saint of the week

Saint of the Week:  Veteran's Day 2007

 

There is a note on my kitchen table that was written by my daughter to someone close to our family.  It reads:  I am sorry for all the sad things that are happening. 

But life isn't perfect.  Let's just leave it at that. 

I'm sorry. 

There is a bag of peanut M &M's included in the envelope.

 

Last week our parish family lost a few awesome men. Their lives enriched and touched so many others.  Their absence will certainly leave a hole.  Over the weekend I attended the National Catholic Youth Conference.  The night before the conference a teen attendee who was walking with her youth group (on the sidewalk) was struck and killed by a truck. My heart can not fathom the pain that the parents, her peers and her youth minister must be enduring.  Now, tonight, the news of a couple close to our family has ended a 20-plus year marriage.

 

I think too of all of those who have lost a loved one in the war against terrorism.  I choke down the tears.

 

Sadness is part of our human condition.  My eight year assures that the cure for sadness is peanut M & M's.  Although I hesitate to argue, for I too, love peanut M & M's, I know that there is more.

 

I see life's joys as a bunch of brightly colored helium balloons and life's sorrows as gum on our shoes.  As hard as we try to reach and keep our eyes on the balloons, the gum keeps us stuck fast and hinders our progress.

 

St. Francis Xavier Cabrini was no stranger to sorrow.  In 1850, when she was born, she was so small and frail that her father rushed her to the church so that she could be baptized immediately. She was initially rejected by the convent.  She endured the small pox epidemic losing both of her parents.  She eventually did become a sister and founded the order of the Sacred Heart.

One source I read said that as the order expanded, the sisters needed more space, but did not have the funds, so they did the addition themselves, laying brick and building a roof.  (And I thought that it was cool to see the sisters at NCYC playing lazar tag!).  Just when things were going well, she was asked by the bishop to move to America to minister to the Italian Immigrants.

She obeyed; working in New York and New Orleans with the poorest of the poor.  In 1909, she became a US citizen.

Because she never let the gum on her shoe slow her down, she became the first American Saint.

 

I doubt that Mother Cabrini ever tasted a peanut M & M, so I know that I am right.  There is more.  Jesus is more.

Our Redeemer loves us when we have a handful of helium balloons, but only because he walks with us carrying adhesive remover and a spatula.

 

So I close with the lyrics of a song by Third Day.

 

I can't stop the rain from falling down on you again.

I can't stop the rain, but I can hold you 'til it goes away.