of Christ
and saying "Amen" to Christ within the other. Number Six:
Experiencing the Real Presence of each
other.
Number Seven: A family is a place where one learns about
faith and hope - in God and in one another - knowing the primary church is the
home - where mom and dad are priests - and kids are parishioners - and members
worship, pray, play with each other - and the classrooms and playgrounds in our
homes are always open. Number Seven: A home is a church
and a school.
Number Eight: A family is a place where the truth will
set us free. It’s a place where we can be the real me - the real we. It’s a place where we can be at home to each
other - without masks or titles - walk around in t-shirt and sweat pants - but
that doesn’t mean we can be PITA’s to each other. To make a family work, takes
work. Go back and check Number Six. Number Eight: A home
is a place where we can become truly free - but that takes work.
Number Nine: A family is a place with a door - where
people make significant - key - wonderful comments to each other - when another
is leaving and when another is coming back home through that door - and those
comments sculpt us into better and better persons. Number
Nine: We’re aware of what is said coming and going in and out the door of our
home.
Number Ten and Last: A family is a place where people
learn to overlook, forgive, understand, accept differences and peculiarities,
as well as sin - but the messy gets cleaned up, people try to speak better, be
better, and learn to understand each other. A “Holy Family” does not mean a
sculpture or statues of people with hands folded [GESTURE] as in prayer - but
hands that clap for each other, hands with a deck of playing cards in hand,
forks in hand, hand in hand, hands on shoulders, hands in prayer and support of
each other. Amen.
Number Ten: A family is a place where
we are joined by hand and have to hand it to each other - generation after
generation after generation.
December 26, 2015
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
’Twas the Day after Christmas,
when all through the house,
there were remnants of wrapping
and boxes and presents, glasses
and plates and every sort of just this
and just that - just resting and sitting
there on tables and rugs, and under
the edges of chairs and the couch,
just here, just there, just everywhere.
So the Mrs. of the house, after just
this and just that - put on her coat
[Since 1993 I’ve been writing a story for Christmas in
memory of an old priest - a friend, Father John Duffy - who died Christmas Eve,
December 24th, 1993. He wrote a Christmas story every year for his
niece - and I have continued that tradition. I had typed a few of them up for
him. He was a horrible typist - and never got into computers. So here’s my
Christmas story for this year - typed up - nice and neat - for you. It’s based
on a few true stories. It has deep sadness in it, but I decided to go with it,
because of some tough stuff I’ve heard from some people this year - people who
need to hear Happy Endings. So a story
with just that title: “Happy Ending.”]
When a baby is born, when a baby is baptized, when a
little kid slides down the slide in the park - mom, dad, sometimes slide into the future and
wonder what will become of this little
one of ours.
Tom and Gladys didn’t expect what was to happen in their
future when they slid into the stretch limo - that afternoon as they left
church - after their picture perfect wedding ceremony and Mass.
Tom and Gladys - in time - had two kids - a boy and a
girl. Tommy Jr. came first - then came Penny. Gladys didn’t like the name
Gladys - never no how - and growing up said, “If I have a girl. She won’t be a
Gladys. She went by her nickname “Glad” - even enduring - sometimes hearing -
during her high school years, “Here comes Gladbag!” when she walked into class
or onto the soccer field.
Time slid on - as their kids grew up. Tommy and Penny did well in school and sports
- and bringing neat kids - friends - into their house - and into their lives.
Tommy Jr. went to college - but went by the way of R.O.T.C.
and ended up in the army and ended up in Afghanistan. Penny went to college
with a partial scholarship for soccer.
Tom Senior and Gladys adjusted to all of life’s changes
up to then. Most were ups - and the downs were not that down.
Only Gladys or Glad was home when they came to the house
to tell her that Thomas Jr. had been killed in Afghanistan. It was December 23rd,
just two days before Christmas. An I.E.D., an Improvised Explosive Device
killed him and two others in the vehicle - they were in driving - down some dirty dusty
road.
