When Death Births Life: St. Bryce Missions Grows Out of a Family's Grief

“I went to the jungle thinking I was going to grieve, but God brought me there to heal,” author and full-time missionary Colleen C. Mitchell said as she sat on a stool in my kitchen, watching me prepare a pot of Crayfish Étouffée. Mitchell and I had met only a week earlier at a Catholic Trade Show in Chicago, but when I learned she was a native New Orleanian who would be coming through our hometown in a week, I insisted we get together. During our visit, Mitchell openly shared her story of heartbreak and grief, and how it led her family to a cloud forest in Costa Rica to serve as missionaries caring for the spiritual and physical needs of the indigenous Cabecar peoples.

Their journey to the jungle began in 2009 while Mitchell, her husband, Greg, and their six sons were living a normal, happy life as a Catholic homeschooling family. On what she called “a perfect homeschooling day,” tragedy suddenly struck when Mitchell found her three-month-old son, Bryce, unresponsive in his crib due to SIDS. Within a short time, the couple lost four more babies to miscarriage, leaving Mitchell completely shattered and irrevocably changed by the multiple heartbreaks and ensuing grief that had visited their lives.

Shortly after Bryce’s death, Greg became inspired to establish a non-profit organization in Bryce’s name for the purpose of sharing the Gospel. “I can’t say I opposed the idea,” wrote Mitchell in the exquisite new book that grew out of her grief entitled Who Does He Say You Are: Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels.  “But I could not make logical sense of how you give your heart away when you are holding its shards in bleeding hands.”

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Still tentative about how they could help others while in so much pain themselves, Mitchell offered God and Greg a “weak-kneed” yes, and St. Bryce Missions was born. Not long after that, Greg visited Costa Rica on a business trip, coming home with a vision for their future that his wife had not imagined: moving their family to the Chirripo Mountains of south Central Costa Rica to minister to the unevangelized indigenous peoples who live on a government-provided reserve therein.

Making a radical leap of faith, Mitchell packed her family’s belongings and necessities into 12 suitcases, embarking “sight unseen on a journey of redemption” to the poorest area of Costa Rica, unsure of what lay before them. Three weeks into their new life in the remote jungle, tragedy struck again via the death of Greg’s mother, necessitating his departure from Costa Rica for three weeks. “It was then—as I sat broken-hearted, isolated and alone in the jungle with my boys, with no car, unable to speak Spanish, apart from everything and everyone I had known—that I realized I needed to get to know God in a new way.”

Mitchell spent long days sitting beside a running river with her Bible and journal in hand, meditating upon Gospel stories of Christ’s healing, transforming power as her boys played in the river’s clear waters. There the grieving mother began to hear Christ speaking life into her heart again, and it was there that she began to reclaim God’s vision of her by journaling the “tender mercies” the Lord gave her in prayer—the very journal entries that would eventually become the chapters of her beautiful new book.

“I began to own that even with all the cracks and broken places the last few years had wrought in me, I was beautiful and beloved to him, and I had a purpose. He wanted to use me,” she wrote. It would not take long for that purpose to be realized.

Mitchell began to notice that basic healthcare was inaccessible to the Cabecar women, forcing pregnant women to walk as many as ten miles while in labor trying to find a hospital in which to safely deliver their babies. Wondering how she could help, she hatched a plan in her mind to find and engage an existing organizational institution to solve the problem of making healthcare more accessible to these poor women. Again, God surprised her with an unimagined solution.

“One day in prayer, I heard God say, ‘Use what you have to meet this need,’” Mitchell told me as I sat listening in amazement. “You have a car, a house, and a way to get these people to the hospital. Share with them what I’ve given you.”

Mitchell said yes.

The very next day Mitchell and her husband encountered a Cabecar woman with an extremely sick baby who had already walked eight hours in the pouring rain to find medical help. They picked her up, drove her to the hospital, and stayed with her to make sure she received the care she needed, leaving their phone number with her in the event she had no way to get home upon the baby’s release from the hospital. The woman called the couple the next day, and ended up staying in their home for a week until the baby was stable enough to go home.

After this first encounter, the Mitchells put the word out that they were willing to help others, and more women began to show up. This influx eventually prompted the family to move to a larger home close to the hospital which sleeps 25 women in addition to their family of 7—bringing to life the St. Francis Emmaus Center, a home-based ministry that is only one of several initiatives St. Bryce Missions is currently undertaking to reach out to those on the peripheries of society with the Gospel.  To date, over 700 Cabecar women have come through their doors to receive food, shelter, health education and health-care advocacy in the state-run medical system, receiving love and care from the Mitchells and their five still-homeschooling sons, all of whom are engaged in the work of St. Bryce Missions.

