My mom died on this day in 2018 and was born into Heaven. Some pictures and a song remembering her wonderful life.
Mom in her butterfly costume at 10 years old.
front row left to right: my Uncle Bob and Uncle Ozzie. back row from left to right: my mom and my Aunt Ruth.
My mom’s Sophmore class at St Rosalia high school. Mom is in the back road, third from the left.
Mom’s graduating class picture. Mom is on the far right, second row.
Mom as a freshman at Mount Mercy College.
Mom, the young home economics teacher in Pittsburgh Pa.
Mom teaching a cooking school for the Union Gas Company, PA.
Mom and Dad at their wedding reception.
Dad, me, my brother Bill and my mom in Chicago, 1954.
A family photo around 1956,
Dad, Mary Ruth, me, and mom at my graduation from the College of St Thomas.
Mom and her grandson, Andy.
Mom and Dad, my brother Bill and my family.
Dad, Mary Ruth, and Mom, 1990.
Dad and Mom on their 50th wedding anniversary, opening up their papal blessing,
Mom and her great grandsons, Aidan and Ollie.
Mom and her great grandson, Ollie, 2017.
Mom’s wake, July 2, 2018.
Mom’s funeral was on July 3rd, 2018. I still miss her very much. Even when dementia started to set in, she remained the warm, compassionate person she had always been. I am so proud to be her son. Our parents shape our lives so very much. Mom and Dad prepared me to be a good man, a good husband, a good father, and a good grandfather. Happy feast day, Mom!
Here is the piano song I composed for her on her birthday in 1990. Mom had a fondness for Chinese art. She had a beautiful painting of a Chinese Mary holding the baby, Jesus.
Meditation on a Chinese Madonna, Psalm Offering 1, Opus 4 (c) 1990, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
My mother as young home economics teacher teaching in a Pittsburg, Pa inner city school.
Were it not for a fall down some stairs this past Monday, this is the final homily I would have given at St Wenceslaus Church in New Prague. Fittingly, the readings are all about being called to be disciples of Jesus. My full-time job as an ordained deacon may be ending officially on June 30th, however, following Jesus as his disciple will never end, but will carry on to the end of my life. Here is the homily I will never give.
God calls each and one of us to discipleship. Are we ready
to hear the call? Are we ready to commit ourselves in being disciples of Jesus?
The readings for this weekend are blunt as to what is expected of us as
disciples. We need to say goodbye to who we once were and open ourselves to
change, evolving into someone we never have been.
In the first reading, God tells Elijah to anoint Elisha to
succeed him as prophet. Elijah finds Elisha, the farmer, plowing his fields.
Elisha accepts but wants to go home first and tell his family. He is sharply
rebuked by Elisha. In a dramatic gesture, Elisha effectively erases all
evidence of the life he once led. He slaughters the oxen pulling the plow. He
breaks up the plow into firewood upon which he cooks the dead oxen, and then
feeds the cooked meat to his people. Then follows Elijah as his attendant. (1
Kings 19: 16b, 19-21)
In the second reading, Paul makes similar demands of the
Galatians. He tells them to abandon their former lives, and to accept the
freedom that Christ has given them. They must first embrace and commit
themselves to the commandment of Jesus to “love one another as yourself.” Paul
uses an interesting metaphor to warn them as to what will happen if they do not
commit themselves to Christ’s commandment to love. “If you go on biting and
devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” (Galatians 5:1, 13-18)
In the Gospel, Jesus is resolute about traveling to Jerusalem. A Samaritan town on the way would not put Jesus and the disciples up for the night. When asked by the apostles as to whether Jesus would call down fire and brimstone on the village, Jesus rebukes them. People come up to Jesus requesting to be his followers. However, they place conditions upon their discipleship, security for one, burying a dead parent, the other, another, to say goodbye to family. Jesus answers these requests saying, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” To be a disciple of Jesus, we must, like Elisha, erase the life we once led and fully commit ourselves to following Jesus.
My maternal grandfather, Oscar Jernstrom, sitting with my first cousin, Greta Cunningham, on the steps of their home on Kircher Street, Pittsburgh, Pa.
