This was originally published in my Saturday newsletter on April 20, 2024.

I was flustered, I was emotional, and my head was crowded with all kinds of thoughts. I was at mass with the kids, Eddie was out of town and I felt really restless. I was looking forward to mass – to the solitude and the serenity that my time with Jesus can bring me.

But when I looked up and saw the priest who was celebrating mass that Sunday, I nearly rolled my eyes. This was a priest whose homilies I found hard to follow and who was difficult to understand. Great, here we go, I thought to myself. But I reminded myself that I wasn’t there for the priest, I wasn’t there for how good or bad his message might be, and I sat back and focused on the mass. By the time the homily rolled around, my attention started to drift to my ragged cuticles. I really need a manicure. The priest’s words penetrated my thoughts of nail polish colors. “You see, we can’t control the actions of those in our lives, but we can respond to them with grace.”  I sat up and listened. Maybe this is the message I need to hear today. And it was. It was almost like the homily had been written just for me that Sunday. Words that on any other Sunday might not have affected me so deeply, on this particular Sunday they were definitely making an impact. I listened attentively to the remainder of the homily and I was nearly in tears by the end of it. 

Sometimes we close ourselves off to a great message because of the messenger. A politician we don’t like, a priest we’ve heard about before, even someone in our community who has a reputation for being abrasive. Our preconceived thoughts, or what we already know of this messenger, can make us shut down and miss something that we might need to hear. I’m guilty of this, more often than I care to admit. The message to be kind, attentive, and to not judge is one we can be reminded of fairly often. But sometimes, the people who we least expect it from are the ones giving us the message we need to hear.