On surrendering to God

My son John has declared that he wants to be called Spike. That’s his nickname, he said, and he for sure does not want to be called Robert, which is his middle name.

I asked if it would be OK to call him Buzz. He said that it would not. John or Spike, but not Buzz and definitely not Robert.

I dearly love that boy and, of course, all my children. I would gladly lay down my life for them. There’s no courageous heroism or grandiosity in that. Their lives simply mean more to me than mine does. It’s something instinctive, I think, something in nature.

Stories about parents standing in harm’s way in defense of their children are myriad in human history. We’ve heard of mothers lifting enormous tree trunks to free a pinned son. Fathers have drowned saving their daughters.

Sure, an evil world spawns aberrations in parent-child relationships. But in the natural order, a parent’s love is not conditional. Even a bird will die defending an egg.

What then are we to make of God the Father giving up His only Son to death? Surely that relationship is fraught with more love than even a dad could have for a small boy named Spike. I cannot understand it, but my faith confirms the truth of it, just as I do not doubt that a mother can lift three times her weight to extricate a son.

The Son of God was in fact Love Incarnate. The Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son. No, my mind quits – trying to comprehend.

I know this: I could not bear to live knowing that I had avoided saving my son from death, even at the expense of my own life. I might have physical life, but my soul would be forever anguished, rendering the physical life also tormented.

Jesus said He came that we might have life, and He freely laid down His own life in His purpose. I know, though, that the life He meant for us to have was not physical life, but spiritual. I know that to obtain this spiritual life, I have to die, not physically – but to my own will.

There must come a time to surrender to God, in yielding my will to His, when what I give up is not only sin, but also even that which is most precious to me. If the truth be known, what is most precious to me is my will.

Abraham was a father. Surely Isaac’s life was more precious to him than his own. Gladly would he yield his own life, but Isaac’s? A father’s will for his son to have life is very strong. With Abraham’s surrender, he gave up the powerful life of his own will. Isaac was spared. Jesus, however, was not spared. He did die.

That’s a radical turnaround, a surprise to the sensibilities. It calls the Son Himself into the picture. The Father freely relinquishes His Son; the Son freely relinquishes His life because of His Father’s love, not only for Him, but also for all His children.

A lot of dying going on, giving up, surrendering. But what’s really dying is any consideration of self. Only by doing that kind of dying, as we are taught by the life and death of Jesus, can anyone obtain the kind of life worth having. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on September 6th, 1987

A Christmas Story

Herbert was a Catholic gentleman; of that there was no doubt. He liked his drinks, but at 82, he was of age and no one questioned his moderation. He’d take a half turn on the barstool and all the whiskey in the shot glass; and then, like the whiskey didn’t faze him, he’d tell his stories.

“We lived down below the Sisters, went over to St. Mary’s to church. I was in the choir over there. I used to take the Sisters fresh cream so just so they’d have fresh cream to cream their coffee,” he said.

It was one Christmas morning, Herbert recalled. He got up before daylight that morning. Before he had gone to sleep, he’d prayed: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide.” Waking was bland and painful. But this was Christmas morning and something about it, we, he was just automatically peaceful it seemed, and full of joy inside himself. Outside there spun a flock of black and gray chickens. Snow had fallen and was falling.

He had to feed the chickens before Mass; but, boy, it was down below cold outside, that morning it was. Herbert stiffened to the cold as he strewed feed on the frozen ground. He talked to those chickens just like they were somebody that day. He wanted the chickens to share his joy.

Five-thirty Mass on Christmas morning was a large, quiet, reverent, freshly cooled bunch of people. The servers lit the candles for the low Mass. Herbert heard the shuffle of the altar boy’s cassock as he put the book. The big crib off to one side had a single bulb shining down on the Baby Jesus. In the background was a painted, dawning scene extending to Bethlehem.

Herbert walked the long way back home as the snow came harder. His mother fixed him one of those only-on-Christmas warm kind of breakfasts, creamed coffee, all. It was good. “Herbert, you’re not going back to the 10:30 this morning, are you? That snow is really coming down. You stay home now. It’s Christmas,” his mother said. No, he said. He was going back. Father Sullivan was depending on him.

Father Sullivan paced the chancel, half reading his Breviary and half losing his place, mumbling to the congregation about Mass starting late. He stopped, though, and espied a bowed, bustling, snow-stomping Herbert in the vestibule.

“Ah, we have a choir,” he said, and he turned for the sacristy to vest for the High Mass.

Herbert climbed to the choir-loft to find not a soul. He looked down at the altar with the high candles lit. There were poinsettias. St. Joseph and Mary watched over the Christ Child as Father Sullivan followed the server out, genuflected and turned to face the congregation with aspergillum.

“Asperges me,” Father Sullivan sang, as Herbert’s glance lowered to meet the rising gaze of the priest. There was an awkward pause. “Domine hyssopo et mundabor,” Herbert sang, embarrassed, alone. He sang the Kyrie, St. Jerome’s Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. His embarrassment eased and left him. At the end of Mass, the congregation joined Herbert in a triumphant “Adeste Fideles.”

Father Sullivan genuflected, turned and looked up at Herbert in the choir-loft. A beaming smile crowded Father’s face. “Herbert,” he said, “may I see you a moment in the sacristy, please.” Herbert knelt and Father gave him his blessing. He then produced an array of sacramental objects, asking Herbert to choose something that he liked. “Herbert,” he said, “the way you sang the morning has made my Christmas for me.”

Herbert, staying on his knees, said; “Father Sullivan, instead of these, well, Father, I don’t want to sing in the choir. I want to be an altar boy. I’ve always heard, Father, that if you were ever an altar boy that you’d never die without the assistance of a priest.”

Father smiled gently. “You sing in the choir, Herbert. And when you die, for sure a priest will be there.”

“O thank you, Father,” Herbert said. “You have made my Christmas for me.”

Herbert Howard was a lean fellow with a weathered face. His means were humble, though he had a big house. His wife was gone and he lived alone, using only a few rooms in the place. He enjoyed the company of the neighborhood tavern. People knew him as a religious man. Herbert died Oct 25, 1978, just after a priest had given him the last rites of the Church. He was 85. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 21st, 1986

Doing what’s necessary

It seems to me that Jesus didn’t do the things He could afford; He did what had to be done. He didn’t estimate His limitations and act accordingly. Rather, He acted according to the will of His Father.

When He had 5,000 to feed, Jesus didn’t feed only those for whom there were immediate provisions. He fed them all.

Jesus didn’t heal only during office hours, but as many as came to Him He made whole.

When He admonished, He did so with love – not to vent His spleen because somebody crossed Him, but because they needed correction to make straight the way for their own salvation.

So often the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers from the temple is cited as the text to justify justifiable anger. It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus doing anything out of anger and not love. Zeal is a very different thing from anger. He had zeal for His Father’s house and the moneychangers needed to have that, too. The moneychangers needed to be admonished. Surely moneychangers are people, heirs to the Kingdom, children of God. Surely Jesus loved them. He did what He had to do. It’s not easy to make a point in a raucous din.

For me, the challenge to live the Gospel message is a daily struggle. Always, it seems, I am beset on all sides because I count the cost rather than doing what needs to be done. I compromise, fear criticism, shrug because of weakness.

I’ve let banal, empty, vapid, inane television sap the vitality from the godly responsibilities and joys of fatherhood and being a husband. I use the old bromide that TV can be a good thing when I know that for every hour of decent programming there are a hundred hours of mindless crud. I compromise.

What Gospel imperative keeps me glued to the set? I know – the need for rest. Lo, on Judgement Day, the Lord said unto Tom, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You are among the best rested in My Kingdom!”

I spend time with, uh, unbelievers from time to time and God help me, I feel embarrassed identifying myself with Jesus Christ. I say it, but my heart and my mouth are in two different places. Among the faithful, faith is easy. Among those in sore need of Clear Light, I feel torn between wanting acceptance on the world’s terms and counting all as dung except the Cross of Christ.

However, if I continually focus on my weakness, my weakness becomes my focus. There is another way. That is to focus on what needs to be done, to keep my eye on the prize and on Him Who can accomplish what I cannot.

As I rise to a new day and feel the call to prayer, if my focus is no the ache of sleep, yesterday’s failure, today’s pressing business – I will not pray. If, however, I do not count the cost – the time, the mental energy, the foregone worldly strategizing – then comes the miracle, the blessing and the privilege of communion with God Himself, with Whom time does not exist, Whose mind is the engine of Life itself, Whose strategies long have been laid out. I will have done what had to be done. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 16th, 1987

Hot summer days

Memories of summer days flash like heat lightning at twilight – showing vague outlines, gently brightening, quickly fading.

Charley Pfiester and I crouched in the fine dust at the corner of his house, in the shade of a giant maple, peering intently at the conical indentation the size of a dime in the light brown powdery soil.

“Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire! Doodlebug! Doodlebug! Your house is on fire!” we chanted in unison, first one, then the other – persistently, not giving up. Slowly, slowly the silt at the base of the cone began to shift, push up in the middle, A tiny mound in the tiny cone formed in starts, stops, starts – each push of the duped doodle bug escaping his burning house creating wonder for two bored lads on a summer day.

Charley and I did our share of doodlebug calling. Charley claims to have called one all the way out one time, but I was never that bored. There were apricots to beckon. They were big and fat.

They hung on the limbs of the forked tree in the side yard, the one Mrs. Pfiester was forever telling kids to stay out of until she gave up. It sat too good. God made that tree to sit in.

A pan of apricots went across the fence for an apricot cobbler. A bowl of apricots went down the hill for an apricot pie. For all the warnings: “Stop eatin’ those apricots!” and “Ya’ll are goin’ to get sick eatin’ all those apricots!” and “You’re goin’ to run into a worm!” – apricot eating continued on until the tree was bare those summer days.