If we are truly in relationship with Jesus, the effect of
this relationship will alter our lives utterly. If we continue to look to our
past; if we are reluctant to leave behind who we once were; if we are unwilling
to evolve and change, then we cannot be disciples of Jesus. Our discipleship
must be the highest value we hold in our lives, otherwise, we are not ready to be
a disciple of Jesus.
To be a follower of Jesus is more than just a one time
commitment. It is not enough to say, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”
once. We must make this commitment every day upon awakening. It is what the
early Church called metanoia, a daily
conversion, turning our lives over to Christ every day. We must be willing to
change our values, how we are in relationship with others, how we are in
relationship with our Church to be true disciples of Jesus.
It is no longer enough to just rotely say our prayers and follow Church rules. To be a disciple of Jesus requires to expand our understanding of discipleship. Jesus taught that he didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. We must allow ourselves to grow prayerfully, and spiritually beyond the mere requirements and roles that the Church places upon us . We must always prayerfully discern as to what next level of discipleship we are called to by God. Our faith life cannot be frozen to just one stage of our lives.
Me, on my dad’s lap, with my brother, Bill, holding his guitar.
What is true for us is also true for our institutional
Church. There is movement within our own Catholic Church to forget Vatican II
ever happened and return the Church to the past. There are those who believe if
only we go back to “hearing Mass” in Latin, with the priest’s back turned to
us, and have priests run around in old liturgical vestments, that somehow the
Church will be “saved”. Jesus clearly stated that there is no putting new wine
into old wine skins, for the new wine will split the old wine skins. Going back
to the past will not fill our churches. On the contrary, our churches will
empty out at even a faster pace. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states
that the Church is always in a state of evolution and change. There is no going
back to what once was. As Jesus teaches today in the Gospel, “No one who sets a
hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of
God.” As a Church, we cannot go back to what we once were. If we do then we are
not fit for the kingdom of God and will fail.
As I look over my 42 years of ministry in the Church, I find that I am no longer the same person I was when I began ministry on August 31, 1977. I discovered that discipleship is not synonymous with complacency or comfort. Rather, discipleship often makes life uncertain, complicated, uncomfortable and requires sacrifice. When I was ordained a deacon by the Archbishop, not only did my life change, but the lives of Ruth and our kids. Every time I was reassigned to another church community my life was changed by the community I was serving. I was required to grow, required to sacrifice security, salary (over $20,000 in salary from 2004 to the present … thank God, Ruth is an RN), and change the values I once held as important. The one consistent in all that change was that of being surprised by God. God is a God of surprises. Sr Joan Chittester once defined God as “changing changelessness.” While God is may never change, my understanding of God is always changes. I am always in the state of being surprised. God may never change, but the disciple of God is always in the process of change.
My family (left to right) my daughter, Meg, my daughter, Beth, my lovely bride, Ruth, myself, my son, Andy, and my son, Luke (grandsons, Ollie and Owen can be seen on the far right) at my retirement open house that the parish staff of St Wenceslaus had for me on June 13th. Of all the achievements I have had in my life, my greatest achievement was marrying Ruthie in 1974, followed by the births of Andy, Luke, Meg, and Beth. They are my greatest and lasting legacy.
Come July 1st, I will be entering a new stage in my life. My
greatest discernment will be in what way will I continue to change and evolve as
a deacon, a husband, a father, a grandfather. My life is not being arrested at
this point of retirement. I am not done growing as a disciple of Jesus. I will continue to grow as a disciple, knowing
full well that I will be saying goodbye to some of the roles and ministry I had
while I was actively employed and continue to grow some roles and ministry way
beyond that which I once did.
As I take my leave as your deacon, I would like to bestow upon you a blessing. I would like to do this in a song of blessing I composed back in 1979, when I was the music director of St Wenceslaus.
God’s Love Be With You, (c) 1979, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
God of changing changelessness. God of endless surprises, confounding the confoundless. You are the God of Paradox, revealing to children, that, which you hide from the learned. Those mortals you touch, utterly transformed, Divinely refereeing matches between angelic wrestlers and mere morals, Jacob becoming the limping Israel, Moses’ staff raining down plague, terrorizing those who terrorized, the vanquished becoming vanquishers. The angel adorned ark, the secret weapon of your Covenant, the enslaved now the rulers. Shepherd royalty, blossoming deserts, lions at peace with the lambs, children playing with cobras, Angelic announcements a Virgin conception of the God/Human who serves but refuses to be served, creation murdering the Creator, the Dead not remaining dead. Divinely bestowed paradox, abundantly planted in history, who am I to question You about a broken left ankle on the Eve of my retirement?
