My Christ Renews His Parish "Witness"

Below is the "witness" I wrote on "Christian Awareness" for a 2005 Christ Renews His Parish retreat.  The topic was assigned to me after prayerful discernment by my fellow retreat leaders.  I share it here because in it I reflect on scripture as it applies to different stages and challenges in my life.  I believe it fits with the purpose of this blog.




Upon entering this world, my very first home was on an all male dormitory floor of a school building where my mother and father lived as house parents.  The school building where we lived was on the campus of a private boarding school for boys.  The school was owned and operated by my paternal grandparents and their adult children.  The boarding school was secluded on twenty-six acres at the top of a hill on the edge of town.  Not many of the town’s residents knew it existed because this school was highly exclusive.  Exclusive in that in order to attend the the school a young man needed to be mentally or developmentally handicapped.  As I write this now it strikes me that I must explain that none of the “boys” were actually children, though we forever refer to them in my family as “the boys”.  I believe the school had a minimum age of probably at least thirteen.  There was no maximum age and some of the boys lived most of their lives at the school.  The boys at the school mostly had been sent away at a time in history when society didn't always know what to do for them.  Sadly, many of them were being hidden away by their wealthy families who very rarely if ever visited to see if they were safe and healthy.  Of course, all of the boys were safe and healthy, living on a beautiful campus, attending classes as any student would, and being loved and cared for very diligently by my grandparents and most of their eight children.

My parents and I, along with my brother who was born when I was four, would live at the school on and off until my family closed it 1986 when I was sixteen. At that time my grandparents became legal guardians to all of the elderly “boys”.  They moved to Florida with the boys to let them live out the rest of their days with the only family they had ever known.

There is so much that I wish I could share with you about those days up on "the hill".  There are enough details and memories, of the school itself, the individual boys who lived there and my family, to fill a novel. But, what is important to share with you is that through simply being there, being around the boys and witnessing the way my grandparents lived their lives, I absorbed into my very spirit an awareness of what it is to live as a Christian in everything you do. 

From my family, my grandparents in particular, I learned what it was to be a devout Catholic: all of the mysteries, beauties and rituals of our faith.  One of the most significant things I learned was a devotion to our Blessed Mother that would sustain me through many challenges to come.  But it was not just religiosity that I learned, but faith in action.  I saw that one’s job could be a calling, one’s occupation could be a service, that you could make your whole life about serving others and receive so much more in return.  I learned that grace and love can flow out of ordinary people and extraordinary things can happen.  I saw those things happen in the lives of the boys who lived happy, full lives, lives that exceeded expectation.  From watching the boys, particularly those with Down’s syndrome, I realized that they are truly blessed in ways that most of the world cannot or just simply refuses to see or appreciate.  Throughout their lives they remained eager to give and receive love and affection, and full of wonder and excitement at seemingly simple or little things; like children, like we are called to be.

At the school, Christ was shining through the boys and through my family and affecting me in ways that I was not aware of at the time because it was the only way of life that I knew.  Not until it was all long gone and I was fighting my way upstream in the world did I become more fully aware of what a blessing it all was. 

It was a blessing in a sometimes-difficult childhood that could have otherwise been lost to sadness and a profound feeling of loneliness.

When I was eight years old my parents were divorced. The circumstances and events surrounding the divorce were particularly ugly and left a profound mark on my life.  The divorce opened a period of eleven years of moving, re-marriages, illnesses, battles, and my personal struggle to grow up in the midst of significantly stressful situations.

As I lived through it and into my young adulthood, I considered my childhood to be a terrible one.  In my youthful self-absorption and naïveté, I did not know any better.  It is only now that I can look back and see all of the blessings that came right along side the challenges.  I am aware now that Christ Himself, through so many different channels and people, was sustaining and guiding me along my path.  Though I may not have had all that I wanted, He knew all that I needed.  When I wanted my parents to be together and for us to be a close-knit, loving family, and we couldn’t be, He gave me an aunt and uncle and cousins as a kind of surrogate family.  They showed me love, took my brother and me on vacations and gave us a safe and more stable environment in which to escape.  When during one period I needed a mother and had not seen or spoken to mine in six months, He gave me His mother, whom, through the prayers of the rosary and the devotion I had learned early in life, comforted me in such a tangible way.  