The glad obviously switched to sad. The funeral was a daze - in that same church
where Tom and Gladys were married 27 years earlier.
And then things got worse - much worse….
The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary are 5 and the
Stations of the Cross are 14. Sometimes troubles double and then multiply. Sometimes life can be really tough - really rough. Sometimes
life contains the stuff we don’t want to talk about - or think about - especially
at Christmas time.
And everyone knows Christmas time can very, very merry -
and for some - very, very lonely and sad.
Penny had gotten pregnant - but was on the other side of
the country - and as a single mother struggled - but she was stubborn and trying to make it
on her own - a day at a time.
Her parents invited her back home over and over again -
especially when her brother had been killed.
Penny - like her parents - didn’t take her brother’s
death well - obviously.
Tom and Gladys didn’t know it at the time - but Penny had slipped into heroin
abuse. It started with pain killers after blowing out a second knee. The first
knee went while playing soccer years and years ago. Being a single mother made
things even tougher.
This time Tom - dad - husband - was the one who got the
news that Penny was found dead - from an overdose of heroin. They didn’t see it
coming.
How could she do it? Couldn’t she think, think, about her
baby girl, Judy.
They flew out to where she was living and were able to
start the preliminary paper work to acquire Penny’s little girl and bring her
back home with them. They had a small, small funeral out there - because back
home it would have been too much.
People who had experienced Tom Jr’s death and found it so
difficult - when they heard about Penny’s death - were speechless. Yet close friends
knew that silence, just standing there with either Tom or Gladys helps very
deeply.
Thank God, Tom and Gladys now had a granddaughter, Judy,
to raise.
Thank God, Tom and Gladys were still working - and Gladys
was able to retire - early.
Thank God, Tom and Gladys had a good marriage. They
worked on it.
They held onto each other. They put one foot in front of
the other. They often went out for walks with each other. Now they could take
their granddaughter with them on walks through the neighborhood and to the
local park. They made it through the night
- and then through the days ahead.
In time they loved it when folks in the mall or the
supermarket or outside church or at the park would say, “Wow you have such a
beautiful daughter.”
They would smile and love to say, “Thank you.”
Judy grew more and more beautiful and kept her
grandparents young.
When Judy was in the fifth grade, Tom and Gladys had another surprise.
Judy became “BF” “best friend” with another fifth grader,
Mary, from just up the street.
And these two became best friends for life. In fact, when Judy got married years and
years later, Mary was her maid-of-honor and Judy was her maid- of-honor when
she got married - and Tom proudly walked both of them down the aisle as dad -
when each got married.
What? What
happened? What happened here? Tom going down the aisle as dad for both Judy and
Mary?
Well, as Mary told
me the story years later - here’s what happened.
It too was a very sad story - but it too has a happy
ending.
You never know what’s going on inside that front door of
the other houses on your street.
Mary’s parents were heavy alcoholics and when she would
come down the stairs in the morning to go to school, there would be no
breakfast - and often no parents. Sometimes she would spot them both passed out
on the family room couch.
Mary would get dressed by herself - put on her back pack
with her books and walk up the street
and up the front steps to Judy’s house. The door was always open in the morning
for Mary. Gladys made sure of that.
Then - as Mary told me - with an amazing smile of joy on
her face: “Mrs. Glad would get me breakfast, comb my hair, clean me up, give me
a nice morning kiss on the top of my head - and get me ready for the day.”
Then looking back on all this, Mary told me, that what
Mrs. Glad did for me saved my life. And Mr. Glad did too. My dad disappeared
along the line. He left us. And so Mr. Glad gladly walked me down the aisle
when I got married as well.
She also said the following. It was around Christmas
time. She didn’t know she was giving me my Christmas story. Mary said, “One
door was closed - like the Inn in the Christmas Story - but another door was
open - the house of Mr. and Mrs. Glad - like in the Christmas stable or cave
story. Amen.”