Talking about People v. Talking about Things

by Dan Masterton

Growing up, my family did the Sunday morning, after-Mass brunch thing. Our usual destination was the local Panera. Sitting down with our coffees and baked goods, the conversation usually flowed pretty easily, typically talking first about Mass and then the week past and week to come. Then, inevitably, we’d get into three tried-and-true subjects: history (the greatest trivial pursuit), Ireland (our literal fatherland), and sports (the heartbeat of many a Chicagoan).

My older brother, dad, and I would get going pretty good. My dad has the encyclopedic knowledge of history, especially of American presidents, to rival anyone; my brother and I have each lived in and traveled about Ireland, my dad’s country of birth; and the three of us follow Chicago sports past and present quite doggedly, having grown up with my dad’s Chicago Bears season tickets that are as old as my older brother. After a certain point, eschewing protest or complaint, my younger brother (a sports fan in his own right) would more or less check out to his own world, and my mom would busy herself with a newspaper word game or even just up and leave in favor of the Hallmark shop next door.

What was so different about the way my family members are wired? People often turn to the age-old classifications that some people are book-smart and some people are street-smart. Let me put it to you a different way: some people are more apt to think and talk about things, and some people are more apt to think and talk about people.

My older brother, dad, and me -- we all gravitate toward knowledge and criticism. When we were together, we could get rolling pretty quickly, especially on topics which mutually fascinated us. It isn’t that we lack social skills or aren’t interested in our friends and family; our minds are just wired more toward thinking critically about concepts, details, and analyses.

My mom and younger brother -- they both gravitate toward socializing. In a group or crowd, they’re both comfortable and outgoing, asking questions of others and making connections. It isn’t that either of them is unintelligent or dull; their minds are just wired more strongly to perceive others, reach out for conversation, and make connections to other people.

As I dug into undergraduate studies, I discerned a call to pastoral ministry, and I loved my first courses in theology, which I then declared as my major. I came to see a degree in the liberal arts as a degree in learning how to think critically, in which one’s chosen major is their preferred lens through which to think about the world. My theology courses were my chance to think about things -- things that proceed from the truth of a person, Jesus Christ, but things nonetheless. My theology studies would be the contents of my toolbox as I grew into a pastoral minister; between the University of Notre Dame and Catholic Theological Union, my think-about-things hardwiring was put to great use and helped me learn and grow profoundly.

Yet, called to pastoral ministry, I would have to do more than think and be more than a thinker. Definitionally, pastoral comes from the word pastor, whose root word is shepherd; pastoral ministers are called to accompany others with interpersonal spiritual care and support. I began my post-grad career with a year of service as a volunteer lay minister in Ireland, and my biggest takeaway was that all meaningful ministry and community proceeds from relationships. Even if I can think my way to great ideas and content for parish gatherings, no one will actually gather unless relationships and invitations draw people into community.

Pastoral ministry, like so many integrally Catholic things, is a both-and concept. Pastoral ministers must be strong in thinking and talking about both things and people.

Surely, we all can think of people who are more things-people than people-people, or vice-versa. In all likelihood, if we think about the leaders at our parish, there’s probably some from each category, too. I’d suggest that the ideal ministry is that which utilizes both these two areas.

One of the things that helped my family stick together well was the complementarity of my parents, siblings, and me, and of the strength of all of us together. My dad would often say that he was the “back” of the family, carrying the load of bread-winner and manager, and my mom was the “heart,” connecting us with family and friends in great love.

Our communities, our parishes, and our Church need the best of both kinds of thinkers. We need a blend and balance of hearty theologians and earnest relationship-builders. We need our leaders to be humbly aware of their weaknesses and have the pastoral sensibilities to delegate and to empower colleagues and community members. We need to look to Christ, who revealed Truth by His parables and preaching as well as by His encounters and relationships.

Best of the Rest(less Hearts)

Six months into our new format, this team has produced a ton of great reflections on theology, ministry, spirituality, and life as a young adult Catholic. It's been great to see so much new engagement on our posts and pages as so many of you click, like, and share with us in our online community. Today, I thought it'd be fun to highlight particularly excellent posts from the last six months, as I share my favorite post from each member of our writing team. Take a stroll down memory lane and click back to these great pieces by our phenomenal authors:

Erin Conway - Good Enough, I'm Ready: Me and the Other Francis

And finally, before Xavier left for Asia he was never “briefed” on what was ahead of him, he simply agreed to the mission, trusting that what he knew was “good enough.” As I reflect on my own life as a missionary of sorts, I realize that I too was never truly “briefed” before any of my transitions. Although I knew I’d be teaching seventh grade English when I moved to Baltimore and had walked the hallways of my school, I truly had no idea what “being a teacher” really meant. Similarly, when I moved to Palm Desert, I’d never seen the school, the town, or any of the individuals I’d be working with for what would be the next three years. And most recently, when I returned home to Cleveland, I once again found myself accepting a job I hadn’t initially applied for at I school I’d never seen.

Going through college, I always enjoyed grilling people about their selected majors and career/vocation aspirations. So often, seemingly unrelated fields came into clear focus as faithful people explained what they felt called to do with their lives. Erin's reflection here reminds me of those conversations. Millennials are unlikely to stick to one narrowly defined career for their whole adult life, unlikely to soldier on unflinchingly with one company for decades and decades, unlikely to anchor down in one location from one's early 20s onward. And while there's something to be said for the consistency of our parents' and grandparents' trajectories, new pros and cons emerge and loom large as we strike out into our adult lives. I arrived in Palm Desert at the same time as Erin, and we worked together at a school that is an earnest petri dish for vocational discernment. Her reflection shows how one can take what could easily become nomadic uncertainty and utilize its dynamism to surge forward toward clearer and more fully realized vocation. And that's just what she is doing.

Laura Flanagan - Simon of Cyrene

This is our cross, and we will carry it somehow, as we were compelled like Simon to take it up. The Lord himself also carries it, though -- as he emptied himself to do. Simon suffers with Christ; Christ suffers with him. Christ suffers with us. And yes, good will come. Through that kenosis of Christ, we have the gift of baptism. In taking advantage of that totally unearned grace, our tiny girl can now be a tiny saint. I see the fruits of Margaret’s sainthood already, most amusingly in the jealousy of her older sister, who currently insists that she too is a saint. I’m content if her saintly sister is her “aspirational peer.”

In working with young people on retreat leadership formation, they are so tempted to define their leadership by the disclosure of trauma and measure its success by the quantity of tears induced. It's a serious wrestling match to draw them into deeper contemplation that describes the dramatic moments in sparse detail and shifts greater focus to the revelations about self, others, and God that become clear from our lived experience. Laura's maturity and groundedness has been strong as long as I've known her, and her faithful insight even endured through unspeakable tragedy. Here, she humbly found resonance in Simon of Cyrene, who is pressed into duty on the road to Golgotha. Laura's words bring consolation to parents, families, and anyone who seeks to understand the cross in their Christian life. May our little friend Margaret pray for us.

Jenny Klejeski - Here. Now. Love.

Through the mundane, the painful, the frustrating, the seemingly pointless, say yes anyway. Nothing is wasted if we love. It is from small obediences that God calls forth great abundance. Do not be afraid that you are missing your vocation or that you ought to be somewhere else. Trust that your vocation is wherever you are.

Jenny's posts often sound like what I imagine homilies at Mass could and should be. In her own pastoral way, Jenny weaves an easy tapestry of biblical insight, lived faith, and spiritual implications. When I imagine the middle schoolers in her classroom, I think not of the zoo-ish behavior of pre-teens but of a group of young people uniquely engaged to think more deeply. This post, especially, captures that image. While our temptation is to give in to the excuses that the modern, busy life presents, the better, simpler option is to love before we let something else get in the way. The ability to love instantly and generously before we erect a barrier points the way toward better relationship and fuller vocation. The trust Jenny draws from the examples of St. Mother Teresa and Mary gives us the ideal toward which we should strive.

