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It’s been a long day. She sits in her dimly lit living room. It’s after
11pm; her day started before six. At the office, it was one crisis after
another; then the school called: her eight-year-old she is raising alone
came down with a fever, so she had to go and bring him home and
arrange for her mother to come over so she could get back to the office.
After getting him to bed, she took on the monthly challenge of making
her salary cover all the bills (managed to make it again for another
month)! She’s tired but can’t sleep just yet. She needs a few minutes
just to be thankful for the beautiful boy snoring up a storm in the next
room who makes her life as a mom more than worth it all.
He drives a truck for a package delivery service – and these are busy
days. He takes a couple of extra shifts when he can because his family
could use the money – the oldest is starting to look at colleges. But one
night a week he manages to get home in time to gulp down some supper
and head to the community center where he coaches a team of nine and
ten-year-olds in the city’s youth basketball league. He first started
coaching his son’s team – and kept at it long after his son moved on.
Yeah, there are other things he could be doing that, frankly, would make
life a lot easier, but he knows that for some of these kids, this team is the
best thing in their lives. So, one night a week he continues to run, push
and coach these kids for the good of his own soul.
He helps her with her coat and makes sure she has a good, steady grip
on her cane. He then puts her arm in his and they walk the same path
they walk every afternoon in the park across the street from their
apartment. He points to a cardinal lying on a tree branch overhead. He
cheers a great catch made by a player in a pick-up football game. He
talks about last night’s call from their son and the latest doings of the
grandchildren. But none of it registers with her. She is lost in a fog of
dementia. All she recognizes is him, her husband of 63 years. And
that’s more than enough. He’s thankful that they can walk arm-in-arm
together for another day.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus upholds the sacred dignity of all men
and women in the eyes of God: the struggling, the poor, the powerless,
the ignored, the forgotten, the vulnerable, those pushed to the margins
and peripheries of society. Every life is open to the “way of
righteousness”: simple humility, faithfulness and gratitude are the entries
to the Kingdom of God. Our standing in demographic and marketing
profiles, our net worth, whatever labels society applies to us do not
determine the “holiness” of our lives or the measure of God’s love in our
days. Christ invites us to realize the Kingdom of God in our lives by our
commitment to the selfless generosity and faithful gratitude; God calls
us to look beyond the designations and stereotypes like “tax collector”
and “prostitute” and recognize, instead, the holiness that resides within
the soul of every person – including ourselves.