Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, November 2008
– PDF version –

My father died alone in a hospital room four days after suffering a series of strokes.  Earlier that evening my family and I gathered around his bed before heading out to dinner. I told him that his two living sisters granted their permission for him to die. He never made any major life decision without the approval of at least one of his five sisters. I told him that my brother and I could manage life from here. We all told him of our love. I thanked him for being my dad.  Dad had accomplished his goals, he battled Parkinson’s disease for years, he was tired and he was ready to let go.

As we prayed around his bed on that cold December evening, he remained barely conscious. Dad responded to our presence, forming his lips into a silent, “thank you.”

I treasure his sacred last words to us. His farewell gift of gratitude has formed and changed me in these past years. I now see more clearly my own life as a man and as a priest. I inherited on that cold night a gift of gratitude and I will spend the rest of my life interpreting that gift in all I do and accomplish in the world. I look back now from that moment of gratitude to listen again to his other words throughout his lifetime. His words and phrases now open me up, challenge me, and create in me a place of strength and love. I believe Dad’s phrases which he often spoke in life also speak now to other ministers in the church who strive to live the same message of gratitude and encouragement.

My parents owned and operated a grocery store for forty-five years. My only brother managed the business after his military service. I worked reluctantly during summers stocking shelves with canned goods and bagging groceries for familiar customers. Dad’s business was his school of life. Through this small, neighborhood business, he learned how to be a man, how to relate to the world, and how to face the struggles within himself.

His familiar phrases, his one-liners, motivated all of us who worked long hours to make ends meet. His words were his mantras, like refrains to the morning psalms. The older I become the clearer Dad’s words ring true especially in the context of my pastoral ministry. I hear his phrases differently now because I heard him admit his gratitude.  I first heard his words as an awkward teenager unmotivated to be working in the family business, and didn’t understand their significance at the time.

Dad woke up each morning with more ideas than he could ever implement. Morning was the time to paint new signs on white butcher paper for the latest sale items. He prepared a dozen varieties of homemade sausage. He organized, made lists, and swept floors before employees arrived. His first phrase that I remember from childhood was, “Get it done early.”

He prepared for his day because he respected his customers and he wanted to offer them his best work. He felt every morning his life’s call, his mission and purpose in the world. He knew personal hunger as a child and he really respected food and its purpose in family life.

This explains why I pray at 4:00am, write essays before dawn and decorate the church before breakfast. I unveil every morning my own call to be a man of integrity and hope for other people. The early morning hours strip away pretense and they help me discover my mission from God. I confront my own demons and the uncertainty of my priesthood before I see the sun. I strive in the new day to be grateful for everything.

We could all learn from Dad’s business that our ministry depends largely on our preparation and reflection. We need better preparation from all of us who serve in the church. Being prepared is also costly. It takes time away from family, self-care and often from relaxation. However, “get it done early” for us may mean that we sit in the early hours and encounter God in the daily Scriptures. It calls us to confront our sin and mistakes. Being prepared for us means that we sort out before dawn the real reasons we stay in the church working, loving and serving people with often very little thanks for those pre-dawn efforts. This is the hidden life of the minister. Being prepared is to accept our call from God to get His work done on earth.

My father butchered meat for a living. He mastered huge meat-cutting saws, sharp cleavers, and wrapping up meat packages with white paper and string. With blood on his apron and sawdust on his shoes, he mastered the tools of his trade. However, in an instant he could wipe his dress shoes clean, whip off his apron, roll down his sleeves of his starched white shirt and be prepared to meet people or discuss products with salesmen. He expected the rest of us to be ready for customers. He would yell to us stock boys, “We need help up front!” This meant we were to drop what we are doing because we were needed to bag groceries at the cash register or help an elderly woman to her car.

This phrase always yanks me out of my solitude and stubbornness and reminds me of my authentic call to be in relationship with people who need God. I often hear Dad’s words when I see priests hiding in the sacristy before Sunday mass. When I witness ushers, greeters or other hospitality ministers telling jokes to each other or reminiscing about former pastors, I hear Dad’s plea to make sure people are greeted and acknowledged. I feel his dissatisfaction when people entering the church doors have questions about how to plan for marriage or simply want to know the locations of the restrooms, and they remain ignored.

