| ">May 6, 2004 | Amazing Grace |
| ">May 13, 2004 | You Want Fries with That? |
| ">May 20, 2004 | The Passion of the Christ |
| ">May 27, 2004 | Thoughts on true power |
Grace Sturla, affectionately known by all who loved her as Amazing Grace, has died at the age of 98. She was indeed both amazing and grace filled.
A long time parishioner of St. Dominic’s Parish, she was not only the essential ‘church lady’, but also the quintessential family person. St. Monica is remembered for her prayers that led to the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. Grace will be remembered as one who prayed for children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren! One of the family treasures is a picture of Grace kneeling in the Basilica saying her rosary during her lunch hour. A reporter asked if he could take her picture, and it appeared on the front of the Sunday Sun Magazine (the brown section) on April 26, 1946.
Grace is remembered not only as a woman of faith, but also a woman of good works. Again and again, I would hear from family members the same thing: “She could do anything”. Not only did she do all of the domestic things required to raise six children, but, when her husband was injured, she went to work as a telephone operator.
One of her sons told me the story of a time when a dog got into the hen house back in the 30’s when the family raised chickens. The dog tore one of the chickens apart. Grabbing her sewing needle, Grace sterilized it, and sewed the chicken back together! It was the best laying hen of the bunch.
One of her grandchildren told me that it wasn’t until he was in his forties, that he realized what an extraordinary woman she was. “All she lived for was to help others”, he said. Grace didn’t work for pay or praise. She just did the next thing that had to be done to help someone else. There was no ego in Grace. There was only grace, expressed in service.
One of her granddaughters, who is as unselfish as her grandmother, said that she believes that Grace now lives through them. That’s exactly right. I like the image of a galaxy exploding and hurling stars through space. Each family member, each person who loved Grace, now has one of those stars living in them. At Easter we celebrate annually that Jesus was not in the tomb. Jesus was alive, and could be found living in the lives of those who believed in Him. The reason we honor the saints is that we honor people who so obviously let Jesus live in them. We honor Grace as one of those saints.
In her declining years, the family took turns having Grace living with them. How often do we hear the tragic stories of children and grandchildren abandoning parents and grandparents in their hour of need? Yet, this was a very different story, of children now in their 70’s, taking care of their mother in her 90’s. In her very last days, she was taken to Riverview Nursing Home in Essex, where she received extraordinarily good care.
There was even a final humorous story told about those final days. Grace had not spoken for about three days, in and out of consciousness. One day, one of her great, great grandchildren was visiting, and bouncing up and up, up and down, next to her bed. Suddenly, from a woman who had not spoken, there came the words: “Stop that bouncing”. Once a mother, always a mother.
When she died, her daughter, also Grace, said: “We’re all sad, but we know that this is the moment Mom lived for”. She did indeed. Grace lived a life of service to the very end, and then went to the presence of the One who had washed the feet of his disciples right before He died. Jesus said very simply: “The greatest among you is the one who serves.” Grace will always remain one of the greatest to have ever walked this earth.
Perhaps it all started with the McDonald’s question: “You want fries with that?” Have you noticed that everything seems to come with ‘something else’?
What am I talking about? Well, I went to get some shampoo recently. With my ‘visual challenges’ finding the aisle is as hard as finding the product, but that’s another story. Facing the shampoo section, I obviously encountered a variety of different brands. Nothing unexpected there. I finally found El Cheapo Brand, but as I reached for it, several labels shouted at me: “What kind of hair do you have?”
“Huh?” I replied. “Is you hair Oily, Very Oily, Exxon Valdez Spill Oily”, the labels asked. “Or is you hair Dry, Very Dry, Sahara Desert Dry, So Dry It’s Gone?” Or, as some labels said: “Is you hair Fine, Extra Fine, or Normal?” Not much in my life is normal, so I reached for the El Cheapo Shampoo, Normal, when suddenly another label shouted: “Don’t even think of picking a shampoo yet. Do you want Body-Building Volumizer in your hair?
“I didn’t know my hair was working out, as well as falling out”, I said to the label. But I kind of liked the idea that my hair would might be stronger than the rest of me, so I reached for El Cheapo Shampoo, Normal, with Body-Building Volumizer.
