Saturday in the 24th Week of Ordinary Time, September 19, 2020

“This is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on the path are the ones who have heard, but the Devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved. Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of temptation. As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce mature fruit. But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”

A persistent theme throughout the New Testament is that of perseverance.  The Lord and his Apostles tell us persistently that it is not enough to believe vaguely in the Lord Jesus as divine but to persevere in this belief.  That is, the Christian must hold steadfastly to the Faith despite persecution from the state, one’s own community, and even one’s own family.  As the Lord tells us, “A man’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10, 36).  This persecution does not consist mainly of psychological pressure, but “they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death” (Matthew 24, 9).  But this perseverance serves a purpose, for “he who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24, 13).  

This virtue “bears fruit” in the one who possesses it as well as for others by the example it gives and by the grace won by it.  During the mid 1980’s my sister and I worked at the Gift of Peace in D.C., operated by the Missionaries of Charity as a hospice for indigent AIDS patients in their last months of life.  Without the Missionaries, these men and women (and their infected babies) would have died on the street.  They had been rejected by their families, kicked out of their homes, and even thrown out of hospitals.  One of these abandoned souls was a young man who went by “Skip”.  One of the first things we had to do for Skip, when he arrived, very sick, was to wash him and dress his wounds.  He had been “released” from the hospital with no place to go and the Missionaries found him.  The nurses at the hospital had refused to touch him because they were so frightened of catching this terrible new disease about which so little was known.  They left him to lie in his bed, and because of the weak state to which the disease had reduced him, he could not leave it on his own and he developed horrific bed sores.  After we cleaned him up we put some salve on his sores and then dressed him in a clean, dry hospital gown.  For weeks afterwards he stayed in his bed but we fed him, changed him regularly, and sat by his bed and kept him company.

Skip had gotten mixed up with drugs and a host of related vices and when he came down with AIDS his family forced him out of the house.  They were afraid of the disease, and ashamed of the stigma it brought as well.  He had wandered around for a while, eating food from charity outlets when he could, and scrounging through trash cans for it when he could not.  Finally, he collapsed on a sidewalk and was rushed to the local hospital when someone saw him and called the emergency line.  When he arrived there and he was tested for AIDS, he was put in a ward where he was just kept, and not tended.  At the time there was no real treatment and rumors flew around that the disease could be caught through the air or simply by touching someone infected with it, even with hospital gloves.  He was given food, but he was not able to feed himself and no one helped him.  He lost a good deal of weight as a result. And when his insurance ran out, he was sent out of the hospital with nowhere to go.  When the sisters found him, he was skin and bones and bedsores.

We set about “fattening” him up, at first feeding him broth with a spoon, then later cutting up his food into small bites and feeding this to him on a fork.  He could not move or talk much at first, but he would look around with wide eyes at the room in which he lay, at the freshly painted walls, at the holy pictures, and at the crucifix across from his bed.  Wonder filled his slightly bulging eyes as he gazed at these things, and at the people taking care of him.  After some time had passed, he was able to sit up in a wheelchair and we would take him for walks up and down the long corridor outside his room, and we even got his chair down the stairs to the main chapel on the ground floor for Sunday Mass.  He was not a practicing believer, although he had been baptized, but he liked to come to Mass and see all the sisters in their habits, and to be in a crowd of friendly people.

The example of the sisters and volunteers led him to faith in the Lord Jesus, and one day he asked to become a Catholic.  The sisters called one of the priests who came to say Mass for us and he did a brief catechesis with Skip, appropriate for people who were facing death, and he was brought into the Holy Church at a special Mass in the hospice — with his family in attendance.  The superior of the house, Sister Rochelle, had called on the family and pleaded with them to reconcile with Skip, telling them how he had fallen in love with Jesus, and they were moved.  We had a big celebration in honor of this two-fold homecoming, with a reception of donated food and much singing and laughing.

Skip came into the Church at just the right moment because the next day he began to fail.  Gradually, day by day, we saw his health decline.  One day he lost the strength to sit up; the next day, he lost his ability to chew; the next day, he had to be given water with an medicine dropper.  The sisters, seeing this, brought in a table close to his bed and set a large free-standing crucifix on it.  For the next three days he kept his eyes fixed on the crucifix and he repeated the name of Jesus over and over.  It was the only word he spoke, and he spoke it to the day when he could no longer speak.  Still, he kept his eyes fixed on the crucifix and he never took his eyes off of it until the night he died.  That night, the sisters came and filled the room and prayed for him, and as they did so, his soul leaped into God’s open arms. 

This is perseverance: that of the sisters and volunteers who took care of him    day and night (the last week, one of us was always with him), and also his, as he lay dying in terrible pain but with great faith.  The perseverance of others bore fruit in Skip’s conversion and salvation, and his example bore fruit also in the lives of those who helped him.  

It is a precious virtue for which we must pray.