My first communion day at St Andrew’s in Como Park, St Paul. My mother, my brother Bill and my sister Mary Ruth are kneeling behind me.
On this Sunday in Catholic parishes throughout the world, we highlight in a very special way the real presence of Jesus in Holy Communion. Formally it is called the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, or, as others call it, Corpus Christi Sunday. The Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy from Vatican II teaches that all grace flows to and from the Eucharist celebrated on Sunday. If all we do this Sunday is worship the real presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, and nothing more, then Holy Communion is nothing more than an inanimate sacred object. To illustrate this I would like to recall three Holy Communion stories from my life.
When I received Holy Communion for the first time, I was taught that Holy Communion was so sacred that to chew the host we received was a damnable offense against God. This was problematic for many of us, because we had to fast from food and water three hours before receiving Holy Communion. Often times our mouths were so dry it was hard to dissolve the host because we had no saliva with which to dissolve it. The host would stick to the roof of our mouth as we desperately tried to work up enough saliva to dissolve it.
We could never touch the consecrated host, that would damn us to Hell forever. Only a priest could touch a consecrated host. To receive Holy Communion unworthily would damn us as well. When I would go forward to receive Holy Communion as a child, I do so with great caution, with great fear, and with great reverence.
Story Number One: It was the year 1961, one year after I had received my first Holy Communion. At St Andrew’s Catholic School, we would go to Mass on Wednesday morning prior to the beginning of school classes. We were all hungry (we brought jelly sandwiches to eat after Mass), stomachs rumbling throughout Mass from hunger. One morning, I knelt at the communion rail to receive Holy Communion. As the priest came to me, I stuck out my tongue and he placed the Holy Communion on my tongue. To my great horror, the host fell off my tongue and on to my arm. The priest told me to stay where I was and NOT to move. He finished giving Holy Communion to the others, washed the sacred vessels (chalice and ciborium), ended Mass. All this time, I knelt frozen at that communion rail, barely breathing out of feat that if I moved or did anything to disturb the host precariously balanced on my arm, I would be sent to Hell forever. When the priest finally came back to me after Mass, he lifted the host from my arm, placed it in a ciborium than scrubbed my arm vigorously with steel wool to make sure that all sacred particles of the host were safely removed. It was with a great sigh of relief that I left the church that morning pulled back from I perceived was the dark chasm of perdition into which I thought for sure I would fall. It was very clear that my understanding of Eucharist was an object to be revered, feared, and adored.
The staff and students from the Masters in Pastoral Studies class at then, the College of St Thomas, in St Paul. I am in the back row, third from the right.
In the summer of 1980, I began my study in the Masters in Pastoral Studies program (MAPS for short) at the College of St Thomas. My major focus of study was sacred liturgy. I had a class entitled, Music and Movement in Liturgy, with Fr Mike Joncas (the same Mike Joncas who composed “On Eagles Wings”). Mike had finished his Masters in Sacramental Theology from Notre Dame, and had begun his doctoral work in Rome in Sacramental Theology. He is incredibly intelligent, and a remarkable professor. He also demands much from his students. He gave us one huge project to do for the class. We were to attend the worship services of other churches and religions, Christian or non-Christian. We were to experience their liturgies and analyze the sacred actions taking place, and then write a thirty page paper with annotated footnotes about our liturgical experience.
One of the churches I chose to visit was the Baptist Church in New Prague. At the time, there were four churches in New Prague: St Wenceslaus Catholic Church, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (ALC at that time), the Alliance Missionary Church, and, the Baptist Church.
I chose to go to the 7 pm Sunday night service at the Baptist Church. New Prague was so small enough at that time, that everyone pretty much knew everyone in town. My understanding was that the majority of Baptist services were strictly focused on sacred scripture and rarely had the reception of communion. As I entered the church that Sunday evening I was warmly greeted at the door. The men and women saw to my every need. I felt welcomed and they saw me to my place in the pew. Of course, being a small town, they knew where I lived and that I was the music director at St Wenceslaus Catholic Church. I explained to them that I was there to worship God with them that evening. And, truthfully, because of their warm welcome and friendliness, I felt one with them.
