Bubble Gum

Well, it was called bubble gum because in that softer form, using your lips and your mouth, you could blow huge gum-bubbles much like small pink balloons.

But because bubble gum was such a rare treat it had to last a long time. How long? Enter, bedposts.

Where else could you put that substantial pink wad of gum but on your bedpost? There it was the next morning ready to be tackled again. And again and again. I won’t tell you how many times some of us re-tackled it!

Bubbles

Blowing gum bubbles was so popular we even had cartoons in which kids could move from place to place by blowing huge bubbles and be carried aloft by the wind. Really? Yes!

But for most of us earthlings, before the bubbles ever got that big, they would burst. And then we often had sticky gum on our eye brows or eye lashes or in our hair. And believe me, nothing hurt more than when mom had to get sticky bubble gum off your eyebrows or eyelashes or your hair. (OWWwwww, Mom!)

Lent and Easter

As I turned my mind and heart to the magnificent seasons of Lent and Easter this year, I found myself thinking of a time in my life when things were as simple as bubble gum on a bedpost.

And in those days during Lent there was no bubble gum, because bubble gum was a treat, and during the Lenten fast there were no treats at all!

And believe me, without any TV, VCR, DVD, ABC, LMNOP, to give up all treats for forty days and forty nights was indeed a great fast for us youngsters.

But we knew that this fast, together with all the Lenten liturgical events and devotions, had to do with the passion and death of Jesus, and we all wanted to be part of that holy mystery.

Yet, to keep hope ever before our eyes, if anyone gave us any treats during Lent, we could save them for the great feast of Easter. And in those days Lent ended and Easter began with the Angelus at noon on Holy Saturday.

So, as soon as we heard the first “bong” of that Holy Saturday Angelus bell, out came our bags of saved treats. (Imagine the mighty wads of bubble gum on bedposts by Easter Sunday morning!)

But, as I turned my mind and heart to the magnificent seasons of Lent and Easter this year, I was also haunted by the vision of tsunamis and genocide, child slave labor, and all the other social, political, and economic horrors in our world.

And I heard that familiar dilemma nagging at me and asking, How is it possible to have any hope in such a world as ours today where the problems are so immense and so complicated?

I don’t often talk about hope, partly because I’m Irish (smile) but more so because, when I do, I feel like I am plunging into a bottomless hole. The problems are so immense and so complicated, what can any one person do?

But every now and then my Guardian Angel reminds me that I have to stop thinking of hope in terms of specific material needs or social, economic expectations, that is, hope with a small “h,” and I have to consider hope as that powerful gift of the Spirit, Christian Hope with a capital “H.”

That Hope is the power by which we can focus and be fed on the promises of Jesus Christ, no matter what is happening in our personal lives or in human history.

When I look at Hope with those eyes, I realize once again that, for us Christians, Hope is about Jesus Christ and not about us! And, in a world gone mad, I have to reclaim that Hope for myself.

It has to be so much a part of me that it soothes my fearful psyche, calms my befuddled mind, and comforts my traumatized soul, so that nothing happening in the world can destroy my Hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ or the promises he made which flow from it.

It has to be so much a part of me that nothing in my life or in human history can destroy my Hope in the sacramental ways with which the Spirit invites us into the deepest mysteries of God every single day no matter what the problems are.

Then, wrapped in that Hope, I can stand face to face with the terrible problems of the world even though at times they are beyond my grasp or imagination.

How does one do that? How does one avoid just making a financial donation, albeit this is an honorable thing to do, to help ease the world’s pain and then not just crawl back into one’s own little cozy corner soon afterwards?

A Question

If someone had asked me that question fifty years ago I probably would have given a different answer. Even thirty years ago, when I was actively, pastorally engaged in helping to provide specifically for people’s basic human needs in one way or the other.

But today, in my 70s, as I look out on the world at large, I realize that in some very mysterious way, though not in a world-shaking or dramatic way, our everyday life can be a valid sign of that Hope.

If we continue each day to really place all our Hope in Jesus Christ, even if we have too much of anything, bubble gum or bedposts, food, shelter or security, I believe that eventually Christ can show us, if we are really listening, how to reach out to the world from within our own state of life.

When Catherine Doherty heard God in her heart call her to, “Sell all you possess. Give it… to the poor…” she was not focused on the needs of “the world.”

Hope

If she had been, then the world of the 1930s would have crushed her Hope. No, it was not the world she was focused on, it was Christ! It was her Hope in Christ that gave Catherine the unshakable Faith that, through the Incarnation, the Son of God was now one with all the people of the world.

That’s why the next phrase from God to her was, “Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me…”

Because Catherine’s focus was Christ and his cross, it was Christ who ultimately manifested to her how to carry the cross of the world and give out   Hope as well as food and clothing and shelter.

Lent is meant to take us deep into the intensity of Christ’s cross as he reveals to us once again the problems of the world as he sees them!

After forty days and forty nights of that exposure, the Easter Hope can then take us deep into his solution to those problems.

Steeped in that Hope and fed by the mysteries of his life, by whatever liturgical season, we will be taught by the Spirit what manner of goods the world needs in order to live in true dignity as children of God and how to provide them with Hope.

Oh, my goodness! It just dawned on me why the moment of Easter Hope each year was unleashed for us at the Angelus on Holy Saturday. The Angelus was our re-enactment of Mary’s “yes” (Fiat) to God. A simple yes by a simple Lady who lived a simple life of utter Faith in total Hope.

And because of that life the Son of God was able to reveal the solution to all the problems of the world until the end of time.

O Risen Lord Jesus, renew our Hope. Focus us on your promises as we reach out to the people and the pain of this world.

O Lady of Hope, teach us a Faith that is so simple it can find Hope in everything, even in bubble gum and bedposts.