The Mitchell’s “yes” to God has birthed healing in hopelessness and grace in grief—for themselves and numerous others. Their efforts have not only spurred a 50% drop in the infant mortality rate among the people they serve, but has given whole families in an oft-overlooked part of the world the opportunity to encounter Christ.

This article appeared previously at Aleteia.

Mercy Upon Mercy: My Father's Final Farewell

“At that last hour a soul has nothing with which to defend itself except My mercy.” —Diary of St. Faustina, par. 1075

“Do you believe in God, Dad?” I asked from the driver’s seat as Daddy and I cruised down St. Charles Avenue heading for my parents’ New Orleans home.

My then-eighty-year-old father, known to cry freely, began to weep. “I’m totally dependent on God’s mercy, Judy Marie,” he choked out using my entire given name, which he’d called me exclusively since the day I was born. “What else is there?”

That conversation contained the most open display of faith I’d ever seen in my dad; a father of ten whom I’d never witnessed initiating prayer or church attendance. Daddy and I had never even talked about faith before, and we only stumbled into this conversation because he was attending my Health Care Ethics course at a local Catholic college. Our weekly post-class lunch together, and the drive home, left ample time for conversation but it seemed that the topic of God was the hardest thing to broach.

Until Daddy lay dying.

“Dad,” I said out loud as I held the hand of my lightly comatose father in what would be the last week of his life, confident he could still hear me. “Remember what you told me about being completely dependent on God’s mercy? Trust in the mercy of God when you meet him, Dad,” I continued. “That’s all you need to do.”

Family members had been gathering daily by Daddy’s bedside to pray the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet, engaged in a vigil of prayer and personal attendance as he slept in a newly delivered hospital bed. At least one person from our large family sat next to him constantly, while others occupied nearby spaces—keeping company with Mama and each other, preparing meals, and running necessary errands.

“What a beautiful way to die,” I thought one evening as I stood in the kitchen tending a rump roast and sipping a glass of wine. I was overcome with awe by the sheer grace of it all, noting the powerful manner in which our father’s impending death had pulled us all to God and to each other; offering gratitude for the way a father’s final days had drawn a family that’s experienced more than its fair share of adversity, division and tragedy solidly together in faith, hope and love.

A priest friend had come by twice in eight days to offer Mass, anointing both of our ailing parents each time with the Sacrament of the Sick. At the second Mass at least thirty members of our extended family crammed around the dining room table to celebrate the liturgy—the same table at which at least a dozen people would gather for dinner another night to pool our hearts and prayers:  intermittently praying, eating, crying, laughing, and sharing stories of our lives together. An Apostolic Pardon was given to Daddy, as well as the offering of love, peace and pardon from many family members. One particularly precious night, a room full of grown children raised our voices beside our unconscious father to thank him for the many gifts he’d given us, including endless hours spent in the scorching Louisiana heat teaching twenty-eight first cousins how to ski, crab, boat and fish in the murky waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

Life had not always been easy and Daddy had borne his scars, especially from the heart-shattering deaths of two of his sons to suicide.  Indeed, life had seemed almost merciless at times and God far distant, and our now-fragile father had cried many tears over life’s bitter disappointments.

But now—at the hour of death when it mattered most—mercy upon mercy showed up.

A peaceful, holy death was granted to a man who had the grace to comprehend that he was “totally dependent on God’s mercy”—tender, faithful Mercy that drew us all into its embrace during a father’s final farewell.

This article previously appeared at Aleteia.

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Hope For Troubled Parents: Become A Child Yourself

Twice recently I've heard parents say: “I did everything right, and my child is still doing (name your favorite sin).” “Good luck with that!” I responded to one of them in a voice that was louder and more vigorous than I intended. Because the lie that if you do it all right, then you’ll be guaranteed a good result is a form of an ancient heresy known as Pelagianism. The old heresy now has a new moniker: the Prosperity Gospel, which purports that if I do X and Y then I will earn Z from God. Oh, how it misses the point of God’s grace!

What a relief to heartily admit what two of the greatest saints of our era, namely St. Faustina and St. Therese of Lisieux, freely admitted: they couldn’t get it right. While simultaneously reading St. Faustina’s Diary and Fr. Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Merciful Love, I was almost giddy when I happened upon Faustina and Therese’s own words:

O my God, I understand well that you demand this spiritual childhood of me…I am an abyss of misery, and hence I understand that whatever good there is in my soul consists solely of His holy grace. The knowledge of my misery allows me, at the same time, to know the immensity of Your mercy. (St. Faustina, Diary, par. 56.)