Dave Gregory - The God-Hole

What does this God-hole do for us? Why did Saint John of the Cross write so beautifully about the dark night of the soul? Why did Mother Theresa’s journals reveal that for the majority of her ministry she felt the night so oppressively close in? Read any mystic or authentic theologian, and the same theme rears up over and over again, incessantly. Read Shusako Endo’s Silence or Karl Rahner’s Encounters with Silence, and you find authors and theologians struggling with the abyss. Although I’ve engaged this absence before, I never realized that I’ve approached it mistakenly.

While I sometimes feel tempted to talk about successes and strides in authoring my own posts (something my struggle with humility tries to temper), I've admired how everyone on the team comes at their writing with fairly gritty realness. These six folks are not pulling punches and pretending about sunny lives of faith, though I do think everyone is committed and optimistic in the proper way. Dave, especially, invites that sort of visceral reality into his work. Talking about the God-hole, Dave embraces the valleys and shadows, things he rightly connects to the lives of St. John of the Cross and St. Mother Teresa, showing how sainthood isn't all smooth sailing and immaculate living. Ultimately, his post talks about how seeing God even in the dark interludes can actually deepen and strengthen trust, such that one's whole life comes into the Light differently.

Tim Kirchoff - My Experience of Spiritual Imposter Syndrome

Before I knew it, I had dismissed as vanity every attempt I had ever made to follow God’s will and concluded that any subsequent effort I could make would be equally vain. The only thing that could make my efforts meaningful was an encounter with Christ, something I could not provide for myself—and something which did not seem to be forthcoming on God’s end, either.

Working with non-denominational Christian students, I have seen first-hand how some of their faith language and piety differs, usually in respectful ways that celebrate the diversity of ways to give praise to God. One of the positive influences from this tradition of Christianity is the emphasis on a relationship with Jesus Christ, something that Catholicism often struggles with. On the one hand, it's something I'm always thinking about facilitating better for my students, but on the other hand, seems like a tough-to-define concept that perhaps is more of an aspirational goal as my young people grow deeper in faith, often starting from next to nothing. Tim's reflection brings this struggle into focus (no pun intended) within our own tradition. His memoir discusses how this emphasis in an interview process frustrated his own faith and invited him to zoom out on his relationship with Christ. I found myself nodding along with him a lot, as I felt his piety and faithfulness oddly blackballed by particular lines of questioning. Tim's fidelity and ecclesial awareness give his reflection an authentic depth.

Rob Goodale - The Trouble with Milking the Clock

The trouble with the conservative clock setting, though, is that you end up wasting a heckuva lot of time. It’s also really tough to switch back and forth between milking the clock and trying to score efficiently -- both in real life and in video games. Once you’ve adopted the time-wasting mentality, it’s pretty easy to get stuck there.

I can always count on my old friend, Rob, to bring in sports somehow, which he knows is a clear way to my heart. I have long joked that our generation will make better football coaches because we grew up playing football video games and calling timeouts strategically to either come back late in a close game (if we challenged ourselves) or to stretch out the end and score even more points (if we just played for gaudy stats). In a delightful way, Rob pivots from playing video games, with these gamer ideals in mind, to the rest of life. We often think that our bad habits are easily compartmentalized such that they surely can't and won't influence the other parts of our lives that need to stay on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, humans are broken, flawed, silly creatures, and this is all but inevitable. Rob's reflection reminds me of one of my favorite things to tell young people, especially about social justice and owning their faith as teens: If not you, who? If not now, when?

The Grace of Awe

by Erin M. Conway

“And awe came upon everyone.”

This line, from the Acts of the Apostles, is used by kinship guru Greg Boyle to remind us of what true compassion looks like. Compassion, he writes, stands in awe of what others are asked to carry rather than in judgement of how they carry it.

Moments of awe are my favorite teaching moments: when I think I know what to expect from my students, who they are, and what they are carrying.

I had one of these moments just last week.

If you’ve been reading my work the last few months, you know race is something I’ve thought about a lot this year. I’ve had a lot of conversations with my students. I’ve listened to their stories. For the most part I thought I knew how they felt. I started to believe I knew what their daily experiences and inner thoughts were. I became frustrated (as teachers are apt to do at the end of the year) by their inability to handle the transition from high school senior to graduate with grace.

Despite efforts to do otherwise, I began to judge, moving myself further and further from compassion.

And then, in the midst of my frustration, my students shared their poems and I found myself once again overcome with awe. Strength, kindness, compassion, resilience. I was reminded once again of how radically different the reality in which I live is.

I hope you listen to their voices.

“And awe came upon everyone.”

＊＊＊

I am tired
I am tired of being sick and tired
I am tired of having this conversation
I fear in the middle of the night that I will have to have this
Conversation with my children
That you will be judged and looked at as less than
Because you are not a part of the majority
I choose love not hate

Because I know that one day the minority
Will have the authority to prove that
They are a priority

Racial discrimination is not blacks against whites
To die or to fight
It's not Christians against atheists
Because we are all patriots
In our nation of obligation
It is ignorance against awareness
That continues to breed unfairness
I choose love not hate

As a community we need to become more open
Open to diversity in our workplace and education
To make room for a new generation
We love people like Richard and Mildred loving
Shoving the thoughts of people's opinion about their marriage

-NG

＊＊＊

We were always treated different
When it came to race
Others said that’s not the case
Even when it came to our gender
We had to surrender

A n*gga can’t walk down the street
Without making a cracker feel uncomfortable
They clench their purse and children
For no f**king reason
Yet we still had to surrender

Driving doing the speed limit
Cops can’t handle it
They kill and beat our black men black and blue
Just because they had nothing to do
Surrender

Can’t even sit at a blooming Starbucks
without making someone uneasy
Call the cops just because they didn’t order anything
You think that we were just gonna sit and not do nothing
No surrender

Yeah right
We are going to show what happens in the dark will come to light
We are going to stand up and then show that the abuse inflicted on our culture will not go unheard
Stand up and FIGHT!

We are going to show that we are human and we have feelings too
We hurt
We fear
We grieve
We stand up
We push back

Till next time…

-AB

＊＊＊

You shifted in your seat when I walked into the room
Did I make you feel uncomfortable?
Does my accent have too many colors for you?
Does my face express ugly truths that you’ve been trying to hide for so long.
Is the way I speak is loud and anxious?Does my outfit disappoints you on what a ‘ classy’ lady should look and dress like?
Dress appropriately not ghetto, ratchet, and trashy
Did you label me yet?
I can see your eyes rolling back saying ‘ Not this again here she goes’
Did you a category that ‘ defines me’
Angry
Black
Woman
Do you fear having a conservation with me?
And I’ll become ‘ angry’
You see us black women have been silenced for so many years
Our mouths being stuffed with obedience
Our dignity being cut up to pieces
We are told to never show that you are hurt
That we don’t feel a thing
I refused to be treated like some object I be damned if you try to shut me out
So yes today I’m an unapologetic black women
I’m unapologetic
Because I’m proud to be a black queen
My voice is my power and I’m not afraid to utilize it when it’s needed
I’m unapologetic
Because as a woman I’m art that was created by god
With a perfect expression of pain, struggle, strength, and beauty
I am black without apology

-RD

The Ministry of the Tutor

by Laura Flanagan

One of the primary institutions which I support at my alma mater is the Notre Dame Writing Center. To begin to explain why, I will write a short ode to an inspiring family. Their kids might be considered a half-generation younger than I; the eldest are in their late teens, but the youngest is younger than my elder daughter. The whole family, including the young children, are cultured and well read and Catholic, in the best sense - able to see beauty in all of creation, generous, aware of the poor and marginalized, etc. They have homeschooled for that same rarer reason my parents also had: to ensure the quality of their education kept up with their intelligence, not to shelter them from the big, bad, secular world. Essentially, if my kids turned out like theirs, I’d be content.

