‘Know what you are doing’

Saturday night, I turned on a recorded travel channel show which had the edgy, irreverent hip and worldly star asking a local man in the setting of a serene landscape and peaceful co-existence among peoples, contemplating existential questions with acquaintances…..what can we do ‘to not muck it up, to not doom it all to heck’…..to paraphrase.

Pondering the question, the man responded gently ‘we have to approach it with a clean heart, pure intentions, and a sound mind intending to do the good and the right and the true’. There is good and evil, said the guest, and we must choose to do the good. The famous and edgy host looked at him with a perpelexed expression…

What is that, was the unwritten subtext.

It was evident in this weekend’s Ordination to the Diaconate service in the Archdiocese of Chicago, where 12 men laid down their lives in a ceremony, with utter nobility to live for others to represent a clean heart and sound intentions for the good of humanity.

As they lay prostrate on the altar, the choir invoked the saints to help them live their calling to witness a life of service to all people, with preferential option for the poor, materially and those inpoverished in spirit, said Cardinal George.

“Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become,” instructed Cardinal George to the 12 men. “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”

In a world desperately in need of witnesses to courage, truth and charity, these men laid down their lives in dedication to that service.

My son was one of the twelve. It was stunning, and breathtaking.