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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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There are some people who become extremely efficient in a crisis. The house could be on fire, the roof collapsing, and they can calmly ask, “Has anyone turned off the coffee machine?” Every family seems to have one. At a funeral, while everyone else is crying, this person is locating the cemetery paperwork, counting sandwiches, finding the missing uncle, checking who needs a ride from the airport, and asking whether the visiting priest has been given lunch. The same thing happens in ordinary crises. A relationship is struggling, a parent is sick, a child is in trouble, or someone has just received terrible news, but the person is concerned about the groceries that have to be bought, the dog that has to be taken out, the bills that have to be paid. Sometimes we mistake this competence for strength. We say, “Look at her. She is holding up beautifully.” Or He is handling it so well.” But occasionally “holding up beautifully” or handling so well simply means that the heart has not yet been given a safe moment to fall apart or to grieve.
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Some time ago I remember reading the extraordinary testimony of a Rwandan Jesuit, Fr. Marcel Uwineza, titled, Risen from the Ashes. Marcel was only fourteen when Rwanda descended into genocide in 1994. His family was devastated; his parents, two brothers and a sister were among those were killed, and more than forty members of his extended family were dead too. For a teenager who had grown up in a deeply Christian home, what disappeared was not simply his family. For a time, even God seemed to disappear Years later Marcel joined the Jesuits. In 2003, before being sent abroad for further studies, he returned to his village to pray at the graves of his family. There he suddenly encountered the man who had killed his family. The man had served time in prison and had been released. Marcel later said something striking: the man had been released by the government, but he had not yet been released by Marcel’s heart. Then the killer knelt before him and asked, “Marcel… do you have space in your heart to forgive me?”
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Every family has at least one person about whom the relatives quietly say, “We don’t know what happened to him or her.” Usually, this sentence does not mean the person has disappeared. Sometimes he became an artist. Sometimes she married somebody nobody approved of. Sometimes he left the family business. Sometimes she simply stopped doing what everybody had already decided she would do. He moved too far away, became too religious, or not religious enough, or committed the unforgivable crime of making a major life decision without consulting the family committee. Saint Clare was, in a sense, that person. She came from a wealthy aristocratic family in Assisi, and her future was more or less already arranged: security, social position, marriage, property, respectability. Then, at about eighteen, on Palm Sunday night, Clare secretly left home and went to join Saint Francis and his brothers. Imagine the conversation the next morning. “Where is Clare?” “She left.” “With whom?” “Francis.” “Which Francis? The barefoot one?” “The one who gave away everything and walks around preaching poverty.” At that point, somebody in the family surely said, “Wonderful. Of all the young men in Assisi, she found that one.” And for sure, somebody certainly needed strong coffee that morning. From the family’s point of view, Clare had gone astray.
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We have become very fond of things that are reversible or with return options. We like hotel reservations with “free cancellation.” We buy something only after checking the return policy. We sign up for subscriptions with a free trial and sometimes cancel before the charge appears. We choose airline tickets that can be changed without penalty, because even our plans now come with escape clauses. We want options. We want an exit. We want to know, “If this goes badly, can I get my old life back?”
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Every family has an unofficial archive. It contains faded photographs, childhood nicknames, unfortunate haircuts, and stories that are never permitted to die. You may become a surgeon, a bishop, or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, but at Christmas dinner an aunt will still say, “This is the boy who swallowed a coin when he was six.” Or, “This is the one who got his head stuck between the railings, and the fire department had to come.” Families are excellent at keeping us humble. Sometimes they continue the treatment long after humility has been successfully achieved.
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Matthew tells us Jesus comes walking across the water during "the fourth watch of the night." The Romans divided the night into four three-hour shifts for soldiers on guard duty, and the fourth watch ran from roughly three to six in the morning, which any person will tell you is the worst possible hour to be awake. Because It's not dramatic midnight. It's not the hopeful dawn. It's the hour where your phone is off, your coffee is hours away, and your brain decides to replay every humiliating thing you've ever said and done since the third grade. At three in the morning, even a harmless coat hanging on a chair can look as though it has bad intentions.
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