Monday, March 20, 2023
Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Traveling on Mayday, 1969
Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever … My kindness is established forever … My covenant with him stands firm.
God says “forever” and that’s one thing. We say “forever” and that’s another.
It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, but through the righteousness that comes from faith. It depends on faith.
Our words arise out of faith. But our faith is fragile. It’s God’s gift, this faith, and then we forget and get fancy with our faith, and claim it for ourselves. I know all about this. I might not say so out loud, but I’m proud of my humility and a little rigid in my righteousness.
Too much so, because then I’m unavailable to the soft strong sweet touch of God. And words get in the way. Here’s something about words from Czech freedom fighter and eventual president Vaclav Havel.
An enormous conflict between words and deeds is prevalent today: everyone talks about freedom, democracy, justice, human rights, about peace and saving the world from nuclear apocalypse; and at the same time, everyone, more or less, consciously or unconsciously, serves those values and ideals only to the extent necessary to serve himself and his “worldly” interests, personal interests, group interests, power interests, property interests, and state or great-power interests.…So the power structures apparently have no other choice than to sink deeper into this vicious maelstrom, and contemporary people apparently have no other choice than to wait around until the final inhibition drops away. But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? Responsibility cannot be preached but only borne, and the only possible place to begin is with oneself.
Pavel wrote this from prison. Where else? St. Paul, MLK, Bonhoeffer, Havel and countless others wrote their most pointed and profound words from their prison cells. In 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, Havel was released. He was quickly elected president and continued his campaign for more honest and transparent government, led by more honest and transparent people.
Long before these wonderful days of freedom in Czechoslovakia, my three Valpo friends and I left our semester’s housing in Cambridge, England and set off on three weeks exploring Europe. We rented a car and drove into West Germany. On Mayday we crossed into East Berlin, very conscious of the Berlin Wall on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. We didn’t much look like spies. We spent an hour watching Soviet tanks and soldiers parading along in the gloom of May 1, mostly unaware of the Mayday history of the last hundred years.
We weren’t arrested and headed south in our comfy (kind of) car. It rained hard as we drove through the mountains of East Germany. We passed through Dresden, knowing less than we should have known of its destruction during World War II. As was also true in East Berlin, beautiful graceful centuries-old but then bombed out buildings had been replaced by horrible Soviet architecture, awful ugly gray ten story apartment buildings one alongside the next, straight down every street.
Climbing back into the mountains south of Dresden, our windshield wipers stopped working. I was driving. I was impatient. We were headed for Prague, where just a year ago the Freedom Fighters stood up to Soviet tanks attempting to reclaim their country. In Chicago the year before at the Democratic National Convention, we rode through Grant Park listening to Larry Lujack on WLS and the Young Rascals singing “People Got to Be Free” at the top of our lungs. There were heroes in Prague. It was Mayday. We had to get there. There was an ugly transport truck plodding slowly up the mountain.
So I swung our car into the opposite lane. Or I tried. The ugly truck pulled out and blocked our way. I was young. I was an idiot. I’m sure the driver thought so. A few seconds later a car zoomed by where we would have been passing that truck.
And we were still alive.
An hour or so later we arrived at the Czech border. Tanks were parked helter-skelter around the checkpoint. We got in line along with other cars. Czech and Soviet soldiers checked our passports. We held our breath. We didn’t feel anything like heroes.
A soldier waved us through. The Czechs were blond and had bright faces. They smiled. In Cambridge at age 19 I learned about drinking Scotch. I imagined them singing at their bars tonight. And then the clouds parted, the sun came out. We saw fields of waving wheat. Everything is beautiful, in its own way.. We arrived in Prague on a Sunday, on a holiday, on Mayday for heaven’s sake, and everything was closed. No hotels, no restaurants … then we found a small cafe not far from the historical downtown and ordered our dinners. Who understood English? No one. We pointed at pictures.
But when we asked for directions to a hotel (again without many words but lots of hand signals), the owners conferred and convinced us to come to their home. “Just follow us.” We did just that. They found places in their home for us to sleep. They showed us pictures of their children, about our age. In the morning they shared their breakfast, eggs and bread and meat and yogurt.
They were the heroes. Their actions spoke louder than words. We moved on to the next day of our trip, richer than we had ever been before.
They could not find Jesus, and returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He went down with them, then, and came home to Nazareth and was obedient to them.
(2 Samuel 7, Psalm 89, Romans 4, Psalm 84, Matthew 1, Luke 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
