Saints, Service, Holiness And The Bread Of Life

I never really knew, until this, what my husband thought about my pro-life activism. He did not come with me. Deacon Michael often told me that I could not do the pro-life work that I did, and I would not be able to save so many lives, if he were not supporting me. He really was my silent strength and now that he is gone, I realize how much I relied on him. For him, his silent strength was the Eucharist.

But he calls himself a coward. He was never in the least bit cowardly. His presence filled any room. At the mention of his name, the most frequently heard comment is always, "He was a great man." This is usually followed by a speech telling me of the amazing unheralded good things that he had done.

—-Laura Weston, widow

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I love St. Stephen. One of the reasons I love St. Stephen is that he reminds me that I am a coward, and reminds me of the depth of my faith.

Now, some of you know, but my wife is, and in the past much more active, a pro-life fanatic. She would go out and do whatever she wanted to do and she was at protests and she was doing all those things, and she would go, "Come with me, come with me."

And I was always going, "I can't come with you. I have to make the money, working a job so you have enough money so that you can go do those things." "If I went with you, who would take care of the kids?"

So one time, the kids were older, I said, "Okay, I'll go with you."

So shortly after getting there, there were policemen everywhere and everything else like that. I took umbrage at what the police were doing and, frankly I walked out into the middle of the street and confronted the policemen and started arguing with them.

I'm going (to myself), "This is not really smart."

And in another instance, probably smarter in that instance, they had the audacity of suing my wife. Now the law firm (the one that sued) knew me, and when I explained to them, "You sued my wife. We're not going to do anything by agreement and we're going to go to trial and I'm going to rip your case to shreds. And you are going to have one of the hardest fights you had in your life." They agreed to dismiss my wife.

So, but I look at St. Stephen. I love St. Stephen. Man, he just says it the way it is. And just like... finally when the policeman said, "Sir, you'd better leave or you're going to go to jail." I said, "Fine, I'm leaving." I'm a coward.

It brings to my attention, St. Stephen does, what I am called to do, what we are called to do for our faith. We are called to live our faith, including not coming up with excuses like I gave to my wife of, "Well if I went with you to Washington, D.C. or whatever it was, who would make the money so that you would have food on the table?" Legitimate excuse, but it was a cop out, let's face it.

Why, though, why is it that God gives me this faith that wants me to go out there and fight for His faith? Ahh... I still have that tendency. I had to back off sometimes. I've gotten into situations where I have to go, "Okay. That's it. I'm not going to go much farther."

And the reality that comes to me is that my faith is so important that I just love this, "I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst." The Eucharist.

That's why you crazy people get up this early in the morning. It's right there. That's why I'm crazy enough. You know, I didn't start out doing the Communion Service. I found that Fr. Bradley was doing a 6:30am Mass every morning and I went to 6:30 Mass. Before, I'd been doing it at St. Monica's. I wanted to go to Mass. I want the Body and Blood of Christ.

I love you here, Fr. Franck. Just love having you here...

But the very core comes down to: Jesus is the Bread of Life. If it weren't for Jesus, would you be the person you are without the Bread of Life?

And I ask that question. It's real simple. No you wouldn't be. You'd be someone else. Someone who is not as wonderful and special as you are. Because the Bread of Life is there at the very core.

And the question I deal with frequently is... you've seen me sometimes. I can get going. How far is God pushing me to be like St. Stephen? How far does he want me to go for my salvation? My working towards my life to be His. How far does he want me to go?

And I talk about Parkland Hospital. And one of the wonderful things about Parkland Hospital is that God just pushed me right to the limit where I was having to do things. What I remember vividly where when I just got in there, "You're going to run across rooms where it says you're going to have to put on a plastic mask and you're going to have to put on all these gowns and you have to walk in there and you have to have your face covered, and everything else.” He says, "Don't ignore it! Because you never know if we are trying to protect the patient or if we're trying to protect you. But go ahead and go on in there."

You know, that gives you pause to ponder. When you go, "Whoa!"

And so God pushes me to the edge. And I just, I mean, I just come over here by Mayve and I'm going, "No, I don't want to do that, God. Uh uh. That's the line. I'm not going to pass that line."

And in our lives we do. We go through your history and we have so many instances where you push the line.
And I love St. Stephen because he had the courage to push the line to the point of death. That he was willing to look up to heaven and see God.

"Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And then he died.

I'm not St. Stephen. Sometimes I wish I had it in me to be St. Stephen. But, I try.

And that's why I know I'm so inadequate and you've heard me say this. Thank God for Purgatory because I need my sins cleansed and I need my inadequacies cleansed because I know that as much as I want to be able to get in the front of everybody and fight for my faith to the point of death, I'm a coward. That's what it comes down to.

But when we look at our lives always remember, God isn't static. He's always pushing us, pushing us, pushing us so we can become closer and closer to Him. And sometimes there are pushes and you have this desire to resist the push, remember that it is God trying to bring you closer to Him. And it isn't a matter of pushing, it's a matter of urging forward and bringing you to Him, as opposed to, "Well, go do something that you shouldn't do, you don't want to do." It's a drawing close. That God loves us so much that he's trying to draw us close through something like Christ dying on the cross. And there we see the love of God. And we see right there the Bread of Life that is calling us always to Him.

May 7, 2019 2