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the wisdom of generations: ordinations and baby showers

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A few weeks ago, our parish celebrated the ordination of one of our own: a local son who had grown up in the congregation, attended the parish school, and stayed close to our church throughout his years at seminary. It was a joyful celebration to see him preside over the liturgy, with his family beaming in the front row, bursting with pride.

The moment that surprised me, though, came during the Eucharistic Prayer. Suddenly this new priest was surrounded at the altar by rows of the men who were now his peers: our pastor and associate, teachers and mentors from seminary, priests from around the diocese. As his bright eyes and eager voice began the prayer, I looked around at the circle of men whose presence supported him in his vocation and shared in his joy. Their hands – some weathered and weak, some young and strong – stretched out with his own over the gifts of bread and wine. Their voices –  some soft and shaking, some bold and confident – wove together during the prayers of consecration. 

And I realized that although I had never before been part of a similar celebration at a priest’s “first Mass,” this scene was intimately familiar. The circle of men on the altar, young and old, looked just like the circles of women, young and old, with whom I had shared living rooms and backyard patios. It looked just like a baby shower.

Admittedly, there were no presents with pink and blue bows. No cutesy games, no glasses of sugary punch, no oohs and aahs over tiny outfits. But there was one person whose new vocation was the center of attention and celebration. There was a group of close friends and mentors gathered to share in the joy. There was the wisdom of generations, years of experience in this same vocation, whose very presence promised support for the journey. There was a passing of a torch, a reaffirmation of the goodness of this work of love. There was blessing and hope.

Rites of passage are profound times of transition. Although much of their demands and emotional weight are carried by the individual alone, they are still moments when we need to be surrounded by those who have gone before us. We need their voices to carry the song and the prayer when our own falters. We need their footsteps to follow until our stride becomes confident enough to walk the path ahead. We need their wisdom to calm our fears, to guide our first fumblings in our new role. We need their physical presence affirming our decision, strengthening our weakness, reminding us that we are not alone.

The proud smiles of the priests gathered round that altar reminded me of the delighted but knowing expressions of the mothers, aunts, and grandmothers gathered around a new mother at a baby shower. They rejoice that another generation is now embarking on the adventure of their own life’s work, all the while recognizing that the journey will bring many challenges. Like seasoned pastors, they know the demands of this vocation are many – and often impossible to predict at the happy outset of the path. But they also know the depths of the commitment, the capacity for growth, the inner strength that will be discovered as this young person begins anew the ancient task that lies before them.

The circles that surround us become the blessing of knowing that we are never alone in our vocations. The shape of their strength – whether around an altar or around a wedding dance floor, around a new graduate or around a mother-to-be – remind us of the presence of God in the companions whose care and love helped bring us this far and promise to remain with us in the chapter to come.

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  1. Kathleen Kelly says

    29 June 2011 at 10:22 am

    A wonderful comparison between parenthood & priesthood !

    Very thought-provoking…..It struck me how both professions have their moments of aloneness, the work done singlely, no “colleague” at your side.Therefore, such a blog as yours provides comraderie as and when it is needed.

    Would that priests knew and used such a resource, too !

    Reply
  2. LKF says

    29 June 2011 at 9:03 pm

    Amen to that – both vocations/professions can be quite lonely at times. Maybe that’s where the communion of saints comes in? A more expansive sense of “colleague” or companion (except they are not there to change the diapers or cook the dinner!). We all need such camaraderie and support; I feel for so many priests who live alone in rectories these days. Far from the ideal.

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

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“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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