Lift Me Up

The fifty years it took to get here were relatively easy. The three attempts to schedule this celebration were more challenging. To be honest, I almost just gave up.

But I realized moments like this are important. Not only to remember and give thanks — for the past fifty years and for today — but also to light the way for what at seventy-one can seem like an uncertain future — even for an unrelenting optimist like myself. I am happy to be here with Mick and Patrick, with my Jesuit community, and with all of you.

I would love to tell the story of my Jesuit vocation through my graced experience of each of you — what you gave to me, what you allowed me to give to you — and how that gift flourished over decades in ways I could never have imagined. I am profoundly grateful. When we gather later at the reception in our community gardens, I hope we can meet one another and share the rich detail of the relationships we enjoy — just please be discreet.

With this homily, I'm going to tell our story in broad strokes and leave it to you to fill in between the lines. I especially hope Mick and Patrick find echoes of their own experience in these reflections.

Many of us know the perils of driving with my friend Steve. It will come as no surprise that when he was a high school sophomore, he wrecked his first car and dreaded coming home to his father after the accident. Expecting to be berated for his carelessness and the damage he caused, Steve was surprised that his father's only concern was that he wasn't hurt, that he didn't hurt anyone else, that he was alive and well.

Over the years I've heard Steve tell this story many times, and each time I came away with one more lesson learned — that possessions are not what's most important, that the people who love us do not judge us, that unconditional love helps us recover from our mistakes and failures.

Steve retold the story in a recent homily, and I realized that as I've grown older what most captures my attention is simply this: the deepest desire we have for the people we love is that they are alive and well. We simply take delight in them for who they are.

The deepest desire we have for the people we love is that they are alive and well. We simply take delight in them for who they are.

When my father struggled with dementia and conversation was difficult, nothing gave me more joy than taking him out to dinner — something he always loved to do — and seeing the smile appear on his face as he enjoyed being out and feasting on his favorite food. He was alive and well, and that was more than enough. And whatever he could not remember, I could remember for him and for me.

Relationships that last over decades are built on this simple foundation. Somehow, in the face of accidents, loss, failure, diminishment — no matter what happens — we push each other to choose life and be well. And through it all, even in the darkest moments, people who love us remember us for who we are in their eyes — not for what we do or even what we become. And they remember what we might forget about ourselves: that there is much to take delight in us — from the beginning, always and forever.

On a day like today, I recall the delight we found in one another from the beginning, and how finding that delight over and over again saves us from whatever darkness we face, and even frees us to be our best selves — for one another, and for the world and the time beyond us.

Some months ago, you might recall that a young boy in Northern Morocco was trapped for five days in a deep well. As his family heard him crying “lift me up,” his parents were joined by hundreds of villagers who gathered to support the rescue operation, to watch and wait in vigil.

Did you happen to see the photo? People standing close together above ground, ready to do whatever they could to save the boy below ground — a whole community just out of his sight, but there nevertheless, chanting and praying for him to be alive and well.

The cry “Lift me up” reminds me of the times we are lost underground, struggling for light and breath and unable to see help on the horizon. And also of the times we are gathered above ground, doing whatever we can to help people in distress — even when our efforts seem futile because the outcome is so clearly beyond our control. As I picture that photo now in my mind's eye, I see the people of Ukraine.

We give to others what we have received. I have come to believe that our readiness to simply delight in one another is of God. With you I have learned that once our delight takes hold, it grounds our lives in ways we never imagined possible. As you know from the liturgies and sacraments we have shared together, I will often say: it is as if from the beginning of our lives God is asking, Will you believe that, above all else, you are made to love and be loved?

Will you believe that, above all else, you are made to love and be loved?

Over time — in day-to-day ordinary life, and maybe even in a heroic gesture now and again — we gladly lay down our lives to safeguard and nourish what gives us delight, to safeguard and nourish who gives us delight: our children, our families, our friends, leading us to respond to whomever in the world we meet in great need. With the help of people who love us and allow us to love them, God's delight takes us into unfamiliar places in our world — in sickness and in health, good times and hard times — where situations may be beyond our control but never beyond our desire to touch, heal, and lift up.

Living into fifty-plus years of Jesuit life, I am grateful for the Jesuits and the people of God — for all of you, who teach me to engage delight and desire, underground and above ground, wherever life in me and around me unfolds.

Moving into the golden years, moments like this remind us not only of the past, not only of the present, but of hope in a future we do not see clearly but glimpse. Perhaps from the beginning of our lives God is gathering a community above ground that we just barely glimpse — not quite out of sight — and not unlike the community that delights us and loves us into being, from the beginning and for all eternity.

Whenever we gather around this table, we ask God, and the community who has shown us God's delight, to feed us and to reveal how God is here, God is with us, God is for us — always and forever.