Moms would send kids over to Mr. Winkler’s or down to Bess Hazel’s Blue Plate Grocery Store for a quart of Purex or a gallon of Ideal milk or a loaf of Bunny bread. (A rabbit rode a horse, played a guitar and sang a jingle: “That’s what I said, Bunny bread.” We sang it, too).

The drink box at Mr. Winkler’s was a pleasant trysting place for the weary traveler from home. Always plenty of Barq’s root beer, Nehi grapes and strawberries, RC’s and Chocolas. Sometimes a big orange would be just what you wanted and Mr. Winkler’s box would have one cold and waiting. Tony Payne won two dollars once under the cork on his Dr. Pepper cap.

Of course lots of Milky Ways and Hershey bars were available in the ice cream box with the Popsicles, the Push-ups and the Cho-chos; but you’d better get what you wanted and get out of it.

Miss Hazel had a spool of string rigged on a coat hanger wire with the end of the string dangling through a fashioned eyelet. She tied up purchases of side meat and baloney wrapped in brown paper.

A few in the crowd decided to see how deep a hole they could dig in the railroad field. It became a fair-sized neighborhood project before it was over. The talk predictably centered on digging to China before it turned to the great dangers inherent in a project of this magnitude, particularly after a ladder was needed to descend the great depth.

Certain advantages became apparent. Stifling and muggy vapors lifted from the thick weeds of the field, but it was cool in the hole. At an admirable depth there was much discussion of heading the excavations sideways. Main diggers could have their place to go be alone. They could put cardboard on the floor, take a candle down there, maybe mix vile poisons from milkweed and pokeberries and squeezings from unknown species.

But nah, that wasn’t any fun. Better to go watch Mr. Weber turn on the streetlight in the back alley. Let’s play hide and go seek, kick the can, wave out, or hum-bum runway. (“Ink, ink a bottle of ink, what color do you choose?” “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…”) Let’s hook our feet in Buck’s fence railing and lean back in the lawn chairs, pretend this is an airplane – not just any plane, but a big plane.

Then the calls came. “Tooonnnyyyyy!” “Toooommmmyyy!” “Charles Lewis, you git in the house! It’s dark as the dickens out here!”

True, nostalgia brings memories likely not as true as they seem. Carried to extremes, it can cause heartache. But a taste now and then has a sweetness, a goodness, a serenity. It can soothe a troubled soul on a hot summer day. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on August 2nd, 1987

Listening to God

Everybody talks about listening, but nobody does anything about it. What I need are not more pleas to listen, but more lessons on how. So often I cannot say what I want to be heard. So often I cannot hear what is being said so plainly.

On a purely physical level, my high-frequency hearing loss leaves me oblivious to some things in this life; and I’ll just have to live with that. My cat cornered a cicada the other night, for example, and my wife grimaced with empathy as she heard the piercing peals of the dying insect, succumbing as it was to the cold mauls of an unfeeling feline. I was not privy to the insect’s wails, they being out of range of my sensory receptors. Death would have its day on my doorstep and I would go blithely on.

The kind of listening I need, however, does not require much physical equipment. What I want most to hear is the voice of God.

I have little trouble believing that God hears me. Betty Maltz, writing about her after-life experiences, relates a striking image in this vein. She was in heaven, she said, and saw shafts of light entering the throne room of God, knowing within herself these shafts were prayers. God hears prayer. That’s easy. But what does God say back and in what way? How does one hear His response?

Some people I know seem to carry on with God like two old-timers on bench. I sometimes envy the Biblical folks who heard messages from God as plain as day, like me talking to you.

For my own part, sometimes I feel like that gargantuan radio dish the scientists have aimed at the cosmos, straining to hear with the most sophisticated gadgetry any faint trace of intelligent life out there. So far they’ve heard nothing intelligible, but have managed to an even more imponderable, and mute, void.

My faith tells me that God is working all around me, communicating His will to as many as will receive Him, to as many as long to be part of the action. However, I don’t believe the problem has so much to do with listening as with accepting the message. God is God. He can and does get my attention. I simply discount His messages in favor of ones with sometimes sweeter tones.

The thing I don’t want to accept is the startling and profound truth that God does speak to me personally. He speaks in a flash of lightning that makes the streetlights go of and sends a chill of awe through all that I am. He speaks in my soul and what He says is stillness, quietude, solitude. He makes a word among words in Scripture, glossed a hundred times before, burn in my heart, the word becoming a window on the page to a vastness of challenge. In the midst of my sin He pelts my conscience like a Chinese water torture, but with a softness that says love and hope and possibility for change.

What of the hard of heart, the jaded, the puffed up, the indifferent, the insensate? Having been all of these, I find the answer in my question: How is it, despite all of these, that still I long for the voice of God? God speaks an irresistible tongue. It is not for want of listening that I sometimes languish, but in hearing I do not hear. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on July 19th, 1987

A change in plans

I’ve changed my funeral plans. It used to be that I wanted to be buried in a Catholic cemetery near Dermont, Kentucky.

Bishop Francis Cotton, the first Bishop of Owensboro (my hometown), was the first person buried in that cemetery. Both my parents are buried there along with several relatives.

Thank goodness I didn’t go ahead and buy a plot, though. I want to find another place.

The reason I’ve changed my mind about the Owensboro cemetery is because it’s one of those places where everybody has to have the same kind of tombstone.

These cemeteries came into vogue several years ago. They seemed to make sense. Everything was nice and even and Romanesque and easy to mow. Then I visited an old-fashioned, cluttered cemetery over Memorial Day weekend, and something snapped inside me.

This was the old kind of cemetery where there are a million different tombstones. No ugly, forbidding signs said: No artificial flowers allowed! There was no list of rules at the entrance telling all the things you couldn’t do. In fact, at this cemetery, you could do whatever you wanted. People had planted every kind of flower there, and marvelous trees of every description. Graves were adorned with shrubs.

The place was busy, owing to the holiday of course. But here were people expending tender loving care upon the final place for those they loved, instead of being forbidden to touch a thing.

As we visited, I became touched with the idea that graveyards are very much for the living. To visit a gravesite and to plant a rose bush, or trim a hedge or put in perennials – these things are purgative and helpful for those who so dearly miss the ones they have lost. These activities help the living spend time with the dead in a way somehow deeper than just putting down a bouquet.

I’ll not soon forget seeing one heavy-set man in his T-shirt as he stepped back from his gardening at the grave of his loved one. He had just stepped back and looked, his hands out from his sides and covered with dirt, like all people do when they have just planted something. The look on his face, however, went way beyond the flowers. His eyes were full of great love and great sorrow. He was an ordinary man, a simple man; but he was at a point of contact with all the meaning any life ever holds: the point at which one person loves another.

So give me one of those kinds of cemeteries, please, when I die – one construed for the benefit of the bereaved and not for the convenience of the caretakers.

Also, I’ve decided I don’t want the Dies Irae sung at my funeral. You remember that, don’t you? “O Day of Wrath, that dreadful day. The sins of man before the Maker lay – As David and the Sybil say.” I thought I wanted that, but now I’ve decided differently.

I don’t want to offend anybody, but now I want a funeral procession headed up by a New Orleans street band playing a little Dixieland jazz. I just pray I’ve made enough black friends by then to join the procession and help my stiff white friends let go a little and dance. Nothing puts me in a happier frame of mind than Dixieland, and I plan to be one happy dude the day I die.

What more glorious, happy, joyous, exciting thing could ever happen to a person than to go be with Jesus? –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 14th, 1987

Preaching with conviction

My wife said she had never heard such preaching in a Catholic church. I agreed. Although I have been unsuccessful in identifying the priest by name, let it be said that he spoke with passion and conviction. He began his “homily” by saying, “Fasten your seat belts.”

My family and I visited relatives in Michigan during the Memorial Day weekend, and we went to Mass on Sunday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Madison Heights, a suburb of Detroit. The sermon we heard that morning was some kind of sermon.

Father spoke about the unchanging law of God and about how it would be well if people realized that God’s law was still in effect. The preacher contrasted God’s unchanging law with laws of the Church which, obviously, change.

“Listen to me now,” he said, “This is important.” The Church can make a law and the Church can change a law, but neither the Church nor the Pope nor anybody else can change God’s law. God’s law is just as true today as it was in the time of Christ. God’s law was true when Moses came down from the mountain and it’s true to this day.

The message we heard that morning was a simple message – nothing heady or intellectual, but spoken with fire and feeling, out of obviously deep and heartfelt belief. Here was a man preaching a faith he lived.

People’s lives are empty today, he said, if they are not following the law of God. People are living together, having sexual relations outside of wedlock and looking for fulfillment but finding none. Because why? Because fornication is still a sin! he shouted. Adultery is still a sin! You can’t break God’s law and get away with it!

Father said he was tired of all the experts called “they” out there who are giving their expert opinion about how God’s law may or may not be applicable to a particular case, about how the Church’s authority has somehow become “relative.”

“You hear somebody say you don’t have to go to confession anymore, you ask that person on whose authority they speak!” the priest said with pointed and deliberate and emphatic diction. “They talk about ‘liberal’ Catholics and ‘conservative’ Catholics. What? Is the Church a political party now? They talk about the ‘non-churchgoing Catholic.’ What is that? Is that some special, new branch of the Church? Does that mean it’s okay for Catholics to not go to Mass anymore? It does not!” he said with power.

Father told his listeners to come off their complaining about changes in the Church and get back to practicing their faith and following the law of God spoken in their hearts by a true and informed conscience.

