Peace on Earth – I Wish

 

A little over a year ago, I was in the Holy Land touring its historic and religious sites. After returning home, many were curious about the trip and asked me lots of questions.

I repeatedly emphasized to anyone who inquired that if they ever get the chance to go to Israel, do so. You will be forever changed.

Historically, you can almost trace humanity’s existence over the millennia there.

For those who are Christians, it roots your faith in a tangible setting. Geographically, everything was right where the Bible said it was. Americans tend to believe that we are at the center of the universe, but to see believers from every corner of the world, of various races and ethnicities in all types of garb, all there for the same reason, put into perspective the universality of Christ’s message and God’s presence in the world.

After having been on the tour, I now know what the flowers look like on Mt. Tabor, how rocky the terrain is, how brightly the sun shines there. I can still feel the silky dried salt on my skin from the Dead Sea and the heat of the dessert on my neck at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. I not only looked back to the past there, but I also looked toward the future, as we gazed out over the beautiful Jezreel Valley, where the battle of Armageddon is prophesied to take place at the end of the age.

Gazing out over the Jezreel Valley.

Ed at Qumran.

I told someone that to me Jerusalem is the earth’s belly button. It seems as if the umbilical cord from heaven terminates there on earth and connects us to that which is not of this world.

One of the other questions I was frequently asked was, How safe were you there? And I repeatedly told people that never once did I feel unsafe. In fact, as I was getting on the elevator on our last night in Jerusalem, another group of Americans got on with me, and one of them asked me if I’d been to the Western Wall that day. When I said yes, he replied, “You know they shot and killed someone there this morning?” Surprised, I told them we were there in the afternoon. Apparently, some man had come to the Wall and was acting strangely. When security questioned him, he attacked the soldiers patrolling the area with a knife and he was shot. “Wow,” I said. “You never know what’s going to happen.” 

“Well,” another American said, “Last night was Halloween back home, and in Chicago 14 people were shot. No one pays attention to that.”

Well, since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, everyone is paying attention now and no one feels safe. After having been to Israel, I feel extremely sad about the violence happening there and wonder how our Catholic tour guide is faring, and all the Israelis we met, as well as the little Palestinian kids who waved to us on our tour bus as they stripped olives from the trees in their back yards. The violence all seems so unreal and unnecessary.

                                 

   The "Glory to God in the Highest" arch entering Shepherd's Field.

One of the first places we visited on the tour was Bethlehem. And next to the Shepherds’ Field is a church called the Chapel of the Angels. Like many churches there, it was designed by architect Antonio Barluzzi, and it is situated near the remains of a 4th-century church that was originally on the site where the heavenly host brought their “good tidings of great joy” to the shepherds minding their flocks.

                                           

 Chapel of the Angels designed by Antonio Barluzzi.

Inside the church, that was designed to look like a field tent much like the shepherds would use, are murals depicting the scenes of the angels coming to the shepherds to announce the birth of the Savior. Around the dome is the inscription: Gloria Excelsis Deo, et in Terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. 

 

                                               

 The inscription on the dome inside the chapel.

 

These were the words of the angelic host and translates from the Latin to say: Gloria to God in the Highest and in Earth peace to men of Good Will.

There are some who say that it should be translated as Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.

There is a difference between the two translations. In the first, the peace extended to Earth is only experienced by those with good will in their hearts and the latter extends peace to all.

No matter how you translate it, Israel and the rest of us on earth could really use some peace this Christmas season. 

This article originally appeared in the December issue of Northern Connection magazine.

Gather ‘Round the Table

 

For some strange reason, the year my younger brother Tim made his First Holy Communion in 1970, our parish thought it would be a great idea for that to occur on Thanksgiving Day instead of the customary springtime like I had two years prior. Aside from making it difficult to find Communion attire, greeting cards and decorations at that time of the year, it posed a great quandary for my parents: Do we hold a Communion party and skip the traditional Thanksgiving dinner or host a crowd for turkey and all the fixings?

Of course, a hue and cry rose from those attached to a turkey dinner when my mom tossed out the idea to toss the turkey that year. So, my mom, to appease the family, opted for a sit-down, turkey dinner for 28 people. At that time, my dad had not yet put in our game room, and we had a small kitchen, and a dining room that only accommodated our family of six comfortably, and a living room.

To help my mother, both of my grandmothers offered to cook a turkey.

On the big day, my family set up folding tables and card tables everywhere and both sides of my family came for the happy occasion. My paternal and maternal grandparents were very different in temperament. My widowed Grandma Aggie Lane went to Mass most every day and never swore except for one time when my youngest brother, David, squirted her in the butt with a hose, and she exclaimed, “Damn you, David.” It was shocking and still lives in family lore.