And if the good God wants you weak and helpless like a child…do you believe you will have less merit?...Agree to stumble at every step, therefore, even to fall, to carry your cross weakly, to love your helplessness. (Gaitley, quoting Therese, 56)

Before I read those words, I’d been feeling particularly low about the mistakes, failures and foibles I’ve made as a parent. But surprisingly, every time I turned to the Lord for guidance he said the same thing to me: Become a child yourself.

Why?

Children are spontaneously, intuitively in touch with their own neediness, and they are quick to ask for help. Children have open hands and open hearts, and they stand ready to receive love with gratitude and joy. Children live in expectant faith that if they fall, fail or flail their Papa is going to take care of it—and he’s going to take care of them, too. Children trust completely.

This is the way of spiritual childhood that Faustina and Therese found so liberating; it is the way of the child through which we, too, must pass in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. The way of spiritual childhood is the path of humility and trust: I freely and humbly admit that I’m a hot mess, while furiously trusting that I am loved and redeemed by a merciful God who is bigger than all of my sins and weaknesses.

Of course, I try my best to live and love according to the ways of Christ. And when I fail to do so I turn to God, trusting that he will fill in the gap of all I am lacking in love and holiness with his love and holiness, and that his offering is superabundantly sufficient. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) said it this way:

What faith basically means is just that this shortfall that we have in our love is made up by the surplus of Jesus Christ’s love, acting on our behalf. He simply tells us that God himself has poured out among us a superabundance of love and has thus made good in advance all our deficiency. Ultimately, faith means nothing other than admitting that we have this kind of shortfall; it means opening our hand and accepting a gift. (Ratzinger, What It Means to Be A Christian, 74).

Are you fretting about all you lack as a parent? Then become a little child. Abandon yourself and your children completely to God, trusting that his love will make up for whatever is lacking in yours. This is grace. For as the Little Flower herself insisted, all is grace.

This article was previously published at Aleteia.

Being Pro-Life In A Pro-Choice Political Dynasty

The whole clan (almost) at Grandma's.

We must admit that the practice of mercy is waning in the wider culture. In some cases the word seems to have dropped out of use. However, without a witness to mercy, life becomes fruitless and sterile, as if sequestered to a barren desert. Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 10

The poignant, personal statement by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the death of Antonin Scalia, and the ensuing details of their warm friendship, has brought to mind the close relationship I enjoy with my some of my own family members who serve in the political arena—loved ones with whom I have deep differences over the issue of abortion.

My teeth were cut on the campaign trail, as I grew up in a highly political family of Louisiana Democrats, wherein one or more of my immediate relatives have held public office almost continuously since I was born in 1960. Memories of my childhood are replete with door-to-door canvassing, rallies and working long hours alongside my siblings and cousins in various campaign headquarters in New Orleans. There we answered phones, ran endless copies of flyers on Xerox machines and addressed, stamped, and sealed envelopes until our fingers were raw. At rallies, we handed out yard signs and bumper stickers, blew up hundreds of colored balloons with helium and sang homespun songs for our candidates. Politics, and its inherent idealism of making the world a better place, was at the center of our lives.

Our boisterous Catholic clan was extremely family oriented, with two lone brothers spawning nineteen children in less than a dozen years—my parents’ 10 and Uncle Moon and Aunt Verna’s nine. (We won the race because we got a set of twins:)  Sundays included shared lunches at Grandma’s house after church, where we lingered to play jacks, card games and jump rope over the dueling smells of Paw Paw’s sweet pipe and Uncle Moon’s strong cigar. I adore the smell of pipes and cigars to this day, as both instantly transport me back to memories of family gatherings over Grandma’s rump roast and gravy.

Summers brought us all together at the rustic camp that Grandma bought on Lake Pontchartrain in 1963, where swimming, fishing, boating, skiing and crabbing kept us, and many of our friends, entertained from dawn until dark in the scorching Southern heat. The pinnacle of summer was our Fourth of July celebration, when we raised the family flag that rested on Paw Paw’s coffin when he died in 1967, then recited the Pledge of Allegiance and read aloud the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Uncle Moon’s short speech about appreciating the gifts of freedom and democracy that we enjoy in our great nation preceded the singing of “America the Beautiful.” We were proud to be Americans and Landrieus.

