How to be like Jesus.

It's times like these you learn to love again. 

It's times like these you give and give again.

It's times like these you learn to love again.

It's times like these time and time again.
~ Foo Fighters, "Times Like These"

I spent the majority of my afternoon half carefully, half carelessly, placing labels on envelopes for newsletters.  I thought absentmindedly about who would get them, and I paid a measure (but certainly not a full one) of attention to my two charges, Maria, who is learning French, and Nhi, who was working on an assignment about St. Thérèse of Lisieux.  I rushed through those envelopes so that I could run to the library, where a movie and two books were wating for me.

As it turns out, they are still there, because I rushed through reading the directions and made a wrong turn.  When I arrived to the library, it had closed minutes before.  All of that rushing, and if I had only stopped to pay a speck of attention, I would have known that the library was closing.

I returned, tail between my legs, to an empty office.  I had a couple of things to read and send out before returning home.

The doorbell rang, but, even though I had told Nancy that I didn't mind being in the office alone, I hadn't any intention of opening the door and occasioning any potential trouble.

I continued my reading in the hope that the man at the door would give up.  Not very Christ-like, I know. 

At least four times more he rang the doorbell, a plea to be heard.

An extended period of silence lulled me into a false sense of security: maybe he's gone...

But then, the doorbell.  A high pitch, followed by a low pitch.

Whatever this man needed, he would not be ignored, so I opened the door.

"Is Sr. Pat or Sr. Eileen here?"

No, they aren't.  They just took Colleen up to the novitiate.  They won't be back tonight.

But I still don't know this man, so I put up the yellow caution tape.

"They can't speak with you right now; is there something I can help you with?"

"I need them to help me with some papers," I thought I heard.  "Can I come back tomorrow at this time?"

"Can you come in the morning?" I offered, knowing that the sisters would be here, and that if he came tomorrow at this time, he would be interrupting their dinner.

"I work in the morning," he said, "but I can come in the evening."

We settled on an evening time, and I knew that the sisters would be there to greet this man, whose name I learned to be Antonio.

Before he left, he offered me the bag in his hand, for the sisters.  "It's going to go bad," he said.  It was some sort of cake.

As I closed the door, I was humbled by his persistence, his care, and his gratitude.

The story that has followed me, of late, is that of the Canaanite woman (Gospel of Matthew).  At this point in the Gospel, Jesus has been traveling and he has been trying so hard to stay out of the limelight for just a little while.  His notoriety cannot be quenched, however, and he is approached by an outsider, this Canaanite woman, with a request to heal her daughter.

Jesus replies to her that it is not fair to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs.  Jesus hung with the outcasts, for sure, but this woman, a Canaanite, was outside of those "outsiders."

 "...even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table," she counters.  I might not be in your circle, but I matter, she implies.

Jesus praises her faith, and heals her daughter. 

All I could do was stand there, both awed and dumbfounded, and tell Antonio to come back tomorrow. 

Lesson learned still learning.