“I had a woman come to me and say her husband didn’t come to Mass anymore. ‘Is that so,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he just got to where he couldn’t take that guitar Mass anymore,’ she said.” Father made the Sign of the Cross. “I told her to tell him to go to one of the other Masses! Just because he doesn’t like the folk Mass doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to go to Mass! Get with it, people! You don’t like all these changes? Neither do I! That doesn’t mean you stop practicing your faith!”

Kind of does something to your heart to hear that kind of preaching, and I mean preaching. I felt some blood flowing in my veins that Sunday morning. Yes, Father what’s-his-name said a lot more things that morning: simple, uncomplicated, truthful things, things that make a person’s soul get stirred with the conviction that it is possible to walk in God’s way one more day. Thank you, Father.

It will be good to have something to cling to on Pentecost Sunday, something not half-baked and mealy-mouthed and soft in the middle, but something good and righteous and on fire.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on June 7th, 1987

Missed opportunities

Being an opportunist is not necessarily a good thing. Seizing upon a situation for personal advantage, but at someone else’s expense, may be good worldly wisdom, but it’s surely not God’s way.

Circumstances and things do come along, however, which are genuine opportunities and truly are blessings from God. We can pursue these things with enthusiasm and dedication knowing that here is our chance to succeed, indeed to excel.

There have been times like these in my life; and times, too, when out of laziness and ignorance and pride, out of immaturity and weakness and stupidity, I’ve blown it. I’ve messed up. I’ve turned fabulous opportunity into empty failure.

These ghosts of the past rear their ugly heads from time to time. If you’ve had the experience, you know what I mean when I talk about the guilt, the remorse, the anger, the unrequited anxiety. These are the missed opportunities.

Sometimes these experiences are big. Real big. Life changing big. At least one skeleton in my closet represents a missed opportunity that could have made a vast difference in my life, both from the perspective of personal satisfaction and probably financially. Not me, though. No. I was more interested in partying than in making the necessary commitment to a career in law. I wanted to boogie!

Suffice it to say that my decision to drop out of law school has flooded my late night consciousness more than a few times in the intervening years. My sarcasm belies my anger at myself and even a sense of shame and embarrassment. Too late now. The feelings can be unlovely. If you’ve ever blown it big, you know what I mean.

At other times my missed opportunities are on a smaller scale. The other night one of my young ones came into the living room wanting to show me some school papers. I was in a sour mood. I had lost something and was mad because I couldn’t find it. When the school papers were presented I said tersely, I don’t want to look at these now. Get them out of my way. Put them on the table over there and leave me alone. Have you seen my …?

The next morning I saw the stack of papers where my child had left them. He was now in school. When I saw the papers I felt empty and sad. I had been hell-bent on being boorish and bearish and I had accomplished that handily, but I had missed the opportunity to share a peaceful and joyful and pleasant moment with a child. Such life-giving pauses can never be recovered. There’s never really any such thing as making up for it at another time.

Each of us has an emblem or two from the past that represents what would have been, what could have been. All of us have missed the opportunities, great and small. For me, it seems the distinction is beginning to blur.

I have trashed whole giant opportunities in my life. Somehow those big circumstances, however, leave me wanting to kick myself no more than the smaller things that come along: the blown opportunity to say a kind word; the lazy excuse for failing to visit a sickbed; the angry preoccupation preventing a session of patient listening.

The older I get, the more I have come to believe that there can be great power in a single moment. Sometimes, eternity may be hidden in waiting 30 seconds more.

One might say it was nothing that I didn’t take a minute and look at my son’s papers, especially compared to those great rewards I could have had in a legal profession. We’ll never know. That minute with my son could have changed his life, and mine. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 31st, 1987

Loving our neighbor

My friend Robin described me as a cat chasing his tail. Some people are called to be monks and live in monasteries, he said, but you’re not one of them. You go around in circles with pietistic, philosophical, heady notions about spirituality, but I never hear you talking about loving your neighbor, he said.

This is a writing about the Gospel message to love our neighbor. Robin says our job is to do that. If we reject the message, then we reject the One who gave us the message.

I’ll be honest with you; it’s not a very exciting prospect. In fact, it’s boring. I would much rather spend time pondering the great verities of the cosmos than sit and listen to some dolt drone on about his problems. Neighbor loving can be very uninspiring.

One thing about neighbor loving that always has perplexed me is that I don’t really seem to get a chance. None of my neighbors are starving. They all have clothes to wear and a place to stay. I can and do give money for the poor, but that’s hardly a concrete, hands-on experience of actually loving. Giving money is important, but it also can be a way to detach one’s self from any real commitment to loving others. I suppose it’s a matter of attitude.

One thing I could do to love my neighbors, I suppose, would be to avoid gossiping about them. That would be very hard for me to do. There’s a compelling thrill about passing on some good dirt. It’s certainly no fun to sit on a juicy tidbit. Besides, I can always absolve myself by saying, “This may or may not be true, but…” That’s a lie and a cop-out, of course. Love dictates that I keep my trap shut.

As I think about it, another way to love my well-fed, well-clothed, well-sheltered neighbors is to tolerate their idiosyncrasies with patience and cheerfulness. That would be hard. Some people have a lot of gall in things they say and do. If I couldn’t scorn and resent their incredible stupidity or their brazen actions – I mean are we talking about blessing them when they curse me? Doing good things for them when they run wholesale over me? Standing by patiently while they keep rambling on?

Other ways to love neighbors, in a practical sense, come to mind. There are hundreds of letters I haven’t written, for example. Community agencies beg for volunteers. People in care centers and rest homes love companionship, even from people they don’t know at first. Blood donors love their neighbor.

When was the last time I found a kind word for the checkout person at the grocery store? How often have I thanked my letter carrier, and sympathized with her sometimes-grueling job? I could remember that courtesy is not dead.

Probably one of the keys to loving one’s neighbors is being open to loving them. It’s probably a safe bet that the Lord will give us plenty of chances to do it, even among the great middle class. I can chase around after my tail in my spiritual life, thinking the great thoughts and having the great visions – ultimately, though, finding myself pretty much where I started. Or, I can begin to go out of myself a little bit, begin to ignore the gooey feelings and go for the hard realities of love. The Lord said He didn’t want to hear “Lord, Lord.” What He wanted, He said, was someone who would do the will of the Father in heaven. God’s will is done in monasteries, but most of us live in the neighborhood. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 24th, 1987

The middle of the night

My wife says God gets people up in the middle of the night so they will pray. I just read an article which says that prayer is an effort to find out what God is doing. So I guess my prayer is, what are you doing Lord, getting me up in the middle of the night?

I’ve been pretty sullen and irascible lately and I’m not proud of it. I probably deserve a little insomnia. I’m just in a place - you know what I mean? I don’t want to be melodramatic, but this image seems to fit: I feel like a prisoner in a cell with one high window through which he can see only the blue sky. The prisoner knows there’s something more and something good, but this ain’t it.

As I pray to discern what God is up to in my life, I find it hard just to listen and to wait. Prayer doesn’t seem like prayer unless I’m running my mouth. In my prayer, though, it’s helpful for me not to have to explain things too much. God, after all, is God. I don’t have to give Him all the fine points, for example, of a job I have waiting for me to do. God understands that I have to do this and do that, this call to make, that research to do. He understands my embarrassment for taking so long to finish and my anxiety about being able to do things right. God knows.

Usually what happens to me – in prayer in the middle of the night which God has awakened me for so He can tell me what He is doing – is that I begin to offload my troubles onto Him. I know He’s going to be up, and I’m trying to get some sleep. The circumstances and things of my life begin to flood my consciousness. As soon as something or someone comes to mind, I simply offer it or him or her to the Lord. It’s like: “Yeah, this situation, Lord. I can’t do anything about it.” Or I will think of someone I know and I will say, “Bless her, Lord. I don’t know what to do about her circumstances, but You do.” And on and on. I don’t spend too much time on any one person or thing, because so many people and things in my life compete for attention in this prayerful presence before God. I can’t concentrate, so I don’t bother to try. I simply try to fix my awareness on the Lord and ask Him to see and experience and be a part of all things that are on my mind. Usually this is a very satisfying kind of prayer.

I’m not a great issues person; I’m an ordinary person. God hasn’t called me to scale the peaks or to achieve much of anything spectacular in a worldly sense. That has bothered me in the past, but more lately it has been a comfort to me that God has finally realized that I’m not Mr. Big.

There is something good in the simplicity of having one’s half acre to plow. God has blessed my wife and me with three children, and I do have a tremendously loving wife. We have a small house and a car to get around in, and a cat. We have friends who love us and friends we love. We have old friends. We want for nothing. My job is, well, as I’ve tried to explain before: this is my job. My employers are good, decent, God-fearing, fair-minded, caring people. What further blessings could a person want?

Still I have the effrontery to sulk from time to time. You know what it is? Immaturity. Childishness. I have not put away former things and put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

God has given me so much raw material to work with. As I squint and strain to see what Christian maturity might look like, surely I see that God has called me to holiness in the place where I am. I might make a pilgrimage and I am indeed a kin of the world community. But this is the place where Jesus expects me to find Him – here, in these little digs. Here I am to be obedient, willing, surrendered. This is where the Lord expects to find me when He shakes me and wakes me up in the middle of the night and tells me what He’s going to do. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 17th, 1987

Things to pray about

Whenever I’ve run out of things to pray about, I can take a look at this list:

- I can pray for all the people who have used me, manipulated me, walked all over me or taken me for granted. I can ask God to give these people every good thing that I would want for myself. In fact, I could ask God to give them good things instead of giving them to me.

- I can pray for people who have no sense of having harmed me, when they have.

- I can pray for forgiveness for all the mean, petty, selfish, inconsiderate things I have done lately.

- I can pray for freedom from deep-seated anger, my inability to let go with humility, and with surrender to God’s desire for my peace of mind.

- I can pray for the grace to speak plainly and honestly at all times with those in my environments.