Sadly, the winds of change crept in during those precious years, bringing with them drugs, rebellion, a confused post-Vatican II church, contraception, radical feminism, and the new law of the land, abortion on demand. I was swept up into much of the Cultural Revolution, but somehow, by God’s grace, I always knew with certainty that abortion was wrong. Whether it was the Natural Law or the sensus fidei at work, no one ever had to tell me that killing an unborn child in its mother’s womb was a grievous offense. Furthermore, no one had to convince me that a pregnant woman was carrying an actual child, given the fact that I had nine siblings and numerous cousins, with almost half of them younger than I.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the year I became a teenager.   I didn’t think much about the issue of abortion until senior year in high school, when a close friend of mine became pregnant and had an abortion. Suddenly, what had previously been clearly wrong was now a “necessary choice.” Freedom became associated with the ability to choose for oneself, and even the ability to define reality according to one’s own perceptions. Thus began the slippery slope that slid our nation headlong into 60,000,000 aborted babies, with some of my family members ultimately leading the national charge for abortion rights by way of their political power.

I’ve prayed, fasted, and grieved hard about my family’s pro-choice stance over the years—the very issue that eventually pushed me into the Republican Party by default. When possible, I’ve tried to persuade those I love to see the light. Some conversations have gone well, others not so much.

I imagine that Justice Scalia must have felt real grief over what he saw unfold before his eyes during his long tenure on the Supreme Court—not only because he was a jurist who believed that the Constitution nowhere permitted a woman the right to abort her child, but also because he was a devout Catholic who firmly believed in the sanctity of human life. Even so, he worked side by side and apparently enjoyed intimate friendship with people who assumed a completely different stance than he did on abortion (as well as on marriage and other moral issues). I was genuinely surprised to learn this fact about him but am heartened by his example, especially during this Year of Mercy when Pope Francis is challenging us to re-think the way we go about relationships, especially at a time in history where mercilessness and rancor seem to rule the day.

There is a time and a place to stand strong for what we believe, particularly when standing firm for what is right and true affects the direction our future takes, both individually and corporately. But there is also a time and a place to put painful, divisive things aside for the sake of strengthening relationships, for the sake of growing in understanding of one another, for the sake of cultivating friendship.

Humility and charity demand that we don’t have to engage the fight every chance we get, don’t have to win every argument or prove we are right all of the time (or even most of the time for that matter). In fact, sometimes we win more through listening, through kindness, through love. That’s one thing that Nino Scalia’s towering legacy is saying to me, and I am taking note.

This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Grace Upon Grace

Dear Friends, Many blessings to you and your families as we end 2015 and begin the new year.  Please know that I am praying for you and your intentions today at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C..  May the Lord bless you abundantly in 2016 and grant you a fresh outpouring of His mercy and love.       Blessings and grace!    Judy  

We recall the poignant words of Saint John XXIII when, opening the (Second Vatican) Council, he indicated the path to follow: “Now the Bride of Christ wishes to use the medicine of mercy rather than taking up arms of severity.” Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 4

Carried tenderly through the Jubilee Door of Mercy at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception by her parents, 10-day-old Grace Philomena would be baptized in just a few hours on this same special day—the Feast of the Holy Family in the Octave of Christmas during the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Grace. God’s favor and unmerited gift. A perfect name for a baby conceived in an imperfect situation by unmarried young adults; yet a child welcomed, wanted, loved by God and by us. Moreover, a child soon to be infused with the grace of God, giving her the one identity that truly counts: child of God.

Standing in the crypt of the National Basilica, it was hard to miss the sense of being in the womb of the Church, the womb of the Bride of Christ, the womb of Mercy. I pondered the paradox of the God-man choosing to enter this world in an irregular and apparently scandalous situation, conceived before Joseph and Mary were living together as husband and wife, making Mary subject to stoning according to the demands of the law. Why that way, Lord? I have asked the question many times. I thought of Mary’s dilemma, about how difficult it must have been as she wondered how her situation would play out. I thought of all the months I worried about and prayed for Grace, asking God for his help that this situation, too, might play out well.

Then came Grace, on the birthday of Pope Francis—the pope who baptized the baby of unwed parents on the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. And here we now stood on the Feast of the Holy Family holding Grace hours before her baptism, with grace holding us.

The last Gospel reading of the year proclaims: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace; for the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17, RSV). While the law was a teacher, grace is a healer. The law was a guide; but grace is a mother. The law foreshadowed Christ; grace gives us Christ. Grace welcomes Grace, making her a child of God “born not by natural generation or by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God” (John 1:13).

“Were sin the only thing that mattered, we would be the most desperate of creatures,” Pope Francis said in his opening homily for the Jubilee Year of Mercy. “But the promised triumph of Christ’s love enfolds everything in the Father’s mercy.” That enfolding comes in many forms—all destined to beckon us to God.

