Reflections on Life
Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
Ironically, by the time we get really good at connecting the everyday dots of life, we see that the span of our life is closer to sunset than to sunrise. This curious twilight phenomenon is a sharp variation or do-over of the axiom, “Youth is wasted on the young.” How many athletes have asked themselves, “How good could I have been as a young athlete in my prime had I known then what I know now as a coach?”
It is of great interest that some of the all-time greats in the world of sports have been described as another coach on the field. In mind-bending fashion, if their stance on the infield was not right for an individual batter, centerfielder Willie Mays signaled to infielders where they should be standing for the tendencies of a batter.
As no other, Willie Mays ran the bases at full speed, looking directly behind in order to direct “traffic,” that is, the runners behind him, to stop at a base or to keep running and take the next base. He did all this while touching only the inside point of a bag as he rounded first, second and third, thus not wasting a fraction of a second. It is no wonder that Willie Mays alone hit two inside-the-park homers to left field.
Coaching is not unique to or proprietary to sports or learning institutions of every kind. Rather, coaching is inherent to any learning situation in every activity, work, profession, entertainment or occupation. Since one can coach a debate team, we know that there is someone somewhere who can coach another to learn and/or execute whatever is at hand or coming down the pike to be done. For instance, one can coach another who aspires to write prose or poetry of various kinds. And we know all too well that lawyers coach their clients to testify in court, enabling them to transcend the dots of legal knowledge by connecting the dots of legal practice.
Coaching sometimes parades under other names, such as being the master to an apprentice who works side by side to see and imitate each technique, move and progression in getting a job or performance done. Thus, the apprentice method of learning is one of the most time-honored in the history of humankind, and, though it has morphed over the centuries, it still retains its luster amid modern technologies.
Highly significant is also the fact that the best coaches do not usually come from the ranks of the superstars and not even from among the better players. Some of the best coaches in baseball in particular did not even earn a spot on a major league team. Superstars such as Ted Williams, who also coached, have a problem relating to the challenges incurred by more pedestrian, journeyman players. They literally don’t know how to connect the practical ballgame dots for mortal players.
This means that great knowledge and skill can be secondary among the assets of a great coach, well behind the coach’s heart and a willingness to learn how to tap into the mind, emotions and heart of the people who are being coached. This is a variant of, “It’s not the dog that’s in the fight; it’s the fight that’s in the dog.” Time after time, we see very journeyman individuals who are world-beaters as a team.
Parents are the first and most basic coaches in life for all of us. This is great when both parents are on the scene, alert and heart-and-soul involved in the physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual development of children. Mother and father need not be astute or sophisticated if their head and heart are right.
Sadly, it is not an exaggeration to say that most families, especially black families, are partially dysfunctional, and have been growing more dysfunctional each year since the halcyon days of 1964, when 76.4 percent of black families were nuclear – a mark that exceeded even the favored white families of the U.S. Yes, both marital coaches, mama and papa, were working hand in hand to develop each child. Nuclear black families now teeter around 30 percent with the bottom falling out.
So, despite heroic efforts of many single parents, overall horrendous effects are seen in our youth at home, in school and on gang/drug-ridden streets, because Coach Papa is not aiding Coach Mama. Literally, sometimes it is the sports coach at school who adopts clueless children and “fathers”/”mothers” them in the ways of life, gently helping to connect the dots where the home coach is not on the job.
With at times near uncoachable, faltering apostles, Coach Jesus was hands down the greatest of all coaches, holding his crew to the highest standards possible.
Parents, who are our prototeachers, other teachers, spiritual directors, coaches of every kind and at every level need always follow the template, the Man from Galilee, who can and will show us how to connect the dots of life when no one else can.