Wouldn’t you know it, that evening was the one evening they had a communion service. Their pastor gave a good sermon on the scripture for that evening, we sang hymns, and then, they brought out the tray with little glasses of grape juice, and communion in the form of small squares of bread. The minister explained very clearly that communion was a symbol and NOT a sign (in other words, it was not the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine), then began to read the biblical passage from Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians, chapter eleven. Looking at me directly, he read the passage that those who received the body of Christ and drank unworthily of the blood of Christ, ate and drank their own damnation. I nodded back at him, letting him know I got the hint, and as the tray of grape juice and the bread came to me, I passed it on to the person next to me, out of respect for their beliefs and their traditions about the Eucharist. What stood out for me so clearly in their worship is that while the Eucharist was not the wine and bread that people drank and ate, the Eucharist was found in the communio, the community of the people, gathered for worship.
Me at St Benedict Catholic Church, outside of New Prague.
My last story is Christmas 2011. From the time of my first hip replacement in mid June, 2011, I had not been able to get to Mass. Within a week of the hip replacement I got a MRSA infection that did not go away. I had to have that hip removed while the doctors tried to find an antibiotic that would kill MRSA but not kill me. It took them over 5 1/2 months to do that. In the meantime, I was confined to my home, hopping on one leg while using a walker to get from my bed to bathroom to my chair to bed … you get the picture. When I did venture out of the house, it was in a wheel chair to the car. All these long months from June through the end of February I was only able to go to church once and receive Holy Communion.
It was Christmas Eve. My wonderful wife, Ruthie, said, “Let’s go to the 6 pm Christmas Eve Mass. I will push you there in the wheelchair.” Fortunately, there was very little snow and the temperature was quite mild for our part of Minnesota. She pushed me in that wheelchair the two blocks to church. We sat in the wheelchair section of the church, up front. The music, the liturgy, was all very wonderful. At communion, the communion distributor came to me and gave me Holy Communion, the first time in over 6 months. As I received Holy Communion that night I felt in communio not only with the Body and Blood of Jesus that I received, but in communio with the Body of Christ gathered around me in the people at Mass, and especially in communio with my beloved Ruth who pushed me to Mass those two long blocks, and then, pushed me home, again. That Christmas was probably one of the most happy and most meaningful Christmases of my life. Holy Communion was not the static, inanimate sacred object of my childhood to be adored, received and feared. Holy Communion was not just present in the community gathered for worship. Holy Communion was the presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion received by the community and then made present by the community in how they lived what they had received.
This Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ must be opportunity for all of us to expand our understanding of the words, Holy Communion. If the Eucharist is the font to which all grace flows and from which all grace flows, then it is paramount that the grace we receive in Holy Communion be poured out into world so that all the world can be in communio with Jesus Christ. To truly honor and celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine, we cannot hoard it like some commodity or just deposit it in a sacred bank vault (the tabernacle) to be adored. We must share the grace we receive with all! In this way, it is not only in church that we give honor and respect toward the tabernacle in which Holy Communion is reserved. We will honor and respect the sacred presence of Christ in the people we encounter in the world.
The Perfect Storm, a confluence of contributing events, meteorological in origin, creations of monumental chaos swathing through human lives, human cultures, property and commerce, metaphorically as devastating as the failed human relationships of the meteorologists who named them spitefully after the former lovers who, categorically five, broke their hearts: Andrew and Maria, David and Sandy, Mitch and Irma. Why my sudden obsession with horrific, destructive storms? Philosophically, Perfect Storms are a part of the human condition which drastically shape our lives growing and revealing themselves like the confluence of lasix I washed down with twenty ounces of coffee making its presence known in a most frightening way as I am stuck in gridlock traffic.
(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
My diaconal ordination class, September 24, 1994. Ruth and I are in the very front row.
