What a weekend it has been. Last night we gathered for our Evening for the Soul: Jazz Vespers concert, and today many of you will return to give a whole day to our Flourish Parish Retreat. I may be a little tired this morning but I am very grateful. Thank you to Meredith, Shedrick, Kerby, all the Pastoral Staff and the volunteers who planned, set up, cooked, cleaned, decorated and worked behind the scenes. You’re giving up a Saturday, and Halloween at that, to sit with God. That is a true gift.
It seems fitting that our retreat ends with Saturday’s 5:00 PM Mass, the Vigil of All Saints. This weekend we will talk about what it means to flourish: to be spent for others and then to let God fill us up again. On Sunday, the Solemnity of All Saints, the Church holds up the ones who did exactly that and kept doing it until God brought them home.
When most of us hear the word “saint” we think of statues and stained glass. St. Patrick with his shamrock, St. Francis with his birds. But the first reading from Revelation describes “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue.” No one could count them. The canonized saints are only a small part of that crowd. Most of the rest are people we have never heard of. A few of them we knew and loved.
This week I came across the story of Olga Michael, a Yup’ik woman from the village of Kwethluk in Alaska. She was a mother, a midwife and the wife of the village priest. She knitted hundreds of pairs of socks and gave them away. People brought her their grief and she listened. Most of her kindnesses were known only to the people who received them. Kathleen Norris, writing about her, recalls a priest who said simply that Olga did what God gave her to do, and that this is what every one of us is called to do. Last year the Orthodox Church declared her a saint, the first North American woman to be so honored. Her icon shows her in her midwife’s clothes, holding a bowl of water and a towel, ready to go to work. Her feast day was this past Tuesday.
I love that. A saint with her sleeves rolled up.
Here is the part of All Saints we sometimes forget. Every time we say the Creed we profess our belief in “the communion of saints.” We say it so often it can slip right past us. It means that we belong to one great family in Christ, and death does not break that family apart. Those who have gone before us are still with us. They pray for us. They cheer us on. And when our time comes, they come to bring us home. When I talk about death and dying, I describe people who journey with us in those last days as midwives who help deliver us into eternal life. Olga, the midwife of Kwethluk, would understand that better than most.
I have seen this many times in my priesthood. Let me tell you about one that has stayed with me.
Years ago I was called to the house of a dying man. His wife, Maria, wanted him to have the last rites. Jack was not a regular churchgoer, but he was propped up in bed waiting for me, and he greeted me warmly. When I asked if he was ready for the anointing, he said, “Yes indeed. I am ready. I feel different this morning. I can feel a warm presence of others around me. I mean more than my wife.”
We had hardly begun the prayers when he stopped listening to me altogether. He was looking over my shoulder, and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He stretched out both arms and said, “Johnny, Johnny. Oh, you are here! Oh, how I missed you all these years.” Maria burst into tears and fell against my chest. When she could speak, I asked her who Johnny was.
Johnny was their firstborn son. He had died in a terrible accident in that very house, and Jack had never forgiven himself. For sixty years he would not let anyone speak the boy’s name. Their younger son, standing on the other side of the bed, was stunned. He never knew he had an older brother.
Jack began to fade. I finished the anointing and the prayers of commendation, and he reached out his hands one last time and died with a bright smile on his face. Johnny had come to bring his father home. Sixty years of guilt, and at the end there was only love and forgiveness waiting for him.
That is the communion of saints. It is a real family of love, on both sides of the veil, helping one another home.
St. John tells us in the second reading, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.” We are all saints in the making. The Beatitudes in today’s Gospel show us what that looks like: the poor in spirit, the merciful, the peacemakers, those who mourn and those who comfort them. Ordinary people doing what God gives them to do.
On Monday, All Souls Day, we pray for our own beloved dead. And next weekend, November 7 and 8, we will roll up our sleeves like Olga and pack 60,000 meals for hungry children and families around the world with Cross Catholic Outreach. Bring the whole family; there is a job for every age, and childcare is available for our youngest. Sign up for a shift here.
Also on Saturday morning, November 7, from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM, we will host Grace for the Journey: A Catholic Approach to End of Life Care. Facing the end of life, whether our own or a loved one’s, can bring questions, fear and uncertainty. Our speakers will cover the spirituality of dying, estate planning, home care, hospice and funeral planning, and afterward you can speak one-on-one with professionals. All are welcome. Please RSVP here.
Looking ahead to Saturday, November 14, at the 5:00 PM Mass, we will gather for our Mass of Remembrance, with a reception to follow. If you are grieving someone you love, please share a photo for our slideshow and Altar of Remembrance by Friday, November 6. Learn more and submit photos here.
A few questions for the week. Who are the saints in my own life, living and dead? Who might be waiting for me on the other side? What is God giving me to do this week, and will I do it?
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan