Witnesses to Christ, Naked on the Cross

Witnesses to Christ, Naked on the Cross

Here is a link to today’s readings.

Mother Teresa is being canonized today! She, like all the saints, is what I call a remote witness. They are able to speak to us over centuries, although we never knew them personally in most cases. They come from other places and times and cultures, thus demonstrating the catholic nature of our faith. We need these witnesses, and I rejoice that we can now turn to St. Teresa of Calcutta as a friend and intercessor in Heaven.

In addition to remote witnesses, I think each of us also needs proximate witnesses. These are the people in our own lives who model holiness and who act as role models in our specific cultural milieu. For me, one such person was my dear friend Fr. Jack Kelley, who died of cancer two and a half years ago. He had conquered multiple myeloma, which he began fighting back in 1996, and was living a healthy, cancer-free life that his doctors considered miraculous. He used to enjoy telling people that his doctors were a Jew, a Muslim, and a Catholic (“It sounds like a joke,” he would say) and since all three agreed it was a miraculous healing, he accepted their judgment. In his words, “They told me I had two-and-one-half years to live [three at most]. And that was 16 years ago.”¹He attributed the cure to the prayers of so many parishioners to God through the intercession of now-Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society (“He was beatified the week I returned from my sick leave,” Fr. Jack remembered).

About his sickness, Fr. Jack said, “I never asked, ‘Why me?’” Instead, “I asked, ‘why not me? I’m as vulnerable as anybody else to a disease. But I would never fault anybody who does ask, ‘Why me?’” He simply accepted the cross with faith in God. He used his Lazarus experience, as his good friend Msgr. Tom Sullivan called his recovery, to minister to others with multiple myeloma. “I thank God for the blessing of having cancer,” Fr. Jack said. “It’s deepened my faith… Now I’m more compassionate because I know what it’s like to be seriously ill… I think it’s made me a better human being as well as a better priest.” After years of ministering to others, a second cancer, this time colon cancer, took his life in 2014. He was just shy of 79 years old. Among his final words were those spoken to Msgr. Sullivan, “I won’t say goodbye… I’ll say Au revoir,” meaning, quite literally, until I see you again. Such faith!

Fr. Jack understood the words in today’s psalm, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” When he said he didn’t ask “why me?” he was acknowledging the words in the book of Wisdom: “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends?” Above all, he understood that basic principle of Christianity, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

Frankly, I don’t like crosses. Who in their right mind does? Jesus didn’t. He prayed in the Garden asking the Father to “let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). Even when the events of his life would leave him feeling forsaken on the cross, his faith did not waver. “Not as I will, but as You will,” he had prayed (Matt. 26:39), having taught us to do the same: “Thy will be done” (Matt. 6:10). Then, naked on the cross, he handed himself over to the Father, deprived of everything he owned.

Christians must accept the cross, and we must be naked as well, standing before God in absolute humility, having nothing except trust in God’s justice, love, and mercy, and our love in return for love. We spend a lifetime shattering idols and trying to break our foolish dependence on things. In the end, we will lose everything anyway. Even our flesh itself will turn “back to dust.” Just like that, cancer or tragedy strikes, like it did Fr. Jack. And we have nothing to hold onto except the Body of Christ on the cross and in the world. It makes sense, then, that Jesus joins to the requirement of the cross a requirement about our attachment to things: “anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” I have a lot of work still to do in this regard. How about you? Fortunately, we have witnesses to the possibility of holiness, witnesses remote and proximate, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, and Fr. Jack Kelley, who remind us, as the Lord taught St. Paul, “My grace is enough for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).

¹The quotes in burgundy are taken from an article about Fr. Jack Kelley and end-of-life medical ethics in The Catholic Free Press by Tanya Connor, Nov. 12, 2012 (page 1). Not finding an electronic version, I am grateful to the author for sending me her original piece and for granting permission to use it here.

• Editorial Credit: Zvonimir Atletic / Shutterstock.com for the image of Mother Teresa.

• Editorial Credit: Renata Sedmakova / Shutterstock.com for the image of Christ.