It
was summertime, 13 years ago. My wife
and I and a dozen other couples involved with Marriage Encounter were planning
to go to the national Marriage Encounter convention out near Chicago. How will we get there, we were trying to
figure out.
Carpool? Kind of a long drive. Fly? Pretty
expensive, and we still have to get from the airport to the convention
site. What about the train, one couple
asked. Don’t have to drive, cheaper than
flying, and you get to see the beautiful scenery out the window, like you see
in the Amtrak brochures.
Having
gone to college in the Midwest, I spoke up.
The only scenery you’ll see, I said, is the butt-end of factories and
junk-yards in Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo and South Bend! Plus it will be dark for most of the trip, we’d
sleep sitting up in our seats and arrive exhausted. It’s not what you imagine it’ll be. Plus I took the train for every break during
college – been there, done that, no thanks, I said.
So,
using frequent flyer miles, Pam and I flew.
Flew right over all those factories and junk-yards, arriving in about
1/10 the time. But even though each of
the train couples confirmed everything I had said, what they saw, how dark it
was, and their lack of sleep, I kind of wished we’d have taken the train
too. We missed out on something. We missed out on being with our Marriage
Encounter friends. We missed out on
interacting with the people on the train, mostly folks who can’t afford to fly. We even missed out seeing the butt-end of
factories and junkyards.
Our
lives can be like that, too, huh?
Flyovers. Avoiding, or at least
trying to avoid, the messiness. There
are dirt-poor people right here in our community, so we clear our consciences
by writing a check or casting our vote.
Even where we live can be sort of a fly-over. Some moved to suburbs for a bit of land and a
quieter life. Some moved to avoid “those
people.”
This
weekend we celebrate “Good Shepherd Sunday,” and the “one message” for all of
us in our parish is this: “can you smell the sheep?” This was a quote of Pope Francis, speaking to
our priests not too long ago, exhorting them not to do a priestly “fly-over,”
so to speak, but as shepherds, get in there with your sheep, get involved in
their lives, get close enough to them to smell them. To even start smelling like them.
Sheep,
after all, are cute. Anyone who’s seen a
flock of sheep in a meadow will remember the serene peacefulness, not realizing
how smelly these animals are.
Well
so are we, brothers and sisters. It may
look like we have our act together and lead picture-perfect lives like the
Amtrak brochure pictures of lakes and mountains, but our lives, each of us, are
at least partly broken, messy, “smelly,” so-to-speak. Who among us can say they know nothing of the
pain or hard-heartedness of broken relationships, the damage of addictions, the
grief or regrets from the death of friends or family, the hopelessness of job
loss or serious illness, the guilt of sin?
What
the Holy Father was telling our priests was – get in there, into peoples’
lives, be present to them where they’re at, heal their wounds, be the living presence of
the Lord, the Good Shepherd to them. Get so close to the sheep, holding them,
carrying them, that you begin to smell like them.
But
that message isn’t only for our priests, is it?
In whatever our vocation, and we join with the worldwide Church today in
praying today for priestly and religious vocations, in whatever our vocation,
you and I, too, act as shepherds, too, and you and I are called to get down and
get close enough to smell the sheep.
What
does that look like in our marriages?
Are our marriages flyovers, do we live like ships passing in the night, or
are we truly present to our spouses, meeting their needs for intimacy, deep
communication and validation? Just last
night my wife was trying to say something important to me, and she was really
hurt when I wouldn’t put down my smart phone.
And
as parents are we only about going to work and supporting our families, or do
we truly get to know our kids, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, where
they’re really at in this very different, frightening world?
And
in our other ways of service, and make no mistake, we are all called to
service, are we flying over or are we in there with the sheep?
As
part of my preparation to be ordained a deacon, I worked for a summer as a
hospice chaplain, assigned to go visit and care for the spiritual needs of
about a dozen dying hospice patients.
I’ll never forget one man, George.
I went to visit him one day at his nursing home. As many hospice patients are, he was
incontinent, wearing depends.
“George,
how are you today?” I asked him.
“I
was doing great ‘til about five minutes ago.”
“Why,
what happened five minutes ago?”
“I
had a bowel movement,” he said.
“Hold
on,” I said. “I’ll go get the nurse to
get you cleaned up.”
Recently
my wife and I started working a volunteer shift at Sunset House, our local Irondequoit
hospice, and now if that conversation were to happen at Sunset House, it’s up
to Pam and me to get George cleaned up.
I had been present to George, and hopefully met some of his spiritual
needs, but looking back that was kind of a flyover.
Or
another story, this one from Holy Week.
It was Holy Thursday. Sister
Grace, the 80-year old nun who runs the House of Mercy homeless shelter over on
Hudson Avenue, had put out a call on social media for donations of Easter hams,
and it was my intention to buy some and bring them down there, but I forgot. So I called my wife and she went and bought
them and delivered them. Felt real good
about ourselves.
But
the following day, a friend of ours was leaving Good Friday service here at St.
Cecilia, and as he was heading to his car up walks an obviously homeless man,
asks for some food, “I’m hungry.” Not
wanting to hand him money, our friend says “come on, I’ll take you to get you
something to eat.” Finds out his name is
Tom and he lives under a bridge, and doesn’t have a thing in this world other
than the clothes on his back. Seeing the condition of Tom’s shirt, and noticing
how bad he smelled, our friend took off his shirt, neatly folded it up and gave
it to him.
And
then took him to Wendy’s and fed him and then our friend says “Are you familiar
with the House of Mercy? Mind if I take
you there, it’s a warm place to stay.”
And so he did. And gave another
homeless man his gloves on the way there.
I
still feel good about our donation of the hams, but this friend of ours is the
one who got close enough to smell the sheep.
So like many of my homilies, this one’s as much for the guy standing up
here as it is for anyone else.
So,
sisters and brothers, the takeaway this week is this - you and I are called, in
all our vocations, in all the ways in which we shepherd others, to a new level
of intimacy, a new level of service, a deeper level of love. Like our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
Good Shepherd, you and I are called to let ourselves get close enough to smell
our sheep.
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