Today is the Feast of the Holy Family, and it is a repeat talk. Those
of you who are regular attendees at the Mass in Christ the King know
by now that there are three times in the year when this particular
priest repeats. Personal reasons, promises I made a long time ago
about these three times: February, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes,
the Miracles of Lourdes; and then in May, letters that little kids
write to God; and now, in December, when we are together for the
Feast of the Holy Family, the Feast of the Holy Family repeat,
because of a promise I made in 1968 to God....

In 1968, it was summer time. I was a teacher. So we had the summer
free. So, my brother (And I told you this before.), my brother was a
recovering drug addict, heroin. And he was recovering in California,
Santa Monica, a great big rehab. It really worked. I mean, it did. It
healed and cured thousands of people. Thank you, God. My brother
called to me in Poughkeepsie and said, “Well you have the summer off
and you’re a teacher. We are opening a school here. Would you come
and teach for the summer, teach our kids, the kids of the addicts and
the alcoholics? It’s a big complex.” And I said, “Certainly.” And I
got there and taught the kids for the summer. At the end of the
summer, they had what is called “a stew.” A stew, you know how you
put everything in a stew, meat and potatoes and onions and.... This
stew was to put a group of us in a circle. (They did this all year
long, but I got in for the summer stew, seventy-two hours!) When it
was over, it was the end of the summer. I was going to go back to New
York and teach. Seventy-two hours! He said, “I think it would be a
good experience for you” my brother said, “to see how we can help
people get recovered.” And you know now about twelve steps, addicts
yelling at addicts to get addicts better. They know the lingo. They
have it from the viscera. They know the right words to say to the
same diseased people. And it did work. Thank you. It did, for
thousands of them. Anyhow, I said, “Certainly. I would be glad to
bring my distinguished presence to this ensemble.”

There I was. And they were shouting at each other, yelling at each
other. “Group therapy” is all too discreet a term for the turmoil. My
leg was going up and down like a jackhammer. I thought, “I certainly
hope that these people know that I’m a priest” (I was wearing normal
clothes.) “and they won’t yell at me!” They yell at each other to
heal each other, and it worked. Anyhow, there was a lady sitting
(There were twenty-four of us, twenty-four of us in a circle in this
big room overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, really a
lovely setting to get better.) We were in the circle and there were
about twenty-four of us for seventy-two hours, you know different
shifts. But this was my final two hours. I had done seventy. The next
day, I was going to go back to New York to teach. It was the end of
the summer. And the lady was sitting over here, four seats to my
left. Let’s call her “Joanne.” They were all shouting at each other.
Guys shouted at guys, and women at women. Let’s call her Joanne, and
some of the women started shouting at Joanne. Tough love! “Joanne,
you never visit your baby!” She had arrived at this place, pregnant,
not married. She had had her baby there and the baby was in the
nursery of the rehab. They had a beautiful nursery and school. “You
never visit your baby,” they shouted and yelled at her. She was so
glacially cool. You could smoke cigarettes in those days and she
(large inhale and dramatic exhale). How I envied her savoir-faire! My
leg was going! Yelling at her, “Visit your baby! You had your baby
and we’re taking care of it and you’re the mother....” And then
another lady said, “And, wait a minute! When we get here, part of our
recovery is we should contact the people whom we’ve hurt in our
addicting days. And you’ve got somebody, your mama, you told us once,
and your mama’s in San Francisco. Call your mama. Tell here you’re
OK. The baby is healthy. Whether your mother wants to hear it or not
doesn’t matter. Her reaction is not important. You must do it for
your own spirituality.” They used words like that. But she just
smoked her cigarette. They kept shouting, “Call your mother. Call
your mother. Call your mother. You got to make amends.” Finally,
she.... (Joanne put out her cigarette and she spoke. She had a very
thin, delicate voice, but you could hear her over the Pacific.)
“Leave me alone. I cannot call my mother. She died three weeks ago.”
There was dead silence. And I sat there and I thought, “You bunch of
jerks!” of course, discreetly to myself. “You dopes! None of you have
a degree in psychoanalysis. None of you have taken courses in group
therapy techniques. You are all a bunch of lugs! Now what you going
to do?” I said to myself. “Her mother is dead.”