These parents also believe deeply in the Writing Center (one is the director, and the other a member of the English faculty). Through them, I have come to see that the formation of good writers and good writing tutors can be essentially a Christian ministry, even if not explicitly so. (I was a tutor for the NDWC as a junior and senior.) A good tutor practices several skills akin to a pastoral minister.

First, he or she must listen well.

Writing tutoring may be an intellectual ministry, but it is one that requires intense focus on the person, the author, before you. The Prayer of St. Francis says, “O Master, let me not seek as much… to be understood as to understand,” and this would be a worthy mantra for the tutor. Your job as a tutor is to bring out the best in what the author has to say, rather than what you think would be best to argue or how you might phrase it. The author is especially able to flourish in the peer tutoring at the foundation of centers like the NDWC, where there is less of an inherent power dynamic or knowledge gap.

In short, tutoring writing requires humility. It should not be your style (however delightful you may think it), but theirs that eventually runs clearly. To achieve this rhetorical invisibility, much of a tutoring session relies on asking questions once the author has read aloud his or her work, and asking more questions once he or she has answered. In between, the tutor listens.

Second, tutoring requires a discerning eye.

You are asked to be a tutor because you write well; you know some of what good writing includes, and what a clear argument requires. You become the person who finds the right questions to ask. While you do not want to impose yourself upon someone else’s writing, you do have something to give.

An author who takes full advantage of a writing center may develop a habit of thinking clearly through his or her communication, much as if he or she received actual philosophical training. The tutors’ clear thinking and fresh sight are often their gift to give.

The questioning process of a tutoring session might then be described as Socratic, but I think it is closer to Christlike. Christ’s questions, particularly to challengers like the Sanhedrin, weren't neutral; but he did genuinely want to listen. His questions are meant to open their perspective, change the nature of the game they think they’re playing. When a tutor sees where someone can improve, he or she asks a question meant to help them realize improvement is necessary or possible, but that question may (should?) not lead only to a single means of improvement.

In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis puts this necessary humility thus:

"...The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love. It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” shall be our reward."¹

Making yourself superfluous is hard, but it is a skill well cultivated for the instances in life (and there are many) where you have no choice but to let go of control over the result.

Third, tutors learn to engender curiosity - the authors’ and their own.

My parish’s pastor wants to begin offering Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.² His stated purpose is to direct children’s natural curiosity towards faith-related objects and stories while young - so then as the children age, they might maintain that curiosity about faith. The next step which immediately jumped to my mind was to include some form of peer writing tutoring in the school for the middle grades (and encourage the use of it particularly for writing assignments in their theology lessons).

At the NDWC, I learned about myriad interesting topics from students who were passionate about those subjects, and just needed some help conveying to others what was greatest about their interests. Now, I often learn interesting tidbits about saints when I read the essays of near-Confirmands.

Imagine if students were given a space to hear about faithful witnesses from a peer who already admires that person, or a new perspective on the Gospel from a peer who has seen something in a parable they haven’t yet? Imagine if students were formed to listen openly, understand their peers better, and advocate well for their beliefs?

To me, this sounds like the formation of an evangelizing Christian, but it is also the formation found within a writing center.

---

1 This quote is not entirely applicable, because until we reach the Kingdom of God, both saints and writers can benefit from another’s discerning review.^↩

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2 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is the Catholic faith formation edition of Montessori education, about which Jenny has previously blogged.^↩

Shouldn't Be Punishable by Death: Reflections from the Borderlands

by Dan Masterton

Last month, I led an educational immersion to the US-Mexico borderlands in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. My students, my co-chaperone, and I spent six days there learning about the realities of immigration and migration. For more info, including links to the organizations that hosted us, and pictures of our visits, please visit our school trip blog.

* * *

First things first, I wanted the group to go right up to the border wall.

We drove straight into Nogales from Phoenix with just a brief stop for lunch; we popped into our lodging for a moment to drop our belongings; we parked quickly in a downtown Nogales surface lot and got moving on foot. As we walked past a McDonalds, down a hill, and across the busy street that feeds right into the checkpoint, we rounded the corner to walk right up to the barrier. Comprised of steel poles that rise a few stories into the air, the wall separates the US from Mexico, dividing two towns that are virtually one. Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora, straddle this international boundary, sometimes called ambos Nogales, or “both.” The Gadsden Purchase, Native American national lands, and centuries of geopolitical conflicts and resolutions landed this boundary here, separating a fairly sleepy town of 20,000 in America from a sprawling community of 200,000 in Mexico. The division not only looks obtrusive; it also feels silly. Yet there it stands, with demands to build it taller, longer, and better.

To begin our immersion, we observed courtroom proceedings in Tucson’s US District Court - District of Arizona, where an iteration of Operation Streamline handles recently detained migrants. This system was set up to process recently detained people who are charged with illegal crossing, formerly a civil offense but now considered a misdemeanor crime. Most migrants we saw had been in custody for just a few days. They had all met with appointed defense attorneys, chosen and compensated by the US Department of Justice, for about half an hour that morning; each attorney represented about a handful of clients that day. This system was designed to process large quantities of people quickly, and that afternoon as we observed, 69 people were processed in two hours. While illegal border crossings have decreased, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has insisted that first-time illegal crossers now be prosecuted, whereas formerly these people were often referred for voluntary deportation without criminal processing, something our host from a local justice group felt was a politically motivated change.

Detained people are brought out in groups of five to seven people. A recent legal battle won the detainees the right to appear before the judge without shackles, but many of them, just unshackled moments prior while in the holding area, cannot help but stand with their hands behind their backs as they present to the judge. Additionally, they appear just as they were when arrested, in street clothes, often with unkempt hair and still looking road-weary. I wondered if, especially when comparing these migrants to defendants in news clips with styled hair, careful makeup, and business dress, this was intentional on the part of law enforcement to mitigate pity or leniency.

Our judge that afternoon, Bruce McDonald, was deliberate and measured in a way not all judges reportedly are.¹ And a court interpreter translated each line on the fly into headsets that each detainee wore.² Piece by piece, he talked each group through their rights: they all will plead guilty to the petty offense of illegal entry; they forfeit their right to silence by pleading guilty; they all are citizens of another country (which they must prove this as part of process), entered by a point other than legal port of entry, and found without authorization to be here; they all could be sentenced to up to 6 months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000; they have fourteen days to appeal this ruling; they are not required to plead guilty and could instead go to trial, get a defense attorney, have their innocence presumed, call witnesses, give testimony, cross-examine prosecution’s witnesses, and subpoena others to appear; they all have the right to notify their country’s consulate. Then, the judge asked each defendant individually if they understood these rights, if they were in fact a citizen of another country, if they entered illegally (giving date and approximate site), and that they enter their plea. Those detained for a repeat illegal crossing offense had a felony charge and plea deal as part of their processing, which came with slightly different questions and proceedings.