On September 24, 1994, I, along with 8 other men, were ordained to the permanent diaconate of the Archdiocese of St Paul and Minneapolis by Archbishop John Roach at the Cathedral of St Paul. I composed piano music for each one of my classmates as an ordination present (heard on this blog from time to time). For the ordination Mass, I composed the hymn, “Abba, Yeshua, Ruah” (Abba is Aramaic for Father, Yeshua is Aramaic for Jesus, and Ruah, Hebrew for Spirit). The text I wrote for the hymn describes the life of being a servant/disciple of Jesus. As Jesus says many times in the Gospels, discipleship is not easy, but it is to be the destiny of all Christians. The Roman Catholic deacon is to personify Jesus as “Servant of God.”
My brother deacons: (back row left to right) Jerry Ciresi, Tom Semlak, and Bill Beckfeld. (front row left to right) By Rudolphi, Tom Coleman, John Mangan, Dominic Ehrmantraut, myself, and Dick Pashby.
When a deacon is ordained, in many ways his whole family is ordained as well. His ordination impacts their lives. This is why before a man is ordained to the diaconate, his family MUST approve his ordination. I have always maintained, that of the two of us, Ruthie would be the better deacon. It is with this lived knowledge that I urge the Pope to restore the ordination of women to the diaconate. The Church would be so very well served in so doing.
The moment of ordination with the “laying on of hands” by the Archbishop.
Here is the text of the hymn:
Abba, Abba. May we be dwellings of your Holy Love, the love which You grace all below, above. May we be dwellings of your Holy Peace, the peace for which all souls search and seek. You loved so much that you sent your Son. Only in You can we live as one, Dwell in us Father, so that all may feel, the touch of your love and your peace-filled will.
Yeshua, Yeshua, May we be servants of You, Eternal Word, Servants of You, compassionate Lord. O may we seek you among the very least, Inviting all to the Father’s feast. You loved so much that You gave Your life. You conquered our death so that we may rise. O loving Jesus, may our bodies be Your living Body for all to see.
Ruah, Ruah. O Holy Spirit, come and make us whole, enflame our hearts, our minds, our souls. Inspire our actions, our fears relieved so we may give to others what we’ve received. Vessel of hope on our world outpour, Your healing breath our lives restore. Infuse our lives now with Your holy gifts so in You, source of love, we may always live. Abba, Yeshua, Ruah.
My diaconal class the first year of formation, September 1991.
The recording that is presented here is that which we heard at the ordination Mass on September 24, 1994. You can hear the wonderful live acoustics of the Cathedral of St Paul (the acoustics are wonderful for music, horrible for the spoken word). The choir is made up of the choirs of all the churches of the ordinands (those to be ordained), including the church choirs of St Hubert, St Wenceslaus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, St Agnes, Transfiguration, St Bartholomew, St Odilia, St Richard, and Sacred Heart (if I remember them all correctly). The choir was under the very skilled direction of my good friend, Dan Westmoreland. My class was given permission to videotape the ordination Mass (as long as the videographers didn’t impose themselves on the liturgy). It is audio from the videotape that you hear.
Abba, Yeshua, Ruah (c) 1994 music and lyrics by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
After nearly 25 years of diaconal ministry, I watch the video tape of my ordination to the diaconate to recapture my initial enthusiasm. Years of ministry can bring on a bit of cynicism as one encounters the very human part of the institutional Church with all its politics and need for conversion. The video tape is a good reminder, especially when I am feeling particularly jaded about the Church, as to why I was ordained.
My official ordination photograph with Ruth.
Now as I get closer to retiring from full-time ministry, I look back and marvel on how I have grown in ministry and how, in spite of the hardships ministry on myself and my family, I have grown as a deacon, as Servant of Christ.
As I am today, minus a lot of hair and a moustache (which Ruth always hated).
One of my favorite movies is the William Goldman penned, Rob Reiner directed masterpiece, “The Princess Bride”. The kernel of the movie revolves around the human pursuit of “true love.” In close to 45 years of marriage, I have found discovered the meaning of true love. It is not the advertised images of young, nubile couples frolicking at some resort along the Caribbean coastline, nor romantic liaisons in exotic places of our world. True love is found not in melodramatic romance novels. True love is only truly found in the everyday mundanity of life. Hence, the origin of this poem.
My feet suspended from the end of the foot rest of my recliner. Socks gently removed, your hands warm the oil, softly, tenderly massaging its mysterious healing properties into my dry heels, my weary arches, my sore soles and toes. Your reflexology of love simultaneously, lovingly massaging my soul.