I’ve watched an unborn baby call two confused young people to adulthood: to purpose, to promise, to love. I watch them now as they hold an infant daughter in their arms, presenting her to the Father of Mercies that she may be enfolded in his love. The law would have repudiated Mary. But grace embraces Grace, and her parents, with the medicine of mercy. The arms of severity have no place here, only the arms of love.

This post was previously published at Aleteia as The Mercy Journal.

How The Gaze Of A Blind Man Healed My Sight

Happy birthday to our beautiful daughter, Kara, who has taught us all so much about love, and to our first grandson, James, who is such a gift of joy! Merry Christmas to you and your families!  May the Lord grant you a fresh outpouring of mercy and love!

At times, we are called to gaze even more attentively on mercy.  Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 3.

Our Christmas girl, who turns thirty today, wanted only one gift that year. “For my birthday and Christmas present, I’d like a plane ticket to bring Richard to visit our family for the holidays,” Kara requested with all of the innocent fervor of her kind eighteen-year-old heart.

Richard was a middle-aged, legally blind man none of us had ever met. Living alone in Florida he’d heard Kara, a singer/songwriter, perform on EWTN’s “Life On the Rock.” He promptly found her website, and they formed a friendship centered upon letter writing and praying for each other’s needs. From what Richard shared, he loved the Lord deeply, and having no family, spent his days praying and watching Catholic television.

“That sounds like a great thing to do for Christmas,” my late husband, Bernie, and I agreed, proud of our daughter’s magnanimity. Besides, having just buried Bernie’s thirty-six-year-old son unexpectedly in early September, we figured it would be a welcome distraction from our own intense pain.

The next think I knew, we were picking Richard up at the airport. And while it seemed like a great idea in concept, I never thought about the possible repercussions of bringing a total stranger into our home until the man was upstairs, planted in a bedroom next to the ones where our five children lay sleeping. Downstairs in the master bedroom, I was suddenly seized with fear. “Bernie, we have no idea who this person is!” I elbowed my half-asleep husband. “He could be Jack the Ripper for all we know!” Thus began a sleepless night of listening to every drop of noise in the house, anxiously awaiting a sign that Richard had left his room.

Daylight brought new perspective. As I sat down to coffee with the poor man, I realized he was probably much more frightened than I over the endeavor he just undertook—flying on a plane for the first time in his life to spend a week in an unfamiliar place with complete strangers. I soon learned that Richard had been blinded by the physical abuse of his parents, then sent to live in foster care while still a young child—only to land in the hands of another abusive mother. His life had been one of deprivation and suffering, and with no family whatsoever, he lived in poverty with two parakeets as his only companions. Though he'd worked for years as a gardener near his home, his physical infirmities eventually took over, sequestering him at home.

Days passed, and what began to strike me about Richard was less the depth of his sad story than the immensity of his gratitude. He raved about how this was the best Christmas he’d ever had, and about how much love, warmth, and welcome he felt in our home. As I entered into Richard’s story, our own deep suffering began to feel much more bearable. It was then that I started to realize that to show "compassion" to another—which in Latin means “to suffer with”—strengthens and consoles us.

“The crucified Christ has not removed suffering from the world. But through his Cross, he has changed men, opening their heart to their suffering sisters and brothers and thereby strengthening and purifying them all.” Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations on the Triune God, 53.

The grateful gaze of a blind man gave me sight that suffering Christmas, an unexpected gift of grace. What began as a token gesture of Christmas generosity ended in a purifying glance of mercy from heaven’s throne; fortifying us all.

Author’s Note: This piece first appeared at Aleteia as "The Mercy Journal."

Man Proposes, God Disposes

Our Thanksgiving visit was going to be perfect. We had the whole thing planned. My daughters, Kara and Gaby, were coming to town. We’d spend four days on the Gulf Coast, three in New Orleans, and three at home in Mandeville. Beach, Zoo, Aquarium, streetcar rides, turkey, babies, fun. Topped off by a romantic dinner and well-deserved night away for Gaby and her husband, Grayson, in celebration of their sixth wedding anniversary. Yes, indeed. Perfect.

Then the bug bit. Ten people, including two babies in diapers, spent the week shuffling between vomit bowls, toilets, and endless mess. “My tummy hurts!” two-year-old Joseph cried as he sat at the kitchen counter. That was after he threw up all over my silk duvet cover.

We skipped Thanksgiving completely; then scrapped anniversary plans. Those of us feeling well enough by Saturday night enjoyed a celebratory meal of take-out Thai food with Gaby, while her spouse lay sick in bed.

