Category Archives: Spirituality

Authentic Love and the Discovery of Fire

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The gospel for the 5th Sunday of Easter Cycle C contains one of most powerful admonitions that Jesus offered his disciples:  “I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you (John 13:34).”  I’d like to share a true story about a young couple from Chicago that will help explain the profound meaning of this gospel.  Peter and Linda were both just 21 years old and had been dating for almost two years.  Peter planned to ask Linda to marry him.

One evening, Peter and a friend were involved in a horrible accident, and Peter was thrown from the car.  He suffered a severe concussion and ended up in a deep coma.  The doctors told Peter’s family and friends that he probably wouldn’t survive.  Even if he did, he would remain in a comatose state.  In the sad days ahead, Linda spent all of her spare time at the hospital.  Night after night, for three and a half months, Linda sat at Peter’s bedside, speaking words of encouragement to him, even though he gave no sign that he heard her.  Then one night, Linda saw Peter’s toe move.  A few nights later she saw his eyelash flutter.  This was all she needed.  Against the advice of the doctors, she quit her job and became his constant companion.  She spent hours every day massaging his arms and legs.

Eventually Linda arranged for Peter to go home.  She spent all of her savings on a swimming pool, hoping that the sun and water would restore life to his motionless limbs.  Then came the day when Peter spoke his first word since the accident.  It was only a grunt, but Linda understood it.  Gradually, with Linda’s help, those grunts turned into words – clear words.  Finally, the day came when Peter was able to ask Linda’s father if he could marry her.  Linda’s father said, “When you can walk down the aisle, Peter, Linda will be yours.”

Two years later, Peter walked down the aisle of Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Church in Chicago.  He had to use a walker, but he was walking.  Every television station in the city covered that wedding, and newspapers all over the country published the story with pictures of Peter and Linda.  Celebrities called to congratulate them.  People from as far away as Australia sent them letters and presents.  And families all over the world with loved ones in comas called to ask them for advice.  Today, Peter is living a very normal life.  He speaks slowly, but clearly.  He walks slowly, but without a walker.  Peter and Linda even have a lovely little baby girl.

The story of Peter and Linda is a beautiful commentary on the words of Jesus in John’s gospel:  “I give you a new commandment: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how the world will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

If there is one thing that we desperately need in our world today, it’s to rediscover the power of Authentic Love – self-giving love.  Jesus is calling us to a relationship with others modeled on his love, a love that Saint Paul describes so well in 1 Corinthians 13.  This is a love that we’re never tired of hearing about, a love that we want for ourselves, a love that we are called to extend to others: “a love that is patient, a love that is kind.  It is not jealous, pompous, or inflated.  It does not seek its own interests, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth, a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, a love that never fails.”  The story of Peter and Linda illustrates that this kind of love has tremendous power.  It has the power to change the world.  It has the power to bring people back from the brink of death to life.  It has the power to bring people back from hopeless sickness to perfect health.  It has the power to inspire people all over the world and give them new hope, as Linda’s love for Peter did.

In the early 1980s, an unusual film was playing in movie theaters across the nation.  It was called The Quest for Fire.  Its French producer said that it fulfilled a lifelong dream.  He had always dreamed of celebrating in film the discovery of fire, for it was the discovery of fire 80,000 years ago that saved the people on planet Earth from total extinction.  It was the discovery of fire that made it possible DSCF1884for them to make tools for survival and to protect themselves from the cold.

Today, people on the planet Earth are beginning to worry again that we are headed for total extinction.  Today, people on the planet Earth are beginning to worry again that we are teetering on the brink of a global disaster.  This time, the danger comes not from something basic like the lack of fire, but from something even more basic – the lack of Authentic Love, the kind of love that Jesus preached, the kind of unfailing, unconditional, self-giving love that Linda had for Peter.

This makes us wonder and ask ourselves a profound and frightening question.  Will someone 80,000 years from now make a movie to celebrate the rediscovery of Authentic Love in the 21st Century?  Will someone 80,000 years from now make a movie to celebrate the only thing that saved our planet from extinction?  Will someone 80,000 years from now make a movie to celebrate the outpouring for Authentic Love that came forth from the Christian community in the 21st Century and changed the world?  Only the future and only the Christian community will be able to answer that question.  Only you and I, and millions of Christians like us, hold the answer to those questions somewhere deep down in our hearts.