“We need help up front,” is a radical call for contemplation by all ministers. Being with people is the reason the church exists. This grace-filled act is faith lived in the moment. Each person deserves our attention because God calls us all into prayerful action. People entering our church doors depend on us believing in something more than our self-centered piety in which some people belong and others feel ignored.

The family-run business often overwhelmed my father. Worry often got the best of him. He did not possess all the answers to how to make ends meet or the best way to advertise or what products to put on sale. When he realized he could not control the outcome of his day or when he grew tired of worrying about something in the future he would say to the rest of us, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

I find in this statement profound love and honesty. I, too, get caught up in many ideas and worries about my ministry and what it could become.  What I miss so often is ordinary life, people and their needs sitting in front of me. I cross one bridge at a time when an elderly man needs medications or when a woman needs diapers for her infant or when the addict needs to talk to someone right now.

The poor teach me the sacredness of Dad’s words. I learn to take each day of grace as it comes. I ground myself in daily life, one person and one need at a time. I make sure I am not living ahead of reality, not feeding on tomorrow’s bread. People who search for one meal at a time or ask for a clean blanket to make it through the night teach me all over again to deal with life as it comes, one bridge at a time. I realize in Dad’s statement that I cannot control life or peoples’ reactions either. I depend on God to help me make appropriate decisions.  I wait like everyone else for God’s initiative and presence.

Dad made financial mistakes. He cut his losses and moved on. He fretted much about making the correct choices and he stressed over people who were difficult to please. His worry became more evident when his Parkinson’s became more obvious to us. When he was exhausted from his worry, he would utter, “That’s the way it goes.”

Even hearing the exasperation in these words, I never took this phrase as Dad giving in to despair. I heard it then from a man who recognized with clarity his limitations. Now I hear it in the truth of adulthood myself. I say it under my breath when I feel my dreams slip away. I scream it to God when I know members of my religious community or parish do not understand me or my new ideas. This mantra becomes for me a new reliance on God, a trust when all else fails. Dad’s phrase speaks relief when my plans crash or it gives me courage when I finally understand I was wrong in the first place.

Many of us compulsively complain that we are never heard or understood in the church. Our energy runs out as we blame everyone when life does not work out from our plans. We blame everyone, including bishops, parish councils, the poor, consumerism, and even school parents, for much that goes awry in parish life. I hold on now to Dad’s words because I am confident it was his phrases and what remained underneath those phrases that brought him to his gracious thanks. I do not want to miss out on that gratitude. I want more than ever to appreciate life, to find it deep in my soul, and to let my gifts speak as they will. That’s the way it goes, when love finds a home in us.

Dad’s phrases race around in my heart daily, too many to speak about here. It was through his phrases that I learned to be a stock boy in a small grocery store. Now I hear them as a seasoned adult, a man searching for authentic priesthood, yet still my father’s youngest son. I learn from his mistakes. I put my own spin on antique phrases. I wallow some days in my own regret. I take chances and dream dreams and I believe that God never abandons us.

My parents and my brother liquidated the family business in 1991. Dad was never the same as his Parkinson’s disease, cancer and his pride took a great toll on his health, his mind and his perspective. He remained faithful to his many simple sentences, verbal reminders of his working days where his dreams once stood.

I preached my father’s funeral having received his words of thanks before he died. His gratitude helped to ease my pain. His phrases, the Gospel and my words seemed to all intermingle in my mind. I anticipated that day for many years, but nothing really prepared me. It was also on that day that I became a man, his grown son. I felt noble, taking the rein of life. I felt my priesthood standing in fire, a moment of purification, a place of passage.

At the end of the Eucharist, during the Final Commendation, I slowly pulled out from underneath my alb Dad’s white butcher’s apron. I held it up and my mother and brother sobbed. Everyone recognized it as his garment of service. They all remembered the baptismal white apron he wore behind the meat counter. I laid the garment on his casket and we prayed our goodbyes. My father’s business prepared me for my Father’s business, the two intertwined. Now I pass on in my adult priesthood what I learned as a youth and I long for the gift of my father’s gratitude, my earthly inheritance.

