Robert Barron - A Friend of the Lord Jesus
Peace be with you. Friends, on this Second Sunday of Lent, we again, going back to spiritual basics, have some marvelous readings, one from the book of Genesis about the call of Abram and then the marvelous account of the Transfiguration. I had a homily more or less prepared on these themes, but as I record these words, it's just been a couple of weeks since the very tragic death of a very dear friend of mine, Bishop Dave O'Connell. I don't know if you've been following that story, but Bishop Dave was shot to death in Los Angeles. I received the news that he had died, which was shocking enough, and then the next morning, the further clarification that he had been shot to death.
And I've just been reeling from that news, as everyone who knew him and loved him has. But I've just been reflecting a lot about him and his life. And I'm going to say, as I was preparing this sermon and going over these themes, he just came back to me again and again. He was one of the most Christ-like people I've ever known. And I don't say that lightly. I've been around for a while, met a lot of people, some very good and saintly people. I can say, honestly, Bishop Dave O'Connell was one of the most Christ-like people I've known. I only met him, it might have been the very day of my ordination as a bishop.
I came from Chicago, so I knew nothing about LA or very little. Dave, and then Bishop Joe Brennan, who's now the Bishop of Fresno, we were all ordained auxiliary bishops together. They were good friends; they knew each other. I was this outsider, but from day one, Bishop Dave was remarkably generous to me and welcoming and warm. One of my memories from that first day, the day of the ordination: We're getting ready to process out, and I'm in my investments and feeling a little bit lost and nervous. And I look over and there is Dave with a couple friends of his, and they were in a kind of circle of very intense prayer, and I could hear they were invoking the Holy Spirit. He was a man of deep spiritual convictions, devoted to the charismatic renewal, and knew how to pray for the power of the Spirit.
I was, I remember, just impressed and moved that day, as he was preparing to go in to be ordained a bishop, that he was calling upon the Holy Spirit. You know, there are two types of people in the world: some who suck air out of a room, others that breathe life into a room. You know what I mean? Some people, because of their egotism or their fear or whatever it is, they tend to draw life out of people. He was a prime example of that other type that would breathe life into a room. I always found that I felt more alive when I was with him. There was something just so warm and welcoming and non-threatening about his presence. His sense of the Holy Spirit was so strong that he didn't feel the need to draw attention to himself or make sure people were acknowledging his gifts and all that. He breathed the Holy Spirit out so that we felt lifted up by it.
That was true all the roughly seven years that I knew him. Tell you why I thought of him now, as I was going over the readings for today. In reading number one from Genesis: "The LORD said to Abram: 'Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you.'" Bishop Dave was born in Cork, County Cork in Ireland, and felt the call to the priesthood early on, but more than that, felt the call to the missionary priesthood. This time when Ireland had lots and lots of priests, and so a number of them felt the call to spread the faith around the world. So he went to All Hallows College, which was in Dublin. It's closed now, but it was a seminary to train priests for the foreign missions.
While he was there, Cardinal Manning, himself Irish-born, who was the Archbishop of Los Angeles at the time, was visiting, and he said, "Look, we need priests in LA". And so, Bishop Dave volunteered and he comes to Los Angeles. "Abram, go forth from the land of your kinsfolk to a land that I will show you". And so he did follow the Lord's prompting. Now you might say, "Well, leaving rainy, gloomy Ireland for sunny California..." But you know, Bishop Dave's instinct was, when he got to California, to follow the Lord Jesus and to go to those who were most in need and most poor and most marginalized. He spent the bulk of his priesthood, some forty years, in South Central Los Angeles.
And if you don't know what that means, it's the part of the city that probably is the most poor, most marked by gang violence. Think of the Rodney King riots back in the early 1990s, that would've been South Central. And Fr. Dave at the time comes to LA and he ensconces himself precisely there and becomes, and it was just congruent with his personality, he becomes a peacemaker. He dedicated himself to reconciling these warring gangs, often putting himself in danger in the process. He lived there in the midst of a lot of this poverty and violence. Typical move for him: During the riots after the Rodney King episode, there were a number of his own people that felt guilty having looted stores, but they didn't want to go to the police, and then their lives would be compromised forever.
And so, Fr. Dave, in dialogue with the police, made a deal where he said to the people, "Bring the things back that you've taken, and I will arrange to have them returned, and your life will not be destroyed in the process". That, to me, was so typical of him. A deep concern for justice, but always tempered by love and concern for people. So I just thought of him. God called Abram from his home, sent him to a land that the Lord would show him. He took Bishop Dave from his home and sent him all the way across the world to a land that he would show him. The Gospel for today is the marvelous account, it's Mark's account, or Matthew's rather, of the Transfiguration, up on the holy mountain.
