IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
In the movie based upon Jane Austen’s classic novel, “Sense and Sensibility,” there’s a very poignant scene where one of her young heroines, suffering from acute pneumonia, is lying in bed hovering between life and death. A young man, very much in love with her, is pacing back and forth, highly agitated, frustrated by his helplessness to do anything of use, and literally jumping out of his skin.
Unable to contain his agitation any longer, he goes to the girl’s mother and asks what he might do to be helpful. She replies that there’s nothing he can do, the situation is beyond them. Unable to live with that response he says to her: “Give me some task to do, or I shall go mad!”
We’ve all had the feeling at times when in the face of a dire situation we need to do something, but there’s nothing we can do, no magic wand we can wave to make things better. But there is something we can do.
I recall an event in my own life several years ago: I was teaching summer school in Belgium when, late one evening, just as I was getting ready for bed, I received an email saying that two friends of mine, a man and a woman recently engaged, had been involved that day in a fatal car accident. He was killed instantly and she was in serious condition in hospital. I was living by myself in a university dorm, thousands of miles from where this all happened, and thousands of miles from anyone with whom I could share this sorrow. Alone, agitated, panicked, and desperately needing to do something but being absolutely helpless to do anything, I was literally driven to my knees.
Not being able to do anything else, I picked up the prayer-book that contains the Office of the Church and prayed, by myself, the Vespers prayer for the dead. When I’d finished, my sorrow hadn’t gone away, my friend was still dead, but my panic had subsided, as had my desperate need to do something (when there was nothing I could do).
My prayer that night gave me some sense that the young man who’d died that day was alright, safe somewhere in a place beyond us, and it also relieved me of the agitation and panicked pressure of needing to do something in the face of agitated helplessness. I’d done the only thing I could do, the thing that’s been done in the face of helplessness and death since the beginning of time; I’d given myself over to prayer and to the rituals of the community and the faith of the community.
It’s these, prayer and ritual, which we have at our disposal at those times when, like the man in Sense and Sensibility, we need to do something or we will go mad. That’s not only true for heavy, sorrowful times when loved ones are sick or dying or killed in accidents and we need to do something but there’s nothing we can do.
We also need ritual to help us celebrate happy times properly. What should we do when our own children are getting married? Among other things, we need to celebrate the ritual of marriage because no wedding planner in the world can do for us what the ritual, especially the church-ritual, of marriage can do. Weddings, just like funerals, are a prime example of where we need ritual to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Sadly, today, we are a culture that for the most part is ritually tone-deaf. We don’t understand ritual and therefore mostly don’t know what to do when we need to be doing something but we don’t know what to do. That’s a fault, a painful poverty, in our understanding.
The Trappist monks who were martyred in Algeria in 1996 were first visited by the Islamic extremists who would later kidnap and kill them, on Christmas Eve, just as they were preparing to celebrate Christmas Mass. After some initial threats, their eventual murderers left. The monks were badly shaken. They huddled together as a group for a time to digest what had just happened.
Then, not knowing what else to do in the face of this threat and their fear, they sang the Christmas Mass. In the words of their Abbott: “It’s what we had to do. It’s all we could do! It was the right thing.” He shared too, as did a number of the other monks (in their diaries) that they found this, celebrating the ritual of Mass in the face of their fear and panic, something that calmed their fear and brought some steadiness and regularity back into their lives.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, one that can bring steadiness and calm into our lives at those times when we desperately need to do something, but there’s nothing to do.
Ritual: It’s what we have to do. It’s all we can do! It’s the right thing.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

COMPLETE THE CIRCLE
George Evans
Every year at this time I am struck by the scope of the readings at Mass, both daily and Sunday. Beginning with the pageantry of Palm Sunday’s entry into Jerusalem and the history and presentation of the synoptic passion and death of our Lord and Savior we know we are in a sacred liturgical time.
We go with Jesus to visit his special friends in Bethany, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus whom he had recently raised from the dead for the last time before his death and we anticipate with Jesus the solemn nature of the days which loom ahead. We return with him to Jerusalem and the events cascade. We eat in the upper room, we have our feet washed, we experience the first Eucharist and eat his Body and drink his Blood.
We go with Jesus to the Garden but our human weakness overcomes us and we first fall asleep and then fear grips us as we see him taken into custody and led away to be tortured and abandoned by us, his closest friends. We watch him be humiliated, struggle with his cross to Golgotha and die ingloriously on the cross as we watch only from a silent distance.
We are petrified and can’t understand all that has just happened. We hide ourselves in a locked room and pray no one comes for us to die with him.
On Sunday morning more incredible things happen. First, Mary of Magdala goes to Jesus’s tomb but the stone has been rolled away and Jesus is no longer there. She runs back and tells Peter and John who didn’t believe her but did run to the tomb themselves. John being younger gets there first but defers to Peter who enters the tomb first and sees the linens which had wrapped his body and head neatly folded and placed where his body had been. They still don’t know what to make of it all so they return to their safe locked room and wait in shock and disbelief.
The scriptures next relate the fascinating and compelling story of Jesus joining two disciples on their way to Emmaus dejected from the recent events in Jerusalem and overwhelmed by the stranger who explains the scriptures to them and finally reveals himself to them in the breaking of the bread.
