Come Again?

Imagine yourself missing a party, maybe a birthday of a close friend, or an anniversary of a couple you hold dear, or St. Patty’s Day or the Fourth of July. You think about the friends that will be there, the chance to see them, the things that they’ll do that would be so much fun to do with them. Oh, it’s not whining, not really, to feel this longing, is it? Mostly, for me as I imagine it, it’s recalling past such occasions, and the stories that were told, the reading of cards, the glow on faces, the sitting around tables full of food and laughter. I remember my brother-in-law Dick, on his thirtieth birthday, receiving a card with photos of scantily clad women with the heads of Supreme Court Justices glued over their own, celebrating his budding law practice. I remember my mom and dad dancing in the basement of our old house, murals of the German countryside of her heritage, and his wartime memory, dancing the polka as uncles and aunts watched them, smiling. I remember Trinity Church with Kathy on St. Patty’s Day. I remember sitting in my Uncle Joe’s backyard on the 4th of July, watching not fireworks, but photo slides of us as kids, and my dad as a young man whizzing by on long-bladed speed skates on the oval ice rink at nearby Riis Park.


Easter Mass at Gesu Church in Detroit was, for nearly 40 years, this kind of thing, not to be missed. The veil of Lent lifted from faces as the stone was rolled away, the Gospel Choir stood and rocked and clapped Alleluia like this was the celebration of all celebrations – because it was. But on Easter Sunday a week ago, Kathy and I had for the first time been instead in our new home parish 250 miles north in Traverse City, where the Mass was bright, and the homily was encouraging, but it wasn’t Gesu.

So just because we wanted to make use of my retiree dental benefits at the University’s dental clinic in the city, Kathy and I had driven down for this weekend. I worked on the database at Manresa and we visited friends and walked walks we had walked for years…and yesterday we went to Mass at Gesu. The Gospel Choir was warming up with some of my favorites. (Listen and enjoy other renditions by Clicking and Clicking)  I wish they were on YouTube themselves!

“Carl,” the pastor said, starting his homily by looking at Carl Clendenning, the Gospel Choir director, “Give me an octave.” Carl, sitting at the organ, smiled and pressed middle C and the C above it, the pipes filling the church. “It’s Sunday in the Octave of Easter,” he said. It’s Easter again, just like Carl gave us a C and a C. The decorations are all still up. The Choir is singing the same alleluias. The Gospel is about Jesus showing up, alive…AGAIN. It’s been a week of Easters, and today is Easter all over again. We’re here having the same party we had last Sunday, and it’s great all over again.”

Imagine yourself coming one week later to the scene of that birthday party, or that anniversary, or on March 24th or July 11th and seeing everybody smiling at you, and realizing that they’re doing it all over again…just for you, just because you’re that important to them.

I like to think that God’s like that, that we’re all that important to Him,  that if we miss Him the first time around, we can...come again.


 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.