I didn’t think anybody would come to Mass. You know, because
Christmas is right on top of us, “Oh, well, I’ll combine ‘em.” So,
good for you, good for you!

The phrase I want to think about with your help today is “Leap for
joy!” That’s what Elizabeth says to Our Lady, to Mary. “The minute I
heard your calling out, the baby inside of me leaped for
joy!” ...Leaped for joy! Christmas is almost upon us, and Christmas
is a time for repeats, a repeat of the Christmas carol, repeat of
Christmas singing, repeat of ...my homily because, for me, it’s my
Christmas Story. Right after the gospel, for me personally, it’s the
Christmas Story. And it’s true and it has a young mother and a
newborn baby and it even has a dumb shepherd. And the shepherds were
very dumb in Our Lord’s day. They were. They were the scruffy bottom
of society, shepherds. They weren’t the male/ female models that you
see in statues of the shepherds. They were the down-and-outs, scruffy
and despised, illiterate. But they showed up at the manger, and this
story even has a kind of dumb shepherd.

It was in 1968 and it was at a drug rehab in Santa Monica, and I
volunteered to help out there in the summer. I was free from teaching
in the school year. So, I volunteered to teach there in the summer of
‘68. (Now, some of my colleagues unkindly hinted that I was committed
there, rather than volunteered.) But I volunteered because I had a
relative there and I wanted to teach in their school. They had a
nursery. They had a school. It was a great place. It healed thousands
of people, (It really did.) who are still clean and sober. Anyhow,
summer of ‘68, and at the end of the summer they had this huge group
therapy session that lasted seventy-two hours. Group therapy is a
cliche, and it doesn’t really describe what this bunch did in those
seventy-two hours. Call it “tough love fortissimo,” industrial
strength tough love, but it worked. Addicts shouting at addicts, to
help addict by addict. It works. They are still clean and sober.
Anyhow, I sat in on this seventy-two hour session, and I thought,
“Well, I’m not going to go dressed as a priest. I’ll show I can take
it. I can participate in this.” You weren’t allowed to sleep. I think
we had two hours to sleep. Eating was limited to vegetables and
fruit, the whole point being that you would be so exhausted in a good
way that you couldn’t lie anymore, or pretend anymore. And it really
did work. That was a long time ago and I still hear from people who
were healed from long sessions in that rehab. Ok. A lot of shouting!
All the shouting, and the language was not always decorous. These are
addicts getting clean and sober at last. They were using gutter
language, but they were healing each other because addict talking to
addict works.

Anyhow, there was this last seventy-two hour session and it was
getting close to dawn. It was almost over, and the various people
were shouting at other various people, telling them the truth. And
there was a young lady, two seats from me. It was in a big circle,
overlooking the Pacific, getting close to dawn, almost the end of
seventy-two hours. There was this young lady, two seats from me, to
my left, and she never said a word. Very thin, long almost diaphanous
blond hair. In those days, they allowed smoking cigarettes, and she
smoked serenely, while all the shouting was going on. And finally,
they decided, the women in the group turned to her. It was her turn
to be on the hotseat, so to speak. She was clean and she was free of
drugs for awhile. But some of the other ladies in the group began to
indict her to heal her. I know you understand how it can work that
way. “Hey, Joanne, why don’t you visit your kid?” Joanne came into
this place” (They had a nursery.) “with her newborn child and she
hasn’t even visited the kid. We take care of the kid in the nursery.
And another thing, you never spoke to your mother since you got here.
Her mom is the only person she still has in the family and she
doesn’t call her mom.” I listened because I was hearing some good
moral theology. “You should know that one of the first things we do
when we are clean and sober is we call the people we hurt. You must
have hurt your mother. So, call her. Call her.”

