September_17_2006FrJFC

This past week I was in the other L.A., Los Angeles, actually I went to Anaheim. I have a friend who’s a White Sox fan and each year we try to catch a couple of White Sox games. Wednesday afternoon I went to Disneyland. That’s the first time I’ve been to Disneyland. I’ve been to Disney World in Florida and the Epcot Center, but I had never been to the original Disneyland and it’s celebrating its 50th anniversary. Walt Disney began in 1956. It’s an interesting place. You know, I met some of my childhood heroes: Mickey and Minnie and Goofy, especially Goofy. I always could relate to Goofy.

We walked around the theme park for 3 or 4 hours and I think I constantly heard “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, Zip-A-Dee-Ay; My, oh my, what a wonderful day”, and I had nothing to drink, then or now. You know what was really funny though, a lot of people wear those Mickey Mouse ears and I mean adults. As we were leaving, there was this elderly couple with these ears on, arguing about something. I felt like tapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Do you know how ridiculous you look trying to be serious with those ears on?” I mean, I’m talking people in there 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t wear the ears. Anyway, after 3 or 4 hours, I was ready to leave; I had had enough of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, Zip-A-Dee-Ay.”

It is a great place but it really is for children. The problem with it, of course, not that there is a problem with it, but it’s not real. Life isn’t like that. Life isn’t everyday a“Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, Zip-A-Dee-Ay”.

Coming back on the airplane, I was reading a reflection on today’s Gospel where Jesus says, “I must suffer, and you must suffer if you are to be my disciples.” I was reading a reflection on that Gospel by a Jesuit priest, Fr. Mark Link, who I admire and often steal some of his ideas in homilies. Fr. Link gave a reflection about a book he had read called, This, I Believe. Now I tried to find out who the author of that book was and failed. There are several books called This, I Believe but none of them are the one that Link mentioned. I couldn’t even find it in the Library of Congress but I believe that it exists.

In any case, in the book, This, I Believe, Fr. Link says that a series of famous people wrote essays and the point of the short essay was to tell about some episode in their lives that affected them deeply. Some of the episodes are remarkably small and seemingly insignificant while others are clearly life changing and traumatic. The first person he talks about is James DuPont. Now, I’m not very familiar with James DuPont. He is the heir or was the heir to the DuPont chemical company. He was a very famous and wealthy person. James DuPont, when asked to tell of an event that had changed his life, gave this story. When he was 7 years old, he had heard his mother cry. He had never heard his mother cry. He had heard her and dad in the next room. He had heard his father trying to console his mother and although they were speaking in relative whispers, he still could hear them. He remembered being deeply pained because his mother was sorrowful about something. DuPont wrote, “While that particular problem is long forgotten”, whatever it is his mother was suffering from, “the big discovery I made that night is still with me: Life is not all hearts and flowers. It’s hard and cruel much of the time.”

That I think is essentially part of today’s Gospel message that life is not all flowers and that it can be very hard some of the time. Jesus knows what he was talking about. He says, “I must suffer.” Of course, Peter reacted. He rebuked him. The old scripture used to say; “He took Jesus aside and remonstrated with him.” Jesus quickly turned it around and chewed Peter out for trying to tempt him. He said, “Get behind me Satan.” The word Satan means tempter. “Get behind me Peter. Don’t tempt me into not suffering because unless I suffer, you will not be free. You will not be saved.” In other words, the most important thing in life is not that we suffer but it is how we deal with suffering. Whether it makes us bitter or whether we’re able to embrace it to some degree. It should make us better men and women, better people.

Fr. Mark Link tells about three other famous people. Eugene O’Neill, the Irish-American playwright, who at age 20 had come from a very troubled family. His father was an actor; his mother was addicted to morphine or heroin. Although he was very gifted and well off by the age of 25, he was living a reckless and worthless life, sinning up a storm. Then he contracted tuberculosis and had to spend some six months in the hospital recovering. It was in that six-month period that he looked at himself; he looked at his life and decided to change. He also recognized in that time that he had an ability, a talent to write plays. Of course, he became perhaps the most famous American playwright and changed American theater and drama for the better, for the future. The reason is that O’Neill reacted to sorrowing and suffering and near death in a positive way. He accepted it and it made him better.

Fr. Link talks about Golda Meir. It is interesting that what seems to be a very petty problem as a child, changed her life. Her problem was that she thought she was not beautiful. Golda Meir was born in Russia. She came to the United States, lived in Milwaukee as a child, and then moved to Israel in 1921. At first, when I read that she thought she was not beautiful, I said, “How silly!” But really, it’s not silly. Many children, especially girls, think so much of their looks, that if they don’t think that they’re perfect in every way, they suffer greatly. Boys don’t have this problem. We’re born ugly. We get uglier and fatter as we live and we are very happy. We don’t have a problem with that. Nevertheless, it could be a very serious problem for a little girl, for a young woman. She decided that in spite of this “handicap,” she would use it to make herself better. She said, “Not being beautiful forced me to develop my resources.” In her words, she said, “A woman who can’t rely on her beauty, have to work hard and therefore have the advantage.” Of course, she was the fourth prime minister of the state of Israel, the first woman prime minister, and one of the very early woman leaders of a nation in modern history. All because she accepted who she was or at least whom she thought, she was. Actually, she was beautiful, I think. She said that, “Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.”

The last person Fr. Link talked about was Oscar Wilde, who was well named. He was a wild man. If you know anything about this Anglo-Irish playwright, he was, of course, a great playwright and a poet, he was an incredible talent, and he lived a wild and reckless life. Towards the end of his life, he was convicted of a very serious crime on a morals charge. He deserved to go to jail and he did. He spent two years in jail. It was during that hardship of the jail experience that he repented of his ways. He repented of his hedonistic lifestyle and his sins. In fact, the night before he died, he was brought into communion with the Catholic Church. He suffered humiliation and scandal of his own doing.

The suffering that Wilde went through was because of his sins but that does not matter. It doesn’t matter if we suffer because of some loss, some accident, or some tragedy. It’s just as real when we suffer from our own sins and perhaps even more real because there’s guilt involved in it as well. Oscar Wilde wrote not long before he died, “Where sorrow is, there is holy ground.” He also wrote, “How else but through a broken heart may the Lord Christ enter in?”

Maybe that is the whole point: how else but through a broken heart can God touch you? You see, when we are not suffering, oftentimes we have tendency not to need God. We are strong and independent, self-made, powerful, and everything is going great. People in Poland tell me that before, under the communist regime, when it was difficult to be Catholic in Poland, it was easy. Now that they are free and becoming wealthy, it’s more difficult to live the faith. The same is true in Ireland. Why? Maybe when we have many things, we think we are independent of God. We don’t need him. Suffering reminds us of our complete dependence on God, of our weakness, of our vulnerability.

The question is often, “Why? Why do we suffer?” and indeed, “Why do we as Christians have to suffer?” It is part of the deal. Why can’t we live in Disneyland? Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. The answer is, I guess, because it is the way it is and somehow, it is good. Jesus does not ask of us something with which he is unfamiliar. In Hebrews 5:7-9, it says this, referring to Christ.

I walked a mile with pleasure.
She chatted all the way.
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow
and ne’er a word said she
But oh the things I learned from her
when sorrow walked with me.