Some of my favorite memories of Bishop Dave O'Connell have to do with a mountain, because the bishops of our province in California would go on retreat every year. We stayed at this wonderful place called the House of Prayer for Priests. It's kind of north of downtown LA, right near Griffith Park. If you know Los Angeles, it's this big, expansive park that ranges north of the city. And so Bishop Dave and I, we weren't exactly young, but we were, I think, the youngest of the bishops on the retreat, and so we both loved to walk. So we always made a deal that every day after lunch, at one o'clock, we would get together and then we'd go for a hike up in Griffith Park. And you can start in a kind of civilized part of it, but pretty quickly, if you go on those trails, you're out kind of in the wilderness and you don't even realize you're near a big city.
But then, you'd turn a corner there and these gorgeous vistas would open up. You'd see the Pacific Ocean, or you'd see the city. Well, Bishop Dave and I would walk every day while we're on retreat. And for a while, we'd chitchat or we'd talk about ecclesiastical politics or something. But with him, because of his devotion and his deep spirituality, we started talking about God, and about the Lord Jesus, and about the Holy Spirit, and about the spiritual life, and about transformation, and what the Church should be doing in the world. And they were just marvelous. We'd walk for, I don't know, a couple hours, looking at these beautiful vistas up on the mountain and talking about the Lord.
And as I read this Gospel again, which I've read a thousand times, I just couldn't help but think about him. He, for me, was someone that just spoke so powerfully of the things of the Spirit. I'll tell you a story about his prayer life. He worked with the poor, of course, as I've said, and worried very much about food and drink and clothing and shelter and all the basic needs people had. But he also cared passionately about education. He knew that the poor needed their minds developed.
And then, the next step, he felt most strongly about the spiritual development of the poor, because he felt many of them just didn't have a sense of themselves and who they were and how much God loved them. And so, part of his outreach was to teach them how to pray. And he would do it in the simplest way, not invoking St. John of the Cross or the high mystics, but he would take a crucifix and he would say, "Let me show you how I pray". And he would look at the crucifix and say, "Jesus, I love you". And I know that can sound maybe a little syrupy or sentimental, but given the sort of man he was, where he lived, and the kind of gritty work he did, there wasn't anything syrupy or sentimental about him.
But to hold that crucifix and say, "Jesus, I love you," and to have these kids see this man praying in that way and realize they could pray in the same way, that had an enormous power; it unleashed enormous power. I'll tell you why I think of that. Jesus goes up on the mountain. He's transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah appear. But the three Apostles who are with him are Peter, James, and John. If you look at Thomas Aquinas' account of the Transfiguration, one of the questions he asks is, "How come those three? Why weren't all the Apostles there? Why not a hundred people? Why just those three"?
And here's the answer Aquinas gives: Peter, because he loved Jesus the most: "Simon, do you love me"? "Lord, you know I love you". John, because he's the one that Jesus loved the most. He was the beloved disciple. James, because he was the first of the Apostles to give his life for the Lord. The point here, everybody, is, and I've made it before, I know, Christianity is not a philosophy. It's not an abstract set of ideas. It's not a program. Christianity is a relationship to Jesus. It's a friendship with the Lord.
Now, we can derive ideas from that. We can derive philosophies and all that from it. Fine. But at its heart it's, Pope Benedict was so good about this, at its heart, it's an encounter with him. It's a living relationship with him. Well see, I thought of Bishop Dave holding that crucifix: "Jesus, I love you". That is the most basic form of prayer. That's what he lived out of. And then, think of St.James willing to give his life for the Lord, to pour his whole life out for Christ. Well, that's what Christianity's all about, isn't it?
So I think of Bishop Dave O'Connell, a great friend to me, and he was. I'll miss him, and I honored him, and his friendship meant a lot to me. But the most important thing to know about him was he was a friend of the Lord Jesus, following his calling, following his prompt, going where the Lord wanted to go, speaking his love to those around him. And that's what made him, as I said at the outset, one of the most Christ-like people I know. Because you become like your friends; you become like the ones that you love. So as we look at these readings, especially the Transfiguration, I think of my own times up on the holy mountain with Bishop Dave. Say a prayer for him. He was a great man. And pray that his impact might be felt in LA and even wider than that. And God bless you.