My favorite place here

I am sitting in a marginally cushioned chair in a window-laden room right off of our dining room.  It gets very hot in here due to the rather significant amounts of Alabama heat and rather significant numbers of windows in this particular place.  Usually I have to turn the air conditioning on for an hour (at least) before the room touches upon remotely bearable.  It is generally as hot, and not on rare occasion, far more hot than a car that has been sitting in the sun all day.  It also takes a tad bit longer to cool down than your standard grade automobile, for it is about two and a half times the length, and five times the height of Fr. Steve's little sedan.

That being said, this is my favorite place in Selma.  It is where I come to read, to write, to pray.  It is here that I sat every morning when I visited during my novitiate (about three and a half weeks) and would watch the birds scrambling and pushing each other out of the way to get to the feeder.  The room overlooks our "yard" which is really just a small patch of grass with shrubs around it to block out some of the noise of traffic and the neighbors who like to blast Biggie Smalls and Lil Wayne all day and night.

This is my thinking spot.  This is my spot.  And it is here that I sit at 7:02 p.m. central time, writing my last homily of my Summer internship at Our Lady Queen of Peace.  Tomorrow, after Fr. Steve proclaims the gospel, will probably be my last time preaching until I am ordained a deacon in some two and a half years or so.  It is bittersweet.

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Two weeks ago, the director of the Southern Mission called Fr. Steve up and told us of a fellow, 50 years old, who for quite some time had received one hot meal a day from our "Meals on Wheels" program run by Sr. Margaret.  He was dying of cancer.  It had initially started in his lungs and then spread all throughout his body, leaving him rather emaciated, frail, and difficult of speech.  What the director specifically told us was that this man had been raised Catholic, gone to Catholic schools all his life, and then one day just stopped going to Church.  The dying man was hoping to get Last Rites--Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, and Eucharist.  That is precisely what Fr. Steve did.  Two Sundays ago, on July 21, 2013 at about 11:45 a.m., this fellow was welcomed back with full blessings and much joy to the Church.  He was hardly about to speak due to the advancement of the cancer, but you could see and feel the look of joy, relief, and comfort that he felt in coming home, in receiving Christ again after all this time.

One thing that struck me was that though he had not being going to any Church for quite some time, he was not so lost as might have been thought.  Each time he had surgery for the rapidly progressing cancer, he would come back to a home with no family--they had all either moved away or died--and go to bed.  Each time he had surgery he would wrap his tattered old rosary around his wrist and pray, "I know that even though no one else will be here in the morning, you will be, my Jesus."  All these years away, all those Sundays where he had no spiritual home, and he still had that mustard seed of faith.

The second time we went back to see him he looked even weaker, but there was a certain peace about him.  "My momma had three strokes and a heart attack in the final years before she died.  For the last few months she couldn't even walk.  But never..." (he paused to gasp for air) "... never did she stop smiling.  She had her faith.  That's just the way she is.  And that's what I know I gotta be."

I don't know if we will see him again--either tomorrow or perhaps Monday before I leave--but I praise God that this man was beckoned back to Christ, to pray and be lovingly held by the motherly embrace of the Church.  I thank God that even though he has no blood-relativesphysically at his side, Sr. Margaret and Fr. Steve--his spiritual relatives--are there to see him through until he goes home to his Father.

As weird as this may sound, I think this is one of the most beautiful ministries of the Church: to be there in whatever way--whether that be a funeral, bringing communion, consoling a family, or just listening--for someone who is dying.  Death comes about only on an individual basis.  Even when a bunch of people die at once, it is still individual people who are dying.  And yet, in some way, be it ever so simply, our task is to pray with and for, and even just simply to be with those dying in order that they might know they belong.  Not to some rigid institution or even a group of a few hundred people on Sundays, but to God almighty, to the One who always has been, always is, and always will be Love itself.

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I leave in four and a half days.