Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Memorial of Saint Barnabas, Apostle
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Encouragers
Barnabas was a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. When he arrived in Antioch and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced.
Yesterday I spent time with peacemakers, with men and women who made my life not only comfortable, but happy. Heaven comes down and glory fills your soul.
Don and I have been close friends for fifty years. I met him on a Lake Mendota dock in Madison, where I’d hooked a northern pike and had little idea how to get him out of the water. Don, avid fisherman, got excited and helped me do the job. Decades later the memory is clear in my mind, the fast breaths, the smell of the water, the tension of the rod and line, the fish. The fish! What a beauty!
I don’t actually remember if we landed that fish or not – it was the joy of our work (play) together that rises up in my memory. Those five minutes set a foundation for much, much more – grief and celebration, vacations on Lulu Lake where Don lived with his family, weddings, babies, surgeries … and spiritual growth that we shared at retreats, in night prayers, music, mass we attended after riding bicycles for 10 Sunday morning miles … we have taken turns pushing each other toward the mystery of God, which passeth all understanding. We will no doubt continue to do so.
When we get together once or twice a year for a meal, we just pick up where we left off the last time. The life we’ve shared for years settles us into today’s transparency and trust. Over time we have learned some about holding each other accountable for surrendering to God’s movement in our lives.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
At one of the retreats Don hosted and we led together I met one of Don’s friends, a fellow Catholic, Ken. He is a former Navy Seal who loved to dive to the bottom of Lulu Lake and grab a handful of weeds to prove he could get down that far. Ken introduced me to the majesty of liturgical prayer.
One night Ken asked us all to lie down on the floor in the dark. We heard the crickets outside, and the breezes blowing through the grove of trees that led down to the lake. He insisted gently that we listen to the words of the now famous Divine Chaplet and pray the words with him. “Eternal Father, I offer you the body and blood, soul and divinity of Your dearly beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world … for the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Not being accustomed to repetitive prayers, I was surprised that we spent 45 minutes praying like this. Later I learned to love this prayer and eventually joined a group in Urbana where the group prayed the Divine Chaplet together.
Yesterday I sat with Ken and his wife Tricia watching yellow finches, cardinals, a woodpecker and the biggest robin I’ve ever seen, eat their bird seed, wash themselves and fly back and forth into the trees. In the evening we got home from supper in time to hear them put each other to bed. Quiet. Quieter.
Occasionally the robin sang. Now and then the cardinal couple serenaded each other. Soon, what had been a busy noisy back yard all afternoon fell silent, filled now with our own human, Â wide-ranging conversation, until we too became quiet and found our own beds.
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
Don and Ken and I don’t pretend to be fine wine as we age. Various illnesses, aches and pains creep into our every day. But these boys are my Barnabases. Our times together do not make me yearn for days gone by. I relish the way we more thoroughly must surrender our physical strength to the One who made us. God is alive, encouragement is afoot, and we celebrate each other with each other, praising God with heartfelt hallelujahs.
(Acts 11, Psalm 98, Psalm 25, Matthew 5)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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