- I can pray for the grace to bear with the trial of loving my neighbor when it’s particularly inconvenient.

- I can pray for those who are experiencing the same difficulties that I have, that God will find cause in my suffering to alleviate theirs.

- I can pray for my prejudices to become apparent to me, enabling me to see past them to the goodness, worth and dignity of all people, no matter who they are, what they have done, or what they believe.

- I can pray that God will show me my stinginess, which I paint prettier and justify and rationalize

- I can pray for deeper gratitude for the abundant blessings in my life, and for the grace to remember that my gratitude is cause to uplift others and God, and not occasion to think better of myself for being so grateful.

- I can pray for the people who right at this moment are dying with hardened and embittered hearts, that the light of Jesus Christ will so overwhelm their conscience that they can utter deep in their spirits a simple “I’m sorry.”

- I can pray that in every circumstance of my life I can see myself standing in God’s presence as I think, say and do.

- I can pray that my religion is more than some pious notion, more than a few half-hearted prayers, more than two dollars in the collection basket – but a commitment of head and hand and heart, of my life, all of it, turned over, turned inside out, sold out to Jesus Christ; a religion so radical that it just doesn’t go well with the world and its ways; a religion so radical that the world laughs and pokes fun. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 10th, 1987

Hanley

When I was a boy I had a neighbor whose name was Hanley. I liked Hanley, and I still think of him often even though he’s been dead more than 25 years. He fell asleep with a cigarette and burnt up in bed. He was a good man, though many in the world may not have considered him such. He spoke in a deep, rich, sonorous voice. Sometimes he called me Tommy, but mostly he simply called me boy.

The reason the world may have looked askance at Hanley was because he was addicted to alcohol. We’d sleep out in the tent under the apple tree in the summer, and we’d wait for Hanley to come up the back alley from the First and Last Chance. We’d greet him, but at those times he often didn’t speak. He’d be drunk and staggering.

On many occasions I went to his house in the morning. He lived with his elderly mother who would pour Hanley his cups of strong coffee before he went to work at the light plant. His mother would smile broadly at me with her teeth out. Hanley would be unshaven and groggy, but it would be obvious that he was pleased that I had come in. Somehow I found their company warm and pleasant.

I know that alcoholism is a dreadful thing, and I don’t dismiss it in Hanley’s case. He died because he was an alcoholic. Being just a neighbor kid, I was spared the probable terrible ramifications of Hanley’s malady. As it was, I liked Hanley, and he liked me. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes and I remember the tar stains on his fingertips. He was a raw-boned fellow and tall, with a weathered face and long hands.

My friendship with Hanley was by no means deep. There was enough distance between us that I took the news of his death with shock, but not with grief. I don’t want to sound cold, but the shock I felt was not disbelief, more the quality one experiences when stark reality sets in. Hanley’s end was not unexpected in our environs. Folks said well, they were shocked but not surprised, seeing how he was, seeing how he drank.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever had any kind of relationship with Hanley. Perhaps it was because I was a child. A child will go in where adults fear to tread. I never saw an adult neighbor at Hanley’s house at 7:30 in the morning, people who just stopped in early for no particular reason. Kids do that, but adults don’t. Trusting children take people as they come, without preconditions.

I read the 13th chapter of First Corinthians today, St. Paul’s great teaching about love; and I prayed that the Lord would teach me to love. After I read the Scripture, I was a bit apprehensive, wondering if I would ever understand love in my time. In my mind, I saw Jesus on the cross and I knew that was love, but I don’t pretend to fully comprehend it.

I ask myself if I loved Hanley, and I think maybe I did. I don’t know what else to call it. Now that I’m old and crotchety, I don’t have relationships with people like I had with him. I have a tendency to judge. I’m forever imputing motives, second-guessing, suspecting, finding fault, making sure I find a shortcoming or two. In Hanley’s case, I never did do those things. I didn’t condemn him, didn’t think to condemn him. Even when he staggered up the back alley, I actually looked forward to seeing him. In my child’s mind, I’m sure I chuckled and probably said, boy he’s really staggering tonight. But I didn’t think that was good or bad or what an awful man Hanley was for being so drunk. He was just Hanley. I accepted him with no reservations, no expectations that he should change. He did not, in fact, ever change.

For sure, love is more complicated than the love I had for Hanley. Jesus’ love for me and Hanley is indeed infinite compared to the simple, detached friendship a man and a neighbor kid shared so long ago. Nevertheless, there was something there, a beginning perhaps, a place for greater love to begin.

It would be easy for me to take my adult perceptions back to those mornings in Hanley’s kitchen and recast them with all kinds of judgments. Rather, I prefer to bring those mornings into now and again smell the strong coffee on the gas burner, hear Hanley’s gentle bass voice say how you doin’, boy. There is no ego in the air, no condemnation – just acceptance. Maybe it takes a child’s eyes to see the beauty and good and sweetness in a broken man. Love is more than the love I had for Hanley; but simple as it was, it was greater than prophecies and tongues and knowledge… and has endured. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on May 3rd, 1987

Then, now, and friendship

My good friend, your letter arrived today, and soothed like an ointment an exposed and aching lack of hearing from you. I have missed you, these too many years.

You mentioned that we may be seeking the same thing in our lives now, if on a parallel, like two hunters going into the woods. You didn’t mention specifics. So often it is hard for two friends to share where they are, having come from what was, the way it was.

The old days were full of the wonder of boys in men’s bodies, of dreams and self-confident goals. Someday we would write the Great American Novel, visit the peak of Everest, tour the Balkans and the Lapland tundra, discover the Great Unknown. Money would be a given. We’d be freed to hear the Muse, to stalk the hart and the nuance of language.

I have tried, how I have tried to avoid orthodoxy. I grew my hair long and wore old clothes. When the “Hair” singers sang about long, beautiful hair just stopping by itself, I had no idea they meant it quite so literally.

Discovery still intrigues me, but somehow I can’t make one. I keep discovering what others already know. My dear good friend of so long an absence (Oh, grit my teeth. Can you bear hearing it? Can I bear telling it?) I, well… uh, you see, uh, what’s happened, uh, the thing is, uh, I didn’t mean to, but, well, I have changed.

I’ve put away Balzac and Voltaire and Ken Kesey and Unamuno and picked up Author Unknown and Duck and Bear and Jack and Donald. I’d mull the great verities of the cosmos with Vivaldi and Menuhin, now I sing Mr. Froggy Went a Courtin’, and he did ride, uhuh.

You are sitting down, aren’t you? I have become responsible. That’s right. I am so damn responsible I can’t stand it. I pay the bills and mow the grass and wash the car and take out the trash and watch out for what the kids watch on TV. You are sitting down, aren’t you? I go to church.

Now I know you knew I went to church before, but what you don’t know is that I have fallen in love with God. Some admission for a leftover, beer-drinking, 1960s-reject, pseudo-intellectual, hippy, stargazing, anti-establishment, rebellious, angry young man.

Before, the days were pointless, as if they were endless. Now they are precious, though ironically they pass in melancholy like a forgotten mist.

Old acquaintances have scoffed, saying sardonically, “I guess you’ve found the Lord.” Oddly, I love them for their honesty. They genuinely cannot see a happy life without boozing and hell-raising. My nemesis now is the arrogant, self-righteous, puffed-up, religious person, the modern Pharisee. They load up those around them with heavy burdens, but inside they are rot. They make me mad. Imagine. My embarrassment is that I know them too well.

No longer do I long for the vague, exquisite insights of intellectual trivia. My challenge now is to love the hard-core self-possessed without lapsing into my own pride and condescension. God loved me that way, in that condition.

Loving God is where it’s at, my old friend. Ain’t that a kick? He’s where’s it’s always been. He’s who we seek on our parallel, like two hunters going into the woods. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on April 26th, 1987

Looking at life through my son John’s eyes

My father-in-law died not long ago, and one of the things we brought home with us from Detroit was a picture of my wife’s family when she and her sisters were little. Our children have been fascinated with it.

Our two youngest sit on the couch and stare at the picture in its frame and talk. I’ve never been able to pick up all their conversation. I gather what’s happening is that they’re internalizing that their mother came from a family, too. But there’s more that our children are aware of concerning this great mystery that is life.

When my wife was still a little girl, her mother died and she went to live with aunt and her uncle. Subsequently they adopted her. For our children, that has meant grandparents in Maine and grandpa in Detroit. Our children always have known that grandpa in Detroit was their mom’s “real” father, and that their Maine grandparents are the adoptive parents of their mother. I don’t suppose we see things, though, until we see them through a child’s eyes.

I passed by my youngest’s bedroom the other night after he had already been to bed for a while. I saw and heard that he was crying. I stepped in to see what was making John so sad.

Why are you crying John, I said, what’s the matter? Grandpa, he said, I miss grandpa. He was my favorite grandpa.

John is named after his grandpa. His middle name is Robert. We call him that a lot. We call him John Robert. He is six years old. I touched John’s hair and hugged him. I told him I understood that it was hard to lose his grandpa. Grandpa had died, I said, but he had gone to be with Jesus and that we would be with him again someday when we die and go to be with Jesus, too.

Grandpa was mom’s real dad, he said. That other grandpa and grandma in Maine are fakes. They’re fakes, he said, and you could tell he wasn’t happy about that at all. It made him mad that his other grandpa and grandma were fakes.

I said, they’re not fakes, John. They love your mother. They adopted her and took care of her. They provided her clothes and her food and gave her a home and sent her to school. They cared for her as one of their own and she really was, and still is, a member of their family.

No she’s not, John said. They’re fake. A lot of people say that, he said. If they’re not your real mom and dad, they’re fakes and that’s what they are.