“Man proposes, God disposes,” my husband, Mark, said as I lamented the train wreck of a week. “The best laid plans of mice and men,” I responded rolling my eyes.

As we sat at the dinner table with Gaby minus her groom, we discussed just how much she and Grayson had been through since their relationship began. “Four children, six moves, the death of your dad, the separation of Grayson’s parents, cancer, major surgery and MRSA,” I offered, recalling the last seven years, noting that the bulk of those events had happened during the past twelve months. But it was the MRSA—an antibiotic resistant surgery-related staff infection—that brought things to a screeching halt. When it became clear that the cancer wasn’t going to take Grayson’s life, and that MRSA might, all bets were off.

Photo Credit @jamesgraysonhicks Copyright 2015.

Grayson took the bold step of quitting his job to allow his body much needed time to heal. Then he and Gaby sold their house, bought a camper, and hit the road for a three-month pilgrimage across the country. Their family, which included children ages six, three, two and twelve weeks when they set out, drove six thousand miles through nineteen states, ending their odyssey in Philadelphia for Pope Francis’ visit. After seeing the Pope for the second time on Sunday, they returned to their hotel tired, happy, high, feeling blessed. It was then that they realized it had been exactly one year to the day since Grayson had his cancer surgery, the very event that set the pilgrimage in motion in the first place.

“Seeing the Pope and receiving his blessing was the perfect way to end an incredibly difficult year,” Gaby texted me that night to share her amazement at God’s timing.   All I could do was cry, because I could see just how much they’d grown in faith and love as they confronted such serious challenges together through the year; and just how much God had entered into their suffering to transform them and draw them to Himself.

As we talked about the year’s events, I concluded that this Thanksgiving was a great metaphor for the last year of their lives, and that we’d spent it just the right way to remember their anniversary. It was hard, and nothing went according to plan. But God was in the midst of it all.

So what if we hadn’t done everything we’d scheduled on the calendar, or celebrated according to our expectations? The stomach bug had given us the opportunity to spend the week playing tag-team taking care of each other, working together to keep some semblance of tranquility and love flowing through the house. It gave us more time to rest, more time to talk, and more time to rock babies. Indeed, it gave us time to be present to the immediate needs of the present, and time to just sit still. Just like the MRSA had done.

We ended the week by watching a twenty-minute video that Grayson compiled of their amazing cross-country adventure. I was struck not only by the sheer magnitude of magnificent things their family was able to see and experience during what will surely be remembered as the trip of a lifetime, but by the palpable joy on the faces of six people who, for an intentional three months, threw off the demands of the world to find healing and peace.

“Even with getting sick, it’s been really a great visit,” Gaby said as we shared a last cup of cappuccino before their drive back to South Carolina. I had to agree. It was a wonderful visit, with unexpected gifts popping up all over the place.

Losing Our Life To Find It

Joseph Landrieu, Six Months Old

“Bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” I prayed as I made the Sign of the Cross three times on Daddy’s forehead the night before last. He looked up at me wide-eyed from his bed, reminding me of my own children when they settled down for prayer and a good night kiss before they fell asleep.

“He’s like a little child,” my mother said moments later about my fragile, eighty-six-year-old Parkinson’s ridden father. “He’s reverted completely to a child,” she repeated with a mix of surprise and sadness.

We all knew this day was coming. Even so, it’s disarming to watch a man who was previously so strong, robust, and physically adept slip into helplessness.

My mind flashes to one of the sweetest times I ever spent with my Dad—the semester he took my “Healthcare Ethics” course at Our Lady of Holy Cross College almost a decade ago. Proud as a peacock that I was teaching college, he was delighted to audit my course and the students loved him. He read and highlighted the course textbook diligently, then kept it on the table right next to his easy chair in the living room so he could show it to everyone who came to the house. The Parkinson’s had just started to set in at the time, and, thankfully, the heavy shaking it caused was largely controlled by medication.

Early one Tuesday morning I picked Daddy up for class, as I’d been doing all semester. We drove across the Greater New Orleans Bridge to the Westbank, where the small, Catholic college sits near the Mississippi River. We pulled some ripe oranges from the full fruit tree next to the parking lot, then made our way through the back door of the school building. After riding the elevator up one floor, we began the long trek down the white tiled hallway toward the classroom where thirty students waited.

About halfway there Daddy’s legs simply froze, and he stood with a frightened look on his face internally commanding them to move forward. No dice. Within seconds he was doubled over weeping heavily, obviously grieving the loss of control over his body. “Come on, Dad,” I encouraged as I wrapped my elbow tightly through his to help propel him forward. “You can do it.”  We arrived late for class, and while he put on a brave face, I could tell he was shaken by the realization of his escalating condition. Those were the birth pangs of a disease that would eventually make it nearly impossible for him to walk or talk.

