He must increase...

"Andrew ... first found his brother Simon, and said to him, 'We have found the Messiah' (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus." -- (John 1:40b-42a)

Today is the feast of St. Andrew. Andrew is described by St. John as a disciple of St. John the Baptist and one of the first two disciples to follow Jesus. Andrew is the one responsible for bringing his brother Simon to Jesus.

Yet Andrew did not become one of the "inner circle" with Simon Peter, James, and John whom the Lord chose to be closest to Him. And what did he think when his brother, whom he had brought to the Lord, was chosen to be the leader, "the Rock" on which the Lord would build His Church? Was he resentful at being passed over, even though he had been one of Jesus' first followers?

If he was, there is no record of it in Scripture. In fact, you can almost hear him echoing the words of his first mentor, John the Baptist: "He must increase, and I must decrease."

Lord, please help me, like St. Andrew, to humbly and gratefully accept the role and purpose that You have for me, whatever it may be, without comparing myself to others. May I always bless what You are doing with others, whatever it may be and whatever it may mean, or not mean, for me.

A taste of the joy

"I rejoiced when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the LORD.'" -- Psalm 122:1 (NAB)

Deaths in my life seem to go in surges, and October saw one of those surges. On October 5, the 12-year-old granddaughter of one of our deacons died following a three-year battle with cancer. The day of her funeral, a 23-year-old young adult in our parish was found dead in his trailer of apparent accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. The 60-year-old wife of a local pastor then died unexpectedly less than a week later.

Experiencing a series of deaths, especially deaths that come suddenly or unexpectedly, can serve as an important reminder of how fragile life is and that we "do not know the day or the hour" when the Lord will come for us (Mt. 25:13). But it can also serve to remind us that there is something much better waiting for those who love God, something that we sometimes get a little taste of when someone close to us dies.

A number of years ago, an elderly friend of mine died of liver cancer. She had never married and had outlived all her immediate family, so I was one of the people closest to her. As a result, I had the privilege of walking with her on her journey from the time she was first diagnosed until she went to be with the Lord 17 months later. 

I had had other elderly friends who had died, but I had never been with them at the moment of their passing. In this case, though, I really wanted to be there for her, so I asked the Lord, if it was His will, to give me the grace of being present at her death.

She was staying in a nursing home under hospice care. It became clear in the last few days of her life that her body was starting to shut down. I was blessed to be able to take a couple of days off work so that I could be with her. The nursing home staff put a large recliner next to her bed so that I could stay with her.

I was sleeping in the recliner when around 2:30 in the morning I awoke to see her roommate, who had dementia, standing beside my friend's bed, gently tucking her in. I thought, "Isn't that sweet," and was about to go back to sleep when the roommate went to her closet and started getting dressed. (It's not unusual for those with dementia to become active at night.) I thought, "Uh-oh, the aide will want to know this," so I got up and found her. After several minutes of coaxing, she convinced the roommate to go back to bed.

By this time, I was wide awake, so I decided to read to my friend from the Bible. I knew that she looked like she was asleep, but I've often heard that a person's hearing is the last sense to go, so I wanted to read to her from Scripture. After reading several other passages, I decided to read the psalms known as the "songs of ascent." These are the psalms that the Israelites prayed aloud as they climbed up the mountain on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

I got to Psalm 122 and started to read it:

I rejoiced when they said to me,

“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

And now our feet are standing

within your gates, Jerusalem.

As I said, "Jerusalem," my friend quietly stopped breathing. I paused and waited to see if she was going to go into a cycle of breaths with long pauses in between, as cancer patients sometimes do. A few seconds later, though, the artery in her neck stopped pulsating. It was all so peaceful and at the same time unexpected that I actually said out loud, "I think you just died!" It was as if one moment, she had been standing at the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the next moment, she had stepped through to the other side.

It's hard to describe what I experienced at that moment. Physically, I was exhausted; emotionally, I was numb. Spiritually, though, I was on the ceiling! It was as if, in that brief moment that the gates had opened for her, a breeze, laden with the joy of the other side, had blown back through to me and given me a very small, swift taste of what she was walking into.

As I considered the three people who died in October and their loved ones mourning their loss, I asked the Lord to let those left behind catch just a bit of that same back draft of heavenly joy.