Albert John Raab, Jr. (1920-2000), Ronald Patrick Raab, C.S.C., Bishop William McManus, Rosemary Raab

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, September 2008
– PDF version –

I proclaim the Gospel during Mass holding on to the lectionary for dear life. My right thumb presses tightly along the lower corner of the page while my left hand glides along the sentences yet to be read. I caress the written words because I understand my life depends on how I interpret those words which I yank out of my throat. After twenty-five years of Gospel proclamation, through translations changes and varied lectionaries, I ponder the yellowing marks on the corners of the pages left by my greasy prints.

My soiled fingers also leave the pages of my Liturgy of the Hours book brittle with shades of yellow decay. They tell the tale that I have been faithful to the same book since the fall of 1976. Those same marks tell the story that I am more faithful to Morning Prayer than to Evening Prayer. I pray more often at the beginning of the week rather than at the end. The dirty-yellow marks on the edges of the thin pages reveal the direction of my past faithfulness. They also reveal my end-of-the-week infidelity.

With little detective work even the sacramentary traces my path of prayer. Those same greasy-yellow marks creep onto even the newest books. Our parish sacramentary, however, tells a tale of years of true-to-life prayer because the cover is being held together by white masking tape. Inevitable wine spills mark the red and black texts with a few bread crumbs hiding in the folds of the pages. Many prayers have come from the written rubrics from this book evoking responses from the faithful listeners in the pews.

Now that I have some years of experience leading communities in prayer, I realize that a liturgical spirituality may be revealed in the ordinary, tangible articles of how we pray in any community. The commonplace artifacts of liturgy speak honestly and boldly, beyond the script set out for me in graduate school or the seminary, more profound than liturgical workshops and much more interesting than discussions on prayer being “liturgically correct.”

I form liturgical ministers by teaching them to act with this same sense of intentionality. I instruct them to caress the sacred texts with fidelity and love. Lectors hold on to the lectionary because they understand now after years of proclaiming the holy Word to our needy assembly, that we all need God. The readers grasp the edges of the sacred book because on some days many of us forget that God loves us. They learn that the written words in a book become something more than a history lesson. The lectors become instruments of God’s intentional love for all His people.

These readers in our worship may also get lost in the swirl of life’s indignities. When lectors lose hope, they proclaim the Word anyway. They hold tight to the holy words even on days when they do not believe they can manage life or believe in something more than themselves. They grasp the lectionary tightly because they never know how much other people need to hear the Word of freedom and healing.

My heart aches for the elderly woman grasping the written text with arthritic fingers because she remains so tired of caring for her husband with Parkinson’s disease. She cannot lift him out of bed and she barely has the strength to lift the holy book up to her fading eye sight. On those days she proclaims the Word in the hope that someday she may believe in God’s love again.

One day Bonnie stormed into the sacristy before Mass disheveled and frantic. Her puffy eye lids told me she had been crying and not sleeping. She screamed out at me that she could not take her daughter’s drinking anymore. She threw off her coat and complained that she was tired of always rescuing her daughter after late night drinking binges. Bonnie could not handle her verbal abuse and the effects on the family. Quickly before Mass started, I tried to suggest that her entire family needed help. I could not calm her. I forgot that Bonnie was scheduled to be the first lector for the Eucharist. Bonnie walked up to the ambo after the opening prayer, held on to the lectionary with both hands and proclaimed from Isaiah, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

On that day, Bonnie left her finger prints on the Scriptures and most of her worry as well. The Scriptures in turn marked her soul. These moments reveal to me that God’s presence in the Eucharist is real and sustaining. Her proclamation of the Word also showed me that seeds of faith are nurtured and brought to fruition by God alone. Our role is simply to be present to life honestly, lovingly and understanding that we cannot force faith on anyone. On that day I grasped the Gospel book with intentional gratitude, leaving on its white pages the prints of my pride and deep concern for Bonnie and her family.

