I know Maria is part of the communion of saints.
It was my privilege—and a blessing from God—to know a saint.
Reflection
Maria’s journey was a determined effort to set things right before meeting God face to face. In her heart she carried regrets, broken promises, and barriers of all sorts. The weight of her life experiences needed to be lifted from her heart so that she could meet the One who loved her. Her last days were filled with honesty and prayerful surrender in the company of her family, whose love was her strength.
Prayer
God, please keep us honest and hopeful in our journey home. Give us wisdom and confidence in your forgiving love, and keep us aware of all that we must surrender in order to meet you face to face. May your love encourage us with the gift of peaceful surrender and grant us joyful reunion with you. Amen.
Ben
The Man Who Could Have Been a Monk
I returned to Kentucky in the late 1990s. It was a big transition for me. I had buried my mother and sold the family home in 1998. After two and a half years of struggle over whether to remain a priest because of my childhood sexual abuse by a priest and other issues that surfaced during therapy, I decided to leave the diocese of Trenton in New Jersey. There I left behind a large suburban parish community of thirty-two hundred households and more than twelve thousand people where I had been pastor. At my new parish in Kentucky, I was an associate pastor again. I was number three in seniority on the staff behind the pastor and senior associate priest. I knew absolutely no one.
One of the good things about my new assignment was that I enjoyed a lot of free time. In my homilies, I began to mention the spiritual retreats I had developed in New Jersey. I described them as a time for people with chronic or serious illnesses to reflect on the presence of God in their lives. Two people immediately latched on to the idea. At my invitation these two parishioners went to New Jersey to experience the retreat firsthand. They came back enthused. Their leadership and organizational skills became the driving force that gathered a nucleus of volunteers for the retreats. After showing my concern for the sick, I began to receive calls from parishioners who were seriously ill. I met with them initially for sacramental ministry, primarily the Anointing of the Sick. Gradually, I felt that I had found my niche in ministry again.
Ben was one of the first people I met. A short, stout, balding man in his early sixties, Ben had been diagnosed with liver cancer but looked good for his age and condition. He was retired from working for an automaker, and he and his wife Mary had recently moved to the Louisville area to be near their only daughter and grandson. His father had also spent his lifetime working for an automaker, and because of that family legacy, Ben was especially fond of an old Buick that he had brought with him from Michigan and was now stored in his garage.
I had met Ben and Mary several times after Mass. Mary was very pleasant and gracious and always talked for the two of them. Ben would stand slightly behind her and say nothing. Mary eventually called and told me that Ben needed me. When someone calls in behalf of someone else, my antennae go up because I don’t know who really needs ministry. Mary was very anxious and verbose, hardly giving me a chance to respond during her nonstop recitation of Ben’s needs. I’m always alarmed when I hear someone tell me what someone else’s needs are.
I agreed to visit with them in their home. They had bought a modest patio home near the church, and when I pulled up in front of the house, I paused because I was unsure whether to park in the driveway or in front of the house. Mary immediately came outside and directed me into the driveway. Now this is a terrible thing to say about someone I barely knew, but the thought ran through my head, “Oh God, I know who’s in control here.”
When I entered the house, Ben was sitting in a lounge chair on the sunporch at the front of their home—his favorite place, as I later learned. Mary immediately sat down next to him. My first impression was that if this gentleman had a lot to say about his illness and impending death, it was being overwhelmed by his wife. I decided to move slowly during this first visit by using the sacramental rituals for Anointing of the Sick and Holy Communion. All three of us prayed together and then began to talk. I asked Ben about his life. Ben spoke briefly about his background, the move from Michigan, and his illness. I asked him if he would like me to come again, and he said he would like that very much.
I promised to visit, and as I left I thanked Mary for the opportunity to visit and added that I hoped that Ben would feel more comfortable talking about his illness. I suggested that Ben and I probably needed some time alone. She agreed, and on subsequent visits she graciously welcomed me to their home and after a few minutes together excused herself so that we could be alone. I knew that she was concerned and even worried about what he was saying, or more importantly, not saying. As I gained her trust, her anxiety decreased, and eventually she stopped asking, “How did it go today?”
Ben and Mary were studies in contrast. Ben was very quiet and reserved. When I engage someone like this, I never know what it means. I am now wise enough to know that everyone reveals his or her story slowly, and patience is a virtue practiced over and over again by listening with your heart. Sometimes a quiet reserve can signal resistance or a lack of trust, but with Ben it was contentment and comfort, a kind of inner peace. He was introspective, a natural contemplative—a monk who was never a monk.
On the other hand, Mary was a case study in anxiety. She talked rapidly and incessantly. She had a very traditional piety, consisting of regular rosary devotions and novenas. Over the course of my relationship with Ben, she kept on praying for a miracle and pressed me with materials about miraculous healing. Above all, she kept on insisting that Ben needed to talk to a priest about his cancer, but when the three of us were together, she did nearly all the talking and always referred to Ben in the third person—as if he wasn’t there.
After my first visit, Ben and I met alone, and he unfolded his life story. He told me that his liver cancer had been diagnosed three years earlier. He underwent chemotherapy treatments, and he reported simply, “I do what they tell me to do.” He talked about selling their old home in Michigan, moving to Louisville, and being near his daughter and grandson. Since he had stopped driving, he now felt immobile and isolated. He knew the way to the church and to his daughter’s house and grandson’s house. “I know maybe two other people,” he said. He missed gardening, a favorite hobby, especially because the grounds of their patio home were maintained by a homeowners’ association. He compensated by watching the groundskeeper work and by caring for several houseplants on the sunporch.
“I am at peace with this—my disease. I’m going to die,” he told me. His real anxiety was his concern about the impact of his death on his wife, his daughter, and his grandson, with whom he shared a very close bond. “I want to live mostly for my grandson,” he said, adding that he really missed fishing with him. “While I worry about Mary and my daughter, that’s not where I’m invested. I’d like to spend more years with him.”
Ben, the contemplative, was someone who was very honest about his disease and knew it would result in his death. He was very cooperative with his doctors. He was at peace with his disease and with meeting God. He didn’t put much stock in his wife’s prayers for “a miracle,” he told me, and what he couldn’t handle was his wife’s anxiety. “I find it so tiring to listen to her,” he said, “so sometimes I quote Scripture to her: ‘Be not afraid.’ That works, but not for long.”
I gradually learned about something else that weighed on Ben’s mind: he had lost touch with his brothers and sisters. When Ben’s mother was dying, Ben and Mary moved her into their home, and Mary provided care for her until she died. I could feel the pain in his heart as he described the estrangement with his siblings. Whatever occurred during this caregiving for Ben’s mother, whether intentional or unintentional, it created a division in