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.”   (1 John 4:16)
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, lives in retirement at Sacred Heart Residence in Bay St. Louis. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

Complete the circle
By George Evans
I have found that advocacy on behalf of the poor and vulnerable for the common good is very difficult for most Mississippi Catholics to embrace as part of their ministry. The U.S. Catholic Bishops have repeatedly urged us to take the Gospels and Catholic social teachings into the market place and the halls of the Legislatures, both state and federal, when issues important to people’s well being present themselves. Pope Francis and his two predecessor popes have used encyclicals of great power to exhort us to such action.
Many of us are not comfortable with contacting our legislators and expressing our support or lack thereof for legislation pending before them. And even more difficult may be suggesting legislation to be introduced. We tend to want to leave those things to other people. Yet we tend at the same time to loudly proclaim the greatness of our democracy and that it was founded on Christian principles. If we believe that then we need to take the time to be heard. There are many issues which need to hear our voices.
All of this has recently come to mind again with the Catholic Day at the Capitol sponsored by Catholic Charities and its Poverty Task Force held on February 11. Much work produced an excellent program attended by approximately 85 people from around Mississippi including both bishops (Jackson and Biloxi) and a good sprinkling of priests and sisters.
Bishop Joseph Kopacz welcomed the participants, stressed the importance of their attendance and reminded them of the remarks of Pope Francis to the U.S. Congress and his call to Christian responsibility for the common good. Bishop Roger Morin presided at the news conference on the south steps of the Capitol after Mass and lunch at St. Peter’s explaining that we were there as Catholics to urge the care and protection of children and the vulnerable as part of our responsibility for the common good.
The issues considered were adequate funding for various programs, including mental health care and the child welfare system in Mississippi. Of particular concern was the state foster care program which has been so poor for years that there is a real and present danger that Judge Tom Lee, a well respected Mississippi federal judge, could possibly decide in a case before him to bring in the federal government to run the foster care program in Mississippi because of the state’s failure to properly provide services necessary to protect and otherwise provide for children placed under its care and to abide by a previous consent order it had entered into years ago in the same case.
Unless significant steps are taken in the current Legislative session Judge Lee may have no choice but to take action which could seriously embarrass the state and adversely affect its economic attractiveness to potential economic development from outside interests.
Speakers at the Cathedral who have had years of involvement with the child welfare system, including two Catholic Charities department heads, told of instance after instance of chronically over worked and grossly underpaid state social workers unable to help foster children as decency requires resulting in the state’s failure to meet basic needs ranging from inadequate health care to frank abuse, both physical and mental and even death in more than one case. The need for help by the Legislature is critical and not optional.
Funding is always a point of contention in funding child welfare programs. This year Governor Phil Bryant has finally taken a lead in responding to the foster care crisis. Perhaps the threat of a federal take over is somewhat responsible and perhaps his best nature is showing itself. Regardless, it is a great time to join in contacting our legislators, particularly our senators and urging them to vote for and support the passage of the foster care funding bill which would provide an additional 34.5 million dollars for the needed additional personnel to help move foster care forward.
We were taught by Matthew Burkhart of Catholic Relief Services in an excellent address at the Feb. 11 meeting that personal contact is the most effective advocacy tool, followed by personal letter, telephone calls, personal emails and form petitions. Please contact your senator and representative and the governor and let them know that you think that the disaster in foster care needs attention and to please pass the foster care bill. What a great way to start as an advocate.
(George Evans is a retired attorney and pastoral minister. He is a member of Jackson St. Richard Parish..)

Joseph Fiennes and Tom Felton star in a scene from the movie “Risen.” The Catholic News Service classification is A-III – adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. (CNS photo/Columbia Pictures)

By Bishop Robert Barron
When I saw the coming attractions for the new film Risen – which deals with a Roman tribune searching for the body of Jesus after reports of the resurrection – I thought that it would leave the audience in suspense, intrigued but unsure whether these reports were justified or not. I was surprised and delighted to discover that the movie is, in fact, robustly Christian and substantially faithful to the Biblical account of what transpired after the death of Jesus.