At some points, the detained people did not understand the questions, particularly, when the judge asked about their crossing, saying something like, “did you cross illegally on April 15 at or near Sasabe?” When detainees didn’t understand, and the judge split the question up, asking separately about the date, and then the location, emphasizing that it could just be near that town.³ Moreover, the final question asking how each person pled sometimes didn’t go smoothly, as some would answer, “Yes,” rather than “guilty” or “not guilty.” The rapid fire of yes/no questions seemed to get them on a roll, and the judge had to reask carefully without putting the words of their plea (inevitably, culpable) in their mouths. These sidebars felt like lengthy detours in a proceeding that sentences people at such a pace, but each deviation off script really only took thirty seconds to a minute. Either way, these mixups illuminated how, despite having competent attorneys, it seemed like many migrants didn’t fully understand what was happening.

After each group completed its process, Judge McDonald would declare their sentence and send them off back into Border Patrol custody with a “Good luck to you.” It seemed genuine enough but felt weird. One US Marshall was especially gentle with the detainees, helping place headsets properly, for example, and offered to get a judge to come speak to us after the proceedings. A soon-to-retire judge named Bernie Velasco visited with us and shared some insights, about how money is immaterial in matters of national security, about how Obama’s “securing the border” to give cover for immigration reform devolved into Trump’s “Make America Great Again” purities, and how this process is swift but relatively just, since many migrants incriminate themselves in their first words to the Border Patrol agents. But most insightfully, he told us, “Just like the defendants are hostages to the prosecutors, so are the courts.” Until we change the laws and the systems and the culture, this is the most justice they can have. And this is why humanitarian aid and basic solidarity-driven charity is so necessary as we work for justice.

Walking in the Sonoran Desert gave us a small sense of what the desert crossing is like. The landscape is dotted with cacti and other dangerous plants, with elevation changes, both sudden and gradual, and with evidence of various creatures that don’t take kindly to human trespassers. And then all this was in the daytime, when it’s bright and easy to see, in the coolness of the mid-morning, before the burn of the mid-day desert heat, and at an easy walking pace, with no one on our tail, looking for us. Walking lightly worn trails, we found old cans, empty water bottles, and plenty of clothing. We’d wonder why they’d been discarded, and we learned that smugglers often insist on rapid action to meet a pickup car or make a checkpoint. So people must move quickly, leave behind their belongings and layered clothes, and be prepared to pile into a crowded vehicle at a moment’s notice. Worst of all, we found a tree whose branches held the torn remains of a woman’s bra. Our guide told us that humanitarian groups have found evidence and heard stories that about what has come to be known as “rape trees,” locations where men force themselves on vulnerable women as they make their journeys.

The wall is a misnomer, so we were told by Border Patrol. Our host agent from the public affairs division explained that walls are solid, with no space to look through; in Nogales, and in many places along the border, the barrier is a fence, a bollard fence to be exact. Even beyond semantics though, our agent all but said that we don’t need the wall President Trump campaigns on, even now in office. Given the differences in topography and terrain, a solid wall across the full border isn’t practical or necessary.

When it comes to the actual work of Border Patrol, I appreciated learning the depth behind the politicized stereotype. We learned how at thirty-four points in the desert region, Border Patrol has rescue towers, which migrants can visit to summon agents and voluntarily turn themselves in, especially if they need urgent help. Additionally, every agent is a first responder “plus,” with many even trained as full EMTs and a team of agents that function as a trauma team to respond to more acute emergencies. Though they ultimately have to perform their law enforcement duties upon detaining a person, they first perform medical triage, offer treatment, and seek to stabilize people. On a more local level, they try to partner with educators to help young people; for example, they found drug smugglers target young people -- and not just teens, even elementary-aged students -- so they have started intervention programming in schools.

The trouble for me began as we moved on with our tour. We were supposed to see the communications room, but a conflict with a training exercise kept us out in the hallway.⁴ That is supposed to be a highlight, as groups see screens and computers on par with blockbuster movies and cutting-edge video games. We did get to see the gear room, where our agent showed us firearms, night vision goggles, and riot gear. He let us pass around the items and take pictures, but I refused to handle the longarm rifle, for which the group and agent laughed at me. As someone who believes in reasonable gun control plus a little more, I didn’t feel right taking a weapon and glorifying its use, when it’s something that should be used seldomly, if at all. I wish we could socially settle into a good spot on the pendulum, where we can respect law enforcement officials without demonizing each decision they make OR blindly supporting their every action, which to me includes the everyday use of longarm rifles.

A breath of fresh air came to us from Humane Borders, a humanitarian organization focused on creating and maintaining water stations in the desert. Their vice chairman, Bob Feinman, visited our group, and opened our discussion with some insightful foundational principles. As an organization, Bob explained that Humane Borders strives to work within the law, in a nonpartisan way. For example, they cannot transport migrants, so they travel in twos when servicing water stations; that way, if they see a migrant in need, one can stay with that person, and the other can seek help legally. Additionally, Border Patrol knows where each water station is located and cannot sit and monitor each one; in order to map desert fatalities and place stations in optimal areas, Humane Borders needs good relationships with the agents, with the governmental agencies, and with the county sheriff. They organizationally feel that due respect must be given to law enforcement agents, who work under risk of death. What’s more, Border Patrol and other groups are politicized by both sides as they seek optics that support their agenda and implement solutions that often come without consultation of local authorities, residents, or humanitarian groups.⁵ For example, many ranchers and patrol agents agree the wall is untenable; they instead would both support better radio towers, which are less obtrusive and expensive, to improve communications and responsiveness. Unfortunately, it’s not a sexy idea, and as my wise friend and co-chaperone, Maggie, pointed out, “BUILD MORE RADIO TOWERS!” doesn’t chant quite as well as the demand for a wall.

On the whole, Bob’s view, and that of his organization, could be summed up in this great quote: “Yes, these people are breaking the law by crossing the border without documents, but we don’t believe that’s a crime that should be punishable by death.” Over the years, Border Patrol has enacted a strategy called Prevention by Deterrence. By fortifying more urban and settled areas with more fencing, more agents and patrols, and more cameras and communication, migrants are forced into more remote areas to attempt crossing without being caught. In this part of Arizona, that more remote area is the Sonoran Desert, where the heat, animals, and dangerous plantlife take a major toll, even to the point of death. By focusing resources on higher traffic areas, migrants are funneled into these rough areas, where the elements serve as a deterrent, a major hazard, or executioner. Despite the dissuasion these elements and friends and family may provide, many attempt the crossing nonetheless, looking at their current life of economic hardship or violent threats and deciding, “I’d rather die trying.” Such indirectly brutal treatment feels so obviously inhumane, and samaritan charitable response is plainly needed as we work for greater justice.

As we visited some women at a temporary community home in Nogales, Sonora, they led us into a parlor and showed us a table full of bright hand-woven bracelets and beautiful beaded earrings. Translated loosely as “weavings of hope,” the table was full of handicrafts done by women who had lived in this home. Learning this art, many of them contribute some products and also take a portion of the proceeds as personal income for their next steps in life. The sister who ran the home humbly boasted of an indigenous woman who had come through recently. She was on her own and missing her disabled children, who she had sought to support by working in the US before her deportation. Since the woman was already familiar with the colors, styles, and patterns, she took to the crafting with ease and participated vigorously during her time there. Upon returning to her home region, a long distance away, she wanted to continue with this cooperative, so she kept creating new items at home, shipped them to the group, and received her portion back in the mail. Now, she had a means of earning some income to support her family’s needs, a way to do so that utilized her gifts, and the ability to do all this from her home.

