This will certainly be the most profound experience of Independence Day in my lifetime. I think I’ve learned more about the truths we hold to be self-evident these past several months, and especially these past few weeks, than in all the years I lived before them.

It started, for me, about a month into the coronavirus. I had asked everyone I talked with, as the weeks went by, if they knew anyone who was sick, or had died, from the virus. Except for one well-known man who died early on, no one knew anyone, and we were all so grateful.

This continued for weeks and weeks, and as we learned more about who was most vulnerable to this disease I became more and more embarrassed to ask the question. Why? Because it was painfully clear, as time went on, that it was the elderly, and those “essential workers” driving the buses and cleaning the nursing homes, who were dying at the greatest numbers. No wonder all the people who look like me didn’t know any of those people who don’t.

The other self-evident truth is now evident to the whole world: people who work in health care are just what they appeared to be when they applied to nursing school, pharmacy school, and medical school years ago. They are utterly devoted to caring for the sick, even at the risk of their health. Years of working in their field may have scarred them in some ways, but this virus has proven that they will lay down their own lives to save their patients.

Celebrate this Independence weekend. That we have so much to be proud of, and so much still to change, should be self-evident.

What things do you think our country needs to change first?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 10: 37-42

Here’s the problem: how do we love God more than any of our earthly loves—-parents, spouses, children—when God became flesh and dwelt among us? In other words, we’ve learned to love the God who “has flesh on.” Because of the Incarnation, we see Christ in other people, and in the working of the Holy Spirit in the world.

How, then, do we hold the love we have for God in a higher place than the love we have for the people in whom we find God? I might have a small idea, and it had to do with one of the shattering effects of the quarantining we have all experienced.

It turns out that too much togetherness for some unions has exposed the weaknesses that have existed from the beginning, but were put mightily to the test when there was no outside distraction. I read about these tensions because I have way too much time to waste on the internet.

It seems like the basic (and hardest) skills of daily forgiveness and forbearance, which the Church tries hard to provide not only in the sacraments but in the required Marriage Preparation, have never been truly exercised. Couples who have counted themselves as “happy” are now helpless against the stresses of confined living, because they’ve never practiced truly talking to each other.

I am grateful every day for the skills we learned as kids, growing up in daily Catholic life. We learned to share (when we REALLY didn’t want to). We learned not to roll our eyes and walk away when there was a disagreement, but to do the hard work of really listening.

By dying to ourselves we get that delicious abundant life that comes from loving God first.

In what ways has the quarantine called up in you some of the skills you’ve learned in your life?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 10: 26-33

If you spend much time in the company of Jesuits who lived in Latin America in the eighties and nineties, it won’t be long before you hear the name Mev Puleo. I’ve noticed that she is the dearest friend, the most beloved companion of the Jesuits who were alive and living in Central and South America during those wrenching years of war and struggle.

She was, by all accounts, a radiantly joyful young American woman whose life changed on a bus ride, much like that world-changing train ride St. Teresa of Calcutta took in 1946. Both women looked out a window—Mev as a teenager on a family trip to Brazil in 1977, Mother Teresa traveling from Calcutta to Darjeeling —and observed the staggering distance between the world of the privileged and those who never had a chance.

Mev lived and worked as a photojournalist in El Salvador, Haiti and Brazil. She documented, from the eloquent silence of her camera, the daily courage and kindness of those who are poor, and the malevolent oppression of those who prey upon them.

She spoke in the light what she witnessed in the dark. She even, of all terrifying things, once witnessed a rape in progress. She drove her old Volkswagen up to the sidewalk and shone her headlights right onto the scene. The rapist hollered for her to leave, and when she held fast, he left instead.

Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed. She used her camera to announce far and wide the atrocities suffered by the “least” at the hands of the “greatest.” If this gospel passage (Matthew 10:26-33) brings to mind some times when you held your tongue when someone told a racist joke, take it as a nudge from the Holy Spirit to be more courageous next time.

How will you proclaim from the housetops what God has whispered in your heart?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on John 6: 51-58

This will be the strangest celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ—more familiar to most of us as Corpus Christi—in my lifetime.

Separated from our communities of worship, most of us are connecting through the excellent virtual Masses our parishes are providing. A small percentage of us are venturing back to the churches that are open, wearing masks and keeping our distance.

But keeping our distance from the Eucharist is an oxymoron. Draw near to me, says Jesus. Remain in me. But how does one draw close to the Body and Blood of Christ when one is home, worshiping from the bedroom?

