Spiritus Christi
July 26, 2020
Father Jim
If you lived in Rochester 20 years ago, you might remember the headlines in the Democrat and Chronicle: “Excommunicated!” And, Jim Smith, I remember you said, “I didn’t think the newspaper had letters that big?!” Excommunicated! And beneath the headlines was a picture of me. I always remember this young woman photographer. She took 70, 80, 90 pictures of me. She was trying to wipe the smile off my face. I knew what she was up to. I was suppose to look forlorn, depressed because I was excommunicated. But, do you know how hard it is to keep a smile on your face for 20 minutes? She wore me down just a little bit but there was a little smirk on my face the next morning in the paper. I never had the full words for that to explain it. Until John Lewis died. The great civil rights leader who just died recently. Mr. Lewis was arrested 40 times. He said, “Every time I was arrested I made sure I had a smile on my face.” He said, “I smile because I knew I was on the right side of history.”
You are always on the right side of history when you are struggling for racial justice. You are always on the right side of history when you work for women’s equality. You are always on the right side of history when you work for LBGTQ equality.
Jesus says today, “The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field.” John Lewis was an absolute treasure. I got to hear him in person four years ago when he came to Rochester. He said he had wanted to be a preacher when he was young. His parents were sharecroppers down south and on the farm John’s job was to feed the chickens. When he was ten years old he practiced being a preacher. He would say to the chickens, “Let us pray!” And the chickens all bowed their heads. He said, “They listened to me better than all the members of Congress in the next 30 years.”
When he was arrested for a sit-in in Nashville his parents were very upset. They said don’t get in to trouble like this. But John said, “I learned from Jesus.” He was a deeply spiritual man. He said, “I learned from Jesus that you had to get in to trouble. He called it good trouble. Necessary trouble. When you see something that is unjust and wrong, you have to do something about it. You have to say something about it even if it gets you in trouble.”
When he led the march for voting rights in Selma in 1965, he and other black marchers were savagely beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Our race convoy from Spiritus Christi visited that bridge a couple years ago. They called it Bloody Sunday. State Police knocked Lewis, the leader, to the ground unconscious and he had a concussion. Sister Barbara Lum and other sisters of St. Joseph saved his life. They came out and got him and brought him to the hospital that they ran, which was the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. When John Lewis was in Rochester four years ago, he paid a visit to those nuns out at the Mother House to thank them for saving his life. Lewis told us on that occasion, “You white people may have come from Europe on a boat and we black people came from Africa on a slave boat. But we are all in the same boat now and we have to learn to love each other and work with each other.” He was a gentle soul and an apostle of nonviolence. A man of deep faith. John Lewis was a real treasure.
Another treasure in my life is my oldest brother, Phil. He died three days ago. He was 84 years old. When he was young, like John Lewis, he wanted to enter the ministry. So he went to St. Andrews Seminary, but the Seminary threw him out because he flunked Greek and Latin. Really important things today, right?
But he found a different w