(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
A photograph of my family taken by my daughter-in-law, Olivia, at my retirement open house.
We began, arms linked together, a metaphor of souls as closely joined. Processing, our destiny wrapped in mystery, our dreams and goals loosely defined to building a life, a family, yet to be revealed.
Folksong beginnings, “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” lives, our children, surprise adventures, forays into adolescent angst, parent and child blindly, mutually seeking our destiny, together, apart, together touching, testing, peering ever so carefully our existential place within metaphysical timelessness, the wrested restlessness of the finite present in mystery.
Marriage is at best a paradoxical sacrament. The sought after life of unity only to be attained, not at the time of witnessed vows, but at the end of life. “What God has joined” pulled apart by children, by work, by survival, it is only now we begin to learn the experience of living and sleeping together.
My love, though our bodies may be battered, beaten by genetics, by illness, accident, and neglect, our souls remain united, joined together on the ontological journey into eternity. Beautiful as ever, you remain the center of my being, the greatest experience and expression of Eternal Love.
(c) 2019, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
My bride and I starting life together over 44 years ago.
My sister, Mary Ruth, was born on this day in 1955. She squeezed a lot of living within the short span of her life. She traveled throughout Europe and the South Pacific. She camped in the Boundary Waters. She received her degree from St. Catherine’s College as an Occupational Therapist, specializing as an O.T for cardiac patients, and received and M.A. in Education from the University of St Thomas. At the time of her death in 1997, she was working on a Doctorate.
Mary Ruth and Ruthie in 1970
She did all of this even though she suffered greatly from Crohn’s disease. While we can’t pinpoint when her illness began, it was misdiagnosed for a number of years, she began to get sick around the age of 15 years. Over the next 25 years, she had one to two surgeries a year cutting out the diseased part of her small intestine and resectioning her small intestine. At the time of her death, she had three feet of small intestine left. She would spend an average of six to eight weeks in the hospital a year.
When Ruthie and I got married in 1974, Mary Ruth was one of our bridesmaids.
The last ten years of her life she was on medical disability. While she could eat, the disease prevented her small intestine from passing on the nutrients of the food to her body. She got her nourishment through hyperalimentation, in which the nutrients were intravenously passed into her body. The downside to hyperalimentation is that it sucks the calcium out of the bones. At the time of Mary Ruth’s death, her bones were brittle from advanced osteoporosis. She would cough and break a rib.
Mary Ruth holding my daughter, Meg.
Mary had an indomitable spirit and refused to let her illness define who she was and what she could do. With the help of her two best friends, both doctors, she did a lot of world travel. To this very day, they will gather at her grave and sing all their favorite songs. Since Mary Ruth was born on Flag Day, inevitably, “Your A Grand Old Flag” and other similar songs will be sung at her gravesite.
When Andy was little, he had trouble saying Aunt Mary. It always came out as “Aunt Dee”. She adopted his mispronounciation of her name as her own moniker, always signing her birthday cards to our kids as “Aunt Dee.” Mary Ruth is here with Andy and Meg. Judging by how well they are dressed, it was probably Christmas.
Because Mary Ruth was a trained medical person, she knew far more about Crohn’s and her Crohn disease than did her internist. Over all the years of her being treated for the illness, she developed numerous allergies to the medications she received. When she would go down to surgery, her medical history files would travel down with her, twelve inches of medical files stacked on top of each other.
As difficult as her life was, she loved life and to quote Dylan Thomas, was not willing to go “gently into that dark night.” She was on medical disability the last ten years of her life. She researched everything she could about her illness and was ready to try all sorts of new treatments to extend her life.
Dad and Mary Ruth were very close. Mom would say that when Mary Ruth was having a tough night following a surgery, dad would be there with her, telling jokes and generally making the long night shorter with laughter. He was her chief caretaker, mixing up the nutrients for her hyperalimentation, making sure the machine was working, and traveling with her as she tried to find a treatment for her illness, as far as going to Florida to seek out a faith healer.