As an adolescent and teen I lived in a house devoid of the kind of affection I longed for.  My self-image and esteem were still developing and at a time when my parents should have been nurturing this process they were actually breaking it down.  My mother had long been telling me through her actions that I was not important and now my father actually sat my brother and me down and told us, directly, that his new wife came first.  These things definitely affected my sense of self-worth, yet they did not destroy it.  For when you know, as I did then, through the grace of God, that Christ loves you, you know that you must be worth something.  I spent so many hours alone in my room in those days.  Yet, my loneliness did not overwhelm me or lead me astray.  I was aware then, and am now, even more so, that Christ and his Holy Mother were right there with me as I knelt beside my bed.  I know this not only because I felt it then but because of the fruits of my life. 

It is important to address here that as part of my adult Christian awareness, I now see my parents as two human beings who like me, struggled through life and parenthood with the tools they were given.  I love them both dearly and feel empathy, if not sympathy, for them.  As part of my spiritual growth, I have strived toward letting go of any resentment I have felt about certain events in my childhood.  I wish only to mention these events from the past for the purpose of spiritual reflection.  In Luke 6:36-38 Christ said, “Be merciful just as [also] your Father is merciful.  Stop judging and you will not be judged.  Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.  Forgive and you will be forgiven.” (NAB)  He goes on to say in Luke 6:42-43, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?” (NAB)

The Christian awareness of my childhood and adolescence was that of seeing Christ present in my life and in the lives of others.  I was becoming aware that He existed, where He existed and how this affected me.  I clung to Him and He never let me down.  As I became an adult those things stayed in my heart, yet where I should have been now broadening my Christian awareness I remained a spiritual child.  As I left home and lived in new cities, in my college years and into my early twenties, I clung to my religion and its familiar rituals for comfort.  All through college I was diligent about attending Mass on Sunday and even became a Eucharistic minister, all the while blowing off classes and partying quite hard all week.  Amazingly, I thought that regardless of everything else I did, I was a good Christian example to my friends because of my faithful Mass attendance.  I did not then appreciate that I had a responsibility as soon as I professed my faith in Christ to them, to represent the behavior of a Christian seven days a week in all that I did.  It was not enough to attend Mass and listen to the Word of God; I had to live it every day.  In Luke 6:46-49 Christ said,“ Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them.  That one is like a person building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built.” (NAB)

I did not reflect Christ when I threw away God’s gifts, as I did with my education, and I did not reflect Christ in my drunkenness.   In Ephesians 5:15-18 it says “So be careful how you live.  Don’t live like ignorant people, but like wise people. Make good use of every opportunity you have, because these are evil days.  Don’t be fools, then, but try to find out what the Lord wants you to do.  Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you; instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (GNT)

At that time I thought, however erroneously, that by seeing that I could be carefree and a big partier, that my friends would see that devout Christians, particularly Catholics were not judgmental, uptight or boring.  They too could follow Christ and still be “cool” or fun.  And I was all too concerned with being fun.  I was always the one to drink the most, be the most daring, seeking to have the most fun.   I would go along with any prank or scheme in the name of having fun.  I was feeling my oats.  St. Augustine spoke of similar experiences when he wrote, “O dangerous friendship!  O seduction of the mind and unaccountable greediness for doing mischief simply in the spirit of fun and wantonness…Someone cries ‘Let’s go! Let’s do it!‘ and we are ashamed of not being shameless.”  I was at once professing and denying my faith in those years; all in fear of being considered boring or too serious.  I told myself that my whole life had been so serious and heavy.  I wanted to let loose; a sober moment might lead to a serious moment.  I had had enough of those.  I might have to face the mess that was continuing to go on at home.  I was just so tired of all the drama.  Instead of taking the opportunity to be Christ to my family, I turned my back:  this was my time.

