Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
Hugging Meditation
September 9, 2015
I have been doing a lot of bedside
visiting recently with desperately ill or dying people. This has brought to
mind an experience I had a couple of years ago.
I was at the bedside of one of our parishioners who had been suffering
for a long time from a terminal illness.
He was still lucid on occasion, but often floated between a
painkiller-induced semi-sleep and the reenactment of vivid memories that seemed
to me to be almost like waking dreams.
Most of the time, I just listened to him. I had done all the things that are a priest’s
special calling, like granting absolution after hearing confession and
celebrating Eucharist at his bedside. I
anointed him with oil and prayed. I sang
to him and held his hand, and this seemed to bring him a special focus of
thought. Now I mostly just listened to
him recount stories from his long courtship and short marriage. On the last day I saw him, I asked him what
he wanted me to do that day. He seemed a
bit more withdrawn than usual, and was clearly close to death. He smiled and replied simply, “Just be with
me.”
“Just be with me.” This is the voice of basic human need. It doesn’t demand that we fix anything,
figure anything out, or make anything right.
It just asks for companionship, for being present, for mutual sharing of
joy and sorrow. Joys thus shared are
multiplied; sorrows thus shared are made lighter.
“Just be with me.” It is a call we hear from friends, siblings,
co-workers, neighbors, children.
Sometimes it is not—and cannot be—put into words, but is there all the same.
Being
present for others is a great gift, both to them and to us. Mindfulness, being fully attentive, is the
key in such sharing. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (who was a friend of
Thomas Merton) wrote the following about what he calls “the hugging meditation”:
“Suppose
a lovely child comes and presents herself to us. If we are not really there—if we are thinking
of the past, worrying about the future, or possessed by anger or fear—the
child, though present, will not exist for us.
She is like a ghost, and we are like a ghost also. If we want to meet the child, we have to go
back to the present, to the present moment in order to meet her. If we want to hug her, it is in the present
moment that we can hug her. So we breathe
consciously, uniting body and mind, making ourselves into a real person
again. When we become a real person, the
child becomes a real person also.”
Jesus calls us to be present for others. And thus he is present for us.
Grace and Peace, Fr. Tony+
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