All along the way as I came and went to my family reunion, I had half-wished that God would send down fire from heaven to burn up all those damn cell phones!

Sickle Cell-Phone Anemia

They were everywhere—on the airplane, on the bus, on the subway, on the street, in the restaurants. And yes, even in the rest rooms!

The constant use of cell phones is a contemporary disease of epidemic proportions, which I call, “Sickle Cell-Phone Anemia.” And it is every bit as deadly as that medical prototype.
For though cell phones are not actually killing people like Sickle Cell Anemia does, they are killing something in people, something without which we will die even if we live.

I had been looking forward to the last leg of my trip, to what used to be a nice quiet bus ride from Toronto to Combermere, but the cell phones in the Toronto bus depot were as plentiful as they had been anywhere else I’d been.

So I decided to take a walk outside in the “normal” traffic and big-city noise. (I never thought I would be thankful for city noise!)

In the Sunshine

As I walked in the sunshine and breathed in the cool air, I passed a young lady whom I had seen often before on my trips to and from Toronto. As usual, she was sitting on the sidewalk in front of a bookstore smoking a cigarette and begging for loose change.
As I passed, I looked at her, and she asked me for some spare change. I smiled without giving her anything. She smiled back and thanked me.

(I always pass beggars by the first time without giving them anything just to see their humble smiles. But on my way back I stop, talk a bit with them, give them my change, and then ask them to pray for me.)

A Gentle Smile

So it was with this young lady. And when I asked her to pray for me, she said, “You asked me to do that before, and I still do.” She smiled a very gentle smile, and I smiled back. And as I walked back to the bus depot, I suddenly thought of the gentle breeze in which God had come to Elijah (1 Kings 19:9,11-13, the first reading for August 7th, the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time).

Then I began to recall all the “gentle breezes” which had been with me all the way along my trip, “breezes” which, because of the noise, I had almost forgotten.

I remembered that at the very first airport, frustrated with all the cell phones, I had asked Jesus to help me to look upon each user as a person, the way he looks at him or her.

Thus to the elderly man who was mopping the floor in the rest room and talking on his cell phone, I said, “Thank you for keeping things so clean and pleasant for us,” I said. His smile was reward enough.

The Third Call

And to the lady sitting across from me in the waiting area who had just finished her third cell phone call in less than ten minutes, I said, “Is that one of those cell phones that can be used like a computer? Really? Can I see it?” That is how I learned that she was on the way to be with a sick friend. I told her I would pray for them both if she would pray for me. She said, “It’s a deal!”

It was like that the whole first half of my trip, but for some reason I had forgotten it until two beggars met person to person in front of a bookstore.

In my younger years, it took me a little while to realize that the gospel call to love everyone we meet has nothing to do with that frail North American slogan which implies that if I smile, then people will smile back and that’s the secret of it all.

No. Loving everyone I meet means a lot more than just smiling at them.

Not Just a Voice

It means realizing that everyone I encounter is a person, and not a thing. He or she is not just a voice at the end of a cell phone, not just “a fourth for Bridge,” not just a salesperson, not just a beggar, but a person. A real person.

And in whatever way I forget this, I forget that God is people. God is a Person!

For our relationship with God is Person-to-person! And that personal relationship is so person-al that the Second Person of the Trinity told us that whatever we do to each other we do to God, whether we are on a cell phone or a sidewalk.

This is not about smiling at strangers and not about “how to make friends and influence people.” This is about God as a Person.

And it is only when we realize what that means that we can talk about the power of a gentle smile.

Two Major Events

Our merry family reunion was poised between two major historic events—namely the death and funeral of Pope John Paul II and the anointing of another pope, Benedict XVI. As these many events came together in me at the end of my trip, I saw something deeper in the story about Elijah hearing God in the gentle breeze.

I had felt a little of that gentle breeze as I listened to commentaries from throughout the world about our beloved Pope John Paul II.

For even though, in terms of his influence on the world and on history, he was like a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a fire, what were the things people remembered about him? His gentle smile—to a person. His gentle touch—of a person. His gentle look—into the eyes of a person.

He was a man who smiled and touched and looked at people as persons because he believed, in an almost mystical fashion, that the triune God treats us all as they treat each Other, as Persons. And so it is that we must treat one another.

And I found it equally surprising to discover that the new pope, Benedict XVI, whom many had seen as the ferocious Cardinal Ratzinger, is also a very ordinary “gentle breeze” of a man—one who was already well-known for smiling at, looking at, and touching others, person-to-person.

I never really believed Catherine Doherty when she said that the world could only be brought back to Christ one by one. Now I see that she was really saying that it could be brought back to him, person-by-person in the way that God is Person.

Her fear of technology was not about technology per se, but about the depersonalization that so easily results from certain kinds of technology. And her agony was not about science or philosophy. It was about her fear of our depersonalizing God!

God Is a Person

She knew that everything was dependent on our realization that God is a Person who loves each of us personally.

Perhaps Catherine sensed that when all the earthquakes and fires and winds have failed to get people’s attention, the only way we will have left to convince others that they are persons loved by God is to gently smile on them as persons the way God does.

Meanwhile, I think we should declare Elijah, the man who found God, not in the great wind, or in the fire or in the earth quake, but in the gentle breeze, the patron saint of cell phones. We could ask him to intercede for us that we might hear the gentle breeze of God above all this noise of technology.

St. Elijah! Pray for us!

Hey, guess what? That prayer I just made to him was a long distance call, and I didn’t even need a cell phone!