Lenten Reflection Series: Have Courage

by Mike Hughes, Assistant Vice Provost, Graduate Enrollment 

I have a reservation for Mass this weekend. Funny to have a reservation for Mass, but many things are funny these days. It will be an appropriate benchmark for Lent, since it’s been a year now that we’ve been deprived of the physical presence of the Eucharist, of others, of community. So, hey, here is a real opportunity for Lenten joy. I’ll be wearing a mask, and I’ll be keeping my distance, but I’ll see light coming through stained glass, feel the worn pews, smell the slightly musty smell of the aging church.

Lent offers other opportunities, including an invitation to deeper reflection and self-examination. I have to think, “Are you kidding? I’m an introverted curmudgeon who lives by myself, stuck at home day after day for the last year, crawling around in my own head even more than usual! How much deeper can reflection get?”

But I have to admit that reflection this Lent has been more purposeful, and hence, helpful, calming – joyful? Still working on it. The book I’ve been following led me to a quote, but more than just a quote, for me it is spiritual advice, guidance, by Dean Brackley. Most of us know that Fr. Brackley was the Jesuit priest who, with a full life and ministry in New York, dropped everything and went straight to El Salvador after the 1989 murders of the Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter at the Universidad Centroamericana, to take on the role left by the martyrs. He stayed in El Salvador until his death from cancer in 2011.

Fr. Brackley talks about the context of “downward mobility” in a world “obsessed with wealth and security and upward mobility and prestige.” He encourages solidarity, “walking with victims, serving, and loving,” where hope can be found:

“Have the courage to lose control.

Have the courage to feel useless.

Have the courage to listen.

Have the courage to receive.

Have the courage to let your heart be broken.

Have the courage to feel.

Have the courage to fall in love.

Have the courage to get ruined for life.

Have the courage to make a friend.”

There are many reminders here, some so seemingly simple that we often miss them. Listen. Make a friend. Fall in love. Others are not so simple: lose control, receive, feel useless – just feel.

And courage? In our society, in our present, we obsess with keeping everything in control, when of course we cannot. And no one wants to feel useless. Acknowledging the reality that we are not in control, that sometimes we cannot be put to use to “fix” every situation, does take courage, doesn’t it?

So while I crawl around in my head, I keep coming back to Fr. Brackley, and his words, his example, plant a seed of hope in my stubborn psyche, a glimmer of potential for joy this Lent, in a time that challenges all of us. I hope I can remember to use these gifts to meet the challenge.