Our extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers also carry with them this ministry of intentionality. They hold the Cup of Salvation with a firm grasp that understands their fragile place in life. Even on days when life erodes their self-esteem and purpose they stand on the holy ground of our worshipping community as if they owned the place. The ministers stand solidly on the earth, breathing deeply, and realizing God is using them for His purpose. The noticeable prints on the communion cups tell me the story of our minister’s grasp for dear life, especially on the days when they do not believe in God’s presence within their pain.

Jane holds the goblet, the miracle of Christ’s real presence, in her hands with great intention because she is allergic to alcohol. Even though she does not receive the Eucharist from that vessel, she holds on tightly to the fact that she must offer the cup of freedom to other people. She stands intentionally on this place of level ground where all people are equally treated. Jane looks into the eyes of each person who approaches her and invests her prayer in people she knows by name. Jane prays especially for people who remain bashful or timid or feel unworthy to look at her in the eyes. She prays through her addiction and into the hearts of strangers who need God in ways that are beyond her imagining. Jane prays at the sight of every lipstick mark on the purificator and every fingerprint left on the sacred cup. She realizes she holds the source of love to many who feel they do not belong in the church, those who cannot forgive themselves and for those who wait to believe again someday. She waits for the day when we are all in communion with one another.

Our ritual books reveal the marks of many other profound moments of prayer. There are a few pages dusted with black marks from my thumb from Ash Wednesday after dabbing burned palms on people’s faces. I leave the dark splotches on the pages because they remind me of the fragile lives behind the greasy foreheads that long for change. These people let go of previous conclusions about sin, division and heartache. Those black-grey ashes under my nails remind me that I will join the club of heaven with all past believers when my body becomes dust.

Every week in our urban parish we celebrate the Anointing of the Sick after the noon Eucharist because so many people long for courage. I pray for healing as I ponder the oil spots left on my chasuble or the sacred oil spills on the maroon carpet in the chapel. In those greasy sights I still see my friends who suffer from mental illness or are recovering from strokes and congestive heart failure. I pray focusing on the crusty oil dried on the glass container that stores the oil during the week. The container waits again for our friends who line up in a row so to be touched with sacred oil blessed by the Bishop. I celebrate every week wearing garments spotted from past encounters of this loving sacrament and touching the foreheads in their need of Christ today.

Even the pages from the ritual book of the Rite of Funerals are warped from blessed water. The crinkly pages from the opening of the funeral mass remind me of all the times I sprinkled baptismal water on the caskets of loved ones and strangers. The texts of this ritual book are blurred from the drops of water and tears that have flooded the opening rituals of bringing dead bodies through the church doors for the last time The pages connect me to people’s lives and the hope I will be sprinkled with new life when my body enters the church door for the last time. These old, worn, faded pages celebrate for me so many lives and teach me again to let go of everything I want to cling to that is not God.

I observe the pen-marked pages of the ritual book from the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults which remind me of all the new followers of Christ. I celebrate my twenty-five years of starting ritual fires in parking lots and on street corners. I remember these years of blessing fresh water in bowls and fonts. I pray again in memory of drenching people with this holy water and ruining their hairstyles. The dark marks on the pages remind me of the sacred chrism which connects all believers from around the world. I wait for the day when our connection to human community gives way to the true unity in our places in heaven. In God’s Kingdom we will not have to worry about our hairstyles or regret our roles in the community or fret about the correct rubrics of our worship.

I believe we must ponder the finite, ordinary aspects of our prayer to find the God of infinite love and mercy. Every aspect of the liturgy must lead us into two directions, first to people’s hearts and then ultimately to the unbelievable mystery of God. Our community worship must shed light on the here-and-now and our future with God. If people or God are missing then our prayer becomes disengaged and meaningless.

As I look back over my years of ministry, I see that the ordinary and even the trite aspects of our common worship help make our prayer honest. This is one of the first fruits of living an intentional life, being honest with God. I see His mercy in the sweat stained purple stole hanging over the chair in the confessional. I understand courage pondering the tattered edges of our chapel’s carpeting. The fringe reminds me of my friends who pray in wheelchairs that get caught along the frayed corners.