The Kino Border Initiative works on both sides of the international border, with staff and offices in both Mexico and the United States. One of its ministries is the comedor, a facility on the Mexican side that supports people in transit. Anyone can come who has been freshly deported, using their repatriation papers to indicate their situation. Staff members process their guests, not to overly formalize things but in order to collect data and perspective on the state of things -- guests share their origin, their deportation details, and can self-report abuses by Mexican authorities, American authorities, or non-state entities like smugglers. KBI can then track the trends and seek to hold these organizations accountable; for example, using their data, they can easily tell that deportations of people who have been living in the US for many years are now on the rise, as an increasing number of arrivals are people who have lived in the US for many years or even decades.

The comedor offers two meals a day, but the atmosphere of the meal is striking. Discard any typical notions you may have of a soup kitchen or a bread line; instead, imagine a family picnic, maybe under a shelter at a park or forest preserve. KBI seats its guests at tables, already set with dishes and silverware. Volunteers and staff plate the meal freshly and bring it out to them. Tortillas, salsa, drinks, and condiments are brought around to each table while the men and women can simply sit and relax a bit. Built around the two meals each day, the staff offers a lot of valuable support to their guests -- prayers over their meal and journey, talks about human rights and legal advocacy, safe phone calls to family that wonder about their safety, check-cashing for otherwise worthless American checks that converted their cash while in prison, triage and first aid for the trials of travel, and more. The many ways in which the dignity of these people was hurt or ignored is restored in small yet beautiful ways by the myriad of compassionate encounter enfleshed in the staff and volunteers at the comedor.

At Lourdes Catholic School that Friday, we joined an all-school, K-12 Mass. Standing with arms extended, we joined the school community in blessing its senior class, with graduation awaiting just a few weeks away. We then joined them for a lunch in the senior garden courtyard that they maintain and followed them to their high school pep rally for games day. Between the unity of the Mass, the picnic table conversations over pizza, and the silly gymnasium games our students played alongside these local students, one could see how easily the two cultures could not just coexist but intertwine. The prayers of the Mass, as well as the directions at the rally, switched seamlessly from English to Spanish to English; the mostly Latino students respected their white campus minister and doted on her as if she were their own abuela; the students engaged and conversed with each other as if they had met during a typical Friday night out. Most of the students at this school we visited cross daily from Mexico, attend to their school day, and then return home to Mexico afterwards. Sure, they have been interviewed and cleared for express entry, but in their steady routine, they show what could be possible. They pose no threat; they carry no malice; they respect and appreciate America and Mexico; they study and work hard and speak multiple languages. They, like the DACA dreamers and hard-working, law-abiding undocumented people, show the potential of more peaceable relations, grounded in solidarity and mutuality.

Living our faith in society calls us to do both charity and justice. Charity is the help that we provide when faced with an emergent need -- the sudden devastation of a natural disaster, the fallout of a tragic accident, the provision of basic needs for those who go without. Justice is what we seek to systemically change structures which prevent people from getting their due rights and dignity -- eliminating discrimination toward marginalized groups, reforming economic and financial policies to mitigate the rich-poor gap, securing models and funding that create equal access to quality education.

When faced with the rampant deaths of people in transit as they cross the desert, we must make water stations, preserve sanctuary sites, and sustain emergency beacons; given the emergent need of travel-weary migrants, immediate help must be available. But this charity needs its underlying justice to come. Immigration policies must change that criminalize border crossing, that create the faulty dilemma of deportation with a record or heavy jail time, that make asylum criteria incredibly strict for people with credible fear. We are extremizing our country in a way that spits on solidarity and ignores the human dignity of a lot of brothers and sisters.

I don’t think we can tear down every border barrier, dismantle every border checkpoint, and throw the doors open. However, we cannot adopt a fortress mentality that turns its back on our nation’s very roots in immigration. We need to analyze and extrapolate the successes of DACA; we need to construct a consensus around amnesty for law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented people; we need to liberalize our asylum, refugee, and legal visa programs; and we need to scrutinize and reform the legal processes for authorized immigration and naturalization so that we can reasonably secure our borders in good conscience. In the meantime, the many good humanitarians and samaritans in the desert will do their earnest work of charity. And they need all of us to dig in and work faithfully for real, greater justice.

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1 These daily proceedings can handle up to 70 people per day, and a day’s sentencings can sometimes unfold in as little as 30 minutes. The judge quoted in that link is the same judge I refer to later in this article; his remarks come off as cold in reading, but in meeting and talking to him, he is just more of a “matter-of-fact” personality and actually holds deep criticisms of the justice system and hamstrung roles of judges. ^↩

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2 All but one of these 69 people elected to use the court interpreter and headset; just one man elected to speak in English. A handful of others had their defense attorneys make note on the record that their primary language was actually an indigenous language, so, while they understood to some extent, Spanish was not their main language.^↩

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3 Migrants often have little sense of the geography of the region or of the US generally. Coyotes, or smugglers, often hand-draw inaccurate maps that claim cities like Atlanta, Chicago, or even Phoenix are just a short walk from the border. So, asking about smaller border towns that may be near the point of illegal crossing sometimes didn’t go smoothly. ^↩

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4 Turns out that National Guard troops had already begun to report, and they were being briefed in the comm room. We learned that guardsmen have no authority to arrest or take legal action on behalf of Border Patrol. They are simply there as manpower, to join patrols and redouble presence as well as manage duties outside the field. ^↩

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5 Bob weighed in also on a recent scandal. A local humanitarian group released footage of Border Patrol agents destroying water stations in the desert. Bob says this group was performing medica triage in the desert but exceeded first aid and went into medical procedures that were unsafe to be doing out there. After being raided by CBP and unlawfully detaining the patients, the group was upset and unearthed and released years-old footage of these agents’ actions. Those agents were disciplined, and obviously, they are a few bad eggs on a big force. ^↩

Facebook Isn't Designed as a Medium for Debate: Moderating a Facebook Discussion Group

by Tim Kirchoff

Last fall, I joined the moderating staff¹ of the Facebook group Catholic Social Thought, Politics, and the Public Square. That I have yet to go out of my way to recommend this discussion group to my friends, given how many of them are conscientious and politically-engaged Catholics, might be seen as a sign that I don’t think participating in the group would be a good use of their time and energy. The group, at its worst, can be rather inhospitable, but some very good conversations happen there, and most importantly I still believe in its mission. My main intention in writing this is to remind myself of why I do this, but If my reflections on my time in the group happen to persuade you, dear reader, that this group is worth a shot, I would welcome your participation.

The Medium

The most obvious difference between this Facebook group and the various debate forums I participated in as a teenager is the lack of anonymity. Yet in my mind, the far more significant difference is that Facebook is not designed as a medium for debate. There is no quote function, old posts and comments are hard to find, and, most glaringly of all, the portion of my computer screen dedicated to the text of people’s posts and comments is only about a quarter of my screen’s width. Comments only a few short paragraphs in length can sometimes seem like impenetrable walls of text, while “clever” one-liners or hot takes get the expected applause. As a medium for intellectual debate, in which arguments and counter-arguments are carefully examined and picked apart, Facebook fails utterly.

But on the other hand, if you are interested in the other person precisely as a person with a wealth of knowledge and complicated personal experiences and you want to understand their perspective on a given topic better, then Facebook’s sub-thread system works well, and you’ll eagerly click to “see more” or “continue reading.”

The Mission

It’s a good thing, then, that the group is not oriented toward fostering traditional debates. Rather, the group guidelines are meant to encourage what Pope Francis calls a culture of encounter. Members are encouraged to participate not in such a way as to win an argument, but to engage the holy in the other. If a person feels as if a conversation is not moving in a productive direction, the guidelines encourage them to disengage as they feel appropriate, and others are encouraged to assume that a person who hasn’t replied to their comments isn’t actively avoiding their no-doubt-devastating argumentation, but rather, is preoccupied with their other, more pressing duties (and what duty is less pressing than arguing in Facebook comment sections?).

