When Pope John XXIII was dying in the early 60’s, someone asked him,
“What do you want to say when you rise from the dead and meet all the
people you have loved, who will rise from the dead? What do you want
to hear?” And John XXIII said, “I just want to hear ‘Welcome!’ I want to hear, ‘Welcome.’“ This is November, and in the Roman Catholic Church, it has been a long tradition that, in November, we remember the dead who will rise again, as Our Lord in the Gospel just
now insists, not some amorphous, globulus memory, but physically rise
as he did on Easter Sunday. And the Gospel today insists on that.

OK. You’re trapped out there and it’s my turn to talk. So I want to
talk about three people that I want to meet when I rise. I like them
and I want to meet them. Some of you may identify with some qualities
of at least one of the three. One was a grumbler, terrible temper.
Another one spent her whole life saying, “Ah can’t seem to please
anybody!” A Southern lady, “Ah can’t seem to please anybody ever.”
And the third was a bumbler and a fumbler who became a Pope.

The first one is Damien, Damien the Leper. My father had a book about
Damien and, on the front of the book on the Life of Damien the
Leper... (Damien was the priest who went out and worked with the
lepers on the Island of Molokai, off the coast of Hawaii. He went out
there as a young priest and he died there, years later.) Anyhow, my
father had a book, “Damien the Leper.” And the front page had a
picture of the young Damien the day he was ordained. And he looked
like the young Tom Cruise. (You might not like Tom Cruise, but it
doesn’t matter.) But Tom Cruise, when young, had conventional,
symmetrical, handsome, American looks. And so did Damien, this young
Belgian, very handsome guy. And when he was ordained, all the guys
who had just been ordained stood in front of the bishop. This was in
Belgium, in Brussels. They had just been ordained. They are standing
there, and the bishop said to the young priests, “Would one of you
please volunteer to go to the Island of Molokai and work with the
lepers? They have no priest. They have never had a priest.” And we
read that all of the guys stepped back. But Damien was thinking of
something else. (He admitted it!) And he found himself still
standing. The bishop, we are told, said “Deo Gratias! Thanks be to
God, Damien!” In less than a month, he was making his way to Molokai,
the lsland for the lepers, and the ocean liner left him off quite a
distance from the island. So Damien had to climb into a canoe and
paddle his way alone. And he would stay on that island with lepers
alone for decades, decades. First thing he did was build a small
chapel, a small log chapel. But the second thing he did, he gathered
the lepers and he taught them simple irrigation, simple ways of
bathing themselves, simple ways of growing some food. He taught them
some practical stuff in addition to building a chapel. Now, he has
not been canonized a Roman Catholic saint because he was a terrible
grouch. He was a cantankerous curmudgeon! But never, never, never was
he grouchy with a leper, never... never. But he was grouchy. His
letters should be on asbestos. They were so hot! He sent letters to
Honolulu to the Medical Bureau for decades, “Send me some machinery I
could use. Send me some bandages. Send me some bedding. Send me some
medicine.” And they cheerfully blew him off, for years. He was alone
there for years. Terrible temper. By the way, somebody told me two
weeks ago, “You know Michael, all that surpressed rage is impacted
anger in you. Your hidden anger is toxic!” Isn’t that a great word,
“toxic”? I thought, “He doesn’t know me!” But now, I think he does.
But Damien didn’t hide his temper. He exploded, letter after letter,
yelling at the Medical Board, “Send me some help!”

In my father’s book, the last page is a page of Damien at the end.
Now, one day, many years after he arrived, Damien was boiling water
for tea. He had just awakened. It was early morning, boiling water
for tea, and the little pot spilled and the scalding water ran all
over his bare feet. He had just gotten out of bed and he didn’t feel
a thing, not a thing, no pain. He knew at that moment, since the
cells on his epidermis were dead, that he had caught the disease.
After all those years of getting up every morning and talking to the
lepers in the little chapel, “You lepers must hold onto the cross of
Christ. You lepers are sharing the sufferings of Jesus. You lepers
are loved by the Lord, “ that morning, he said, “WE lepers must hold
onto the cross of Christ.” And he died and that picture at the back
of the book, he is a horror. He is out of a horror movie. The leprosy
has totally destroyed his hands and his face. But, even as an old
man, leaning on the cane, you can see through his glasses, those same
eyes, glowing with idealism and purpose. But, he had a bad temper, so
they haven’t canonized him yet!

