March 26, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
| Tonight I want to speak to those who have come here for the first time, to those who have for weeks and months been faithful to their formation and preparation for the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist. The ancient rites being celebrated in every Catholic Church on earth tonight are all about one thing. They tell one story. They happen because God wants us to understand one thing. To make it unmistakably clear, I want to share.with you a story I read this week about his father t left me humbled, silent, and grateful. The story was told about his father by a young man named Matt. “The fire radio woke my father from a well-deserved sleep and notified him of a car accident that had just occurred a quarter-mile from our home. He was accustomed to being awakened by emergencies. This sort of night was familiar to him as a , veteran firefighter Dad was the first to arrive, several minutes before the ambulance. He found an overturned car and a driver who was confused but conscious. Quickly moving to the passenger’s side of the vehicle, he assessed the condition of the unconscious victim still trapped inside. From his years of experience he knew immediately that the injuries would be fatal. There was nothing in his experience however, that prepared him for a more horrifying discovery: the victim was his son. After what seemed like a lifetime for my father, the ambulance crew arrived, freed my brother from the car and transported him to the nearby hospital. A death watch followed When it saw clear that Joe was brain dead, my father ordered the removal of advanced life support and Joe died a few hours later. He was 16.The driver of the vehicle, my brother 17 year-old friends, Kenny, was treated for minor injuries and released. Soon afterward, he was cited for si criminal infractions in connections with the accident, including vehicular homicide because he was driving under the influence of alcohol. The follower November, Kenny pleaded guilty to the charges and was awaiting sentencing Under the Victim/Witness /act just passed in our state, my father was invited to submit a statement about the impact of the event on him and his family that the judge would take into consideration. My dad said that he would do so and asked to deliver it in person. On the day of sentencing, Dad rose and faced the judge and inn a quivering voice told the court that the night of the accident had been the most horrible time of his life and he continued: “My son, Joseph, was a bright, good-natured young man with enormous potential. The emotional impact of this event on my family has been devastating. Today the driver of the vehicle stands before you awaiting sentencing. He has admitted to his guilt. He was Joseph’s friend, yet through the thoughtlessness of his actions, Joseph is dead. He did not approach that terrible night with the thought of harming anyone, least of all his friend, but the result is that one young man is dead, our family has suffered, his family has suffered, and not least of all, he himself has suffered. Now he must bear the knowledge of what he did for the rest of his life. That burden is far greater than any punishment this court could dispense. For this reason, I respectfully request that this court hear the appeal of the victim’s parent and family and impose the minimum possible sentence” The judge granted the request. The young man received a six-month suspended jail sentence and two years of probation and was ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. The father in this story was able to see the future, not the past. In the living friend of his son, that father was able to see more than the kid who killed his son. If that was all he could see, there would have been no hope. Joe’s death was Kenny’s doing, but it was not Kenny’s being. The father in this story was able to tell the difference, and in this story, we begin to see how it is with God, and what this night is all about : faith and hope. This is night is about our being, not our doing Faith give us the eyes, with which to see the world as God sees it. Even though faintly we see our brothers and sisters in this life as God sees them. We can begin to understand that the totality of someone’s doing no matter how awful they may be is never the total of someone’s being. Every man and every woman everywhere is always loved as much by God as any other man or woman everywhere. That love is the wonder of this night and it is worthy of our greatest efforts to understand. The world is a desperate for the radical forgiveness of which Jesus spoke. It is the kind of forgiveness the young driver in this story received. Healing is always found in God in an act of forgiveness, and tonight we are healed once again as we recall another father who through the death of his son, forgave the seemingly unforgivable, allowing a shaft of light to pierce the darkness of a weary, angry world. |