Staring down at Daddy’s limp, frail body, I pondered the mystery of losing our strength, our abilities, our life, as we knew it, to prepare for eternal life. There is apparently tremendous grace in ceasing to depend upon ourselves, and in learning to depend completely on God and others. The last season of a long life is generally one of deep vulnerability and stripping, a taking off of defenses, coping mechanisms, and masks. It is a sacred season wherein we return to being bathed, fed, diapered, and carried; offering us  the opportunity to recover—in spite of withered skin—babe flesh hearts.

It takes most of us a whole lifetime to arrive at the place which nature finally offers as a gift—to powerlessness—the thing we’ve often feared the most, fought hardest against, and tried to fend off unceasingly with an arsenal of our own personal strength.  In the end, powerlessness is a grace that invites us to surrender, training us to open our hands to simply receive from God and others. Powerlessness is heaven’s kiss, a kiss that beckons us to trust, a kiss that invites us home to the place where we will finally understand that we are infinitely loved by a God who sees us as we are truly meant to be—little children.

“Good night, Daddy. I love you.” I said softly as I bent down to kiss his child-like face. “All is well. Be at peace.”

Living Mercy

“I was scandalized by the story of the prodigal son,” Fr. Maximo shared as he stood on the altar before hundreds of us who came together to celebrate Communita Cenacolo’s Festival of Life—all united because we have experienced first hand the ravages of addiction in our families. “I was the elder brother, I had done everything right, and I was outraged that the Father would show that kind of mercy to the son who squandered everything. It was a scandal to me.”

My husband, Mark, and I looked at each other knowingly, shaking our heads in acknowledgement. We’d been discussing this very topic for weeks; as we sadly observed the division, accusations, nail biting and downright panic increasingly explode in the Church over Pope Francis’ fervent call to mercy. As the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy approaches on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8), Pope Francis has reminded us that “the Church’s first duty is not to hand down condemnations or anathemas, but to proclaim God’s mercy, to call to conversion, and to lead all men and women to salvation in the Lord”* (cf. Jn. 12:44-50).

What is this mercy of which Pope Francis constantly speaks? And why does it scandalize so many of us? As Pope St. John Paul II explained it in his encyclical Dives in Misericordia (“Rich In Mercy”), God’s mercy “showed itself…as love that gives, love more powerful than betrayal, grace stronger than sin.”*

The families of Communita Cenacolo experience the mercy of God concretely when we show up at the Community’s doors, our lives in shambles from addiction and its beastly effects. Most of us are exceedingly happy to find such a place to bring our desperate children, hoping against hope that the Community will “fix” them and set their lives aright. We quickly learn that the focus of the Community is not to “fix” our children. It is instead to introduce them to a loving, merciful God, who like the prodigal son’s father, runs to meet them with open arms and a heartfelt kiss. It is to convey to them the inestimable gift of their very existence, and to communicate to them the truth that God loves them personally and passionately, no matter what they have done. The Community invites our children to open themselves to God’s mercy—the place where His infinite love meets their most wretched sins. And it extends the same invitation to us.

Many parents show up at the Community as elder brothers, shouldering a long list of grievances of what our addicted children have “done to us”—the ways they wronged us, betrayed us, squandered the family inheritance. We are soon challenged to acknowledge the reality that we have all sinned, all been prodigals, all fallen short of the love and glory of God. We are asked to honestly examine our own part in our family drama of addiction, and to admit our faults, failures and sins both to ourselves and to a loving God who takes pity on us and who yearns to greet us, also, in the embrace of His forgiveness and love.

Mercy is not a cheap pass for our wrongdoing. It is, instead, the very intersection where our transgressions meet Love; the place where a personal encounter with Love Himself impels us to change our minds, hearts and lives. This is what conversion is all about.

True conversion of heart—admitting that we are poor and weak, and surrendering completely to the love and mercy of God—eludes those who are convinced they’ve “got it right,” have “done it right,” and therefore “deserve” the feast. It eludes those, as well, who refuse to return to the Father’s house because they are convinced they are too tattered, torn, and tainted to be forgiven. Real heart conversion finds those who awaken to the glance of the Father—a tender, loving Father who has never ceased to long for us, look for us, and await our return.

