The Light of Hope in Christian Community

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Faith, Hope, Love, Prayer

Tags

Light of Hope

It’s been almost four weeks since my last post. Much has transpired since then and it’s been a roller coaster of emotions at times. In The Other Side of Prayer Requests, I left you hanging with the news that someone special to me had been diagnosed with a disease that would require surgery the next day, and that I had asked friends and family to pray for us. I probably should not have been quite so vague but I suppose I was holding on to that last shred of privacy. The rest of the story eventually came out when I replied to comments posted by friends. In case you missed that thread, that special someone was my wife, Melinda, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a lumpectomy on 24 July, our thirty-first wedding anniversary.

Ever since she was diagnosed on 31 May, I had been praying for her healing harder than I had ever prayed for anything in my short history of praying. Although the lump was small, we didn’t know if the cancer may have spread or if it was localized. My biggest fear was that cancer cells would be found in her lymph nodes, indicating a spread that would require chemotherapy. So, when I asked others, or they offered, to pray for her, I asked specifically for prayers that no cancer would be found in her lymph nodes. Personally, I prayed that when the final pathology report came back they would find no cancer at all and she would be pronounced “cancer-free”.

In spite of my praying, both Melinda and I had an uncanny feeling of optimism, that everything was going to be alright, that all the prayers being registered on her behalf from a legion of experienced prayer warriors were being heard. As I mentioned, we had “a confident assurance from an entire faith community who seemed to be saying they had inside information.” I also took comfort in a passage from a book of daily reflections by St. Augustine:

“Be assured that all your diseases will be healed. Have no fear. You may say that your diseases are powerful; but this physician is more powerful. There is no disease that the Almighty Physician cannot cure. Just allow yourself to be healed and do not reject His healing hands. He knows what He is doing.” – Commentary on Psalm 72

So, cutting to the chase, Melinda had her surgery on Wednesday and the early report was there was no cancer found in the lymph nodes, nor in the marginal tissue around the tumor. But, we had to wait until the following Monday before the official pathology report was completed. That was a long and anxious five days. On Monday we received the news that, indeed, no cancer was found in her lymph nodes, nor the marginal tissue around the tumor…. and none in the tumor itself! This was precisely what I had been praying for. Praise God!

My intention with this post is not for it to be a play by play of my wife’s surgery. Rather, it is a testament to the power of Christian Community. It is difficult for me to describe the way we felt about the tremendous support, caring and prayers we received during this ordeal. There is no doubt in my mind we would have been unable to sustain such strong confidence, such unwavering faith in the healing power of prayer had we gone it alone and not reached out to our community of friends and family, people who care for and love us, and asked them for their prayers. The outpouring of love and the demonstration of faith from everyone gave us something special – it gave us hope. And, I believe, it was this powerful combination of practicing the three theological virtues that brought about the miracle of a clean and cancer-free diagnosis for Melinda.

I had heard witnesses about Christian Community from men on the Christ Renews retreats on which I had been. But, especially for someone like me who is new to this life, you don’t know what you don’t know until your eyes are opened by a personal experience. I witnessed so many examples of love and caring I feel compelled and obligated to mention some of them:

To all those who prayed with an intensity honed by years of practice that I can only hope to achieve one day; to those who went the extra mile and sacrificed and fasted on Melinda’s behalf, who prayed Rosaries and Novenas specifically for the two of us, I give you my utmost gratitude.

We had a promising indication that all would be well when the surgeon surprised us and asked us to pray with him for healing and for God to guide him during the procedure.

I was overwhelmed with the caring and love expressed by so many asking how Melinda’s surgery went and how she was recovering. It was honest, look-you-straight-in-the-eye concern followed by sincere hugs borne of relief. Your love was truly felt by both of us.

To Melinda’s sister, Carol, who traveled from Texas to be here for both moral and physical support for Melinda, our daughter Grace, and me, many thanks, you were a God-send.

A special group of people took it upon themselves to unselfishly prepare dinners for us during the two weeks between Melinda’s surgery and the completion of her two-a-day radiation treatments. Thank you all for the plentiful and delicious meals, they were wonderful and so welcome! I still plan to hit you up for the recipes.

For someone who is both unfamiliar and uncomfortable with receiving so much love and assistance from others I have been totally humbled by the overwhelming support and encouragement to open up and share my emotions instead of keeping them bottled up inside me. Your prayers not only helped heal Melinda, they also healed me.

