Novena of Grace Day 8

Here's a cheery thought for you to start your day. I remember very vividly September 11, 2001. I don't know what that was like over here, but on our side of the pond, obviously, it was a very traumatic thing. It was a wake-up call. It was the first time that in the United States that we came to recognize our own vulnerability. I remember the day really well. I was a Jesuit. I was a scholastic, so in training. I was in graduate school at Loyola University in Chicago. And I remember everything closed down that day. And there was an eerie kind of quiet that descended upon an otherwise very busy, very loud city. I remember walking around the campus that day, and I would see groups of students huddled together, sometimes crying, sometimes praying. And I saw a long line of cars start to appear on campus about midday, parents coming to take their kids home. I don't think it was-- I don't think it was the case that they thought an airplane was going to come and crash into our school. But there was definitely this sense that whole day, and in the days that followed, that we need each other, that we need to be together.

Isn't it something though? At times of tragedy, times of great stress, we really do find out what we're made of, don't we? And so it was in that day that what I witnessed was a real vulnerability and a desire to connect with one another. A recognition that we're not going through this alone. We can't go through this life by ourselves. We need other people. We've got to connect with other people. We need people that we can cry with and people we can pray with and people we can celebrate with. And I'm sad to say that that sense of vulnerability and that longing for connection, I'm sad to say that it only lasted a few days and then the drums of war started beating so as to distract us from the fact that we really are vulnerable and that we really do need each other. We human beings, we were created for a purpose. That purpose is love. And not just love of God, but love of one another. And that's deep, deep in our species, and it's coded in our very DNA.

And so, we need connection. We long for connection. No man is an island; no woman is an island. We long for that connection, and yet, sadly, we are disconnected as ever, aren't we? There's an abundance of research that's being done, that has been done for some years now, tracking loneliness in Western culture. And it would appear, as the research suggests, that the number of people who report being lonely increases, increases. Loneliness is a part of life. There's no escaping it. But what we're talking about here is loneliness that endures day in and day out. And over time, that loneliness starts to have effects on us. And so concurrently, we also see in research the incidence of anxiety and depression is also increasing in the West, in Western societies. We really are at a crisis point for loneliness.

We seem to have forgotten that we're made for relationship, we're made for friendship, we're made for love. And I see it; I see it every day in Belize where I work. Very frequently, just for, just for grits and shins, I'll ask the congregation where I am, I'll say, how many of you, how many of you, don't raise, I'm not asking you to raise your hands. How many of you have, but think for a minute, how many of you have a really good friend in your life? And what I'm talking about is this, somebody who knows you on your good days and bad. Somebody who knows where all the bodies are buried. Somebody who knows you. The vast majority of your dirty little secrets. Do you have somebody like that in your life? If you do, consider yourself blessed. Because when I ask my congregations in Belize, no one ever raises their hand. Nobody trusts anybody enough to have that kind of a friendship. As I mentioned the other day, Belize is a big, small town. Everybody already knows each other's business. And so, you kind of keep to yourself. You're guarded. You're careful about what you reveal to whom. But what a lonely, suffocating existence that is, to keep all those secrets bottled up inside. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say, you're only as sick as your secrets. And that's a way of saying ‘do not keep secrets’. You got to find somebody. And you don't broadcast your secrets, but you got to have somebody. You got to have somebody. This friendship that we long for, this is so important for us.

And I'll tell you what, it was very important for St. Francis Xavier as well. During the years at the University of Paris, Francis Xavier, his two roommates, Peter Favre, and Ignatius Loyola, they shared one room together. For some five or six years, they shared that room together. If you live in close quarters like that, either you come out the other side best of friends or worst of enemies. Thankfully, they became best of friends. And that friendship served as the backbone of the founding of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius even referred in a letter to those early companions in the society, he referred to us as friends in the Lord. Now, he only used that phrase one time that we know of in his writings, but it's an idea that picked up traction and that really does inform who we Jesuits understand ourselves to be, that we are connected on a deep level, and that was so true with Francis Xavier. Yeah, put yourself in his place for a moment. He gets on a boat. It takes months on a boat for him to reach the farthest reaches of the world. And there aren't other Jesuits around, or maybe there are just a couple of Jesuits around.