This gospel is an invitation for us to look into our heart-of-hearts today and see how we ourselves are answering that question by our own lives of Authentic Love – especially within our families, for we must begin to change the world in the family, or we won’t change it at all.  “I give you a new commandment.  Love one another, and love them as I have loved you.”

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Authentic Love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire.”      Teilhard de Chardin

 

Deacon Greg Ollick teaches sacred scripture for Saint Joseph’s College Online. He is a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Atlanta and runs The Epiphany Initiative website.

Mother Teresa Was A Thin Place

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I’ve never really thought of myself as a person who is overly concerned or even that aware of celebrity or celebrities.   In retrospect, it being 20/20, I can see that I’ve been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time on occasion.  Once, when I was a little girl, we were on a family vacation touring Washington D.C.  In simpler times when there were virtually no security concerns or precautions it was easy for a little girl to wonder into the Speaker’s Office where I was welcomed by Speaker of the House of Representatives,  Sam Rayburn,  who invited my stunned parents and older brother to come in and meet Senators Everett Dirksen and Charles Halleck.  After handshakes and gifts of House of Representatives pens and stationery we continued wondering the halls.  I realize now that a little girl who actually knew who those men were is just as unimaginable as a time that existed when that could actually happen. (My Father was very civic minded and talked to me about politics and just about everything else, like I was an adult.)

Once, as my Mother and I exited a performance of Funny Girl in New York, we noticed a crowd gathering across the street.  So we investigated and found Ginger Rogers signing autographs.  She had just completed her performance in Hello Dolly.  She touched my Mother’s face, patted me on the head and signed our Funny Girl program.  (Yes, it really happened.)

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Teaching in a high school in a small state (Delaware) it was not uncommon to have elected officials visit.  Then Senator, Joe Biden lived not far from school and often visited.  Besides my memory I can actually document this occasion with a photo…

 

By far and away, however, the most profound meeting came when I was a novice many years ago.  Its impact on me has not waned over time and I can still close my eyes and experience the moment as if for the first time.  Cardinal O’Connor had invited Mother Teresa of Calcutta to speak at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  Our Mother House was several hours away in Pennsylvania.  Assuming that she would speak during Mass, perhaps at the post-communion, we did not attend Mass before we departed for New York.   We learned when we got there that she would be speaking shortly but not within the celebration of Mass.  She gave a wonderful message, elegant in its simplicity.  When she concluded the Cardinal graciously invited all present to a reception in the lower church.  We were informed by our superior that we would not be attending the reception since we had not yet attended Mass.   We would attend the Mass which was about to begin and depart immediately thereafter for PA.  We were, I must admit, not very devout, because we really wanted to meet Mother Teresa.  All present, except us, filed out of the cathedral to the reception, leaving us and a few others, to attend our Sunday Mass.

End of story?…oh no.  After Mass we piled back onto the yellow school bus and headed out of NYC and onto the New Jersey Turnpike.  About 30 miles down the Turnpike one of the novices in the back of the bus called loudly, “Mother Teresa’s in the car behind us!”  You would have thought someone had just spotted one of the Beatles.  We all stood and looked toward the back and sure enough there she was with a younger sister who was the driver.  Mother still had a dozen red roses on her lap that someone had given her at the Cathedral.    Just then the driver motioned for us to pull over.  So, at the next interchange we did just that.  I can’t imagine what the passersby on the turnpike thought.  We looked like a scene from the Sound of Music.  Can you imagine driving by and saying to your friend, “Is that Mother Teresa in the middle of that?”  Yes, and In the middle of all of that one of the novices began taking pictures as Mother Teresa graciously and gently hugged every one of us.  She offered her roses to us until they were gone.  She said that she was disappointed that we were not at the reception and that she had seen us in the cathedral and recognized out habits.  We explained about Mass.  We said our goodbyes and made our way back to our Motherhouse in PA.

IMG_2050For me the enduring effect of that meeting resides in the experience of grace.  The old Irish speak about the “thin places”.  Celtic spirituality holds that the separation between the natural and supernatural is very small and that in some cases very, very small.  These places are the thin places.  A thin place can be a place.  It can also be a person or an experience.  In this case, the thin place was Mother Teresa.  The experience while vivid is still ineffable, but I can say that I experienced a palpable sense of grace and I felt an urgency to be open to it.  I smile when I think of the details of this story, but I pray when I close my eyes and remember the grace.

Susan O’Hara teaches theology for Saint Joseph’s College Online.