One thing that helped me open up and receive this kindness was understanding and acceptance of another bit of advice given by St. Augustine:

“For when we are harassed by poverty, saddened by bereavement, ill, or in pain, let good friends visit us. Let them be persons who not only can rejoice with those who rejoice but can weep with those who weep. Let them be persons who know how to give useful advice and how to win us to express our own feelings in conversation. – (Letter 130)

To close, please accept mine and Melinda’s gratitude for your gifts of prayer for her healing. And, specifically from me, please know my appreciation for your example of Christian Community by showing this neophyte how to shine the Light of Hope as suggested by our Lord, Jesus Christ:

“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the light of the world – like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. – Matthew 5:13-16

God Bless you and thank you for being our Light of Hope.

Love is a Verb

14 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Love

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

C.S. Lewis, Charity, Love

John 13: 34-35 “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The last two weeks have been unlike any I’ve had in some time. My emotions have run the gamut from worry about some serious and scary health concerns within my family, to feeling so much love for and from God, my family, and my parish community, that I find it difficult to describe. I think my frequent and fervent prayers about the former were answered and actually begot the latter. The emotional love I am feeling is, I believe, a direct result of the acts of love shown to me from others and by my acts of love to them. It’s the act of loving that has built a bridge over that emotional gap. And it’s that bridge that has caused me to examine it and to count it as one of my blessings. Let me explain.

Many years ago I lived in England and, as a seventh grader, I studied Latin. I don’t remember ever learning the Latin word for the noun form of the word meaning “Love” but I remember, like it was yesterday, learning to conjugate the verb “To Love”: Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatus, Amant (I love, you love, he/she loves, etc.). And, even though I memorized this, I don’t think I understood what it really meant as a verb, or an action word. Instead, I lived my life for the next fifteen years taking for granted that it was only a feeling, a noun, not something to be done.

In fact, I’m embarrassed to say that I probably had not yet made that connection when I married my wonderful wife thirty-one years ago. Love, to me, was a feeling, and any actions that could have been interpreted as love were probably more a result of trying to satisfy my own desires rather than hers. I was self-centered and immature into my early twenties. My only consolation is that most everyone my age was the same way. All these years later, when I look around our world and examine its culture, it looks much the same to me.

Why is it this way? Is it just a part of growing up? Is it our culture? Is it due to parenting in today’s society? Do some parents work so hard to build the egos of their children that they become self-centered and live in a “me” world?

With luck, young adults will have a unique defining moment that helps them to redefine what love means, that it’s an action word, a verb, and not just a feeling.

My defining moment didn’t happen with my marriage although I felt extreme love for my wife. It wasn’t with the birth of my first child, either, although I had never felt new love like that before. No. It was the simple act of understanding the phrase, “Love is a verb”, that I read in a book by author Stephen Covey when I was trying to get control of my life during a very crazy period. Quite simply, Covey wrote that if you want to feel more love, then you have to give more love. Love is an action word. It’s something you do. What a novel idea for me at the time!

Have you ever stopped to consider the idea of love being something you do, not just something you feel?

I like to think that, since then, I’ve grown up and learned a thing or two. I wish I could somehow effectively teach teens, young adults, and others who’ve never before stopped to consider the concept, the definition of love as explained by C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity. In his chapter on the theological virtue of Charity, Lewis writes,

“Charity means ‘Love, in the Christian sense’. But love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people. Christian Love for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection. But, liking or [having] affection for people makes it easier to be charitable towards them. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.”

And, I would like to explore with those students what St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans,

“Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” (Romans 12:10)

Fortunately for me, I was old enough for the meaning of ‘Love is a Verb’ to make some sense. I started practicing this new idea. Lo and behold, I noticed that my intentional efforts to do things to show my wife and children how much I loved them returned good results. I felt more love from them. But the biggest eye opener was something unexpected – the more I showed them love, the more love I felt for them. The engineer that I am recognized this as exponential growth – a powerful thing.

How do you show love? Have you received something in return which you never imagined would happen?

So, I rocked on for about twenty-five more years in this way, focusing on a loving relationship with those closest to me, my wife and four daughters, (who, I’m proud to say, are much more mature and responsible than I ever was at their age) and my extended family. And, with just a few exceptions, that was about the extent of the loving in my life. The people in that circle made up my world. Oh, I had a few people I called friends, people at work and neighbors who I liked but they were not “loving” relationships under this new definition of love.

