How deep is our faith?
April, 2026. Early spring. Life returns. Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
April this year: crazy, senseless wars. Dictators flourishing. The whole world hanging by a thread. Our senses dulled by overstimulation, overdoing it, and lack of silence.
This April for me: lots of personal struggles. Parkinson’s making inroads. Don’t like being restricted as to where I go and how I get there! Chance to be heroic? Well, at least cheerful. Interested in others. Trusting a little more in God. Finding my sense of humor.
The Church at this time: a pope who invites all to the table of charity, kindness, forgiveness. Reverent worship being restored. But reverence towards one’s opponent? Towards those who disagree with my point of view? Am I ready to sit at this table as well?
And prayer? How deep is our faith in God’s action, God’s mercy, God’s victory? Am I ready to suffer with and for those who suffer with Christ for our Church and our world today?
Oh yes… Parkinson’s. Is that, more and more, to be my contribution to all this? Not Parkinson’s per se, but what I do with it on this beautiful but cool spring day in April?
By the way, I like the way this pope welcomes all with an open heart. I wonder, when he gives a hard saying, if he would be willing to suffer with me a little as I try to receive it and understand and accept it? I have a feeling he would at least pray for me, and that thought brings me a measure of peace!
Christ suffered for all, and endured the painful anguish that all human beings eventually must undergo. Many, perhaps, want nothing to do with him, but even that rejection he carries for the sake of the salvation of the rebellious. And who of us isn’t part of that rebellious multitude?
So, as you can see, perhaps, the writer of this column is going through some adjustments in his life. Parkinson’s is developing and following its natural course.
That means I am having increasing difficulties with walking, maintaining balance, and otherwise focusing on tasks that require some natural agility (like handwriting or getting dressed or flossing my teeth).
I have tried not to bore our readers with detailed descriptions of the various stages of this illness through the years (coming up to 16 this spring). And I promise I will try to maintain that policy for the most part.
At the same time, I want to continue to write a column with honesty and with an eye towards the mystery of Christ revealing himself through all the circumstances of our lives, including illness and diminishment.
I feel like I have little to congratulate myself about with regard to how I am bearing up with all of this. But even that poor performance is part of the spiritual journey, learning about oneself and about the patience and the mercy of God.
When we do well in the trials God sends, we can thank him for his many graces that make such a thing possible for poor human beings. But when we are only so-so, up-and-down, and warm-then-cool about these things, we can at least grow in humility.
Humility, that is, from the repeated discovery of the depths of human weakness and our difficulty in accepting it as our fate. In the end, I suppose we all will be invited to be as little children who, in receiving all, give so much by their very littleness and vulnerability.
They are signs to us of something so deep about ourselves—without him we can do nothing. In him we live and move and have our being. It’s hard, Lord, to be such a child when one isn’t a child any longer. Or am I?
The next thought is that this thing about diminished being, and less engagement with life itself, is not true! If my being is “in him,” there’s no telling how vast is the scope of a newborn babe’s cry, or that of a long-ago newborn, now old and decrepit.
The cry of the infant is one with that of a whole world. The groan of an elder is that of every elder on earth, for Christ is one with all. Whether or not I am cognizant of this, is not all this the prayer of mankind rising in anguish and in hope that one day God will raise us all to be one with his Risen Son?
These are the days when we celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord. In his life on earth before the Resurrection, Jesus showed how he trusted the Father in all things, so much so that they were “one” in a fantastic unity beyond our experience.
On the Cross he cried out to his Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And receiving no apparent answer, he prayed, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” and then “It is finished!” And he breathed forth his Spirit upon all creation, fulfilling his mission to the very last breath.
The Father’s response to the obedience and trust of his beloved Son came on Easter morning when Jesus was raised from the dead in his human body which was now filled with the transforming glory of the Spirit. God’s Son now recovers his glory as Son of God, but remains Son of Man. Having shared our humanity for all eternity, he shares his divinity with us; now in weakness and one day, in glory.
Now we cry out, as Jesus once cried out, in poverty and weakness of the flesh. And Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, brings that same cry to his Father—his and ours. And he breathes forth the Spirit upon us.
What gifts does that Spirit bring us? The gifts that poor people need: faith, trust in God for another day, assurance that God is faithful to his promises, comfort in the day of trial, laughter in the day of sorrow, joy in being so little and so poor, a grateful heart. Armed with such as these, we can face another day, or another sleepless night, with equanimity.
For God, who shares his poverty with us, cannot fail to raise us up with Christ in glory. Christ is truly risen, alleluia!
