St. Joseph of the Lakes

And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father,
and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Jn 14:21

 When I was pastor of St. Bernard’s in 2009 there arrived a group of Burmese refugees. Unlike earlier days when the Hmong and Vietnamese refuges came to our country there was no one to sponsor this new group. They had access to our economic support systems but there was no person assigned to help them understand what it was like to live in America.  I found myself becoming a “sponsor” of a large part of the community partially because they were Catholic and in need of guidance, but mostly because they needed to be loved. In their home country they were burned out of their villages and hunted down to be put to death by the dominate ethnic group (the Burmese). They had escaped to refugee camps in Thailand, but that country did not want them. Finally, the United Nations declared them to be world refugees and the pathway to entering a new country emerged.

These were a people who no one loved. In encountering them and hearing their stories my heart went out to them. I sought many different ways to reach out to them and as best as I could to provide for their needs. I went from being “father” to being “dad” in the way I interacted with them. In that transformation I began to understand what it really meant to love Jesus in a real way. The more I loved them, the more it became clear that they were Jesus for me. That revelation continued to grow even though I experienced their flaws and pettiness. I saw Jesus in their weakness and became to understand that it was in that encounter that they best revealed Jesus. 

I carry this with me in my pastoring today, but I apply it differently. Many of us have people we need to care for, perhaps older parents; disabled family members; or difficult neighbors. Instead of looking upon the difficult people with impatience and resignation I advise others (and practice myself) to look upon them as revealers of Jesus Christ, especially in that person’s weaknesses. I find that if I can help someone see that they are loving Jesus in that person, they begin to see him reveal himself to them as they practice that love. It can become a powerful moment for the person who loves Jesus.