The party ended with graduation.  I moved to Boston with my friends and under financial pressure, took the first job I could find.  As everyone else began to settle down into their lives, I was feeling very unsettled.  I began to realize that I had thrown my education away by never getting serious about it.  I was successful yet miserable at a job that was not at all what I had expected to be doing.  I once again felt profound loneliness even in the midst of my friends.  I had no family to lean on as both of my parents now went through divorces from their second spouses.  I once again clung to the Lord.  I prayed the rosary with fervor.  My grandfather sent me a small blue prayer book called the Pieta book.  In it I found beautiful morsels of food for my soul in the form of prayers and stories of saints.   Through this period of intense prayer my faith deepened and I began to see that I needed to stop being so self centered; that only by getting out and doing for others would I be lifted from my own depression.  I volunteered at Boston’s Children’s Hospital where I was so touched by the grace with which the children accepted their illnesses; I was humbled as I served the homeless food at a shelter, and deeply honored as I served once again as a Eucharistic minister.  I realized how small my troubles were and I received so much more than I gave.  I realized I no longer wanted to sit behind a desk but to be in a profession where I got out and touched people.  I settled on nursing.  I wanted to make my whole life about caring for others.  I considered it a Christian calling, consistent with the values I had learned in my youth.   I put all my faith in the Lord’s plan for me and through His providence got into an accelerated degree program at Catholic University in Washington, DC, found a great place to live and a place to volunteer (where I would soon meet my future husband) all within two months.  I had no money and knew no one but what had seemed impossible became possible through the Lord. As always His plan for me exceeded what I could have imagined or hoped for.  Even now whenever I start to worry and stress about a challenge before me I hearken back to how easily everything fell into place back then when I completely placed all of my faith in the Lord’s plan.  It reminds me that, to paraphrase a sister of Mother Theresa’s order, everything is difficult when we try to force things to fit our timetable, but conversely all things come easily when they are in God’s time. 

My mid to late twenties provided me with many opportunities to be Christ to people both in my profession and in my volunteer work.  I stepped up to the plate in a few ways that I can recall, but I know there were also times when I failed.  I will mostly never know, in this lifetime, how I positively or negatively affected people in those times.  

At twenty-seven, I married my husband and became a mother to my first daughter.  My husband started PA school in Philadelphia when our daughter was three months old and we started our family life, ironically, in a dorm room, just as my parents and I had twenty-seven years earlier.  We struggled in many ways in those first years but the Lord always provided for us.  Almost immediately after my husband graduated, I became pregnant with our second daughter now and gave birth fourteen months after her birth to our first son.  We have not had time to catch our breath in the last seven years.  There have been financial struggles, demanding careers and difficult moves but the Lord has blessed us abundantly with a strong marriage and three beautiful, healthy children.  I am overwhelmed with love and appreciation for my family.  Prayers of thanksgiving for them are rarely far from my lips.

I have found it difficult to stop working as a nurse and devote 100% of my time in the last year and a half to raising my kids, but recently the awareness has been given to me that my primary calling right now is to be devoted to raising my children.  Passing on faith and a Christian awareness to them is my primary service to Christ right now.  This awareness though it sounds obvious, has been hard to come by for me, because I have been “bucking at the reigns” so to speak and trying so hard to steer my life in a different direction then it has been going.  For the last few years I have been petitioning the Lord in prayer saying “What can I do for you Lord, show me where you want me to be, lead me, use me.”  I wanted to do something big; start a charitable foundation, go help as a nurse in a third world country, just “save the world” in some way.  I was longing for answers from God, seeking Him but not finding Him.  Through my parish community He said to me “Get up off your knees and come find me in my people”. 

From my first days at HNJ a year and a half ago, I had heard of the Women’s Retreat from other school mom’s who had attended.  It sounded wonderful but two retreats would pass before it would be my time.

The Christ Renews His Parish retreat came at a time when I just needed a little peace and quiet and time with the Lord; time to think exclusively about my spirituality.  I had no idea to what extent I needed to deepen my appreciation of Christ’s love for me until it began to overwhelm me over the course of the weekend.  I had been a faithful Catholic all of my life but I now felt my heart and soul opening to Christ’s love and burning with the Holy Spirit on a new level.  The gift of the Good News New Testament bible that I was given opened my eyes to scripture in a new and exciting way through its more familiar language.  I had never felt that I could readily tap into the riches of the Bible before.  I had difficulty following the language and style.  Now I longed to read His Word every day.  I longed to stay as close to Him as I felt in those two days.  What an immeasurable gift I had been given!

Catapulted by my retreat experience and propelled by the many spiritual tools that have sprung forth from it, I began to grow evermore in my faith. The retreat helped me to remember that it is all about Christ and not about me.  I have stopped pleading, “Please use me Lord!” and am learning to say, “I am here Lord, when you need to use me.”  I am realizing the simplicity with which God wants me to serve Him.  It may be that God expects great things from me someday, but in His time.  For now, I am becoming aware that I first must see Christ in those immediately around me and take the time to do the seemingly little things He is asking me to do.  I am trying to become more aware of what those little things are.