I remember thinking, “Oh, I hope they don’t turn on me and yell at
me!!” And I remember thinking, “Oh, she is so cool. She’s glacial.
She’s not being ....” Finally, she stubs our her cigarette and she
said, “Would you leave me alone?” She spoke very gently and therefor,
there was instant silence. It was a freeze on the whole room. “My
mother,” (They came from a lot of money, very wealthy. She did, came
from a lot of money.) “...when I was having this baby and my mother
said, ‘Terminate it! .... Terminate it’.... I did that once when I
was bombed out of my mind. I’m not going to do it with this
second. ...’Get rid of it!’ My socially aware mother.... And I came
here. So don’t shout at me! And I don’t want to see my kid...” (She
had a daughter.) “... because I don’t want anything of my mother or
me to be absorbed by this kid. I am going to leave the kid free of
me.” She didn’t say it the hammy way I’m doing it. She said it very
icily. They kept shouting at her, “Well, at least, call your mother.
Call your mother...” And then she looked up and she tossed back that
blond hair and she said, “I cannot call my mother. She died last
week.” And I thought, scrunching back in my chair, “You idiots!” to
the group, I thought. “You’re not licensed therapists! You’re not
real psychologists or shrinks. And how dare you shout at this lady!
What’s she supposed to do now, if the mother died?. You dopes. You
don’t know....” Of course, I kept that discreetly to myself.

And then, Lou the Lug spoke. That isn’t his real name, but let’s call
him “Lou the Lug” and “Joanne” is not her real name. Lou the Lug was
from Brooklyn. He was a real thug.... you know, t shirt, big lug,
thug, dope, jerk, like a shepherd.... to me. See, all I could think
of that session.... new mother, new baby, all I could think of was
Christmas for some reason. “Hey, uh, Joanne...” This was he, the Lug.
And I thought, ugh! because he had spoken previously to other guys in
the group, dropping his g’s, splitting his infinitives, dangling his
participles. I thought, “Oh no! This is really the bottom of the
barrel.” ...”Hey, Joanne.” (I wrote notes down as soon as that
session ended. I ran to my little room, and I still have them.) And
he said, “I was brought up Kattlick and I believe that stuff. She can
heah ya, so pretend ah’m huh. Pretend ah’m huh and tell me you’re
sohry, that you’re OK now. Yuh gotta because that’s the way we get
bettah, is to make amends.” I thought “This, oh...!” But she got up.
She did. She didn’t look at anybody but she stood up, very thin,
delicate cheekbones, and she walked across the rug, not looking at
anybody. It was a long time, walking across the rug. But he had been
hammering at her. I am trying to make it short. “Awright now, now
kneel down.” And she did. She knelt. She didn’t look at anybody. She
certainly didn’t look at Lou the Lug. And he said it again, “I was
brought up Kattlick and I believe that stuff. She can hear you but
you got to say it for you, for you.” And then she said three things.
“Mother, I am sorry. I messed up. I know you were trying to do the
best you could but I had the baby this time and I believe you can
hear me. So, hear me.” (She took much longer than I am doing it,
but...) Then he said, “Awright, now there’s no more time for guilt.”
He said it twice. “There’s no more time for guilt. You should go out
and live. Go out and live.” And then I thought, “I had six years of
premiere theology in the seminary and I have just heard it
encapsulated by this gorilla!” Sin. Then Jesus comes. He is born.
Redemption. We are saved. We are all right. We do penance and we make
our amends. That’s the theology of the redemption. If there were
never any sin, we didn’t need Jesus to come to save us. And this lug
summed it up, the whole theology of Christmas. A child is born to
grow up and be one of us and save us. And we go out. And Jesus said
twice, in the gospels, that “I came that you might have life, and
have it more abundantly.” And Our Lord didn’t just mean “up there.”
Not from the Aramaic Greek. “I came that you might have life and have
it more abundantly, more richly.” ....I grew up Kattlick and I
believe that stuff.


Anyhow, it was almost the end of the session. I fled the room and
jotted down these little things I have saved all these years. The sun
had come up by now and people were emptying the ash trays and
blowing out the candles in the room. I think the last thing I saw of
Lou was he was eating oatmeal, a big bowl. The next morning, I got in
a jitney (That’s a little bus.) to go to the airport in L.A. And as
we were pulling out of the driveway of this drug rehab she was there.
She was on the beach, Joanne. And she was holding up her daughter.
And they were both laughing. The kid was gurgling with the breeze
coming in from the sea, the ocean. ...”I grew up Kattlick. I believe
that stuff.” That was a long time ago....And I still hear from a
couple of people in that session, and metaphorically speaking, when
we would remember that, and we always do at Christmas, we kind of
“leap for joy!”