Dear Christ the King Family,
It was the night of September 9th, 2017 and the Irish were hosting the Georgia Bulldogs for a high-stakes night game. It was a big game and a tense one, as I sat there with my fellow Holy Cross seminarians in our usual section 108. I was sitting second from the end of the section row but the aisle seat next to me was left vacant. Then, in the 2nd quarter, something happened that added even a little more tension at first: a man dressed in a red-and-white checkered Georgia shirt came down the aisle and proceeded to sit down in that vacant seat that clearly wasn’t his! We seminarians exchanged disconcerted glances and whispered among ourselves but, also being seminarians (we collectively tend to be too polite to a fault at times) so we figured if he didn’t cause any trouble, he could stay there.
As the game wore on and the tension on the field grew, this man started to strike up a conversation with me which, admittedly, I was not the least bit excited to engage with at first. But as I shared that we’re all seminarians here, he shared that he is Catholic as well and was so excited to be able to visit Notre Dame. As the minutes ticked by, he also began to share with me a heaviness in his heart over his now-adult children who were raised in the faith but not currently practicing. The game did not end, as you know, in Notre Dame’s favor, but we exchanged a friendly handshake and he was grateful for a listening ear. His story is one of many that I have encountered that speaks to the heartache people go through when their family members and loved ones drift away from the faith. In fact, I would venture to say that a family that never experiences this division is an incredibly rare and incredibly blessed one.
In our Gospel this Sunday, Jesus names this uneasy reality. Maybe this weekend there is a husband here at mass without his wife, or a wife without her husband. Maybe there are parents here at mass without some of their children, or children without parents. Those are perhaps some of the deepest wounds we can encounter in our discipleship, and even though Jesus’ words cut to the bone, I would venture to say that for those who have said ‘yes’ to Christ and have encountered division in their own families, there is something encouraging and reassuring in Jesus’ upfront truth. Jesus doesn’t offer a superficial, sugar-coated peace that is simply an avoidance of any conflict. Instead, the true peace Jesus invites us to is that deep, inner peace of knowing God and knowing who we are in our life with God. That is a peace that will abide even when all around seems chaotic, even when there is division. That is the peace God offers us in the sacraments, that we share as brothers and sisters in Christ, and that makes each of us, in our messy, broken, fractured lives, whole as one family in faith.
In Christ,
Fr. David
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