When I am transferred from this parish I will leave behind the stains, tears, and smeared pages of all our ritual books. The books will outlive my stay and they will remind others that we all prayed here with gusto and grace. I am not sure the second grader stepping on the kitchen stool to read the Scriptures at Mass will notice yet the greasy marks on the pages. The confirmation student may not even be aware of the oil spilled on the ritual book. On First Communion day the children may not be aware that the adults are holding on to the chalices for dear life. They will in time, when God settles into their lives, find grace in the ordinary, connecting their real lives to fingerprints on the chalices and the smeared, yellowing pages of the lectionary.

Originally published by Ministry & Liturgy Magazine, September 2008
– PDF version –

The autumn sun burns most deeply into my room. Every year the hours of daylight shorten but the rays of sunlight lengthen to stretch beyond the windowsill to the crystal vase on my bookshelf. My mother passed down the crystal heirloom to me when my grandmother died. The first arms of this light bring back fond memories of my grandmother and now my parents as well. I see my past more clearly every year when the crystal seduces the sun.

The soft light so often surprises me because I always forget it will appear again.  When I finally settle into the memories, the late autumn light also brings the darkness of my loneliness and the reminder of the rapid pace of my adult life.

I first noticed the friendship of the sun and the crystal when my spiritual mentor, Richard, told me he had AIDS. He sat at the piano bathed in this light and for the first time could not play Mozart because of his dizziness. This light cracked open a new experience for me of delicate conversations with a dear friend who was dismantling his relationships, discovering a soulful and physical dying. The devastating news wore in me a new place of vulnerability and fear.

A year after sitting at the silent piano, he died. I preached his funeral in autumn after sunset. The roles of friendship reversed that final year. I mentored Richard through extreme physical suffering and letting go of all life. Now every year, I begin to fear the earthly change of cold air, shorter days, and the autumn memories of all the dead. I frolic in reminiscences like a lost child in a pile of fallen leaves. I feel the cold regrets and pray through the emptiness.

This autumn ritual catches me off guard. Yet, my body senses every year the deep experiences of all the loss in my life. No one autumn contains all my fear. No one crystal vase receives every regret or memory. Grief lives within the confines of our earthly life forever. The human heart calls for this flow of ritual, the current of memories, and the natural course of sorrow to find healing.

Every parish community in autumn must prepare people to feel their grief and connect their memories to faith. There is no way around death. We must find new ways to ritualize what is most common, the fear of loss. We must sort out ways to help people ritualize within in their own families and circles of friends the grief that keeps us numb to new ways of relating to people.

Death keeps every community honest. However, we must risk telling the truth about life. Naming real issues and celebrating loss breaks through much of the narcissism and pretense that strangles most communities of faith. This truth cuts into our natural instincts of thinking that money, power, education and fear create community.

These are the days to create this awareness of loss. Gather grief counselors, professional spiritual directors and liturgists from your assembly to facilitate discussions for parish staffs and liturgy committees on death and grieving. When we build a network of openness and honesty about what is most important, a new vital energy emerges to help people deal with sudden grief, sustained depression and the release of anger.

Create forums where the Gospels ignite genuine discussions in preparation for homilies during the months ending the liturgical year. Connect elderly people in the parish and school parents by creating opportunities to pray in silence for the dead. Instruct school age children to write follow-up letters to grieving families a month after losing a loved one in death. Suggest that volunteering among the poor is a way for every family member to memorialize a loved one. Create an opportunity in the church lobby for parishioners to write down not only names of the dead but how they grieve them at home and with family members. Organize discussions and name rituals for home reminders that grief needs to be ritualized within everyday experiences.

Ritualizing our grief comes in the everyday awareness of living life. Members of our communities need the assurance that they are not alone in the simple ways grief becomes articulated and lived. We need to live an honest life to lovingly grieve other people’s death. I wait for this autumn, when I will be reminded of those I love in death, when the sun shines on the crystal again.