From the old film “Little Big Man” there is a line I find that I often use. In that movie, Old Lodge Skins, an ancient native American chief who has endured much, too much in his lifetime, decides that it’s time to die. He performs his farewell rituals, says his goodbyes, and closes his eyes. After a long while, his eyes flutter open. He looks around, disappointed, and says, both honestly and a little sadly, “Some days the magic works; some days the magic doesn’t work.” The church’s choice of three very different and apparently unrelated readings for today’s liturgy, which, on top of that, is on Mother’s Day, looks like a “sometimes the magic doesn’t work” scenario.
We have three different stories, images, directions at work here. In the Acts of the Apostles, we hear how the 12 apostles, already acting like members of the priestly board of directors, just can’t get everything done that needs to be done for the fast-growing community. So they look back into the tradition of Moses, who appointed helpers to share the burden. They gather proven people as deacons—literally “servers” more than “servants”—to see to parts of the ministry, to care for the poor and see to the needs of the ignored. There is some serious evidence that there were even, dare I say it, women among those helping folk, at least for a while. Pope Francis has recently established a commission to study that.
In the gospel, we hear the befuddlement of those same would-be priestly directors when Jesus tells them he must return to God after he has given the full witness of his death and resurrection. They can’t accept that, they can’t get their hearts and heads around that idea, even when Jesus promises that where he is going they too will follow one day, and that in his father’s home there are many dwelling places, many mansions. They know that without him they will feel lost, not knowing where to stay or where to go, not having the security of being at home with him. He assures him that he is the way home, the truth that will make them at home in this world and the next. He is the life that is never lost, but is transformed by death. He even promises them that they will do even greater works than his.
And in the middle of it all, we hear the Second Letter of Peter’s beautiful riff on Psalm 118, “the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” And maybe it is this fundamental text, this literal foundation text, that binds these three disparate readings and ideas together.
Jesus, the living stone, the stone rejected by the builders, is the cornerstone of a new house built of all of us, living stones. It is a house where all can dwell, a house where the great are the servants of all, and where the lowly are deemed of equal dignity with the mighty. It is a house lit by the light of Christ, inspired by his example, where the hungry are fed through the generosity of all, where the father’s love is really more like our mother’s love. Today as we remember and celebrate our mothers, living and deceased, imperfect in both their tenderness towards us and their ferocity to protect us, we see a love that is unconditional, accepting their wayward children as well as the virtuous, smoothing out the bumps that would make us carelessly stumble, opening a door to a place of safety and security.
If God is our father, so to, God is our mother who builds up the house as surely as our moms and grandmothers built up our family’s place into a home, built that home out of the living stones of grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren, the weak and the strong, the old and they young. The disciples, I suspect, looked to the examples of their mothers and grandmothers more than to the priestly caste when they needed examples of servers to care for their flock; Jesus, I suspect, looked to his Holy Family in the simple carpenter’s house of Nazareth when he promised many dwelling places, many mansions, many places of shelter, refuge, and nourishment.
Whether they were or are stay-at-home moms or the work two jobs to feed their children, mothers are homemakers, home-makers. And that is what we all invited to be: home makers.
Constructed on the cornerstone of Jesus, the stone rejected by the builders who is the foundation, and inspired by the examples of our moms, let’s work together to make of the living stones of our lives a place of welcome, shelter, and loving kindness. Let’s make a home.
Doing so, we can be assured that the magic will indeed work, today and always.
Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.