But what happened? He got very lonely. Now, Francis Xavier was a bit of a maverick. He was a bit of a loner anyway. But even as a loner, he felt very much alone. And so, when he would receive letters from Rome, and the letters would take about a year to reach him. So, once a year, he's getting a letter. When he would get the letters from Rome, he would cry because Ignatius would sign the letter. And just seeing his close friend's signature was enough to bring him to tears. And so Xavier had a practice whenever Ignatius would write the names of other Jesuits, Xavier would cut those names out of the letters and he would put them in a pouch and he would wear them around his neck, close to his heart to remind him that even though he's thousands and thousands of kilometres away from his friends, that they're still right here. The friendship was so important to him. And in those painful, dark moments, the moments of confusion and fear and whatever else he battled with, I can only imagine him clasping that pouch around his neck, tightly, to feel the love that his brothers had for him. And it was likewise the other direction. The Jesuits in Europe loved to receive these letters from Francis. They shared the letters with one another. They passed them out at the schools. They read them to the students. They rejoiced in what their friend was doing.

Ah, these bonds of friendship, these are so real and so important. and I fear sisters and brothers that in Western society we're losing the importance of it and social media yeah I don't mean to sound like an old head complaining about social media and screen time but yeah I am for a minute because it is a problem you know you look up social you look at social media and it would have you believe that we've got all these friends who how many friends do you have who how many followers do you have they're not friends And they're not followers. Social Media does the opposite of connection. It's the opposite of friendship. Friendship is about being honest. Friendship is about taking off the masks and revealing who you are. Friendship is about being vulnerable with somebody. Social Media is the exact opposite. Social Media is about putting on masks and pretending for all your followers that you got it all figured out. as you post the umpteenth picture of your fancy meal that you had or whatever. I don't know why people post pictures of their food, but that's okay.

The good Lord gives us friends. He puts friends in our lives. He gives us people in our lives to be friends with, and that is one way that He shows us that He loves us. It's one way that He helps us to stay alive and stay healthy. But even more than that, our good Lord wants to be our friend. There's a beautiful line that comes up frequently in the Spiritual Exercises where Ignatius writes that at the end of your prayer period, you should just have a conversation with Jesus. He says, ‘As one friend to another’. As one friend to another! That Jesus isn't often some distant heaven looking down on you like a condescending king. No, He's your friend. He's your buddy. As we say in Belize, he's your two-five. He's right there with you. This is something for us to think about. I want to invite you today maybe to think about who your true friends are. Who are those people in your life that you can really be yourself with? Who are the people that you can really let down your hair with and take the masks off? Who are the people that you trust enough that you'll let them challenge you? Who are the people that, when tragedy strikes, are the first ones you call on the phone? Who are those people that, when you win the lottery, they're the first ones you call? Other than Father Brendan, if you win the lottery, remember, 10% comes to the church. Who are the people in your life who'll tell you when you got a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth? Those are your friends. And I want to invite you today to take a minute to thank God for your friends, but more than that, I want to invite you to pick up the phone and call and tell them thank you.

NOW LET US PRAY THE NOVENA PRAYER.

O most kind and loving saint, in union with you I adore the Divine Majesty. The remembrance of the favours with which God blessed you during life, and of your glory after death, fills me with joy; and I unite with you in offering to Him my humble tribute of thanksgiving and of praise, I implore of you to secure for me through your powerful intercession the all-important blessing of living and dying in the state of grace. I also beseech you to obtain the favour I ask in this Novena …...here ask for the favour you wish to obtain…. but if what I ask is not for the glory of God or for the good of my soul, obtain for me what is most conducive to both. Amen.

Let us pray…

O God, who was pleased to gather into your Church the peoples of the East by the preaching and miracles of blessed Francis, mercifully grant that we, who honour his glorious merits, may also imitate the example of his virtues, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.