Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - February 7, 2025
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
Some years ago, after arriving in the Bahamas for a two-year stint, I was so pleasantly surprised by what turned out to be a regular sight. You often saw the local bishop, Leonard Hagarty OSB, dressed in clerical suit, riding his motorcycle (as did all of us Benedictines). But there was always this: his face lit up by a wide, genuinely happy smile, one of his hands almost always off a handle (!) waving to someone on the street, somehow dodging potholes, chickens and other challenges.
In a letter written by him to the people of the Bahamas he spoke about how much more effective preaching or teaching was when it was accompanied by witnessing. People listen best to preachers and teachers, he said, when their lives match their words. Further, he said that he always felt very strongly that you witness best to the good news of the Gospel when it really sounds like good news. On his motorcycle, radiant as he kept waving greetings, he made it really look like good news too.
Bishop Hagarty’s words and bearing are echoed in Pope Francis who says Christians should not “have a funeral face” because “pessimism” is not for Christians. A severe critic of Christian faith, Friedrich Nietzsche, made the same point from his stance. I paraphrase his words: Christians would have to sing with more conviction to persuade me to faith in their redeemer and they’d have to show that faith in happier faces. Our faces should be those of redeemed people, of those who know the joy that comes from the forgiveness of our sins, a closeness to God and trust in God.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
