With Autumn comes cooler mornings! The temperature doesn’t get to 90 until noon. So now I rush off to morning Mass and pray for all my friends. Jack Harlan used to add a SALPF (say a little prayer for) addendum to his monthly letter and I think it is wonderful to dedicate prayer to someone. Recently cousin Carol’s daughter Jenee was sick with Covid, but I hear Jenee will be cleared for work next week so she has not sunk into bad illness. Thank God!!!! A neighbor told me of two young people (in their 50s) who caught Covid and died recently so we are still fighting the demon pandemic. SALPF those who are fighting vaccination. Let them decide to take on this protective cloak of vaccine. That’s the way I believe. Give me a cloke that protects me, and I’m putting it on. OH! And I am walking again with neighbors who wait for me. I invite them to Mass…. I am not doing Yoga as that is offered at the same time as Mass.
Amidst polarization of our society, lost friends with whom we cannot agree, dissention, anger, we are sure the world is ending. But it probably isn’t. Jesus invites us to settle into his lap like a child on its mother’s lap… Relax and settle our souls in peace. In church I can either gaze up at the Cross, at a stained glass picture of the Last Supper, or at a beautiful statue of Mary. This last Sunday I looked at Jesus serving bread to his disciples. I looked at the face of Jesus, calm, and beautiful. His blessed hands offer bread and wine which he turns into his body and blood for us. He prays in John 15 through 17 so beautifully for us, "Father… I have loved them." In his last moments on earth, he knows he is going to be beaten, derided, betrayed, hung up with nails in his feet and hands to die naked before a jeering crowd. He knows what horrors await him. He knows his own people will allow the horrors out of their own weakness, yet he turns his beautiful face to his Father and he prays for us, his betrayers who turn our faces away. My friend weeps for the awful things our generation does to children, women, migrants. He weeps for the hungry, the enslaved, the homeless. My friend despairs and asks, "Where is God?" My answer of, "He is with us" doesn’t satisfy the weeping heart. Jesus wants us to put our head down on his chest and have full faith. Who knows what luxuries await the bedraggled migrant orphans when they enter Paradise? We certainly can’t fathom the Glory! This place is earth. It’s pretty in a lot of places and pretty awful in a lot of other places, but it’s only earth. God blessed the earth, but we damaged it…. If we would just try to do good. Be kind. Each one of us. A priest told a story: A man fed a robber one night and his friend said, "What are you feeding that creep for?" "If I am kind to him and keep him fed, eventually he will respond. I must have hope he will respond." Get their attention. Feed them. Love them. Pray they will respond. If not to you, then to someone. I might not see the leper I feed healed, but I have hope he will be healed in heaven. I can’t change the world. I can only change myself. Climbing up, lifting my little arms, I ask, "Lift me up, Lord! Teach me to Love!" Thank God.