People may say that, John, I said, but they are wrong. Your grandpa and grandma in Maine are your mom’s foster parents. Who was Jesus’ real father, John? He was God, wasn’t He?

John gave me one of those faraway, thoughtful looks through his moist eyes. Yes, he said.

Yet when Jesus came down to earth, He had to have a father to take care of Him, to love Him, to be His dad. That man was St. Joseph. St. Joseph was not Jesus’ real dad, but he wasn’t a fake. He was Jesus’ foster father. St. Joseph gave Jesus hugs, made sure He had food, taught Him how to do things.

People may say that grandpas and grandmas who are not real moms and dads are fakes, John. But that just isn’t true. They’re foster parents, just like St. Joseph was Jesus’ foster parent.

John Robert didn’t say anything. I love you, John, I said, and I grabbed him close to me. I know it’s hard to lose your grandpa, I said. I smoothed down his hair and he pulled the covers up around him. Very soon, he was asleep. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on April 5th, 1987

On finding the Truth

Dishonesty is hard work. One of my more outlandish lies occurred one Saturday afternoon when I told my wife that I was on my way to confession. My real purpose was to idle about with the boys, but I knew my missus would have no part of that.

After my return from an absence of unseemly duration, the wife of course questioned me about the reason. I thought you said you were going to confession, she said. Indeed I had been to confession, I said. But my sins were of such a grievous nature that they could be forgiven only by the bishop. Owing to Father’s having to make arrangements and our having to wait upon his excellency, the hour grew very late, I said, against my best intentions.

So much for one of the redwoods in my forest of saplings.

By contrast, one of my favorite stories about honesty features Betsie ten Boom, Corrie’s sister. Betsie, it seems, so valued telling the truth that her very nature would not allow even slight equivocation. The ten Booms were hiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. The family received word just before the arrival of the SS and hid their precious charges under floorboards, atop which they placed a table. When the Nazis burst in, Corrie said she feared the worst because she knew Betsie would tell the truth if they asked her any questions. Sure enough, a soldier asked Betsie if they were hiding any Jews and she said yes, they were under the table, which was in plain sight. The Nazi mistook Betsie’s truth for sarcasm.

Somehow I have a hard time figuring Jesus for telling a white lie or a fib or mixing fact with fiction to avoid bruising somebody’s ego. I doubt that He harbored any false humility or pride when He came before His Father in prayer. I doubt He had a complex system of denial about the shortcomings of human weakness. I think He was honest with His Father, others and Himself. Would that I could be.

Dishonesty will work you to death covering bases, backtracking, stirring in enough true-seeming deception to get you through the day. Through the grace of God, I’ve found a lot of peace in making a clean breast of things with God, myself and others. Still, though, I know I’ve got arthritis of the tongue, a few spurs and outgrowths in my efforts toward rigorous honesty.

When I come to the Lord in prayer, I want Him to see me just as I want to be or as I’m trying to be, rather than as I actually just plain am. Surely I have a better shot at the Lord’s love and forgiveness with a few qualifiers on my is-ness. You know what I mean. I’m lazy, Lord, but… I have lust in my heart, Lord, but… It’s easy for me to say I’m the most wretched of all creatures; just as easy for me to thank the Lord that I’m not like the rest of men. Why is it I can’t just come before God acknowledging my deliberate choices and my gratitude for all that He has given me? Too much theology, perhaps, and not enough honesty.

My neighbor will call inquiring about my interest in some service to the Church. Surely my hems and haws must sound almost comic. Say that sounds pretty good, I’ll say, but I’m pretty busy. What night? The boss has been pushing me pretty hard lately. I really need to get more involved. ‘Course the wife has been after me to finish wallpapering the bedroom. I’ve been called away on a journey to a faraway land. I’ve bought a yoke of oxen and I have to try them. I’ve taken a bride and I will be unable to attend.

One of the last great victims of my deceptions and dishonesty is me. I lie to myself all the time. I can lie to God and say I’m willing to change, but He knows the score. I can lie to others and say I’m willing to change and some will believe and report back to me how touched they’ve been by my courageous resolve. They, too, however, ultimately bear witness to the fruits of my actions. They’ve got eyes. They can see the same old so and so. Come we now at lengths to the heart of the man, telling himself with confidence and satisfaction that he’ll get going on that self-improvement campaign first thing in the morning. Never was there a lie repeated more often to such a naïve and spellbound believer. I’ll believe anything I tell me with the faith of the fathers.

Jesus said He was the truth. It seems ironic that a poor, broken sinner, in a grace-filled moment of honesty, will acknowledge that he is in fact unwilling to change, that in that moment he will meet Christ. I guess it’s true that if we can find the Truth, then we can find the Way: and if we can find the Way, we can find Life. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on March 29th, 1987

The beauty of forgiving and seeking forgiveness

The second week of February was International Forgiveness Week, and doggone it, I missed it. I could have used the opportunity to forgive and seek forgiveness, but I let it pass.

I could have forgiven my mother for that time she punished me for something I didn’t do.

I could have forgiven my father for those times when I just couldn’t make him understand all my anger.

I could have asked my brother to forgive me for all that blind, immature selfishness I had that time he said, “You’re a punk, Tommy. A New York, Chicago punk.” I couldn’t see that he was right. I couldn’t see all the hurt I was causing my family. There has been a barrier between me and my brother for 20 years.

I could have forgiven the nun who was vindictive toward me. I could have asked her forgiveness for the mean acidic things I said about her behind her back.

I could have forgiven that person for being so empty-headed toward my children, thinking her kids could do no wrong, but scolding mine. The nerve!

I’ve never personally known Lyndon Johnson or William Westmoreland or Stanley Resor, but they are archetypes in my mind of the draftee Army. I gave myself over to full-blown, unrepentant hatred in the Army toward this government which had so much power over me, and these people represented this government. This same government did not send me to Vietnam in the heat of the Vietnam War. This same government has helped me buy two houses, and paid for advanced education. I know forgiveness would heal the hurt, but I let it pass.

What about that landlord that kept my rent deposit? I could have forgiven him, but I didn’t.

The crazy woman that drives me crazy could have been on my list. She never listens to what I have to say, but is ever expecting me to endure her great wisdom.

Ah, my dear mother-in-law. I’ve never known what to call my mother-in-law after all these years of being married to her daughter. Generally, I avoid the subject – talk around it, you know. Whatever name I choose to call her will be the wrong one, you can bet on that. It’ll be disrespectful or too familiar, and I refuse to call my own mother-in-law Mrs.

I think of the boss I need to forgive, stealing my ideas, earning credit for the work that I did.

The Church has made me mad, so blind to my needs, so irrelevant to my circumstances, so smug and rich and intellectually arrogant, answers changing from one priest to the next, one decade to the next. I could have forgiven my Church. I could have seen in Her leaders the same imperfect exercise I see in my own parenting.

I could have forgiven God for taking my mother and my father and my only dear grandparent. I know that God has no need of my forgiveness, that the change has to take place in me. But somehow I have preferred the bitterness, perversely enjoyed the resentment which feeds on itself, and grows – even though I am the only one who suffers. I know in my heart that forgiveness would bring peace and a whole new dimension to living, but I hang on.

Reliving these old circumstances in my life has helped me to appreciate anew the sheer beauty of forgiving and being forgiven. Knowing that I have in fact dealt with each of these relationships has changed the very quality and nature of my life. I do have peace.

Sometimes we sit between the ledge and the mountaintop, separated by a cloud. The peak is just a leap away. As the cloud passes, in the bright clarity, we have our chance. A little courage, a little action will bring us safely to the other side.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on February 15th, 1987

Self-centeredness has always been in vogue

Pride is a difficult subject these days. So much is said about the importance of a good self-concept, and justifiable pride and the worthiness of pride in accomplishment. We say we’re proud of our Catholic faith, proud of our families, proud of our new car - not that all these things are equal, but we’re proud of them nevertheless. And rightly so.

Where, then, do we draw the line and cross into the Great Defect so ably exposited in the Story of the Fall? The sin in Eden, we know, was not so much disobedience as pride: man and woman thinking they could be equal with God.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t go around thinking I can be equal with God. I rather doubt, though, that that puts me in the clear with respect to pride. No, it seems to me that pride is not cut and dried, but insidious.

It seems to me that the very nature of pride would disable our ability to recognize it in ourselves. That is, if I’m swelled with pride, oozing with it – the worse the case I’ve got the less willing I am to acknowledge that I am indeed puffed up. How then to break the cycle of spiraling big-shotitis, sacrosanctity, gooey self-satisfaction and holy-and-worthy-of-praise-am-I?

Pride is no more noticeable than it is in someone else. I can spot pride coming up the road. I’ve noticed, however, that when my sensory-receptors become especially keen, I have to run and look in the mirror, there to see his excellency himself sitting in the judgment seat. In short, I’ve learned that one clue to recognizing this beast in myself is the recognition of it in others.

Once recognized, the pill is bitter. Seeing those pompous, egomaniacal, sick-with-self qualities in others, I become forced to admit that I myself must be schooled in these attributes, nay steeped in understanding.

Oh, society will come to my rescue with balms and ointments aplenty. I can round up confederates quickly - quickly stir the gossip mill against my boasting, pride-bloated target. It’s easy to find support to boo the overbearing fop, the woozy drunkard at the trough of self.

Being proud is chic. It’s in. Self-centeredness always has been in vogue, but it has taken on a certain religiosity. It’s true that God didn’t make any junk; but He also didn’t make any other gods. Recognition of self-worth can easily become the Cult of the Self. We may be worth it, but we also may be full of it. The Gospel message is still he who would gain his life must lose it; it’s still the last shall come first; it’s still never act out of rivalry or conceit; rather, let all parties think humbly of others as superior to themselves; it’s still looking to other’s interests rather than to our own.