He leaves them and they are so excited they run back to the locked room and tell those gathered what had happened. They did not believe them either (Mark 16:13). Later on the same first day of the week, Jesus appears to the disciples in the locked room. Mark reports that Jesus “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised.” (Mark 16:14)
Yet he immediately commands them “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15) John reports on that first visit that when Jesus appeared he immediately said “Peace be with you” and showed them his hands and side and said to them “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22)
Thomas had missed this visit, was adamant that he would not believe unless he saw Jesus’s wounds for himself which occurred on another visit a week later and led to his unforgettable utterance “My Lord and my God.” The scriptures continue throughout the Easter season to tell us the beautiful stories of Jesus’s reconciliation with Peter following his appearance at breakfast at the Sea of Tiberias following the wondrous catch of fish, of the miracles of healing of Peter and John and their own miraculous escape from prison assisted by an angel. All of these give us reason to believe as John tells us “that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”(John 20:31)
The readings in the Easter liturgies also inspire us to do what the apostles and disciples did as shown in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. They took Jesus seriously once he breathed the Holy Spirit into them and sent them. They went and preached everywhere “and great numbers of men and women were added to them” (Acts 5:14).
They built a church on what Jesus taught them and the Holy Spirit inspired them to do. “The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common.” (Acts 4:32) Could not our church today use a healthy dose of being of one heart and mind. Would not our efforts to serve the common good rather than selfish needs and wants transform our community as the early church did theirs.
If we truly live the Easter story and followed the person at its center would we all not experience a new freedom and freshness found nowhere else except in the Risen Lord. We have nothing to lose. Let’s try it.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish.)

Reflections on Life
Father Jerome LeDoux
Seven months and three weeks had slipped on by and most of my books and other effects were still warehoused in a small back room of Our Mother Of Mercy Church in Fort Worth, Texas. “Enough is enough!” I told myself as the time loomed large for a new pastor.
“I need to clear out whatever belongs to me, to Our Mother Of Mercy Church or to St. Augustine Church in New Orleans. I should just junk the rest.”
By dint of three days of slavish separating of mine, theirs and junk, all that I had left in Cowtown had been whittled down to two and a half 12” X 12” X 15½” boxes ready for shipment. With less than an hour to leave for DFW airport, the Knights of Peter Claver, who had been meeting in the old convent, descended upon the rectory to say “Hi” and “Bye.” After an exchange of pleasantries, they stared in wonder at the photos, religious trinkets and other items strewn over the carpet.
“What you see is not junk, but all pre-sorted according to category and place of destination,” I observed. “If you see anything you like, collect it for yourself.” At which point, they fell in almost as one, swooping down on photos, holy cards, any kind of keepsake that struck their fancy. It was a delight to watch them go over the whole array, almost displaying guilt by claiming them.
As their ranks thinned out and as flight departure time drew nearer, three of them volunteered to help scoop up the final loose bits scattered here and there. One final smaller box would suffice to swallow this miscellany of items for shipment. All I could do was say, “Thank you, Lord!” and exhale as I have seldom done before.
Once more, brother Aaron Page chauffered me to DFW, but, unexplainably, the Saturday traffic moved like molasses in January. Given our slightly tight window of time, my arrival at the terminal was past the cutoff for boarding passengers. But none of this mattered since I had exhaled and said, “Thank you, Lord!” The kind folks at the ticket counter gave me a boarding pass for a 6:15 p.m. flight out.
Annoyingly, that flight was postponed. Again, nothing at all mattered since the gorilla was off my back. When we were cleared for takeoff, I was gradually able to assess the difference between the Embraer E-190 and the workhorse Boeing 737. After flying the scrappy little Embraer a few times, one is reminded of smooth, stone-slinging David, while returning to the muscular 737 puts one in mind of incredibly powerful Samson. It is hard to believe that this roomy jet ranks among the group of medium-sized jetliners. Cruising smoothly at about 540 miles an hour, it likewise defies belief that this heavier-than-air “hunk” is so agile in flight.
Flying appears to enable our thoughts to soar as well. Moving is usually at best an odious task for most people. We turn a jaundiced eye at the sundry variety of things we have accumulated over the years. A distinct majority of people suffer from the gradual accruing of belongings and just plain junk that they did not take the time to sort out and trash. However, most writers have a built-in problem. It is summed up in the law: “The day you decide to junk something is the day before you need it.”
As one totes up the years, especially a writer, one becomes ever more wary of consigning things to File 13, the trash. As I was processing my remaining effects in Fort Worth, I readily discarded some old newspapers, but slowed to a crawl as I soon saw why I had saved so many articles and stories. Usually, each saved paper contained the makings for one or more columns on subjects across the board. To the casual observer, this was all trash; to the writer, bountiful treasures of knowledge.
The lateness of my flight urged me to overnight in New Orleans. Sunday was decision time for choosing a church to attend Sunday Mass. Ben and Sandra Gordon encouraged me to attend Mass at my former parish, St. Augustine in Faubourg Tremé. I balked at first, still smarting over my rejection there for seven years. As I entered the church, it was obvious that the choice had struck pure gold.
Reacquainting my eyes to the beauty and décor of the church, I was stunned by the outpouring of affection and pleas for blessing from the smiling populace. If a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps a loving smile is worth several pictures. At any rate, the smiles and cheers abounded as Pastor Emmanuel Mulenga, O.M.I., introduced me. A spontaneous “Shake the Devil Off” rendition shook the building.
“You made many people happy by your appearance this morning,” Sandra said. Yet, they were equally my joy and blessings.
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.” (1 John 4:16)
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)