-Fr. John Roche, SDB
I have been travelling too much lately! Though every opportunity to meet other people or to attend an important meeting enriches me, traveling is not one of my favorite things. Yet, there is one part of the experience of which I never tire. In almost any airport in any city in the world, there is the precious interaction of loved ones returning home or leaving. In both cases, I have witnessed again and again something so universal and so touching that it almost embarrasses me to write about it: the deep love we share as human beings.
Recently I found myself choked up as a group of soldiers exited a jetway to the spontaneous applause and cheers of men and women at the airport. I have tried not to be too obvious in my spying on couples reuniting in joyful tears and embraces. How can I not be moved as I watch a parent or grandparent bite their fingers as they watch a little one escorted on the plane with bags and souvenirs in hand trying to wave a goodbye? I am certain that you and I have many other memories of these simple and beautiful encounters and most of us, admit it or not, are moved to tears even though none of these memories are connected to people we dearly love ourselves!
This is good news for me because it indicates that we are, deep down below our own histories and the sordid details of our lives, people who are in need of love and who need to love. And while this is no great insight, but the stuff of songs and poems and ballads all down the centuries, there is something in the quality of that need which is, I believe, profound.
All of this jogs a very special memory for me. I was newly professed as a young Salesian religious. I was 20 years old, on my way back to a college on the East Coast after a few weeks visiting with my family. My father had been battling cancer and it seemed to us at the time that he was finally turning the corner and would get better. On my last day of our vacation at home, my father offered to walk with me to our parish in the neighborhood for a daily afternoon Mass. At the end of Mass, he prayed the rosary with me.
And after I led the first decade, I noticed that my father was unable to lead the prayers of the second decade. I turned to him and found his eyes filled with tears. Immediately I assumed that his health struggles were on his mind so I turned to him and asked, “Are you worried about the coming treatments?” It is his answer that I will never forget. He smiled weakly and said, “No, honey, I just hate to see you go.” That may seem ever so expected or obvious, but it remains, this many years later, one of the most profound memories I have. It was the expression of how important and loved I was by my father and it is something I have returned to a thousand times.
My father died seven months later. I had to fly back from the college and went through the expected rituals for saying goodbye, but I secretly felt that I had been given a special gift before I left for college that last summer. Over the years, then, when I see two loved ones embracing or watch a lingering hand cling to someone departing for the gate, I am reminded of that special need we have to love and to be loved. It is something so basic, yet it is something so many people do not experience.
It occurs to me now, and it is the reason I share with you today, that this is the most profound and simple reason we need God in our lives. Jesus’ entire ministry was dedicated to revealing that surprising and life-giving love of his father to anyone who would listen. It was never advertised as a fair-weather love or a love that demanded response or meriting. Jesus spoke of a Father who longed to love his children and to share that love in abundance. Again and again the parables of Jesus reveal a love that is endless and totally free for whoever would embrace the gift.
Inside of me there is an urgency and an impatience to see that message go out to as many people as possible. How I long to see people who may be lost or without meaning or purpose discover this living Father who loves them and who has a plan for their lives. Often times it is my own imperfect love that mars that message in another person’s life. And that is precisely why I return often to that bench at the back of my parish church and look into the eyes of my own father filled with tears and with love.
Once you have tasted that love, it is something you want the whole world to know. Certainly, this is exactly why Jesus stopped at nothing, not even his own execution, to proclaim the reality and accessibility of his Father’s love.
When is the last time you told the people in your life how much you love them? When is the last time you allowed the love of the Father to enfold and enrich you — to comfort and sustain you?
Waste no time. Show love, seek love and be love for others while you can. Proclaim with your lives the love which never ends and which withstands the travails and the chaos of our lives — the love of a Father who has written our names in his heart and who holds us in the palm of his hand.