The guiding principle of the group is to respect each other’s narratives. That phrase, when I first read it, did not seem to be written in my native language, but I came to grasp its meaning soon enough. Group members need to respect the way other people understand themselves. Statements along the lines of “you can’t be transgender and Catholic,” or denunciations of, for example, all Libertarians or all Communists as heretics are not allowed. All claims about what the Church teaches, or what is “truly” Catholic should be backed up by a citation to a relevant Church document.

This rule is not intended to obfuscate Church teaching or discourage people from explaining and defending it, but rather, to prevent people from using the magisterium as a cudgel. This is supposed to ensure that people who hold minority or even fringe perspectives can have a space to explore the resources of the Church’s tradition without being browbeaten or harassed for not accepting everything the Church teaches, or for not fitting into someone else’s overly-narrow view of what it means to be Catholic.

The group’s founding was inspired by the 2012 election, in which both vice presidential nominees, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, were Catholic, and the Church’s relationship with the partisan divide briefly took center stage as Catholics debated the extent to which Paul Ryan’s hawkish fiscal policies were compatible with the Church’s social teaching. The lesson I take from the group’s origin is that, theoretically, either Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (or, more likely, people who sympathize with one or the other) could have the space to explain themselves and how they understand their policies in light of the Church’s teachings. Before we throw mud at fellow Catholics across the aisle, we should try to understand them on their own terms, and the group is intended to facilitate this.

The Mundane

This lofty purpose is easily forgotten in the day-to-day workings of the group. Most of my time in the group is spent checking and approving submitted posts and monitoring discussion to make sure things don’t get out of hand.

Discussions in the group often take on the same tenor as arguments that could be found anywhere else on the web, or, dare I say, cable news. In this predominantly left-wing group, any article about Paul Ryan will see half a dozen comments about Ayn Rand² for every comment that even briefly entertains the notion that Paul Ryan intends to serve the common good (a notion that I once found much easier to hold). Discussions of Trump overwhelmingly (and understandably) skew negative. When right- and left-leaning members do clash, the exchange often sounds like the repetition of talking points. In the discussion of mainstream politics, I rarely see attempts by either side to step outside their own biases to understand others beyond what they need to win an argument.

When the battle lines are not so clearly drawn, though, conversation is possible. A recent discussion of how the Church should engage indigenous religions and superstitions (prompted by a story about a summit of exorcists in Rome dedicated to this topic) saw various group members bringing forward what they understood of beliefs and practices in different parts of the world. No particular conclusions were drawn from the conversation, but all who participated seemed to walk away with a greater appreciation of others’ insights and the complexity of the issue.

Genuine trolls are rare, and generally dealt with on sight. It’s usually pretty obvious when someone comes in with the intention of stirring up trouble. But behavior that falls short of the guidelines is a frequent temptation even for well-established members. When discussing a topic for what seems like the thousandth time, it’s all too easy to fall into familiar patterns of argumentation rather than encountering the other person as a child of God.

I’m no paragon of the guidelines, either. One of the first things I was told about moderating was that I should see it as a ministry, but it’s a piece of advice I often forget. When someone says something controversial, I sometimes find myself exasperated at the extra work the subsequent conversation might give me, when a more ideal response would be to welcome the new perspective and try to bring it into conversation with other members and especially with the principles of Catholic social teaching. Too often, I find myself valuing a superficial peace in the group over the possibility for the kind of encounter that the guidelines are supposed to enable.

I had hoped that participating in the group would provide me with insights into how to bridge the partisan divide within the Church. I'm sorry to report that I have little good news on that front. But something that my participation has made clear to me that I think is not well-enough understood is the degree to which the divide within the Church is not simply a matter of disagreement, but of hundreds of insults and resentments which have only compounded over the years. Online discussions will have little direct impact on policy, but our words still matter. The way we treat each other (even when talking in the abstract about the "other side) matters. With every exchange, we can either deepen the divisions, or look for the good in the other.

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1 “Staff” might be an overstatement. At the moment, I’m the only moderator other than the group's founder.^↩

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2 Every time someone on the Left mentions Ayn Rand or the Koch brothers, or someone on the right brings up Saul Alinsky or George Soros, I die inside just a little.^↩

Deep within tired & aching bones

by Rob Goodale

There is no substitute,
No polyphonic chant or tinkling piano
which can as adequately capture
the gratitude buried deep within
tired and aching human bones
compared to the roaring cacophony
of pages flipping and
pencils scribbling and
(best of all)
stomachs churning
which splashes onto the cozy backdrop of silence
as we sit together on the floor
gathered around the shiny brass box
concealing the Life of the World
in the corner of the room,
and it makes me smile.

When God Gives You a Nickname

by Jenny Klejeski

“A slave does not know what his master is doing. I no longer call you slaves but friends, for I have revealed to you everything I have received from my Father in Heaven.”

In 47 days, God willing, my fiancé and I are getting married.¹ Now, I have never been married before, nor has my fiancé, but I hear that this involves quite a few life changes. To be more precise, it’s a sharing of everything. It requires a lay-it-all-on-the-line commitment. You know, just small things.

This is signified in many ways, not least of which is changing my name.

In Scripture, a name change marked a new mission from God, a new identity in God, a new understanding of one’s relationship to God. It means a conversion, an acceptance of a vocation, a whole-life-game-changer. Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, Simon became Peter, Saul became Paul²—and neither the person, nor the world was never ever the same again.

When I was baptized, I, Jennifer Marie, became a new creation in Christ. I became an alter Christus—another Christ—with a distinct vocation that can be fulfilled by no one but me. Later, when I was confirmed Francesca Pio, the gifts I received at Baptism were sealed in the Sacrament of Christian maturity. These signified my new status in the family of God—a supernatural change of identity.

Another "Squib."

There are natural changes of identity, too. I have been the recipient of many nicknames over the years. Among these pseudonyms are “Squib,” “Jenethian Puffercake,” “Jennitori, Jennitoque,” and to my dad, I’m “Squeaker.” Each nickname means a specific thing to a specific person. Each represents a memory, an inside joke, or a term of endearment. They are all part of my past, and are woven into my identity. Names are signs of relationship—agreed-upon symbols representing the mystery of the person him-or-herself.

When I take a vow before God and man in a few months, I will be accepting a new name—the name of my future husband—a name that I believe is given me by God—as a gift. It means to me an acceptance of a new mission in life, a profound call to radical self-gift, and a surrendering of my will to another.

“For this reason, a man leaves father and mother, and cleaves to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” What’s worth it? What relationship could make me willing to leave my family name, everything associated with my old identity, and to be transformed one step further? What mission could God possibly offer me that would transcend the blessings of my childhood and young adulthood? Only a deeper share in the mystery of Christ’s love.

It seems to me that, deep down, Saul was always Paul and that, deep down, Simon was always Peter. Not that they couldn’t have rejected these new names and identities, of course, but that the potential for radically following Christ was always there for them. The name I take in marriage is one more step in becoming who I am, who God is calling me to be. It is taking my universal call to holiness and particularizing—incarnating—it. It is taking on the responsibility for my future husband’s salvation, and that of our children, God willing.

Christ is the model. In His mission, His marriage to the Church, He gives us HIS name along with Himself—we become what we receive, the Body of Christ.

So, in preparation for my name change, a prayer:

Saul-Paul—pray for me that I might be able to evangelize my husband and family in my thoughts, words and deeds, and to persevere in running the race and fighting the good fight.

Jacob-Israel—help me to wrestle in prayer with God and man so as to achieve the fullness of God’s plan for me, and for my family, regardless of obstacles and my own past (and future) failings.