I’ve been thinking a lot about hummingbirds during this quarantine. Think of the effort it takes for the hummingbird to extract nectar from a flower. It must hover in mid-air, flapping its wings at rates up to 80 flaps a second. And it remains in that posture, using every ounce of its strength, until it has all the sugars it needs to fuel its rapid flight.

Are you hovering near Jesus as you watch the thousands of young people who are peacefully begging for real change? Drink from the life-giving nectar of their thundering calls for conversion of heart.

Are you using this sacred time at home to draw near to spiritual reading you may have neglected in the past? There is an explosion of magnificent Catholic writing all over the ‘net, and I’ll bet your own library at home has some great books—maybe something of St. Augustine, or C.S. Lewis—you haven’t discovered yet.

We aren’t together in our churches quite yet, but we remain in the Body. Hover close, and drink.

How are you enriching your spiritual life during this quarantine?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13

One of the many touching things I’ve learned through the years of writing this weekly column is how seriously Christians take the gift of their faith. It’s different these days, I think. Catholics who have withstood the many horrible sexual abuse scandals, and financial scandals, that have staggered faith and hardened hearts through the past decades are not just holding on because their parents baptized them as babies.

They hold on because they read, and pray, and are constantly learning about the faith they love. When we arrive at the Solemnity of the Trinity, for example, I’m always inspired by the deep and intuitive reflection in which today’s Catholics have invested in order to come to their own understanding of what it all means.

For example, if you asked any adult Christian what the first part of that closing blessing St. Paul offers in today’s second reading—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ”—means to them, you’ll get a rich reflection on the ways grace has directed their lives.

The second half of the blessing—“the love of God”—is probably the easiest, because all Christians can tell you how the love of God is living and active in their lives.

The third part of the Trinitarian formula—”and the fellowship of the Spirit”—will be easy too, especially since we are smack in the post-Pentecost octave. I can’t imagine active Christians who can’t relate the ways in which the Holy Spirit lives in their hearts and spirits.

We don’t need theological explanations for what we’ve experienced through lifetimes of prayer and attentiveness to the liturgy and scripture. Grace, and love, and intimacy. That’s the meaning of the Trinity.

Why do you think one of the Persons of the Trinity might attract you more than the Others?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 5:38-48

Of all the examples Jesus gives of nonviolent  resistance—turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile—it’s that business of the tunic that’s hardest, especially in bleak mid-winter.

Jesus says, “If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand over your cloak as well.” Try this. Imagine that you need milk and cereal for your kids, but you’re several dollars short at Walmart. The owner says, “Well, it’s snowing and it’s freezing. Give me your parka as collateral.”

Your kids are hungry, so you leave the store with your groceries and go stand at the bus stop with just a sweater to warm you. That parka is your only coat, so when the sun goes down it’s too bitterly cold to go back to the store to deliver the few dollars. In the morning, the police arrive to take you to jail because you haven’t paid for the groceries yet.

Now you’re in front of the judge, shivering in your thin sweater. “Here,” you say, taking off the only protective garment you own. “Since having my parka is so important to the owner, give him my sweater as well.”

It’s all about mercy. We are never to cast such a burden upon people that their most basic needs can’t be met. Hence the scripture, “If you take  your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset, for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body” (Exodus 22:26-27).

Use your wits, Jesus says. If your situation puts you in a position of servitude to a Financial Giant, find a way to make him look very small indeed.

How are you helping those without a coat this winter?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 5:17-37

Wouldn’t Jesus, the Master Teacher, have fun shredding some of our favorite cultural proverbs? I can just imagine the scene:

You have heard it said, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but I say to you, “All that is hidden shall be made clear. All that is dark now shall be revealed” (Luke 8:17).

You have heard it said, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” but I say to you, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven…where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6: 19-21).

You have heard it said, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” but I say to you, “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against any of your people” (Leviticus 19:17).

You have heard it said, “Look out for Number One, because nobody else will” but I say to you, “If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10).

You have heard it said, “Life’s terrible, and then you die,” but I say to you, “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; character, hope. And hope does not disappoint” (Romans 5:3-5).

You have heard it said that the bible says, “God helps those who help themselves,” but I say to you, “No, that’s Aesop’s Fables, not the bible. Go and find the Samaritan Woman at the Well, or the Man Born Blind, or Lazarus in the tomb. They will tell you that God helps those who cannot help themselves.”