It’s particularly difficult for me to think as superior to myself of someone who already thinks he’s superior to myself. I’d just as soon assign the jack-a-napes to you know where. I know I’m in a dead run ahead of him, though, if I do. It doesn’t seem right, but I guess it is.

The bottom line again, ever and always is prayer. I can’t get into the right understanding of who I am in relationship with God and my neighbor if I distance myself from the question. Once more, pride breeds a barrier to seeing its ugly face, so plain in others, but so hidden in the mirror. Praising God reminds me of Who indeed is worthy to be praised.

Pride comes in many forms inside this aging clay of mine: vanity (if you can believe that), an air of superiority, thinking little of others, smugness, being a gossip. It’s most insidious when it creeps into my self-confidence, my accomplishments, in the exercise of the gifts God has given me.

I know that there are those who need ego-reinforcement as therapy for crushing and painful circumstances. I know also that it can go too far, that it’s not a cure-all, cure-everything. Somehow in all the blessings afforded by counseling and the other helps we know in our world, a person’s relationship with God has to enter into the picture. Pleasing ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, satisfying ourselves is not a blessed objective without a deep understanding that we are who we are only because God made us that way. In and of ourselves, we are nothing. We gain our worth and dignity only in relationship – to God and to others.

God commanded us to love our neighbor in the same way as we love ourselves. I take that as a command to love ourselves, too. But love is patient, love is kind, is not puffed up, forgives all things and bears all things. To love means to die to self, and that brings the fullness of life.

My biggest hang-up with pride is recognition of good things I have done, thinking how I’ve helped and served and suffered long and patiently. There, too, Jesus taught me: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus said, “Only the Father in heaven is good.” That’s something for us moderns to ponder. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on February 8th, 1987

Making God my Pilot, instead of my Co-Pilot

We’ve all seen the license plates which say “God is my Co-Pilot.” That’s a nice expression and expresses a faithful attitude, but one which, to my mind, doesn’t go far enough. The saying would be better expressed: “God is my Pilot.”

Now license plates saying that might be enough to strike fear into the hearts of motorists everywhere, having folks craning to see who was driving the car. My distinction, of course, is a spiritual one.

Having God as a co-pilot seems like a relationship with the Lord out of perspective. Either God would be taking over the controls when I let go; or even at best, He would be flying along with me. In the latter scenario, I would still be calling the shots.

I’m not saying that there’s necessarily any conflict between what I want and what God wants for me – but there could be, particularly because I have a strong inclination to sin. My point is that only insofar as God is in control am I in tune with the way things are supposed to be in my life.

So how does that work? I’ve never received any messages from God like Samuel received, or like Paul heard. I have been aware of the Lord working in my life in a lot of ways, but somehow I have perceived His Hand as I went along, or often I will see Him at work only after something has been accomplished. I will ask the Lord’s help to do some work, for example, or to help me talk to someone. During or afterward I will see how He helped me, guiding, giving insight, someway being a part. These understandings have helped me to build up my faith, to see as Thomas did that Jesus is alive.

My problem is common to most of us, I believe: It is in knowing what God wants me to do beforehand. I can think of plenty of things to do, things that are in the scheme of things wholly good and meet and proper. Which, though, should I do? I obviously can’t do everything.

How does a person decide, for example, to be a teacher, or a brick mason, or an engineer, or a janitor? Each of these things can be pleasing to God but one occupation is more suitable to one person, another to another. In our more common experience, among all the charities that beg for support, which one deserves my attention? Should I take the initiative to go to this neighbor or that with a kind word or a help, or should I keep my mouth shut and mind my own business?

I wish I could have a clear and unequivocal word from God about things out front, but alas it doesn’t work that way.

Like my friend Dick is wont to say: “God’s voice often sounds an awful lot like mine.”

The answer to the dilemma of making God my Pilot instead of my Co-Pilot I believe can be found in the very nature of the relationship I have with God. The more intimate and enduring the relationship I have with Him, the more I am going to “know” what He wants me to do. If my wife and I never talked, I would not – could not – be sensitive to all the things I “know” about her. Of course, many are the circumstances when I simply have to ask my wife what she thinks. So it is with God.

The more I come to Him in prayer, the sacraments and in reading His word in the Scripture, the more I will know Him, and understand how all that He has said and has to offer applies to me in the nitty-gritty circumstances of my life. If I never talk to Him, never receive Him into the home of my heart, never hear His word spoken eternally in the Bible, I just won’t know Him, that’s all.

If I keep the Lord on as Co-Pilot only, I may find myself high and dark and trying to find my way on instruments I can’t read. I need to become sensitive to His direction and guidance. If God Himself is just my Co-Pilot, there’s a poor pilot indeed at the controls. Maybe the motorists ought to be afraid of that. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on February 2nd, 1987

Marriage: living and loving together in Christ

Just because my wife and I have been married for 16 years doesn’t make me an expert on marriage. I’m sure my wife will testify to that. It is true, however, that I have learned a thing or two. I don’t presume to suggest that I have a world view or that my views apply to anyone’s marriage other than my own.

One thing I’ve learned is that I shouldn’t be callous and domineering. I once suggested to a group of people there is only one thing in the world that I expect of my wife – that she keeps the bed made. A woman remarked from the group, “Why can’t you make the bed?” Gee, I said, I didn’t think it was too much to expect only one thing.

Of course, I was simply trying a little humor – that I was clinging to a last strand of chauvinism among the millions and billions of things involved in a marriage. It was a poor joke.

Even though I’m writing this from my perspective, I “feel” my wife’s attitudes and ideas and perspectives. For the record, my wife makes the bed if she feels like it. Far be it from me to tell her what to do. That becomes particularly significant in matters of faith.

I know that Lizzie needs to be free to be who she is in Jesus Christ, just as I do. He made us one and we are as one, but we are not one and the same. I’m what you might call lockstep wishy-washy, for example, and demand the freedom to be so. Elizabeth, however, has a tendency to regard matters with more conviction. I take a broader view, she a more detailed approach. She accepts people as they are, whereas I accept people as I think they ought to be.

Elizabeth needs freedom to go places and do things, particularly as she seeks the Lord, even if I believe she’s dead wrong. That does not mean that I cannot voice my opinion, that I cannot share deeply and intimately my own faith and feelings. However, I cannot tell her what kind of relationship to have with God. It is her relationship with Him. In the last analysis, we both worship the same God the Father, in Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Spirit.

If God wants my wife to make widgets or to associate with people who, uh, don’t always see things the way I do, then who am I to judge? I’m confident we are in agreement that God loves all His people.

Another thing I have learned is that I shouldn’t be selfish. I am decidedly selfish, but only in letting go of my laziness and preferences and pride do I find real peace.

One thing my wife won’t let me do is be patronizing or false. She has a highly developed awareness of the dishonest. I can’t say “It’s OK if you go there” if I don’t genuinely think that. She’ll catch it like a frog catching a bug. No, she wants the dignity of my honesty with her, not the indignity of my pseudo-complicity only to find out later I was really opposed.

Even if I am opposed to some of the things Elizabeth does, that doesn’t mean that I’m right and she’s wrong. Just the same, it is incumbent upon me to be honest about it and respectful of her freedom as a child of God. I ain’t saying I’m good at it, either. I just know it to be true, that’s all.

We Catholics share a common faith. That does not mean, however, that we do not have different talents, different gifts, different inclinations as we seek to know God and His will in our lives. Differences occur in our faith community and in marriages, too. God knows they do in mine. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 18th, 1987

It’s about time

At a communal reconciliation service, Father Larry Zurek related a story he’d heard about the devil calling a brainstorming session, soliciting his underlings for good ideas for getting more souls into hell.

One devilish soul scratched his head and said, “Why don’t we tell them there is no God.” The devil said that wasn’t bad, but he figured that would not get too many. Another demon said: “I know. Let’s tell them there is no hell.” The devil liked that one, but still, it was short of the mark. Finally, a third fiend spoke up: “Let’s tell them they have plenty of time.” The devil threw his head back and laughed a scornful and hellish laugh. “That’s it, my boy,” he said. “That’s it.”

My mother had a sampler on the wall when I was growing up. It was called “God’s Minute.” Here’s how it went:

“I have only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t refuse it,
Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it
But it’s up to me to use.
I must suffer if I lose it,
Give account if I abuse it.
Just a tiny little minute,
But eternity is in it.”

Time is very different from our other resources. We seem to be able to get a little more money, more food, more information. This, though, is the only right now we get. Ever.

We’re preoccupied with time. People are always taking time, or trying to find time, or losing all track of time. I suppose the most intriguing aspect of time for me is the enormous significance of single moments, little snippets of whatever time really is, that have such profound effect.

Take, for example, the moment the first light appeared in the first filament in the first light bulb. Or what about the moment it occurred to Albert Einstein that space and time are interdependent, that indeed time itself is relative.

What about the moment Jesus said: “It is finished.”

It seems to me that each of our lives could be filled with such moments, relative to our own circumstances, of course. If you’re anything like me, life is either something that was or something that’s going to be. Surely life, though, can be neither. Life is. This is our life, mine as I write this, yours as you read this. This is how we are spending our life now. We don’t accept that really. We have this intractable idea that life is something other than what life is right now.

St. Paul says in Ephesians 5: 15-17: “Keep careful watch over your conduct. Do not act like fools, but like thoughtful men. Make the most of the present opportunity, for these are evil days. Do not continue in ignorance, but try to discern the will of the Lord.”

The King James has verse 16 as “redeeming the time.” I like that a little better than the New American because it spells out what can be done with a moment. It can be redeemed. This is such a moment, isn’t it? Is this not a good one? When is a good one? Do we have plenty of time?