“Not so fast”, another label called out: “You want Protein with that?” Thinking my hair my need some protein to life weights, I reached for the El Cheapo Shampoo with Body-Building Volumizer and Protein.
“Not yet”, another label demanded. “You want Conditioner with that?” Knowing the kind of condition my eyes were in, I figured I had better help my hair, so I reached for the El Cheapo Shampoo with Body-Building Volumizer, Protein, and Conditioner.
Thinking I was finally free to take my purchase to the check out line, I was surprised when another label practically tackled me: “Don’t you want some Dandruff Protection with that?” Fearful of looking like I had just come in from a snow storm, of course I reached for the El Cheapo Shampoo with Body-Building Volumizer, Protein, Conditioner, and Dandruff Protection.
Convinced that I had finally exhausted every possible ‘add on’, I now noticed the aisle seemed darker. The store had closed, and I was locked inside!
“I better find a pillow if I have to spend the night”, I thought to myself. A whole new chorus of labels greeted me: “You want a pillow with polyester fill? With foam fill? With feathers? With NASA astronaut-like material? With fiber husks?
Okay, I’m exaggerating. I didn’t get locked in the store, and I didn’t get a pillow – this time.
Safely home, I realized that, with proper nutrition, rest, and exercise, I would attempt another future visit to the store for toothpaste! The labels will have a new chorus of choices. “You want that toothpaste with Fluoride? With Whitener? With Baking Soda? With Tartar Control? With Breath Freshener? With Hexachloraphine?
Can you imagine those first settlers of our country, chopping trees to build homes, hunting for food, fighting the elements to raise crops, can you imagine them seeing us today? Or, would they have just turned around and gone home?
And did Christ suffer, die, and rise just so that you and I would face multiple choices on the shampoo, pillow, and toothpaste aisles? I think He came for something a whole lot more important, but who has time for important issues when these other ‘important’ questions surround us?
While many things have been said about Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ”, we all have to agree that it got out attention! Also, every reviewer or commentator I heard said the same thing: “this is not for children”. In those words, I rejoiced. The rating of the movie, and the challenge of Christ, are for adult conversion and change of heart.
Christmas has been so sentimentalized that, as the song goes: “Christmas is for children”. With Santa and reindeer, buying and selling, cooking and decorating, the holiday has dominated the holy day. We celebrate each year the birth of the Messiah, the birth of God as a human being, but how much are our lives changed by the annual celebration?
The death of the Messiah is harder to sentimentalize, so society usually ignores it. Stores fast-forward to Easter with flowers and bunnies and eggs. We like celebrations – the birth of a baby Jesus, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We don’t like to deal with the reality of evil in the life of Jesus, or in our own lives.
How could a God made man, who came preaching only love and doing only good, have been rejected? It wasn’t the lack of expansiveness of God’s love as much as it was the narrowness of human vision. For certain observant Jewish leaders, the behavior and words of Jesus would have been profoundly upsetting. Touching lepers would have been perceived as violating purity codes. Speaking of the destruction of the Temple would have been blasphemy. Questioning interpretations of the law would have been seen as unorthodox and betraying the traditions of their ancestors.
When I hear the venom spewed on talk shows against “those people”, it’s easy to see how people can do great harm by vilifying others, thinking all the while they’re doing good. No doubt those who conspired against Jesus really felt that getting rid of him was in the best interest of preserving their religion.
None of this was anti Semitic. It was some Jewish authorities against other Jews. However, when Paul took the message of Christ to the Gentiles things would change. Within roughly fifty years, what had been all Jewish followers of Christ had become all Gentile. Christians became a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire for hundreds of years. When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 313, Christians suddenly were in power. Tragically, some Christians then persecuted the Jews, for centuries.
The narrowness of human vision that had led some initial religious leaders to reject Jesus, would be the same narrowness that would lead later Christian religions to reject Jews, and other religions. It would lead Christians to kill other Christians after the tragic split between the East and the West, and later again after the Reformation.
The passion, death, and suffering of Christ remind us of the profound love of God for us. This is a God willing to die for His creatures. That thought can change our lives.
