The photograph in the Washington Post is stark. Beneath the colorful native robes, the man kneels on a prayer carpet in a mosque with his head bowed. His dark arms end in stumps at his wrists, stumps he presses tightly into his closed eyes. He one of 10,000 victims of a horror-filled civil war in Sierra Leone, where terrorist tactics include cutting off the hands and arms of “the enemy,” leaving them helpless, dependent and depressed. I looked through the photos at the story on-line, at photo after photo of teens, young men and women, now mostly mutilated. One young woman’s formerly fresh and beautiful face now wears a gaunt, hollow-eyed, hunted look that will never leave her face.
I read the story and felt empty. How could human beings do this to each other? How could so many wars have been fought on so many continents? Is it for freedom? Or is it for the power of a few? How many have been fought over “religion”? Decades and centuries of religious wars attest to the fact that these conflicts are not designed to bring people closer to God, but to protect territory and to get rid of those who are different. There is no answer to this darkest side of humanity, and we can only picture Jesus gently holding those victims, weeping along with them in sorrow and pain.
Jesus comes to us in our deepest sorrows and our strongest desires. In today’s gospel, the hungry disciples pull heads of grain from the wheat as they walk through the field with Jesus. They are quickly reprimanded by the Pharisees for breaking the Sabbath. The Pharisees seem to not care about bringing the disciples closer to God. They appear to want only to throw their weight around and bully Jesus, who frightens them.
Jesus calmly faces his critics and answers them so his followers can continue to be nourished. His first concern is with our hunger and in so many ways, he makes sure we are fed. In each one of our lives we hunger for things deeply in our souls, things un-nameable, unmentionable and powerful. We long for a deeper connection to God and hunger to understand why so many parts of our lives seem to get in the way of that.
And through it all, Jesus holds us gently in our confusion and pain, feeding us when we no longer have arms, and wiping away our tears - and his own - with his garments. His desire to care for us, feed our hungers and comfort us in our pain, is what he does best if only we will allow him to do it, if only we will hold out our maimed selves and accept his invitation to be loved.
As we begin this Jubilee year, can we commit that the Sabbath and all that organized religion most deeply calls us to, will always be for people? Can we commit to breaking down the hostilities that divide us because of our religious judgments and our religious traditions? Can we commit ourselves to be with Jesus in caring for those in need because of our faith in God and our belief that we are children of one God who loves us all?
Maureen McCann Waldron
The most important part of my life is my family – Jim my husband of 47 years and our two children. Our daughter Katy, a banker here in Omaha, and her husband John, have three wonderful children: Charlotte, Daniel and Elizabeth Grace. Our son Jack and his wife, Ellie, have added to our joy with their sons, Peter and Joseph.
I think family life is an incredible way to find God, even in (or maybe I should say, especially in) the most frustrating or mundane moments.
I am a native of the East Coast after graduating in 1971 from Archbishop John Carroll High School in suburban Philadelphia. I graduated from Creighton University in 1975 with a degree in Journalism and spent most of the next 20 years in corporate public relations in Omaha. I returned to Creighton in the 1990s and completed a master’s degree in Christian Spirituality in 1998.
As our children were growing up, my favorite times were always family dinners at home when the four of us would talk about our days. But now that our kids are gone from home, my husband and I have rediscovered how nice it is to have a quiet dinner together. I also have a special place in my heart for family vacations when the kids were little and four of us were away from home together. It’s a joy to be with my growing family.
Writing a Daily Reflection is always a graced moment, because only with God’s help could I ever write one. I know my own life is hectic, disjointed and imperfect and I know most of us have lives like that. I usually write from that point of view and I always seem to find some sentence, some word in the readings that speaks right to me, in all of my imperfection. I hope that whatever I write is in some way supportive of others.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to hear from someone who was touched by something I wrote. Whether the note is from someone across campus or across the world, it makes me realize how connected we are all in our longing to grow closer to God.