My favorite scene shows tribune Clavius (played by the always convincing Joseph Fiennes) bursting into the Upper Room, intent upon arresting Jesus’ most intimate followers. As he takes in the people in the room, he spies Jesus, at whose crucifixion he had presided and whose face in death he had closely examined. But was he seeing straight? Was this even possible? He slinks down to the ground, fascinated, incredulous, wondering, anguished.
As I watched the scene unfold, the camera sweeping across the various faces, I was as puzzled as Clavius: was that really Jesus? It must indeed have been like that for the first witnesses of the Risen One, their confusion and disorientation hinted at in the Scriptures themselves: “They worshipped, but some doubted.” Once Thomas enters the room, embraces his Lord and probes Jesus’ wounds, all doubt, both for Clavius and for the viewer, appropriately enough, is removed.
I especially appreciated this scene, not only because of its clever composition, but because it reminded me of debates that were fashionable in theological circles when I was doing my studies in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Scholars who were skeptical of the bodily facticity of Jesus’ resurrection would pose the question, “What would someone outside of the circle of Jesus’ disciples have seen had he been present at the tomb on Easter morning or in the Upper Room on Easter evening?” The implied answer to the query was “well, nothing.”
The academics posing the question were suggesting that what the Bible calls resurrection designated nothing that took place in the real world, nothing that an objective observer would notice or dispassionate historian recount, but rather an event within the subjectivity of those who remembered the Lord and loved him.
For example, the extremely influential and widely-read Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx opined that, after the death of Jesus, his disciples, reeling in guilt from their cowardice and betrayal of their master, nevertheless felt forgiven by the Lord. This convinced them that, in some sense, he was still alive, and to express this intuition they told evocative stories about the empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
Roger Haight, a Jesuit theologian of considerable influence, speculated in a similar vein that the resurrection is but a symbolic expression of the disciples’ conviction that Jesus continues to live in the sphere of God. Therefore, Haight taught, belief in the empty tomb or the appearances of the risen Lord is inessential to true resurrection faith.
At a more popular level, James Carroll explained the resurrection as follows: after their master’s death, the disciples sat in a kind of “memory circle” and realized how much Jesus meant to them and how powerful his teaching was and decided that his spirit lives on in them.
The great English Biblical scholar N.T. Wright is particularly good at exposing and de-bunking such nonsense. His principal objection to this sort of speculation is that it is profoundly non-Jewish. When a first century Jew spoke of resurrection, he could not have meant some non-bodily state of affairs. Jews simply didn’t think in the dualist categories dear to Greeks and later to Gnostics. The second problem is that this post-conciliar theologizing is dramatically unhistorical.
Wright argues that, simply on historical grounds, it is practically impossible to explain the rise of the early Christian movement apart from a very objective construal of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. For a first-century Jew, the clearest possible indication that someone was not the promised Messiah would be his death at the hands of Israel’s enemies, for the unambiguously clear expectation was that the Messiah would conquer and finally deal with the enemies of the nation.
Peter, Paul, James, Andrew, and the rest could have coherently proclaimed – and gone to their deaths defending – a crucified Messiah if and only if he had risen from the dead. Can we really imagine Paul tearing into Athens or Corinth or Ephesus with the breathless message that he found a dead man deeply inspiring or that he and the other Apostles had felt forgiven by a crucified criminal? In the context of that time and place, no one would have taken him seriously.
Risen’s far more reasonable and theologically compelling answer is that, yes indeed, if an outsider and unbeliever burst into the Upper Room when the disciples were experiencing the resurrected Jesus, he would have seen something along with them. Would he have fully grasped what he was seeing? Obviously not. But would the experience have had no objective referent?  Just as obviously not. There is just something tidy, bland, and unthreatening about the subjectivizing interpretations I rehearsed above.
What you sense on every page of the New Testament is that something happened to the first Christians, something so strange and unexpected and compelling that they wanted to tell the whole world about it. Frankly, Risen conveys the edgy novelty, the unnerving reality of the resurrection, better than much contemporary theologizing.
(Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.)