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Although the
Year of Mercy has officially ended, the mission of mercy remains at the heart
of the Christian vocation. Motivated by
our desire to work for authentic peace, a peace which can often only be
achieved through heroic acts of mercy, the friars covered the song, “Brother,”
by The Brilliance. You are invited to
read the reflection and then have “Brother” accompany you as you invite the
Lord to speak to, and work in, your heart.
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BOXES. I’m really good at checking boxes. Daily rosary? Check. Daily Mass? Check. Holy Hour? Check. Works of charity: feeding the hungry,
visiting the imprisoned, giving shelter to the homeless? Check. Check. Check. Obviously, as a friar, it’s assumed that
we’ll be checking all of these boxes daily.
In a sense, it’s our day job.
It’s our duty. For a lay person, on
the other hand, it may be difficult to make it to Mass during the week, or
downright impossible to make time for an entire Holy Hour, but with a little bit
of effort, we are able to check the little boxes that make up our spiritual
to-do lists. Morning offering?
Check. Grace before meals? Check. Prayers with my children before bed? Check.
Now,
the boxes are important, but they are not everything. It reminds me of a story... Boxes and boxes
of food were lined up waiting to be unpacked.
The boxes were filled with different food items which we needed to move
from boxes to bags. The bags would be
given out to over one hundred Hondurans families, most of them single-mother
homes with four or more children, at our monthly food handout. I was still a baby-friar, but the
responsibility of organizing this particular “packing day” had fallen on my
shoulders. A couple dozen volunteers had
joined me and one other senior-friar to check the proverbial food packing
box.
The
problem was that the baby-friar became frustrated with the senior-friar. I knew what needed to be done. I knew the best way to get it done. And I knew that the senior-friar should know
what I know. You know? As things did not
go the way that I planned, I started to get irritated and apparently it was
obvious. Now, the senior-friar did not
do anything wrong, he just didn’t do what I wanted.
Well,
apparently the baby-friar’s frustration was evident to the senior-friar. So, did the senior-friar sit me down and give
me a talk and some good ole’ fraternal correction? No, he didn’t. He came very humbly to me and apologized (and
he didn’t even do anything wrong!). And
you know the best part about it? All it
did was make me relive the frustration.
With my words, I waved off his apology, “It’s no problem. Don’t worry about it.” My face must have said something different.
The
senior-friar could have checked the box.
He did his part. Any remaining
frustration or lack of peace was totally my fault—but, apparently, religious
life works. He was not willing to reduce
his relationship with me to a box that needed to be checked. When we crossed paths in the friary, he
stopped me and apologized again! And this
time it worked!
When
he looked upon me, he did not see a task to be completed or a nuisance to be
endured, he saw a brother to be loved.
Lord,
grant me the eyes to see as you see.
Father,
Grant
us the grace
To
see as you see
And
to love as you love.
Amen.
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