Becoming Manna

Dear Friend,

When we hold up a child dressed in white, newly baptized, sometimes crying, sometimes smiling, those assembled in the Mission church break into loud applause. These are great moments at Sunday Mass when the little boy or girl “steals the show” as one parishioner put it after witnessing a baptism at Sunday Mass.   

What a contrast, then, with the Gospel for this week: “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,” says Jesus, “and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished.” This baptism isn’t about “stealing the show” but rather about setting the world on fire. This is also a Gospel about families divided over their responses to Jesus. Like the prophet Jeremiah whom we meet in the first reading this week, early Christian communities questioned established hierarchies and alliances. They paid a high price. They did so on behalf of a love that did not allow them to become self-satisfied in the face of the destructive patterns of their lives. Anger, anguish, and anxiety are related.  

This last week we celebrated Saint Clare, whose initial break with her family was extraordinary and painful. And yet, her sisters and even her mother later joined her on the new trail she had blazed. Our Mother of Sorrows is the title of Mary which directs us to the painful disruption of her own soul as she followed her son to the Cross. Holy women act like lightning in the “cloud of witnesses” pictured in the Letter to the Hebrews. I’ve known them – one of them held me on the day of my own baptism. Now they spur me on to accomplish it by sharing my own flesh and blood and energy with those in need. Can I become manna in the wilderness of the church and world today?

Gratefully,

Father Dan