Second, the suffering of Christ reminds us of the reality of evil. We humans have free will, even a flawed will if you believe in Original Sin, and thus we can fail to see love, and even respond to love with fear and violence.
Finally, Catholic piety has always celebrated the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross – the journey of Christ to Calvary. Every Church has them, and every Church prays that journey. That is the genius of Catholic piety – not just to watch a play or movie, but to turn the passion into prayer.
As a child, praying those Stations of the Cross, I knew about nails in Jesus’ hands, whips that beat him, and thorns that crowned him, and a cross that held him and a spear in his side. In prayer I was with Jesus in those moments. And I learned something else. I learned that I could take those nails out of his hands, get rid of the whip, take off the crown, even ease the crucifixion by changing my behavior. I learned that I did that every time I was kind, gentle, giving and forgiving to others. We crucify Christ on earth again and again in our cruelty. We ease the suffering of Christ on earth again and again by our kindness. “What you do to the least person, you do to me.” If we believe that we are redeemed by the blood of Christ, can we ‘redeem’ his suffering by ending all prejudice, persecutions, cruelty, and unkindness? Can we show the selfless love to each other that Christ has shown to us?
As a boy I was an avid reader of comic books, especially Superman and Batman, and various other ‘crime fighters’. Predictably, the good guys won, and always threw the bad guys in jail. On occasion, I would read my sisters’ comic books, specifically Wonder Woman. She would always win too, but, instead of throwing the ‘bad guys’ in jail, who would take them to Transformation Island, where their evil and meanness would be transformed into goodness and light.
I never expected to meet Wonder Woman as an adult, but recently I was honored to be part of an evening honoring Louise Phipps Senft. Louise was recently named one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women. She’s a Cathedral Parishioner, so we know she’s on the side of good. Her Transformation Island is the Baltimore Mediation Center. Here she teaches people how to transform conflict into collaboration, to transform anger into reconciliation.
Lech Walesa, who led the shipyard strikes which eventually brought down the Communist Government in Poland, once said that: “The only reason to have power is to help the powerless.” That sounds strikingly close to the words of Jesus who said that: “The greatest among you will be the one who serves.”
In conflict situations, we often want the power to hurt someone, to get even with someone, to make them suffer as we have suffered. Yet, apart from the sociopath who has no conscience, the average person doesn’t feel better for having hurt someone else.
When Jesus, a humble and condemned man stood before Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor and symbol of the awesome power of the Roman Empire, Pilate addressed Jesus: “Do you not know that I have the power to release you, or the power to crucify you?” And Jesus responded: “You would have no power at all were it not given to you from above!”
The power to control, to hurt, to flaunt self-importance most often comes from some outside source or authority structure. The power to serve, to reconcile, to heal wounds comes from within. It comes directly from God: “I living in you. You living in me”, said Jesus.
Louise comes across as a powerful person. She does indeed have the power of persuasion, of education, of personal and organizational skills. But mostly she the power to empower others, to give others a sense that they have power other than the power to get angry, to ‘win’, to get even. Rather than victims of violence becoming perpetrators of violence she teaches ways to become mediators of reconciliation.
After a divorce, couples often end up ‘savaging’ each other in a court system that is adversarial by nature. Both parties typically end up financially, emotionally, and spiritually impoverished. Mediation is a better way to go.
Companies send out threatening memos to employees warning them not to unionize. All this does is further demoralize the work force, increasing the likelihood of poor performance and lower morale. Mediation could bring both sides to a win-win resolution, rather than perpetuating the win-lose philosophy of power abusing the powerless.
Governments wage war before waging peace. Nations want a quick answer, victory, rather than a slow answer, negotiating the best deal possible, and end up with no answer, and only further chaos.
The Gospel is about the power of God confronting the power of the world. In the short run, the world, the Roman Empire, wins every time. But the Roman Empire is long since ancient history, but the power of love, and healing, and reconciliation is living history. It’s not by accident that Jesus is called the Mediator. It’s not by accident that those who choose to take Jesus seriously become mediators themselves.
Amazing Grace
Catholic Review, May 6, 2004
You Want Fries with That?
Catholic Review, May 13, 2004
The Passion of the Christ
Catholic Review, May 20, 2004
Thoughts on true power
Catholic Review, May 27, 2004