I find it a lot easier to look back in time and say, “My Jesus, have mercy on me,” than I do to look ahead and say, “My Jesus, change me.”

I know Scripture talks about everything having its season. Even Jesus spoke frequently about the coming of His hour. But Lot didn’t have much time to get out of town, and the Jews didn’t have much time to smear lamb’s blood on their doors. The tribes of Israel did not slow their march from Egypt as pharaoh’s army approached. Neither did Joshua hold back at Jericho, nor did Matthew tarry at the tax table. Jesus’ hour did come, though He sweat blood begging His Father to let it not be, not this way, not here, not now.

What if He backed down like I do all the time?

One thing I’m absolutely, positively sure of: This is the only moment I will ever have this moment. I can waste it or redeem it.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 4th, 1987

Perceptions and truth

They say we remember things the way we perceived them to be the first time. I recall my oldest brother grabbing me from my bed one winter morning, taking me outside and setting me down in the new fallen snow. It was up to my waist! I had never seen so much snow!

Many snows have come and gone, but my memory shows the great snow of my childhood. The point is: It wasn’t that we had tall snow, but that I was a short boy.

I used to think that the home of my birth was very big, but it wasn’t so big. The overgrown hilly field behind our house was not a jungle but a thicket.

Many more perceptions come into play as we grow older, things a lot more complicated than big and small. Take marriage, for example. That can be a shocker.

I’m sure I went into marriage satisfied with the old ’60s adage: “You do your thing and I do mine; and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.” That seemed like a reasonable sentiment. Certainly I believed my wife and I had it together, each of us with something to keep and something to share.

Good golly Miss Molly how things change. Things just didn’t work out 50-50 in our wedlock. Come to find out that marriage can be ninety-nine to one or a hundred to nothing. Come to find out that marriage just won’t work any other way.

It seems that so much of maturity deals with coming to terms with disillusionment. It seems so unfair that big things are really small, that snow that once prompted awe now prompts dread, that love can be hard and thankless and painful.

I don’t mean to imply that I go around disillusioned all the time. Far from it. Actually, in a kind of ironic twist, disillusionment has been a great teacher, demonstrating to me that real beauty is found in truth itself rather than in a perception of it.

Who can know the peace, the deep satisfaction, of a couple married 50 years, a Sister celebrating her Silver Jubilee, a priest who has been a priest for 30 years or 40 years? You and I know that they didn’t make those milestones easily or alone. Indeed, they could not have made them without God.

My wife and I have discovered that Jesus Christ must be at the center of our marriage if we are to do the loving that’s called for. We have discovered that He was there all along, whether we chose to acknowledge Him or not. He has that kind of love.

One of the things I tell my kids is that Jesus loves them and that He never stops loving them. Even when they are doing wrong, even when it seems nobody loves them – when they are happy, when they are sad, Jesus loves them. I tell my children this over and over and over again. Sometimes they say, “I know, Dad.” Or they will say, “You always say that, Dad.” Sometimes, though, they don’t say anything – they just look off in one of those childlike stares, seeing what a child sees as he grapples with believing.

Having come through a few disillusionments in my time, I know that my children will face them, too. I cannot spare them that. Maybe, however, when the going gets rough, when life gets unfair and they are called upon to love someone who doesn’t love them back, they will recall with confidence that Someone does love them after all, and never stops.

The Hebrew scholar says that God did not tell us how to begin things. That is His secret. He did, however, reveal to us a precious secret: How to begin again.

That’s what I’ve had to do as I have recovered from my disillusionments. I’m surely thankful that God, Who is Truth, has pulled back the curtain, from which way to go.

As I have begun fitfully and timidly on these new journeys, I know that the snow may not be deep, but it can be serene and pure and awe-inspiring, and that I can appreciate it in a child-like way. I know that love out there will not be based on some preconceived idea, but will be beyond all understanding. –T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 23rd, 1986

Feelings and temptation

The insight came to me with a freshness and a sense of peace and security. Surely this understanding about temptation was a gift. I do not know why I had not had this awareness before.

Certainly I could say the words – “Just because you’ve been tempted doesn’t mean that you have sinned.” People had explained this to me over and over. Just the same, I had grasped the idea only intellectually and not with faith. It was in the gift of faith that I was able, I suppose, to have an epiphany of understanding, a kind of manifestation of the truth underlying the concept. It’s like an “aha!” experience. We call dumbly poll-parrot that two plus two equals four. But when we understand what that means in a concrete situation, it makes more sense.

For example, if I have two dollars and you give me two more, two plus two equals four has much more meaning.

So it was when I came to understand about temptation.

You see, the thing I saw into was that the devil is a liar. Not only does he put a thought into my brain, he then follows that up with a subtle lie usually along the lines: “You sure are a bum for thinking such a thing. Look at you. You say you love God and you say you love neighbor. How can you love? Would a person who loves God be thinking what you’re thinking? You’re doomed, brother. God doesn’t want the likes of you around.”

It’s all a lie.

The plot thickens, of course, with feelings that come into play. A greedy thought sets up certain feelings. A lustful thought feels one way, a slothful thought feels another. Now I know that God gave us our feelings, and they do indeed make our lives very interesting. The thing I’ve discovered about feelings, though, is that they are unreliable. Feelings just exist. Just because feelings can be appropriate in a given situation doesn’t mean that they are. Feelings are not an unmistakable clue to the truth.

How often do we feel anger toward someone, for example, only to find out that we misunderstood? Or how can two people encounter the exact set of circumstances, one feeling serene and the other wired for sound? Feelings may add spice to life, but they certainly are no recipe for understanding.

In the case of temptation, the devil will put a lustful thought in my mind, and sure enough, I’ll start feeling, well, you know what those feelings are like. Then, though, the devil will begin his accusations, chiding his victims for not feeling disgust and revulsion, for after all, wouldn’t a truly faithful, believing, spiritual person feel horrified? The poor victim’s feelings are involuntary, but they do seem to confirm the devil’s lie.

And that’s the whole point, that’s what the big lie is: falseness represented as the truth. We can get tangled up in fiendish logic and lose sight of the fact that what has been happening is a plain old homespun run-of-the-mill temptation.

Let me lay it out simply. The devil puts a thought in our head. Quickly now, he lies, telling us we’re no good for thinking such a thought. Then, before we have too much time to think about that, he starts running on about our feelings. Then, so the devil’s plan goes, since we’re no good anyway for thinking such thoughts and feeling such feelings, we might as well act on or act out this initial thought, which was not our idea, but his.

To be sure, the devil knows exactly which thoughts to put in my mind because he knows my weaknesses, my stress points, my areas of confusion and doubt. But guess what, so does God.

God knows I have sinned, but Scripture and my faith confirm in my heart that, for those who will turn to Him, there is no condemnation. That does not mean there will be no battle. Spiritual warfare is very real, I should think. Just because I have gained some insight into the devil’s wiles is no guarantee that the father of lies won’t try again.

This gift of understanding, however, has been comforting to me, giving me strength for the struggle and encouragement toward the victory.

My nature is broken, inclined toward evil. Like St. Paul says, though, not that I live, but that Jesus lives in me. He is my hope, my strength, and my song. I have found that in the heat of temptation, in the pack of lies, in the confusion, in the tugging toward the wrong and the yearning for the good, if I simply say “Jesus” the devil can’t stand it, not for long. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 2nd, 1986

Life at the checkout

I’m at the grocery checkout. The woman in front of me waits for her groceries to be tallied. When the job is done, she needs to stand there for a couple of minutes to let the full impact of her bill sink in. In about a month, after she has stared blankly at the numbers on the machine which proclaim the harsh reality of her circumstances, she begins a process known as opening her purse.

Somewhere in there is – no, not there, or here, or under that – ah, another purse. Extracting that in the modern day science of non-filmed slow motion, purse No. 1 needs to be snapped shut so as to rest purse No. 2 on the top of it. Opening purse No. 2 is a millennial event, accompanied by dabs to the nose, sniffs, and sundry other ceremonious trappings befitting the bittersweet occasion.

After my children have become mature adults with families of their own, we begin a surgical technique which is accomplished by holding a wad of bills safely inside the purse with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, while sliding a single note from the bundle with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand. That leaves for my middle and most productive years the counting out of change.

The change, of course, is taken out and put back in an elaborate scenario, each coin arrangement displayed on the flat of the hand until a mercifully accurate combination can be found. Meanwhile, wife dear wife is at the morticians attending to the necessary details.

As my family and friends return to the limousines and the scruffy gentlemen begin shoveling in the dirt on my aged and long-suffering remains, the woman is about to begin an evolutionary phenomenon called putting purse No. 2 back into purse No. 1.

Patience is a difficult thing to have to live with. To be honest, sometimes I think I’m going to die. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 19th, 1986

An unlikely partner to goings-on in Purgatory

I sat in the city room at the daily newspaper doing what we call in the trade: “moving copy.” A routine obituary came to me for editing and typesetting; but my job, of course, was to look for errors and to see that they were corrected before the information was published in the paper.

In this particular case, I noted that the woman had been a member of a purgatorial society at our local cloistered monastery. Trying to resurrect from my memory the exact wording of those arcane old words has proved impossible. Nevertheless, from the context of the group’s name, it was apparent that the members promised to pray for one another promptly upon death.

Arcane then as now, I felt it necessary to call the monastery to verify the name of the group, the spelling of the words: routine procedure for a routine obit.

Somehow I was also reluctant to make the call. The usual press of deadline bore down, the hour of the night was not early; and the picture showed in my brain of a gruff, officious editor rushing to get the facts from a meek little nun. However, with the reluctance was also a sense of urgency. I dialed the number.

After identifying myself, I said, “Uh, we’ve received an obituary notice, Sister, on a Mrs. ______ I just want to check the name of a group. I note here she was associated with the monastery. From the context, Sister, it seems she was in a society, the members promise to pray for one another promptly at death…”

The meek Sister cut me short, “Oh,” she said, “has she died?”