The next is a woman, a Southern Catholic lady. She grew up in the
South, and she died in the South. She died at 39 of lupus. She is one
of the greatest short story writers and novelists who ever lived,
which is acknowledged. She was a Catholic. But that’s not why I love
her, Flannery O’Connor. In here lifetime, she was acknowledged as a
supreme writer. But she spent her life, writing letters. They are
hilarious. I read them once a year, hilarious letters to people, all
over the country. She was Southern. She often says, “Ah can’t do
anything ever to please anybody!” She wasn’t grouchy. She was making
a declarative sentence, “I can’t please anybody.” She would write
these wonderful short stories. But they were always about people in
the South, struggling with grace, wrestling with grace. One guy in
Hollywood wrote and said, “ I want to make a movie of one of your
stories, but who is this ‘Grace’? We never seem to see her!” Flannery
said, “Forget about it!” Can’t please anybody. Her mother would say
to her, cause her stories were short stories, printed in obscure
intellectual magazines until she got famous... Her mother would say
to her, just the two of them living on this farm, and Flannery was
already sick with lupus. She had to wear these crutches, “Flannery
Honey, why don’t you write something that will make some bucks? Like
Gone With the Wind? Write Gone With the Wind!” Flannery said, “No, I
don’t want to write Gone With the Wind. I want to write about people
struggling with grace, struggling with salvation.” They are not
boring stories. They are hilarious. But, that’s what she wanted to
write. Her other relatives said, “Why don’t you write about sweet
priests and lovely nuns. You’re a Catholic, living in an area,
surrounded by non-Catholics. You should write about sweet little
priests and kind, cute little nuns.” And Flannery O’Connor said,
“Never! That’s not what I want to write.” Can’t please anybody. She
was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize because gradually critics all
over the country said, “WHO is this woman, writing these incredible
stories?” All over the country, not Catholics. So the Pulitzer Prize
Committee met at Columbia University and they were all voting to give
her the Pullitzer Prize. You know, American Literature. And one guy
put up his hand, Edmund Wilson, “You cannot give Flannery O’Connor
the Pullitzer Prize for Literature.” ... Why not? “She is a Roman
Catholic and therefor, her mind is chained to the Vatican.” When
Flannery heard that she said she laughed for an hour. “Unchain me,
Pope. Unchain me!”

Now, in bookstores around here, you can go into some of these
bookstores and you can sit down and read and no one hassles you. They
leave you there. If any of you should be in a bookstore, go to the
Literature section and just pick out “The Short Stories of Flannery
O’Connor.” I know I shouldn’t be waving a silly book, but I need a
prop. This is a prop, “Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor.” There
is one story there which is basically the reason why she kept winning
prizes, although they wouldn’t give her the Pullitzer. It’s called
“Revelation.” That’s easy to remember, Revelation. It is the single
best short story I ever read in my life, despite the fact she was a
Catholic. I taught this stuff for thirty years. It really is the best
short story I ever read. And the last paragraph of Flannery
O’Connor’s “Revelation” is incandescently beautiful. It’s very short,
and in a couple of sentences, she sums up everything that Christ was
trying to tell human beings, in one short sentence at the end of
“Revelation.” And she died finally. People would come and take her
picture. She said, “Don’t take pictures of me. I’m ugly.” She said,
“I’m no Hollywood movie star,” and she wasn’t. She had these aluminum
crutches. She died at 39. She said, “I got the homeliest face in
Georgia.” She said, “Don’t take a picture of me. Take a picture of
that.” She grew peacocks in this area. One day, a New York Times guy
came down to interview her for this big article, and he was going to
take her picture. And she’s there. We have the picture, and the sun
is bouncing off her big glasses and the sun is bouncing off her
aluminum crutches and she’s no beauty. But she said to the guy, “Look
there.” And the guy from the Times looked and there was a peacock. At
that very moment, the peacock was spreading its great tail with all
those golden suns in the tail. And Flannery O’Connor said to the guy
from the Times, “That’s beautiful! And that’s how Jesus will come at
the Resurrection, just Beauty!” And the New York Times guy didn’t
laugh. He stared. Anyhow,when she was safely dead, they awarded
Flannery O’Connor the most prestigious award you can give, short of
the Nobel Prize, The National Book Award. She was dead and it was
safe to give it to her then. “Ah can’t please anybody ever,” she
wrote in one of her last letters.

OK, and the third and last was a Pope when I was a young priest. He
is the guy I told you in the beginning who said the thing he wants to
hear at the Resurrection, his and the people he has loved, is
“Welcome!” The day he was elected Pope, the New York Times had,
outside the refectory.... (That’s where we ate. We were studying to
be priests.) And we had a new Pope and they had all the pictures of
all the Cardinals who were candidates for the Papacy. There were a
couple of hundred it seemed. All the Cardinals, big color
photographs. And, in the center, they had a picture of the pope who
had just died, Pope Pius XII. Pope Pius XII, tall, lean, saturnine.
He looked like El Greco on steroids. His face was drawn. He could
speak five languages fluently, first-class intellect, ascetic, lean,
kind of the way a Pope should look. Pius XII, great, great, brilliant
man. But we had just elected the new Pope. And the guy who led us out
to look at the pictures was the class president. Let’s call him
“Bob.” Bob was six feet three, the body of a male underwear model. He
would tell us stories after summer vacation. In those days, in summer
vacation, you dressed like a seminarian, black stuff... He said, “A
woman climbed into the cab with me at Grand Central. She said to me,
“Why are you dressed like that?” And I told her I was studying to be
a priest. And she said, “What a waste!” He told that story a lot!
Anyhow, Bob, the Class President, led us out to look at the photos.
And there was Pius XII, central casting Pope. He was a great Pope and
he looked it. And Bob said, “To go from this to THAT!” And THAT was a
picture of the new Pope who was very fat and very small and very
old... And when they put him in a chair, he sank in the cushions and
he looked like an ecclesiastical frog! He did. He was 77 and very
sick and everyone admitted... They did. The cardinals later admitted
they elected him as a “meanwhile Pope.” They couldn’t decide on whom
they really wanted so they elected this kind of innocuous fat little
guy. They figured he would only be Pope for a couple of years, and
then they could marshall their forces to elect someone they really
wanted. That’s a fact. And they all admitted it.