 I want my whole life to be a “Yes” to Jesus.  It pains me to realize all the ways in which I have been saying “no” to Him.  I think back to when as a teenager I would try to imagine myself in Mother Mary’s position:  Fifteen years old, as yet unmarried and living in a culture where she may have been stoned for being pregnant in her situation.  Yet she so readily said “Yes”, not only to what the Lord asked of her at that moment but to whatever His will was to be for her life.  Having the advantage as I did of knowing the profound importance of Her “Yes”, I liked to think back then that I too would have said, “yes” in that situation.   Not that I was comparing myself to the goodness and purity of Mary, but I thought that if the Lord sent one of His Holy Angels to me to ask me to do something that important for Him, I would, of course, give Him an unequivocal “Yes!” As an adult, I realize that He sends angels across my path every day, not in the form of Gabriel but in the form of the homeless, the sick, family members, even my own children.  But often I fail to recognize Him in them and I say “no” through my actions, or lack thereof.  As St. Paul wrote, “Jesus Christ… is not one who is “yes” and a “no”.  On the contrary, he is God’s “Yes”;”

Every “no” answer I give to the Lord stands between Christ and me, keeping me at a distance from Him. Every “yes” I give can draw Him near again and that is what I pray for every day.  However, for the prayer to be answered, I believe I must first become more aware of all the “no” answers in my life.  I am becoming aware that it is a “no” to Christ every time my words are less than kind or I am less than patient with my loved ones, my children or my neighbors.  In those times I am denying my Christian call and failing to represent the Peace and Love of Christ.  In James 3: 7-12 it says, “We humans are able to tame and have tamed all other creatures- wild animals and birds, reptiles and fish.  But no one has ever been able to tame the tongue. It is evil and uncontrollable, full of deadly poison.  We use it to give thanks to our Lord and father and also to curse other people, who are created in the likeness of God.  Words of thanksgiving and cursing pour out from the same mouth.  My friends, this should not happen!  No spring of water pours out sweet water and bitter water from the same opening.  A fig tree, my friends, cannot bear olives; a grapevine cannot bear figs, nor can a salty spring produce sweet water.”  (GNT)

I definitely want the fruits of my life to be sweet and not bitter.  I am also aware now that I am in a way saying “no” to Christ when in my work as a nurse or even in my ordinary household responsibilities, I complain or do things begrudgingly. Romans 12:8-11 says, “Whoever shares with others should do it generously; whoever shows kindness to others should do it cheerfully.  Love must me completely sincere.  Hate what is evil, hold on to what is good.  Love one another warmly as Christians, and be eager to show respect for one another.  Work hard and do not be lazy.  Serve the Lord with a heart full of devotion.” (GNT)

I have recently taken all of these words into my heart.  I understand them and I want desperately to follow them.  Alas, I am still human, and my most recent and blatant “no” came when I was asked to give this witness.  I immediately answered, “ I can’t”.  I felt that I should be able to stand before you as a total success.  That I needed to be able to say, “Because of my new broadened Christian awareness, these are all of the things that I have done for Christ’s sheep.”  I felt that I had not yet done enough to be any kind of an example.  Then the Holy Spirit made me see that Christ is the example, I am but a witness.  I am a witness to the glory of God, the peace of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit working in my life. I am a work in progress but I am aware now that Christ has called me just as I am, right now. I thought that I needed to be a shining example of Christian awareness 24 hrs a day, every day, in order for him to really be choosing me to witness.  But it is not that Christ has chosen me above anyone else to share His message; He has chosen all of us.  Now, He is just waiting for us to choose Him.  Christ cannot wait for me to be perfect, it will never happen.  As Paul said in his letter to the Romans, “How can the message be proclaimed if the messengers are not sent out?”  Like the first disciples, we are sent out as we are according to His will. And Christ reassured me in Mark 13: 11 when he said “…do not worry ahead of time about what you are going to say; when the time comes, say whatever is then given to you.  For the words you speak will not be yours; they will come from the Holy Spirit”.   

I am so thankful for a chance to speak about Christ and my understanding of Christian awareness. At this point in my spiritual journey I am aware that Christ’s message is simple, “Love:  Love Me, love those around you and bask in My Love for you”.  I am aware that if I follow Christ the way will be narrow but He will lead me; that I will be identified as a Christian not by the cross around my neck, but by the way that I bear the cross upon my back.  For each Christian must take up their cross but if I am walking with Christ he will help bear the burden and I will have peace even in times of trial.  I am aware that what God asks of me is simple.  He said, “Believe in the One whom I sent”.  I believe.