I was at St. Kevin’s on Cortland Avenue in San Francisco during a period when Cortland Avenue was a little rougher than it is now, with a lot of drug dealing and using and a lot of people hanging around doing nothing and creating havoc.
One day at morning Mass, there was this man who was a good 6’6” – much taller than anyone else, or so it looked. He didn’t look like he’d had a bath for a month or so. His eyes were glazed, and he was totally unfocused. At the Our Father, Margaret Ahearn, who was all of 4’6” and had a smile that was about five feet wide, walked to the man with a big smile, took his hand, looked up at him (which was quite a feat), and then prayed the Our Father with him and everyone else. What she couldn’t see were the tears running down his face. How long had it been since someone had touched him? How long had it been since someone recognized that he, too was a human being, he too was loved into existence by God? When was the last time anybody had recognized his dignity?
Margaret was amazing; I’ve known very few people like her. I never met her husband Matthew; he was dead before I arrived in the parish – but she would talk about him. She said that she and Matthew wanted children, but they never had any, so they adopted everybody they met. And they did: everybody they met. It didn’t matter who, they had a place in the hearts of the Ahearns, a place in their home, if they needed it. Come Thanksgiving, if you didn’t have anyone to have Thanksgiving with, they had more than enough room. And they were happy to have you.
Because Margaret took this seriously: If God has loved us first – it doesn’t happen the other way around – if God has loved us first, what other response can we have but to love God and to love what God has made? Our gospel text is the conclusion to last week’s text: Remain in me as I remain in you. Love one another as I love you. As I love the Father and the Father loves me, join in that love, be one in that love, join us, be with us, never part from us … for our love for you is eternal. Let your love for each other try and reach the same lack of limitation.
--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, May 5, 2024
Image source: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/11/16/what-its-going-church-when-youre-homeless/
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