So, here we get this “meanwhile Pope,” taken for granted and
unattractive and kind of a joke. And the first week he was Pope he
got lost. He was wandering around the Vatican garden. He fully knew
why he was Pope. It was just kind of a joke for a few years. He was
wandering around the Vatican garden and he found a gate. (This was in
the newspapers all the next week.) He found a gate open and he walked
out, Vatican City, out of the Vatican garden. And he walked around.
He was gone for six hours, walking around, talking. He passed one
woman who was selling fresh fruit, and she said, in a stage whisper,
“God, he’s fat!” And the Pope turned and said, “I can assure you,
Madam, infallibly, my election was not a beauty contest.” He knew it.
He knew it. He was gone for hours. You can imagine the Pope in the
Vatican, missing! When he got back at the end of the day, through
the garden gate, and walked into this big corridor in the Vatican,
the Secretary of State, who was another Cardinal, but extremely
severe, naturally, “Where have you been?!” You could shout at the
Pope in those days, because he was taken for granted. He was fat
and... unimportant, really. And this guy shouted at him, “Where have
you been?” And John, who had been pushed around all of his life,
stood his ground. And he said, “I am sorry if I have caused you
worry.” And he meant it. He meant it. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been where
a priest should be. I’ve been with people.” Anyhow, he kept doing
things that irritated a lot of the officials. He would go to the
prison once a week and talk to the prisoners. He would go to the
hospital for dying and sick children, once a week. He’d go all
through the corridors, talking to the little kids. On one occasion,
he was close to dying himself, but every week, he’d go see these
little kids. And he was here and the sick kid was way over there. And
the sick kid, way over there, kept shouting, “Papa Giovanni.... Papa
Giovanni... Come over here.” You know, a little kid yelling. Why are
you staying there so long? The Pope was sick and he was old and he
said, “Basta. Basta.” (Enough!) “I’ll get there when I get there.”
Cause he was a little ...mad. And he finally got to that kid, hopping
up and down in his bed. And he saw on the clipboard in front of the
child’s bed that the kid was dying. Now, what do you do, even if
you’re Pope, in the face of inexplicable suffering, and loss and
tragedy? And the little kid’s hopping up.... So, the Pope sat down on
the bed and he put his arm around the kid and he hugged him. And then
the kid hugged the Pope. And they stayed there for over twenty
minutes, and they were both crying, but hugging each other. What do
you do in the face of inexplicable tragedy? That’s what John did,
just held the kid. When he was dying, his best friend came to see
him. His best friend hated everything John did. The only thing they
agreed on was the Apostles’ Creed. His best friend said, “This
Vatican II is ridiculous. Don’t do it. But he loved John. He loved
the man. And when he was dying (Father Joyce mentioned this a few
weeks ago.) the Pope said to Cardinal Testa (That was the guy who was
mad at him all the time, but his best friend.).... Testa said, “How
do you feel?” The Pope said, “I want to hear the word ‘Welcome.’ I
feel like a little kid who has been in boarding school all winter
long and I’m going home and my bags are packed and I won’t waste a
minute. And I want to hear ‘Welcome.’ “ And he died. And I got to
tell you, he was the most loved human being on the entire planet. I
was in a small parish upstate New York, very anti-Catholic. It was!
Even the Catholics would call me “Sir.” But the day that he died,
that little Catholic church was packed with people, agnostics and
atheists. There were even a couple of Communists, intellectual
Communists. They were weeping. He was , as a human being, much -
loved. But taken for granted and unattractive and....

Anyhow, I want to do something now, with your help. It will only take
a minute. I am going to shut up at last in a minute. What I’m going
to do is I’m going to ask if you would do something with me, just in
silence. The gospel is about resurrection. The Church teaches we are
going to see people we lost, in the face, not a nebulous memory, in
the face. Now, that’s a little hard to believe, and I told you a
couple of years ago, I was at this class. A professor at Stanford, a
convert to the Roman Catholic Church several years ago.... He read
his way into the Church by studying arguments for and against the
Resurrection. He became convinced Christ rose, and Christ promised so
will you. We will, physically we will rise. So, I said to this
Stanford professor, “How come even some Catholics don’t quite buy the
Resurrection? They don’t..” He leaned over and he said, “When people
have suffered a long time, when people have suffered a great deal,
even good Catholics, they may think that the Resurrection of the body
and meeting people we have loved is too good to be true, too good to
be true. If some of you in this church are feeling somewhat like
that, it’s just too good to be true, pretend, just pretend with me
and Father Aidan that you are rising and you’re meeting people you
have loved, and you are seeing them. What are you going to say? What
do you want to hear in that atmosphere of welcome? Just for a minute
in complete silence.....