Directly across from her was a kid of seventeen, eighteen, young man.
Let’s call him “Louie.” He was a quintessential thug! I mean he had a
tight teeshirt, with the biceps bulging. I hated him on sight! And he
sat there like this, Louie the Lug! I still call him that. Louie the
Lug! Dead silence. They were all “What can we do?.... What can she
do, Joanne?” And then.... (I am rushing this. It took much longer in
real life to do what I am about to narrate.) Dead silence. Painful!
And then, the gorilla speaks, the one from Brooklyn. “Hey, uh, my
name’s Louie and I’m brought up a Catlick.” (I said, “Of course,
you’d pronounce it that way.”) “I’m brought up a Catlick and we do a
lot of Catlick stuff here. We’re sorry for our sins and how we messed
up and we say we’re sorry and we try to make amendment. Amendment, we
make amendment. Now, your mudder’s dead. You can’t help that. So, I’m
huh.” (her) “I’m huh. You pretend I’m huh, and you come over, cause
you got to say it. To get better inside here. Inside here, you got to
say it. In the Catlick Church we say it to the priest and God. You
say it to me. I’m huh! C’mon.”

She put out her cigarette. Now, this took a long time, but.... She
got up. She didn’t look left or right. She walked straight over to
him! She didn’t look at him either. “Aw right, now. Your hair’s in
your face. I can’t really see yuh. You better kneel.” Which she did,
with great magisterial dignity. She did. She knelt. She didn’t look
at him, but she knelt. “OK, now. I’m huh. Now you tell me. You say
it, cause you got to get bettah! You!” It took a while but gradually
she said, “Mom, I messed up. I’m OK. The baby’s healthy. I’m sorry I
used to say, ‘I hate you.... I hate you.’ I didn’t hate you. I’m just
sick. I’m OK. I’m getting better.” She took a long time, but her
voice was as clear as a bell. And then he said five things. And, as
soon as I got back to my room, I wrote the five things he said on a
paper napkin, which I still have. I didn’t want to forget. He said
five sentences. First, “Aw right!” (Sentence 1) “Aw right!” Now,
sentence 2, “You said you’re sorry. Now, Joanne, there’s no more time
for this misery. Joanne, there’s no more time for the guilty stuff.”
He didn’t say “stuff.” I’m cleaning up a lot of this. “So I would
say, ‘Go out and live.’ ....I would say, ‘Go out and live.’ “ She
got up. She didn’t look at him. Anyway, she came back, very slowly
and she sat down and she lit another cigarette. Now, by this time,
the sun was up. People went around slowly and turned off electric
lights, emptied ash trays. And I looked at her and she did this. I
had never noticed her do this. Took a deep, deep, subterranean breath.

Now, the next morning, and this sounds like a movie ending but it’s
absolutely true. The next morning, I was being driven in a jitney, a
little bus, to the airport in L. A. to come back. It was early
morning. This place was on the Pacific. And I’m climbing in the bus,
and she’s there out on the beach with the kid. She’s holding this
little kid up that she hasn’t seen since it was born. The kid is
gurgling with glee and the surf is crashing and the wind is blowing
the little kid’s hair. She’s just looking at him, just looking at
him. And I went back to teach Religion. Now, since I was a little boy
in Catholic School, I hated the Holy Family Feast. I came from what
is in the wretched cliche of today, a dysfunctional family.
Industrial strength dysfunctional! And I would sit there, I never
missed Mass as a little kid. Nor did my kid brother. We’d sit there.
How I hated that priest! Every Holy Family he would paint his own
family in which he had grown up in this normal Rockwellian,
translucent glow. You could see his family, they all had to adjust
halos. I wanted to bop him on his noggin, with this perfect family!
And then I would sit there. You know, kids can be so mean and cruel
in their snap judgments. And I sure was! And I would see these
families come gliding down the aisle to go to communion, with their
smug, self-satisfied grins! I wanted to whack them! I had to grow up
and find out. A lot of the people who put on what I thought were
these smug grins had all kinds of pain and trouble and tension which
they were hiding, hiding the sore spots, the raw spots, by smiling.
But boy, I hated them then, and I hated the priest, and I hated the
feast. I haven’t since.... I haven’t hated it since Louie. “No more
time for guilt. No more time for the misery stuff, the guilty stuff.
Go out and live.” Jesus said, Our Lord did, twice. Christ, as a grown
man, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.”
Life! He didn’t mean just up there. Christ said that. .... So did
Louie, “Go out and live.” Anyhow, I hope he is clean and sober to
this day. He certainly was spiritually smart. Amen.