The more the human conscience succumbs to secularization, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word "mercy," moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of mercy, the more the Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of mercy "with loud cries.” These "loud cries" should be the mark of the Church of our times, cries uttered to God to implore His mercy, the certain manifestation of which she professes and proclaims as having already come in Jesus crucified and risen, that is, in the Paschal Mystery. It is this mystery which bears within itself the most complete revelation of mercy, that is, of that love which is more powerful than death, more powerful than sin and every evil, the love which lifts man up when he falls into the abyss and frees him from the greatest threats.

Pope St. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, paragraph 15

*From Pope Francis closing remarks to the Synod of Bishops on the Family, October 24, 2015.

*Pope St. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, footnote 52.

To Ponder: Has Pope Francis' call to mercy prompted me to reflect more deeply upon this attribute of God?

To Pray: Father in Heaven, may I receive the gift of your merciful heart with which to embrace myself and everyone you send into my life. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine. Amen.

Becoming Like Children

Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.   Matthew 18:2

I have noted with some interest this week that several of the daily Mass readings—on the heels of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States—have been about becoming like children. A defining feature of children is that they trust their parents; trust that is also meant to be a delineating mark of Catholics in regard to the Pope. Yet, while many “faithful” Catholics spent the week picking apart Pope Francis’ messages—looking for a blunder, for something with which they disagreed—it seems that his messages managed to touch and transform the hearts of many who supposedly do “not follow us,” which God-incidentally, was the Gospel for Sunday’s Mass in Philadelphia (Mark 9:38-43).

I sat glued to the television watching the Pope make his way from the White House to Ground Zero, to the United Nations, and through the City of Brotherly Love. I was struck by the fact that the secular news media, typically known for their full frontal attack on the Catholic Church, gave non-stop coverage to a man who one mystified reporter laughingly stated was “not a rock star coming with pomp and pageantry,” but the Bishop of Rome, of all people. Furthermore, the personal reaction that secular news reporters had to the successor of St. Peter was nothing short of stunning.

“Here he comes! Here he comes!” a CNN reporter squealed gleefully as the Pope’s motorcade approached, unable to hide her excitement. “The crowd is electric as the shadow of Peter passes by!” she said breathlessly as the Pope’s motorcade passed the CNN platform. She then went on to share that she had left the Catholic Church in dismay over the sexual abuse scandals, but that the love she’s felt from Pope Francis has reignited her faith, bringing her back to the Church. “He passed right by our CNN platform out there and I can’t tell you what I felt. I didn’t expect it. It was the presence of holiness and goodness…Pope Francis is speaking a message that is hungrily received by a world that is desperate to hear good news.”

That message is the unconditional love and mercy of God for every single one of us; a communiqué that is a balm to the ears of so many who are beaten down and exhausted by the amount of hatred, rancor and division in this world.

My husband, Mark, and I watched the coverage in stunned silence, smiling broadly over the childlike exuberance repeatedly displayed by secular news reporters on both CNN and MSNBC. It was real. Their hearts were touched by Pope Francis’ love. So much so that New York Times reporter David Brooks said Sunday morning on NBC’s Meet the Press:

"the big effect of this week is not what (the Pope) says on global warming. It's that hundreds of thousands of people will have their hearts opened by his presence. And (for) some percentage, their life will be utterly altered by this week. Today in Philadelphia, there'll be tens of thousands of people whose souls are just exploding. And they will look back on this moment as the moment their life changed."

His words resonated with what broadcast journalist Maria Shriver wrote in her blog on Monday, the day after the Pope departed:

"Francis has had a dramatic impact on my life this past week. It’s almost hard to put into words…No, I didn’t get to interview him. I didn’t even get to meet him, but it didn’t actually matter because his words met my heart and ignited my spirit. I felt them deep in my soul. Every sermon, every speech moved me further, moved me deeper. Some I’ve read and reread 10 times."

She then proceeded to describe how, since Pope Francis arrived in the United States, she has taken “an internal inventory of everything in her life, reassessing power, success, joy, money…I’m going forward differently because of him.”

All of this has made me ask myself: have I been as open as those who don’t claim to adhere to everything the Church teaches, yet whose hearts were accessible enough to listen, to trust, and to learn from what Pope Francis had to say? Am I willing to turn, to change, to let the Pope’s visit make a difference in my life? Will I, like Pope Francis, approach others with love, mercy and kindness—which will surely win more souls for Christ than any good dose of scolding about the doctrines of the Catholic Church ever could?

I must admit that on day one of his visit, I wanted the Pope to read our President the riot act. Instead, he simply shared the beauty and joy of his faith in Jesus Christ, as he continued to do throughout his journey. By day five, I could see that Pope Francis was disarming the skeptics and unbelievers with humility and unconditional love, the hallmark of his childlike heart—signs that are meant to be a hallmark of every child’s heart.