It has only been in the last 15 months, since my first Christ Renews weekend, that I’ve been able to truly extend my circle of love beyond my family. Since then, my new extended family of my Catholic community has shown me example after example of love in action and I have been so blessed to have had opportunities to act with love for them, too. And, over the last two weeks, I have felt God’s love, and Jesus’ presence next to me, more intensely than ever before. I can’t help but believe there is a direct correlation between these feelings of love and peace, my time spent praying, and the reciprocating actions of love I have shared with family and friends.

Do you notice the noun version of “love” the more you practice the verb version of “love”? Do you have an experience to share?

Good day and God Bless.

Fear is Easy, Love is Hard (1) / Nothing is Wasted (2)

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Jerry Robinson in Prayer

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Boston Marathon, Fear, Jason Gray, Love

“Turn on the T.V. for the evening news / They got plenty of fear and nothing to do / Another somebody’s gone too far / Makes you want to put up your guard / Fear is easy, love is hard”.

These song lyrics by Christian singer/songwriter Jason Gray came over my car stereo this evening as I was in the middle of a two-hour drive on a business trip. The sadness in them could not have been more appropriate or timely. Like most every other American on this fifteenth day of April, 2013 my mind was on the senseless terroristic acts of violence that unfolded today in Boston, Massachusetts during the Boston Marathon. I intentionally chose not to listen to any more news reports – I had heard enough and nothing they said could change what had happened. My thoughts vacillated between anger at whoever was responsible for the death and destruction, and heartfelt sympathy for all the human beings who were tragically affected. It was painful to think in the present.

It was no less painful when flashback images and emotions from September 11^th, 2001 coursed through my heart and mind’s eye. But, one of the advantages of my age is in understanding that history tends to repeat itself and, thus, if you pay attention and learn as you go, you are better prepared for when evil will again, inevitably, raise its ugly head. I no longer believe in coincidence, so when the next song on the CD, Nothing is Wasted, came up I smiled for the first time in a couple hours:

“The hurt that broke your heart / And left you trembling in the dark / Feeling lost and alone / Will tell you hope’s a lie / But what if every tear you cry / Will seed the ground where joy will grow / And Nothing is Wasted / It’s from the deepest wounds / That beauty finds a place to bloom / And you will see before the end / That every broken piece is / Gathered in the heart of Jesus / And what’s lost will be found again / And Nothing is Wasted….”

There’s no doubt we Americans have been down this road before. To forget or not use what we learned almost twelve years ago would indeed be a waste. So, my thoughts turned to the future and I wondered, “What are we going to do about this?” I’ve learned there are many things about which I can do absolutely nothing. How to tackle the issue of terrorism is one of those things. Our government is supposed to do that for us. A terrorist’s most lethal weapon is their hatred for what is good and just, and the primary goal of terrorism is to spread fear and that same hatred. Their bombs are simply a means to that end. Let the government figure out how to stop them from using their physical weapons.

But, as citizens, and Christians, we have learned we can do something. We have to take the hard road, the difficult task of ensuring our spirit is not broken. We have to stand up to the cowardice of terrorism with the courage to continue what is right and just in accordance with our faith. We can be there for each other. We can love each other. We can support and encourage each other. We can pray for those who have suffered and who are suffering. (Psalm 147:3 “He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds”) We can pray for those who are fearful and help them overcome their fear by finding love in the only one Who has enough love for all of us (Isaiah 41:13 “For I am the Lord your God who grasps your right hand; It is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear, I will help you’”). And, by doing so, we can send a clear message that, even though we may have been set back a step or two, we won’t be knocked out by the one-two punch of fear and hatred. We’re not going to take the low, easy road, we’re going to take the hard, high road. We did it almost twelve years ago and we can do it again. And, finally, we can do what is feared most by our enemy, “Pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:28).

“When fear is easy and love is hard / It’s hard to bring your heart to a world that can break it / To offer love to those you’re afraid will forsake it / But a well defended heart is always looking for a fight / In a lonely war against an endless night / But love can bring a light / …It comes down to a simple choice / Shouting devils or a still small voice / One is spreading fear and dread / Oh, but love has always said / Do not be afraid / Fear is easy and love is hard.”

Thank you, Jason Gray, for your beautiful insight! I hope you don’t mind me borrowing some of it.

Peace be with you all, and with your spirit.

Reflections of a Lay Catholic

Tag Archives: Love

The Light of Hope in Christian Community

Love is a Verb

Fear is Easy, Love is Hard (1) / Nothing is Wasted (2)