Mary Ruth would take my kids out for movies, to Dayton’s Downtown Minneapolis at Christmas to see all the decorations on the fourth floor of the department store. There were the numerous family formal portraits at Como Park in St Paul and other locations. The picnics she would plan at which the bees and the ants had the most fun and food. She was the one that kept our family connected to our greater family in Pittsburgh and Virginia. When mom and dad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, two years after Mary Ruth’s death, I missed Mary Ruth’s ability to organize big family gatherings. She really knew how to throw a party.
Mary Ruth at my home in New Prague, looking a bit 80’sish.
Finally, Mary Ruth’s illness prevailed. The doctors were unable to stop the internal bleeding caused by the illness and Mary was transferred from ICU to the hospice wing of St Joseph’s Hospital. After the nurses had settled Mary in her room, Mary looked around the room and greeted all our dead relatives present. She turned to my mother and I and said, “They are playing my song, but I am not ready to hear it yet.” My mom said to me, “It must be the morphine.” I replied to mom, “It’s morphine, mom, not LSD. She is beginning to see beyond our world to the next. Your mom and dad, your sister, Greta are all there to welcome her.” Mary Ruth was not ready to her their song. She still had two days of life left. Those two days were tough for her. I remember Mary Ruth’s last words. She woke up, looked at me and asked for some Seven-up and ice chips. Then she said to me, “You know this really sucks don’t you?” I replied, “Yeah, I know.” She took a sip of the Seven-up, ate a couple of ice chips, and slipped off into a coma from which she never woke up.
Mary Ruth, Meg and Beth, Easter 1990.
This is a song I composed as a birthday present for my sister in 1988. Happy birthday Mary!!!
For Mary Ruth, Psalm Offering 3 Opus 4, Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
An Icon of the Trinity painted by Andrej Rublev. Andrej pictured the Trinity as the three men who visited with Abram and Sara.
The Trinity. It is a mystery that people, especially theologians, always want to solve, but in so doing, always fail. Quite simply our finite minds just can’t wrap themselves around infinity. The Holy Trinity is far too vast a mystery for our feeble minds to handle. Hence, we have Jesus, the Incarnation of God in human form. Jesus is the human translation of who God truly is. In the person of Jesus, our minds are able to glimpse and grasp the mystery of the God who created us. Sadly, we often fail, as Christians, to listen and to follow what he taught us and modeled for us.
Common symbol of the Trinity as 3 interwoven circles.
I think the only thing we need to grasp about the Holy Trinity is the word, relationship. The Jewish theologian and rabbi, Hans Buber’s first sentence in his magnificent book, I and Thou, is, “In the beginning was relation.” The Holy Trinity is God in relation to God’s self. As Human Beings, made in the image and likeness of God, we carry within ourselves this Divine relationship. It is a natural part of who we are. Just as we don’t have to mentally think to breathe in and breathe out, this Divine relationship is a natural part of our lives without us noticing it or acknowledging it.
We hear this expressed in our prayer. In most Catholic prayer, all prayer is directed to the “Father”, through “Jesus” the Son, in the “Holy Spirit” (For Catholics, note that with the exception of two prayers, namely, the Penitential Rite, e.g. “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy”, and the Fraction Rite, e.g. “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us,” all prayer at Mass is directed to the Father.). Notice the end of most prayers at Mass. “We pray this to you (the Father), through Jesus Christ your Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.”
Celtic symbol of the Trinity (found on a marker at Drumcliff, Ireland)
This Divine Relationship is operative in our lives all the time. When we hear the birds sing in the morning, bask in the sunlight on a warm Summer day, when we breathe in fresh air on a Spring day, we, unknowingly are giving thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we hold our significant loved ones in a warm embrace, calm a crying child, or cradle a baby in our arms, we, unknowingly, give thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we savor the flavor of food or a good drink, listen to music that inspires, enthralls us, or warms our spirits, we, unknowingly, are giving thanks to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. When we encounter physical, emotional, or spiritual pain in our lives and cry to God for succor, healing, and peace, our cries for help are directed to God, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit.
Just as we don’t have to understand the mechanics of breathing in order to breathe, so we do not have to understand the Holy Trinity in order to have the Holy Trinity work within our lives. The Holy Trinity is always moving within us, largely unnoticed by us. On this Feast of the Holy Trinity, let us give thanks for this wondrous Mystery which moves just as mysteriously in our lives, and with whom we are so intimately connected.
