The Heartbreaking Way We Learn Eternity Exists

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The Heartbreaking Way We Learn Eternity Exists

‘Why are we here?” I used to know. I used to be so certain.

“We are here to know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.” That’s what the Sisters of St. Joseph drummed into my 6-year-old head. That’s what I read in “The New Baltimore Catechism.” That’s what I recited day after day after day. So that’s what I believed. This life is temporary. The next is eternal. Sister said. Father Finn said. My mother said. So who could doubt…

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A place for men to talk about cancer

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The room looks like a private lounge at an airport. Nice carpet, good lighting, soft chairs, bright, colorful paintings, magazines and books, coffee and cookies. The dozen men who sit here, all neatly dressed, look typical. They talk. They laugh. They listen. They look as if they are discussing sports or politics or pubs in Dublin.They are, in fact, discussing cancer. Their cancer…

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Looking for a silver lining in a tragedy

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I keep looking for the silver lining in the long, slow dying of a friend who should not be dying. He's too good a person for the world to lose. But this is how life works. Good people die every day. Now it's Kyle Gendron, a good man in the middle of his life, who has a wife and three young children he would give anything not to leave.

Kyle Gendron and his wife, Kerry, and their children.

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On this day, life's circle without end

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On this day, life's circle without end

Amazing things have happened in the 2,000 years since Jesus Christ lived. But none compares with what Christianity celebrates today.

Eternal life. That's what Easter is about. Not fancy hats or frilly dresses or Cadbury eggs or lilies or bunnies or patent leather shoes or Easter egg hunts or even family get-togethers.

Easter is about all that cannot be seen.

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Christmases That Live Dimly in Memory

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The manger was my mother's. But I hadn't thought about its history for a long, long time, because the figurines Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus and the wise men and the sheep and the cow and the horse and the angels are mine, bought over decades, all porcelain, all white, the small, wooden manger the sole thing that was hers. It's in the background of a picture I keep on my desk all year long…

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Faith that falters is restored today

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It's easy to believe in Easter morning, with its message of resurrection and eternal life, when the mortal life we're living is comfortable and good. When our children are tucked in their beds, safe and well. When our husband is well, too, and our mother and father and sisters and brothers; when everyone we care about is reachable, by plane or by train or by phone.

It's easy to believe in Easter morning when death is confined to newspaper headlines and illness is only a setback, not incurable. When cemeteries and chronic care facilities are not where we go every day. When it's Jesus on the cross, not our son, our mother, our daughter.

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She was no saint, but she looked like one

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A woman lives and dies out of the spotlight, 88 years on earth; and who, besides her family and friends, knows the mountains she's climbed, the fears she's faced, the impossible things she's accomplished? Without headlines or a song or a book or paparazzi to record the story, what happens to the story?

In words, Louise Nolan's story would describe a saint - selfless, loving, faithful, kind. But she wasn't a saint. Saints are stoic. Saints endure, carry on, play the hand life deals. Saints sacrifice.

Louise didn't sacrifice. She loved.

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Father Coen made it easier to keep the faith

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Father Coen made it easier to keep the faith

It was easier when Father Coen was alive. His faith was strong and certain, and as long as he was here, my faith was strong and certain, too. I called him my window through whom I saw God. And he said, "God is everywhere. You know that." I know it sometimes, but not all the time. Not enough of the time. Not the way I knew it when he was here to remind me…

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Helping one family at a time

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Helping one family at a time

Terry Orcutt spends her days on the phone and most evenings, too, listening, taking notes, asking questions. "Where do you live? What do you need? How many children do you have?" Her concern is real. Her love for people she doesn't know is real, too. It's what drives her and what sustains her, call after call. "Love one another as I love you." This is Christianity's number one rule. Terry Orcutt lives this rule. She loves without question. She sees God in all people. So does her husband, Jim.

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DAD GAVE ME THE KEYS TO LIFE

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DAD GAVE ME THE KEYS TO LIFE

My father was not overtly, nor even subtly, religious . He hardly ever went to church and I didn't have a sense that he prayed, though at the end of his life he told me that St. Jude was his good buddy. I imagine, though, that he talked to St. Jude in the way he talked to me, not often couching his requests with "please" and "if possible," but stating them directly and firmly as in, "I need you to do this for me." At the end of his life he handed me a crucifix, which he said he carried with him throughout the Second World War.

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A RWANDAN SURVIVOR'S TALE OF FORGIVENESS

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A RWANDAN SURVIVOR'S TALE OF FORGIVENESS

It is not a beach book. It is not funny like "Marley & Me" or intriguing like "Beach Road" or trendy like all the Whitey Bulger books now suddenly in print. It is, no doubt about it, totally incompatible with summer and sand and sea air laced with Coppertone and flimsy bathing suits and cups full of lemonade. "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust" is exactly what you don't want to read on a summer day. Which is why it's not on any summer reading list that I've come across. But here is why it should be.

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COUNTING OFF THE YEARS WITH A BOOK OF THE DEAD

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I haven't put him in my dead book yet. A hard word, "dead." A word you want to camouflage with softer syllables: deceased, departed, passed on. But dead is the right word because dead is hard, people you love not in the next room, or the next town, or on the telephone saying, "Do you know that I'm the only one in the world who can call you daughter?"

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Antonio earns American dream

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He arrives at the door on a perfect spring day wearing a helmet, riding shorts and a grin that is his signature. With some people, you notice their hats, ties, scarves. With Antonio, you notice his smile. It's after 5, after work, and he has pedaled from Brockton to Canton, a distance that takes 20 minutes to drive, without traffic. ``It's a beautiful day,'' he says. ``So warm. So nice.'' And I look at him and think, he's right. It is.

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Putting our trust in God is a healthy choice

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"Is Religion Good Medicine?" is the question on Newsweek's cover. "God and Health." Is there a connection?

Some experts say yes. Some say no. Prayer works. Prayer doesn't.

In the end, the article says nothing new. But that's no surprise. We pray for the big things. We want the miracle. "Ask and you shall receive." And when we ask and don't get exactly what we beg for, we think, it didn't work. My prayers weren't answered.

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ST. ORDINARY: MOTHER TERESA'S HUMBLE LESSON

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ST. ORDINARY: MOTHER TERESA'S HUMBLE LESSON

Last Sunday, in Roman Catholic churches around the world, the Gospel told the familiar tale of a rich man's quest for Paradise.

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," Jesus said.

This is a bold statement. But what does it mean? That the rich are doomed? That in the afterlife the poor finally get what they never had on Earth?

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Friendship reveals the depth of trust that belongs to God

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Friendship reveals the depth of trust that belongs to God

The piano sat in the living room for 33 years. A baby grand, it took up a lot of space. It was old, it didn't hold a tune, it needed to be refinished, but I loved it - not just for the notes that filled the house whenever it was played, but for its history. It was my in-laws' piano before it was mine. My sister-in-law played and my father-in-law sang and strummed a ukulele, and friends would come by to visit or to have dinner and inevitably end up around the piano. For years, it made music for parties that seemed to run one right into the next.

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