Ah, so true. Thanks, Jesus.

What family proverbs do you have that Jesus could easily overturn?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 5: 13-16

Jesus invited his disciples to be Real Salt, and Real Light, and by accounts we have of the earliest Christians, they really were. The second century theologian Tertullian imagined the pagans observing the behavior of the Christians and saying, “See how they love one another!”

Our parish is hosting an eye-opening class on Racial Equity. I realize, to my shock, that the places where I thought I was bringing salt—like taking a Spanish class in order to know a tiny bit about the parishioners in my heavily Hispanic parish years ago—were the same places I was rubbing salt in old wounds—like nominating myself to proclaim the Spanish-language reading, poorly, instead of yielding it to the actual Spanish speakers in the parish. Shivers.

I learned in class about an African-American employer who asked a young, white male applying for a job if he noticed her color. He gave the same answer I imagine myself giving, “Not at all. I don’t see color.” The interviewer helped him understand that it’s okay, it’s honest, really, to say something like, “Of course I see your color. If I didn’t I wouldn’t see you.”

Why was he afraid to give that answer? Perhaps he was wrestling with an unconscious assumption that seeing color means seeing someone who is “less than,” and he doesn’t see her that way. And that goes in both directions. When people of all ethnic backgrounds insist they don’t “see color,” might they also be really saying, “I don’t see you with the damaged worldview that I might have unconsciously received from the culture”?

Real salt. Real light. Jesus challenges us to bring Real Peace by sweeping out the dusty corners of our own hearts.

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Luke 2: 22-40

Don’t we all love this story? And we only hear it in the odd year when the February 2^nd Feast of the Presentation falls on a Sunday, and thus pre-empts the usual Sunday in Ordinary Time. The last time we heard it was in 2014.

It’s the concluding story in Luke’s gorgeous narrative of Jesus as an infant. His parents, observant Jews, traveled from Bethlehem to Jerusalem so that he could be “dedicated,” or “presented,” at the Temple. This ritual also called for the purification of the mother, which of course Our Lady did not need, but I’ll bet she went along with, as Jesus did his baptism.

We live this life in grateful service to God, but eternity has a foothold in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Simeon and Anna waited, decade after decade, for the salvation of Israel. When Joseph and Mary walked into the Temple that day with the Baby Jesus, the Holy Spirit led them both to perceive that their life’s waiting was finally over.

All of us have this deep intuition, or maybe memory, that we are made for heaven. But it’s the timing of when we die, and how we die, that we wish we could direct. Anna and Simeon knew that the purpose of their lives had been fulfilled. But is that when most of us die? So often that seems impossible, especially in the deaths of children and young parents. On the other hand, the elderly sick, languishing for years, may beg God for death, and live and live.

Today’s gospel assures us that Jesus holds our future. Clinging to him in life is the surest way to recognize him at our death.

What are you hoping to achieve in your life before you see heaven?

Kathy McGovern ©2020

Reflecting on Matthew 4: 12-23

We have a kind houseguest staying with us this month. Emmanuel is from Pakistan, but has studied abroad for several years. We expected to see a lot of cultural differences, and we are humbled by them. Even though he has a driver’s license and we’ve offered him the use of our extra car, he walks everywhere! Almost every day he walks nearly four miles to visit his uncle. The four miles back are usually walked in the cold and the dark. He admits to no discomfort. Walking, he assures us, is the better way to live.

He came home one night with a delicious dinner he had prepared at his uncle’s house and carried home to us. He found us in the tv room, just finished with dinner, watching the playoff game. “Come in and eat and watch the game!” we offered. He smiled, set the table, and called us to dinner. In no universe he knew did anyone eat dinner alone, or in front of a tv. We left the game, had a fabulous second dinner, and a wonderful conversation.

When did Jesus begin his public ministry? The day he invited people to share in his mission. He sought out the brothers Simon and Andrew, and the two sons of Zebedee. (Notice how they’re identified by their relationships.) Jesus knew that the heavenly banquet collects, like a net of fish, humankind at its hungriest. We are meant to sit at the Table together. There is grace in stepping away from our computers and phones.

There is companionship and real community in carpooling.

And yes, it’s SO much easier to work alone than with a team. But that’s not how Jesus did it, thank God.

How will you stretch yourself to build community this year?

Kathy McGovern ©2020