Abram-Abraham—pray that I too, along with my husband, might be a source of life for all whom we meet—a figure and fountain-head of faith by putting God first in our lives and trusting in His promises, and not our own plans for life.

Simon-Peter—you rock. Pray for us and help us to follow Christ despite knowing it will cost us—and to follow Him unreservedly, without comparing ourselves to others, or asking God what we can expect, like mercenaries. Let us be lovers of God. Let us be lovers of God. Let us be lovers of God. And let us love Him more than these.

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1 WHAAA?!!?^↩

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2 Though this was technically not a name change given him by God, we still generally refer to the pre-conversion man as “Saul” and the post-conversion man as “Paul.”^↩

A Peek into Kairos: Results of God's Friendship

by Dan Masterton

All across the country, Catholic high schools, parishes, and even some colleges and universities undertake retreats based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and most places call this retreat Kairos. These retreats are typically four days, though they sometimes are adapted to three days for Cristo Rey schools or college students cramming it into a long weekend. This retreat's thematic coherence, intensiveness in length and depth, and unique combination of talks, discussion, prayer, and ritual together create a retreat that is often looked back on as a seminal experience for young people.

Between my high school retreats and six years working in high school campus ministry, I've been a part of 13 Kairos retreats, the 13th of which I'm currently directing. Without giving away the context for it (there's no secrets on Kairos, only surprises, for there's nothing secretive about God's love), I thought I'd share the talk I gave on this retreat: Results of God's Friendship. The talk titles and topics are similar across the country, but the stories and insights with which the speakers animate them are what bring the retreat to life and make each iteration unique. Here's my words from a big moment on night two of the retreat, which hopefully brings some warm and fuzzies to the hearts of Kairos alumni out there who can remember that evening...

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Before we even get into write-down write-downs, I want you to just write these letters, without spaces, in this order, on the page that you have open for this talk: G-O-D-I-S-N-O-W-H-E-R-E

Now look at those letters, and break them into the words they’d have formed if you spaced it out like usual. How many of you did that and read “God is nowhere”? How many of you did that and read “God is now here”?

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For whatever reasons, we pack our lives full of stuff that bombards us with information and commands our attention. We prioritize those things that enable us to control information, to manipulate what’s available to us, and to enjoy it in the exact way and at the exact time we want to – we can open our snaps and stories on command; we can choose our streaming shows and kick back on autoplay; we can issue commands through our cable box’s voice remote or via Alexa or Siri; we can curate streaming radio stations to play the exact songs we want.

That all seems great, but then it becomes quite hard for us to be open and attentive, especially to things that we don’t command but are nonetheless important – we can’t force nature to deliver a beautiful sunset or a sunny, clear day; we can’t make our teachers deliver knowledge and wisdom just the way we want; and we can’t insist that God reveal Himself in the way we’d design. God is not a Netflix queue set to autoplay. God is not a snap story with a funny joke that disappears after we get our quick chuckle. God is not an app to bark commands at. And our temptation is to think that God must then be inferior to these convenient, pleasurable things – that if God doesn’t function like our favorite technology, then He must not be that great. Or, worse, we’re tempted to think that God then must not exist if He doesn’t appear just as we’d like.

But the tricky thing is that sometimes God is like that one friend who you add on Snapchat out of obligation but then realize is really funny. God can be like that one show that your friends keep telling you watch, but you don’t want to watch, but then you watch it, and you’re like dang, this is actually really good. God can be like that one band or song that you find really annoying because you hear it all the time but then realize after a few listens that you actually kind of secretly like it.

God is always here, looking for us, seeking us, loving us. One of the greatest things we can do is to let God save us from ourselves, so that we might realize the presence of God’s love and the results of God’s loving friendship. He doesn’t ever disappear or stop or take a break. So, the challenge for us as humans isn’t so much trying to prove God exists; rather, our challenge is making space in our awareness and consciousness to see God, who is already present. Rather than be lazy or deferent or apathetic, we have to open our eyes and ears and hearts to the love of God moving around us and toward us. So how do we find this God? Who is He? How do we know when we’ve encountered Him? St. John writes in his First Letter:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world,
so that we might have life through him. (1 John 4:7-9)

We must look for love, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. God is already present here, if we only make space in our crowded selves to acknowledge Him. We must be aware of the love being given to us, and we must strive to give that love back to others in turn. God is love. I think is important, and I’d like you to write it down: God is love. God is love. God is love.

Sometimes this love can be hard to find in the moment, but when we take the time to reflect on and process our memories – whether looking back at a day when we go to bed at night, or thinking back on fond memories from months and years past – they become rich experiences in which our God who is Love is so potently present. And in these experiences, we see how our very selves are the results of God’s friendship, results of the love our family and friends pour out to us. So, tonight, I want to take you back to July 18, 2015, and bring you to the power of God’s Love on my wedding day.

My wife’s name is Katherine. We met in 2009 while we were both in college at the University of Notre Dame, and we sang together in the Notre Dame Folk Choir. We started dating in 2011. In February 2014, on a chilly Friday night down on the Chicago riverwalk, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. We scheduled our wedding for July 18, 2015, and a flurry of planning ensued.

Wedding planning is obnoxious. People are often just being nice when they ask about how things are going, but they inevitably are most interested in the superficial stuff, which is all so largely about money – the reception venue, the wedding dress, the flowers and colors, etc. What should be most important, and what we fought to make our priority, was to prepare for a marriage, not just a wedding. And when possible, we tried to shape our wedding plans to reflect the important values of us as a couple and of our families, to help emphasize the families we came from and the new family we’d start together.

One wrinkle in all of this is that my mom, Karen, passed away in March 2013. While, thankfully, she had met Katherine and gotten to know her, my mom wouldn’t be there at my wedding to walk down the aisle with me and celebrate in person. So as we prepared the wedding, it was important to me to honor her love in a celebratory, joyful way, and to avoid being morose or sad. While the love between Katherine and me would be on full display, there were three major moments during which I could feel my mom’s love potently present in this day full of celebration and love, and looking back on these moments powerfully reminds me how my mom, my family, and my life are the result of God’s friendship.

First, I had to decide how to handle walking down the aisle. Traditionally, the bride and groom have their parents, and sometimes even their grandparents, too, join them in processing in at the beginning of the wedding Mass. While I could excitedly imagine the joy of my dad and I each offering an arm to my mom to walk her down the aisle, I had to be differently imaginative. My thoughts raced toward three very important women in my family.

Tim with Auntie Di.

Mike with Aunt Lynn.

As long as I can remember, my mom had two long-time best friends – Lynn and Linda. She’d known them longer than I’d been alive, and they were around for all the big moments in our family’s life. Lynn’s husband, Jeff, is my brother Mike’s godfather, and Linda is my godmother. In addition to these two ladies, since my mom’s mother, my grandma, died when I was four, my great Auntie Di, who is my grandma’s sister and my mom’s godmother, sort of stepped forward as a grandmother figure to my brothers and me. These three women were at the core of my mom’s life, and so, too, my family’s life, so, to step into the place where mom would have walked, I asked them to each walk down the aisle with us. My younger brother, Mike, first walked my Aunt Lynn down the aisle. Then, my older brother, Tim, walked my Auntie Di down the aisle. Finally, with my dad on one arm and me on her other, my Aunt Linda walked down the aisle in the place where my mom would have walked.

My dad and I with Aunt Linda.

