Fr. Bob White
It was Easter Sunday 1954. It’s Bob and June White and their four kids, my sister Liz 8, my brother Jim 5, my sister Jean 1 and me, 6. Mass at St. Olav has just let out and we’re walking down the sidewalk in downtown Minneapolis. A reporter from the Minneapolis Tribune asks if he can take our picture.
My mother is looking like June Cleaver, with her pearls, while gloves, and matching purse. My sister Liz, who wants to be like her mom, has the same white gloves and a matching purse. My dad is looking like Ward Cleaver, in his suit and tie. And my brother Jim, the Beaver, and me, Wally Cleaver are all dressed up in our Sunday best with our clip-on ties which we think are so cool. And my little sister Jean just looking cute.
A day or so later there we are featured in the Minneapolis Tribune, looking like your typical family of that era. It’s a mom and dad with their four kids on an Easter Sunday morning taking a stroll in downtown Minneapolis.
A lot of things have changed since the 1950s. The innocence of the “Leave it to Beaver” era is no longer with us. But there is one thing that hasn’t changed. It’s a question we all must answer. Knowing that we all come from God and are going back to God what am I going to do with this one precious life that I’ve been given? This one chance at life, what am I going to do with it?
A week or so ago I visited a young woman who was dying of cancer. Her body was giving out but inside she was more alive than ever. She was on fire, on fire with love, for God, for life, and deeply grateful for the one precious life that she’d been given.
I left that day struck by what I had seen. I’d just been with someone who was deeply in love with God and consumed by that love. That’s how it works. When we let our hearts burn with that kind of love we come alive, even as we’re dying. That’s how I want to die, on fire, deeply in love with God and consumed by that love, and deeply grateful for the one precious life I’ve been given.
We come from God and we’re going back to God. So, what am I going to do with this one precious life I’ve been given? I don’t want to be asking that question as I’m dying. I want to be asking that question every day. Why stay in the tomb when the one who was raised from the tomb is now calling me out of my tomb?
Your being here this morning, is not by accident. Trust that you’re meant to be here. This Eucharist is all of us learning to live out of an energy that calls us out of our tombs and into the light of another new day. It’s not 1954 anymore. It’s 2024. But the question is the same. What are you going to do with this one precious life you’ve been given? That is up to you and to me.