At the time I made this call, I was not exactly your lockstep, practicing Catholic – more the gadfly exterior with the lukewarm interior. But the experience was surely mystical for me. I felt used, like the Lord wanted to get the word to the deceased’s comrades quickly, so he tapped this joker.

Now I don’t want to make more of this situation than was there, but what was there for me has held a special place in my recollection each November as we pray for the Poor Souls.

I know some people have trouble with the concept of Purgatory, an article of our Faith we accept on faith, the Scripture reference in 2 Maccabees notwithstanding. My faith, though, has been reinforced in a very practical way.

As with so many things about faith: logic, reason, documentation and argument don’t hold a candle to a personal peek in the door of something profound and holy.

The cigarette-smoking editor and the gentle nun became involved in the ongoing life of a woman who had died, two people at least one of whom was an unlikely partner to goings-on in Purgatory. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 16, 1986

Sainthood is not reserved for the few

All Saints Day has always has been special to me. I am reminded of all the good and holy and God-fearing people I have known who are now with the Lord. I am reminded that sainthood is not reserved for the few who luck out, but for as many as will come to Him.

Now I’m not being presumptive. Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, but I have known saints. I am sure of it. None is on the Church calendar, but how would any of us know the Gospel – which is to say, really appreciate the Gospel – if we had not witnessed it in the lives of those around us.

I think of my friend Leo. He was a businessman who gave me a job, but my relationship with him went way beyond employer-employee. He was the most generous, selfless, giving man I have ever known. He accepted people just like they were, and that included me.

Leo’s fairness, right-thinking, patience and honesty have been an example to me throughout my life. There are times I made him mad with my shenanigans, but he always put up with me benignly. His evenness would make me see how cruddy I had been. By the example of his life I could come to see the shortcomings in my own.

He had an accident one time, and it was a freak accident. He was backing up and hit a lady with his car, severely injuring her arm. I’ve never seen Leo so distraught about something. Besides seeing to her financially, he went to visit that woman every day until she recovered.

Leo would honor a commitment uncompromisingly, fully and without fail. I know that in his business he had an arrangement with another business. Although his partner fell down completely on his end, Leo never flinched. He was a man of his word.

Long after I stopped working for Leo, I was always invited back to the company Christmas party, and of course went back to see him many times just to visit.

On his last Christmas on earth, I was living in Lafayette and could not make it back to the party. A former fellow employee told me that after the party that afternoon as they were leaving, Leo stopped, looked off and said, “I guess Tom’s not going to make it this year.” It made me very sad.

When I received word that Leo had died, I came back to his funeral. With the exception of two, every person who had ever worked for Leo was there.

I remembered seeing Leo at noon Mass during the weekdays in Lent. I remembered his laugh, a hearty chuckle, and his expression: “Good morning, glory.” Often he would talk about his World War II days in Italy.

The night before Leo’s funeral Mass, I went back to the place where I had worked for five years during high school and college and walked around the buildings. They had a spray of purple carnations on the door and I sniffed the fragrance of each one.

I loved him. I miss him.

Leo will never be canonized, but he’s a saint all right. He was a decent and good man, a caring father and husband. He loved his neighbor and he loved God. He was unassuming and gentle, but there was no doubt about his ethical convictions. He was surely conservative, but ask anyone who knew him about his magnanimity.

I pray for my friend all the time. But on All Saints Day, when I think of all the people God has called into His kingdom, all the simple souls who have passed unheralded into glory, I will think of Leo. – T.R.

written by Thomas Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 26th, 1986

My friend is always there when I need him

Let me tell you about my oldest and dearest friend. I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t around.

That childhood day in the swing on the front porch was quite a time. I sat there holding my old cat, Rhubarb, feelings so sorry for myself. “Rubie,” I said, “you’re my only friend in the world.” It was truly a feast of childhood self pity. I didn’t recognize it as such, of course. I was steeped in my bittersweet emotions with abandon. Who should come along, though, but my old friend. It wasn’t long before dumb Rhubarb had lazed off under the foot-a-nights and I was swinging high with my friend singing made up songs.

We used to run for high pop flies together in a neighbor’s field. It’s funny. I wouldn’t be aware that he was running with me. I was a terrible baseball player, but my friend never let on like he minded. I tried out for Little League. That pitcher threw the ball so fast I didn’t even see it. My fellow Little League aspirants were impatient for their turn to try out at bat. They kept taunting me with “What do you want, pal?” All I wanted was a ball I could hit. I was a washout, but my friend made me feel better about it.

I went to St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville what I was 14 years old and I was really glad that my friend went with me. When I hit those terrazzo floors and sniffed those unfamiliar smells at St. Thomas, I was one frightened and homesick boy. I can’t tell you how intensely my friend and I talked that first night when we were supposed to be quiet.

My friend and I rode home together for Christmas that year – Glory be to God! Home! I recall that “Telstar” was playing on the car radio and my friend and I “dum dah dummed” to that instrumental song with happy gusto. What a joyful and sweet day that was.

When I left the seminary in February of my second year in high school, I couldn’t believe it, but my friend came with me. That was particularly comforting because my parents weren’t too happy about me leaving.

When my mother died, I honestly could not have taken the pain without my friend there with me.

There were some years after that when I lost much interest in my friend. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with me. I guess I just didn’t want to be with him. He didn’t like beer bashes and I did. It’s hard to explain. I got all full of bitterness inside. My friend would get in touch with me, want to know if I wanted to talk. For some reason or other, I got mad at him. He just took it. I’ve never heard him say an unkind word to me.

I kept it up, kept it up. Here was a friend who had never hurt me, had been with me through thick and thin, called on me what I wouldn’t call on him; but I started blaming him for everything I found unpleasant in my life.

Somehow or other, we got back together. I’m reasonably confident it was his doing. I told him I was sorry for being such a jerk. He just shrugged and said forget it. He gave it to me straight, tough. He was as honest and true as you can get.

He said we weren’t kids anymore, and the time had come for me to decide if I wanted to be his friend or not. He’d always been my friend, he said, and he certainly wanted to go on being so. What was I going to do, though? Was I going to keep asking him to go places and do things I knew very well he didn’t like? Was I going to go on blaming him for every rough place in the road I came across? Was he going to be the only one to be the friend in this friendship?

He had a good point.

I know that there’s not another one like him. He’s bailed me out of more scrapes. I don’t understand myself sometimes. I forget about him, don’t call him. I can’t remember one time when he wasn’t there for me.

My friend told me one time that there wasn’t a single living, breathing human being in this world he didn’t love deeply. I said wait a minute, you know everybody I know, and even though you’ve been down the line with me, we’re acquainted with some pretty low types. He said, o yeah, who?

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 12th, 1986

The Rosary

October is the month of the Rosary. My mind runs in a hundred directions about the Rosary in my life. How about you? Have you ever thought back to some of the Rosaries you’ve said?

My namesake is Blessed Alan de la Roche (d Sept. 8, 1475), a successor to St. Dominic in encouraging devotion to the prayer. But that certainly doesn’t make me a Blessed or a saint, particularly when it comes to the Rosary. The Rosary is a devotion to our Lord through the intercession of our Blessed Mother which has fallen on hard times. Used to be, everywhere you turned there was a queue of Catholics praying the Rosary. Today – how does it go – we’ve got one around the house somewhere. Now where did we put it?

Our tradition tells us with alarming simplicity that the Rosary has great power, power enough to effect world peace. We don’t have world peace, but of course we don’t say the Rosary either.

It’s not a little intriguing that one place where the Rosary still has widespread popularity is at wakes.

What a mysterious, inexplicable attraction this prayer holds! I’ve rushed through it empty-headed, persevered through it thoughtfully, begged it, pleaded it, wondered at it.

I’ve turned to it in desperation, interceded for others with it, cried through it.

I’ve been moved to imponderable peace during it, fought my way through it, been flooded with doubt about it. I’ve had deep confidence in its efficacy and let it go unsaid for long periods of time.

Real blessings have come my way in the wake of it. I’ve experienced profound temptations in the midst of it.

I’ve prayed Rosaries in airplanes, cars, hotel rooms, woods, living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. I’ve prayed it on my fingers, in my mind, out loud in groups and out loud alone.

So much can be said about this prayer. Indeed there are books. Our own second bishop, John Cardinal Carberry, has a volume called “The Book of the Rosary” (1983, OSV). It’s a nice enough work. It takes the reader through the Mysteries with Scripture and has a good introduction on the meaning and value of the prayer.

The enduring classic, however, is “The Secret of the Rosary” by St. Louis de Montfort (Montfort Publications). St. Louis knew the Rosary I know. Consider his words: “One must not be looking for sensible devotion and spiritual consolation in the recitation of the Rosary; nor should one give it up because his mind is flooded with countless involuntary distractions or one experiences a strange distaste in the soul and an almost continual and oppressive fatigue of the body.”

Now there’s a man who has said the Rosary.

I believe in this great prayer. I know in my heart that the devil hates it.

I will do this: I will pray the Rosary each day this month for the readers of the Visitor. If you have a need, a hurt, an ache for solace, a fear, a hope, claim this Rosary as your own.

Please don’t confuse the one praying with the prayer. I’m not puffed up about this. In fact, I have “a strange distaste in the soul and an almost continual and oppressive fatigue of the body” just thinking about it. I’m aware that someone may think I think I’m something special. I’m not. However, it often has helped me to know that somebody’s praying for me. It’s as simple as that.

Also, please don’t expect any assurance of particular fervency or the assiduous attention of my mind. I know from experience you'll have to rely on the great power of the Rosary to help you and not on me.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 5th of 1986