Fr Vincent Sherlock
Two days before the celebration of Confirmation in our parish we gathered for a short practice. I looked at the group of 38 boys and girls preparing for Confirmation (as an aside, the 38, typical, I would say, of many parishes like my own, represent the total number of pupils in senior classes in three primary schools. We’re a long way from over-crowding, a long way from turning pupils away from the school’s door on any ground and a long way from the decisions shaped and taken in our name. Maybe that’s for another day!)
Back to the 38. I’ve known most of them now for eight years. Many of them have served at the altar in our four churches, being members of the choir and some have, at least on occasion, proclaimed the Word of God. I know them to be likeable, good-humoured and very free in themselves. More often than not, they tell me stories about their lives and interests, their successes and failures on sports fields and see me, I hope, as a friend.
Change
The coming years will do much to change them – some of the change is as essential as it is natural but some of it pains me too. I’ve met it before; that distance that comes between us, as teenage years and choices become shaped by other influences, not all of them – it has to be said – for the better. I am certain parents feel this too. I’m reminded of one of our teachers telling us during our own teenage years about a man who once said that at the age of 18 he was horrified and embarrassed at how stupid his father was. By the age of 21, the same man was astounded at how much his father had learned “in three years”!
As I looked at the 38, I asked them not to change too much, to continue bringing joy to the hearts and smiles to the faces of their families and friends. I told them the church would always be ‘another room’ in their homes and that always they’d be welcome. I desperately wished that they’d truly be ‘confirmed’, enriched, enlivened, empowered and equipped to make life’s choices, based on reflection rather than reaction, courage rather than going with the flow and that ‘right judgement’ would guide them to all that’s good and right in life including having that sense of ‘wonder and awe’ in God’s presence.
Emphasis
Somewhere I was thinking of St Paul’s powerful words to the Philippians, and wanted them to be “happy, always happy in the Lord”. Paul repeated it for emphasis – “what I want is your happiness”.
Having ‘confirmed’ them, the ongoing call is to affirm them. Maybe we’ll have to do it from a distance for a while but let’s try to lessen that distance. As someone once said, the easiest way to shorten a mile is to put an ‘s’ in front of it. Smile!
He died by suicide. A mother shared the news with her son and daughter before they would hear it in the school yard. She rightly felt she should be the one to tell them since they both knew the man. She spoke first to her son and when she told him he asked “How did he do it?” The mother avoided an answer and went to tell her daughter. Her daughter asked “Why did he do it?” She had no answer for that one either but recognised something significant in the questions asked.
‘How?’ is one thing, but whatever hope we have in reaching out to people is found, I believe, in ‘Why?’
Do it anyway…
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
(Attributed to St Teresa of Calcutta)