Monthly Archives: April 2016

Reflecting on John 13: 31-33A, 34-35

I break all the rules in the weight room of my inner-city Parks and Recs gym. I don’t keep the code of silence that demands that tattooed strangers grunt their way through agonizing routines while keeping their eyes straight ahead, never acknowledging anyone else.

AARGH! I say to the guy who can lift himself up and do about a thousand crunches on the ab machine. How do you DO that? I’ve been coming here half my life and I can’t do one. And just like that, Scary Guy becomes Kind Guy. Oh, sure you can, he says. Let me see what you’re doing wrong.

I love that moment of encounter, when two people from different backgrounds find a common place where gentleness and graciousness so easily spring forth. And it almost always happens when I ask strangers for help.

Yesterday I smiled at a Scary Guy who was sitting on the bench, waiting for space on the basketball court. Could you help me, please? I don’t have the extension in this leg to tie my shoes. Like that, he was smiling and saying, No worries! Is this tight enough? Do you need me to tie the left one too? And then his adorable daughter came running over to show me her shoes that light up, and how she can tie them herself.

Love one another as I have loved you, Jesus says. My daily exercise―and I’m not talking about leg curls―is to find opportunities to break the weird silences between us in traffic, on elevators, in the gym. As it happens, I do need help sometimes. It’s in asking “strangers” for help that lovely moments of warmth and friendship break open.

This week, ask a stranger for an easy favor. Watch how grateful they are that you aren’t asking for money!

Kathy McGovern ©2016

Reflecting on John 10:14

I like to think about all the great shepherds I’ve had in my life. My grade school music teacher, Sr. Genevieve, comes to mind. “Kathy,” she said to me when I was twelve, “here’s the key to the back door of the church. Let yourself in, go up to the choir loft, turn on the organ, give yourself the first note and sing the Mass.”

I remember, shortly after my Confirmation, being picked up after school and taken to an inner-city parish to help with a Religious Education class. “Kathy,” said the wonderfully kind director there, “Here’s the book. Here’s the kids. Sing to them. Tell them stories. Teach them to love Jesus”

I remember Father Frank Syrianey, he of blessed memory, who was the pastor of my parish when I was in college. I had no idea then the great blessing of having such a wise, warm priest at the helm a few years after the Council. I rang the doorbell of the rectory one afternoon, and he answered.

“Hi, Father,” I said, “you don’t know me, but my name is Kathy.” And he said these unforgettable words to me: “Of course I know you.”

That’s a good shepherd. The one who calls forth gifts, who inspires young people to lead, who knows us by name―that’s the Good Shepherd so desperately needed today.

A few weeks ago, as they were working on the music for Holy Week, about a dozen of the stunningly talented teenagers in my parish had to be shooed out of church by their brilliant choir director because it was time to lock up.

You know what? one said. Church is my favorite place to be.

Who are the good shepherds who are helping to build the next generation of believers?

Kathy McGovern ©2016

Reflecting on John 21: 1-19

We watched a stupid movie the other night. The wife has been disfigured, but transformed through plastic surgery. Now, beautiful again, she is shocked that her husband doesn’t recognize her.

“Oh, brother,” said my husband, “I would know you if you were a foot taller and bald. The second you even took a breath to say a word, I would know it was you.”

And I would know it was Ben. That’s why it’s so intriguing that the disciples, who have been with Jesus from the beginning of his public ministry at the Sea of Galilee, don’t recognize him when he appears at that very sea after his resurrection.

All but one, that is. The Beloved Disciple realizes at once that it is Jesus.

Who is this mysterious “disciple whom Jesus loved”? This anonymous disciple reclines next to Jesus at the Last Supper, stands with Mary at the foot of the cross, races to the tomb with Peter on Easter morning, and, now, is the first to know that the stranger calling from the shore is Jesus himself.

My student of many years ago changed my understanding of the Beloved Disciple forever. He said, “Kathy, whenever I read about the disciple Jesus loved I just put my name there.  I say, ‘and then Jose, the disciple Jesus loved, put his head on Jesus’ breast.’ Or, at the cross, ‘Woman, behold Jose. Jose, behold your mother.’”

Now that’s the way to pray the gospels. Try it. Put your name there.  Imagine that is you racing to the tomb, and you seeing the angels. And, yes, it is you who is given the charge to “go and tell the others.”

Are you afraid to talk about the resurrection of Jesus in our increasingly secular culture?

Kathy McGovern ©2016

Reflecting on John 20: 19-31

Like Thomas, I long to see miracles face to face. That’s why I loved the wonderful new movie Miracles from Heaven. The film, starring Jennifer Garner, tells of a miracle that took place in a young girl who was undergoing treatment for an inoperable abdominal obstruction at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The glorious miracle, of course, is the most heart-stopping part of the movie, but it’s the short montage towards the very end that inspires me every time I think of it. In this too-brief section, we see the hidden kindnesses of many people who left their comfort zones in order to extend mercy to the traumatized family in the months before the miracle occurred. They made what they did look unimportant, but we find out at the end that each of them sacrificed something ―a day off, a night off, a possible termination from their job― in order to give this struggling family every possible comfort.

Those hidden acts of mercy are miracles in themselves, and we have experienced them countless times in our lives. It doesn’t matter that, like Thomas, we were not in the room with the Risen One that Easter night.

We have seen him, and touched him, and received the Holy Spirit from him in a thousand ways. How? Through the gracious kindness of those who have sacrificed their time and energy in order to care for us in illness, or listen to us in sorrow, or even just call us by our name.

Blessed are they who have seen miracles. How much more blessed are they whose gracious kindness opens the doors to miracles for others. That, too, is the Divine Mercy we celebrate today.

Are you aware of some of the hidden kindnesses of others?

For Peg and John, who are accompanying their beloved ones through the hardest time in their lives.

Kathy McGovern ©2016