While the ideal thing would have been to walk down the aisle with my mom, this was the next most perfect way, and I felt the fullness of my heart as the three of us walked down the aisle. After I hugged my dad and godmother, they sat down, and I walked to the side of the altar by myself to watch the wedding party of all our groomsmen and bridesmaid enter two-by-two and wait for my bride. As I looked toward these three amazing women seated with my father, I felt proud that I understood and shared their love, both in the relationships they had with my mom and in the way they love our family. In those last moments before Katherine appeared for her walk down the aisle, escorted by her dad in her wedding dress, I was overcome with emotion. Looking beyond these amazing women toward the doors where Katherine would enter, I could feel my mom’s love so powerfully. In that moment, I simply wanted my mommy. She was and is part of the joy-filled love of my marriage and family. My mom’s love, here present and shown through her godmother and two best friends, is a result of God’s friendship.

Our wedding Mass was full of amazing moments that highlighted the love of our families, which we’d seal in our new family through marriage. The readings, the homily, the music – all of it unfolded beautifully to give praise to God for the gift of this Sacrament. A favorite moment for my mom would have no doubt been the recitation of The Lord’s Prayer. So often, it’s a prayer we say monotonously, without feeling; however, praying the Our Father happens differently at Notre Dame. Our choir director, Steve, decades ago arranged the prayer to music, and at Notre Dame, we don’t just ramble through the Our Father; we sing the Our Father.

When my parents would visit me at Notre Dame, they loved to come for Mass, to pray with our community and our choir in our amazing basilica. And for my mom, she always found the sung Our Father to be so beautiful; it was her clear favorite. No matter how many times she heard it, it always brought her to tears. We had a good laugh one week. Because the Mass we sang at was always broadcast online, cameras were stationed throughout the church to record to Mass. That week, during the Our Father, the cameras were panning the crowd and settled on my mom, who, with cinematically great timing, released my dad’s hand to gently wipe tears from her eyes while singing the Our Father.

At our Wedding Mass, the choir did its usual excellent work leading the congregation in song. And then as the introductory notes of the Our Father invited us into prayer, the congregation joined hands. At that moment, my dad, from his place on the aisle in the front row, did something wonderful. Now, my dad is a very low-key fellow, who rarely, if ever, does anything loudly or demonstratively, so it’s unlikely he thought much of what he did, but his silent gesture spoke volumes on the love that my mom poured into him. Dad stepped out of his pew, pulling my family toward the aisle with him, and reached across the aisle for my now-father-in-law’s hand. He echoed the gesture and pulled his family with him to grab my dad’s hand. As we sang my mom’s favorite song, her favorite prayer, my dad literally and physically reached out to my wife’s family and connected himself with them.

My dad, right, and my father-in-law, left, connecting our families across the aisle.

Much is said on a wedding day about two families becoming one through the new family started by the newlyweds. In that moment, my dad and Katherine’s dad enfleshed that bond in a gesture of unity. Our families already had connected so well, and my mom would have only further fueled that had she been there. In this beautiful moment, my dad’s reach manifested the tearful, joyous love that mom would have been praying had she been physically standing next to him. And those linked hands are the result of that love and transcendence that is God’s friendship.

Needless to say, the Mass was great. After Mass ended, we enjoyed our time with our bridal party, going around campus taking our wedding pictures and then heading back to the hotel to enjoy our cocktail hour and start the wedding reception. After some lovely toasts by Katherine’s parents and our best man and maids of honor, it was time for the first dances. Katherine and I had one of our best friends play our song on guitar and sing it live for us, and then I yielded the dance floor to Katherine’s dad for his dance with her. After their dance, it was my turn, as typically the groom dances with his mother for one of these three opening dances. This was another moment in which I had to be imaginative and creative to try to honor my mom’s legacy of love in the best way I could.

After talking with my brothers and friends, I stepped away from advice and ideas to do the last bit of thinking myself. Mom was always so proud of us and loved having all sons (though she and my dad would have been great parents to girls, too). And coincidentally, most of our family and family friends had both boys and girls or all boys. So as a result, there were a lot of sons at our wedding who were there with their mothers. I decided the best way to celebrate that love from my mother, at this moment when we would have shared our dance, would be to get all the sons at my wedding to take their mothers’ hands and bring them out to the dance floor together. I pre-arranged with my brothers and myself to dance with the ladies we walked down the aisle, and then I called out several of my friends and cousins whose mothers were at the wedding. By name, I shamed slash invited them to take their mothers’ hands and bring them out to the dance floor in honor of my mom.

As I went to get my godmother, an army of young men chivalrously moved into action. In a matter of seconds, the dance floor was flooded with lovely couples. At least two dozen of my friends and cousins had – surprise, surprise – “twisted their moms’ arms” into coming out for a dance. As I danced with my godmother, it was special for me to be with her, too, as she had lot her son in a motorcycle accident when he was just in his 20s; so together, we sort of stood in for each of our loved ones as we celebrated on this night together.

Meanwhile, it was such a sight to look around and see so many happy moms. If you take a moment to imagine what it’s like when you make your mom happy, I don’t have to tell you it’s a great feeling. Even if you fight it a little, deep down you want to make your parents happy and proud. In that moment, all around me on a ballroom dance floor, I saw a bunch of dressed-up-to-the-nines moms who were happy and proud of their sons, reveling in this fanciful moment of love. And I knew that my mom, though she was not there to dance with me, was proud – proud of me, proud of all those boys who are sons to their mothers, and proud of the love she taught us all. The love that danced around that reception between so many mothers and sons is the result of God’s friendship.

A nice sampling of some sons and mothers :)

I’m a momma’s boy. It was always true, but as I grew and matured, I knew more and more that when my mother was happy, everyone was happy. And that all I had to do to accomplish that was to be myself the way God made me to be and the way my parents raised me to be. I think in these big moments of my wedding day, what I wanted and needed Jesus to do for me was to show me my mom’s love and presence. Sure enough then, throughout the whole day, and throughout my whole life, highlighted in these three luminous wedding moments, there she was – there the God who is Love was – beyond a doubt, showing us the results of God’s friendship.

* * *

Let me tell you a simple story. There once was a man whose town was being flooded by a great storm. He prayed to God, saying, “God! Come to my assistance and save me!” Just then, he heard on the radio that the flood was getting severe, and everyone in town needed to evacuate. The man dismissed the radio report and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” A few minutes later, a man in a rowboat came by his home and called out to the man to jump into the rowboat. The man dismissed the rower and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” Shortly after, a helicopter flew down over his house, lowered a ladder, and called out to him to climb into the helicopter. The man dismissed the pilot and said, “No, no, God will come to help me.” The flood overtook the town, and the man died. When he met His Maker, he said to God, “Lord, I prayed for your help, and you abandoned me in my time of need!” God paused and replied, “I sent you a radio report, a rowboat, and a helicopter. Why didn’t you take my help?”

Sometimes, we want to box God in. We want to turn him into some sort of divine butler, who waits far away and leaves us alone but then hurries in to answer our call when we are in need, who will serve and help us at our prompting but otherwise is uninvolved. However, that’s not quite right; our God is more than that. Our God is the God who made us in His image, out of love, with free will. Our God is the God who became human, who walked among us, who died for us all. Our God is the one who gave us the Holy Spirit to inspire and guide us, who gathered us as a Church in communion with Christ and one another, and who calls us to be the hands and feet of Christ to love one another.

Look at your sheets. I only have one write-down for you tonight, because it’s the singular thing I want you to focus on here: God is love.

Relationship is all about the giving and receiving of love. So when you connect to another person, when you reach out to love them, when you open your heart to allow them to love you, you are experiencing the results of God’s friendship. Our God who is Love flows through the relationships we share. We see this most potently in our family and in our closest friends. While we can be frustrated or annoyed by them, these closest people manifest the results of God’s friendship for us. And when we are aware of this love, when we receive it with open hearts and share it with others in turn, this love in action is the Result of God’s Friendship.