Pauca Verba (a few words)
Let us walk with Mary. The gospel tells us that the newborn Jesus is Mary’s “first-born.” This doesn’t mean, “Oh then, Mary must have had other children.” That misses the point utterly. It means that God is starting a new family, and that a whole host of brothers and sisters will follow Jesus. That’s us!
And If I know I am part of God’s family, then, with Jesus I can call God, “Abba” which is the tender Aramaic word a little child would use to call a dear father. And if I realize I am part of God’s new family, then I will see other people as family. How important is this in a world of hateful alienation. And if, in Christ, God is starting a new family, then I can live with God in trust and comfort and can call Mary, Mother, just as Jesus did!
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Great story shared by Scott Cole! Chuck Bednarik was a football player for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1949-60. “Concrete Charlie,” as he was known, was a fierce offensive lineman and a linebacker who would play almost every down of almost every game he played. His Hall of Fame career is remembered for the many devastating tackles and leveling hits he gave opponents and the fierce protection he gave his quarterbacks. Today, the best collegiate defensive player is honored with the Chuck Bednarik Award.
During WWII, he served as a waist-gunner in the B-24 Liberator Bomber in the 8th Army Air Force. He and his crew flew thirty missions over Germany in broad daylight. These missions were extremely dangerous as the slow bombers were easy prey for faster German fighters. Waist-gunners were particularly easy targets because they sat exposed in a plexi-glass bubble underneath the bomber and attempted to fight off enemy fighters with machine guns. “The anti-aircraft fire would be all around us,” Bednarik says. “It was so thick you could walk on it. And you could hear it penetrating, Ping! Ping! Ping! Here you are, this wild, dumb kid. You didn’t think you were afraid of anything, and now, every time you take off, you’re convinced this is it, you’re gonna be ashes.”
Bednarik and his crew were on their 30th mission. In the Army Air Force, all bomber crews were “retired” after their 30th mission to keep crews fresh and not battle-fatigued. Their final mission was a very tough, ferocious battle. He began to pray and ask God for his safe return home. He even bargained with the Lord and asked that if he were spared, he’d keep his promise to pray the rosary every morning. That was in 1945.
As of July 2009, Bednarik, now 84, still lives in the Lehigh Valley, not far from Allentown where he grew up and raised his family. Every Sunday, he attends the 8:00 A.M. Mass. He also says the Rosary every day, using a rosary that Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia gave him many years ago. Not one day has passed where Bednarik has forgotten the promise to God he made 64 years earlier. He wakes up early each day and starts it with the rosary.
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Here is the first part of the Rule of Saint Benedict: How to live with other people.
1. In the first place, to love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole strength.
2. Then to love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Not to murder.
4. Not to commit adultery.
5. Not to steal.
6. Not to covet (which means not to desire what others have.)
7. Not to bear false witness (which means not to lie about others.)
8. To honor everyone. (Check it out in your bible: 1 Peter 2:17)
9. Not to do to another what you would not want done to yourself.
10. To put away your own interests to follow Christ.
11. To quiet our bodily senses.
12. Not to become attached to pleasures.
13. To love fasting.
14. To relieve the suffering of the poor.
15. To clothe the naked.
16. To visit the sick.
17. To bury the dead.
18. To help the people who are in trouble.
19. To comfort the people who are sad.
20. To become a stranger to the world’s ways.
21. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
Rejoicing in the Torah