My maternal Grandma, Gert Hughes, and her mother, my Great-Grandmother Cornelia Ledergerber, swore like crazy (not F bombs, but vulgarities.) Grandma Gert smoked, read novels, and loved soap operas. She believed in God but was not nearly as devout at Grandma Aggie.

If you want to create tension, throw four cooks into a tiny kitchen to prepare a massive Thanksgiving dinner. The Hughes side of the family made their stuffing with an egg in it, and the Lane side of the family liked their stuffing dry. One side liked the jellied canned cranberries and the others liked whole cranberries. My Grandma Leder was old school and wanted to sew her turkey shut with twine after stuffing it, while Grandma Aggie thought the new metal wires that closed the cavity and came on the turkey was a great innovation much to the disgust of Grandma Leder.

Each of these women had their own method for making gravy, and as they stood in the kitchen with their turkey drippings in cups trying to concoct their “best” gravy, my Uncle Bill on his way to get a drink, called out, “I’m next in line to make gravy!”

To which my Grandma Leder replied, “Oh, Billy you’re full of sh*t.”

I neglected to share that among the guests that day was my dad’s Aunt Gert, Grandma Aggie’s older sister, who was officially known as Sr. Euphemia, a Mercy nun.

When Grandma swore, my mom shushed her, “Grandma, the nun.”

And Grandma replied, “Ah, the hell with the nun.”

When dinner was ready, we all sat down for a memorable Thanksgiving dinner. Although my grandparents’ personalities were very different, they always respected one another and, in fact, liked and got along well, even under stressful circumstances like competing to make the best gravy.

And why? Because they shared something. They loved us.

There’s a home movie of that Communion Party/Thanksgiving Dinner, and on it are all my grandmas, clad in their aprons, crammed in the kitchen. In the next segment, Grandma Leder is standing with several of her great-grandchildren, including my brother, Tim, the Communion boy, and she’s hugging us and giving Tim a kiss.

It doesn’t matter who makes the best gravy, how you stuff your turkey, or if you’re stuck sitting on a telephone book at a card table. What matters is if there is love around your table, and this Thanksgiving, I hope you have an abundance of it.

Generosity

Are you generous? I hope I am, but sometimes I wonder.

Recently, we celebrated the 90^th birthday of one of my good friend’s mother, Millie. From the time I was 14 years old, her house was open to me and my gang of high school friends. We had slumber parties there, and when her daughter won a turkey at our school’s annual Turkey Bingo, she cooked it for a dozen girls. When we went to the prom, she opened her home for us bleary-eyed prom goers, getting up at 4 a.m. to cook us homemade waffles after we departed the Gateway Clipper after-prom cruise. Neither I nor my friends were wealthy. We all grew up in three-bedroom, one-bath homes, sharing rooms with siblings, and no one at that time had a “family room.” But we were welcomed into all of their homes, and drinks and snacks were generously provided.

Contrast that to something that I also experienced when I was in high school. In my senior year, I was a contestant in the North Hills Junior Miss Pageant. Upon making the cut as one of 16 finalists, (I didn’t win), all the contestants were welcomed at a party in a rather hoity-toity neighborhood, in what I would have called back then a mansion. Our refreshments? They hostess passed around one small bowl of nuts and served us lemon water. They didn’t even crack open a bottle of Pepsi or pop the top on some Pringles.

 

 

It often seems that those who have a lot are the cheapest. When I was in 6^th grade, my group of friends decided to go Christmas caroling and donate any money we earned to Children’s Hospital. We went door-to-door in my girlfriends’ neighborhood, and almost every house we stopped at gave us a dollar or two and some even gave us a five-dollar bill! Adjacent to her neighborhood was a plan of newly built homes that looked to me back in 1972 to be homes like the Brady Bunch lived in. When we caroled at these new homes, person after person who opened their door to us gave us a measly quarter.

When I worked at Westinghouse back in the early 80s, someone in our department suffered a tragedy, and one of the secretaries decided to take up a collection for our co-worker. Everyone threw some money into her bag until she got to the “big boss,” who said, “Sure, I’ll contribute. Write a check from petty cash and sign my name.” The secretary replied, “No, we’re not soliciting money from the company; we want cash from just the co-workers.” Sadly, this person could not grasp that giving money from the company funds was not the same as giving a personal gift from the heart.

Stinginess is not an attractive quality, and I hope my meter falls on the side of generosity. Not all of us are St. Francis, renouncing material goods, or have a lot of extra cash to give, but like my friend’s mom, you don’t always have to give cash, you can be generous with your time, your hospitality, your talent and even with your smiles and complements.

This article originally appeared in the May issue of Northern Connection magazine.