From The Friars: Live According to the Spirit

Last week I spoke with a good friend of mine, Arleen. She was standing outside the Shrine Center waiting for a friend to pick her up. I was surprised to find out that Arleen, an elderly Irish lady (who uses a wheelchair), was going to a concert two blocks down the street where there would be free Spanish music. Wow! Many of you may know that we lived in an apartment above a Spanish restaurant where there was no lack Spanish music: Loud music that played all night! We even closed the church parking lot on the weekends to keep the neighborhood quieter for the elderly due to loud parties. What irony! Arleen was going out to enjoy that same music!

“Why do you like listening to Spanish music?” I asked Arleen. Her response was one word: “Culture!” Arleen then proceeded to tell me how she enjoys getting out of her apartment at the St. Alfio’s Villa to talk with people in her neighborhood. “I’m Irish!” she told me with a grin, “and I cannot understand a word that the Spanish people are saying to me. But somehow, we understand each other! I love it when I meet people who are different than me. There is beauty out there, Fr. Francis, you must go out there and find it!” I was floored by Arleen’s wisdom.

When Arleen got picked up, it was not by an Irish American friend but by a lovely Hispanic woman!

How often do we complain and grumble when we encounter someone or something that challenges us? A different culture certainly challenge us to break out of our comfort zones and ways of understanding in order to enter someone else’s world. This is similar to what Jesus Christ did upon becoming man. So, if we wish to put on Christ and live according to the Spirit, we must learn to love those things that challenge our own point of view for the sake of greater communion.

This year at the Feast of the Three Saints on Labor Day Weekend we will have more involvement from different ethnic communities. I invite all of you to attend and witness the power of the Spirit, who unites us with our common Catholic faith by celebrating the three heroic Sicilian martyrs.

Thank you, Arleen, for your beautiful words of wisdom that challenge all of us to live according to the Spirit.

Fr. Francis