The Power of Simply Showing Up for Someone in Pain

Do you understand what I have done for you?
You who call me master and teacher, and rightly so,
what I have done for you, I ask you to do for one another.

One of the great gifts we have as priests
is to visit people in their homes and in their areas of vulnerability,
in their hospital beds, in their convalescent homes.
And when we get there, yes, we bring oils,
often bring communion, and we bring prayers.
But what we receive is often something quite spectacular.

We see relatives, loved ones, not doing anything spectacular or heroic,
but they are present. They are simply present to their loved one,
holding their hand, taking care of simple deeds.
Sometimes conversations, sometimes not,
but there is a sharing of love.

Often people will tell me in those moments
that they never knew they had that strength within them,
that they never thought themselves that selfless,
that they were able to give and pour themselves out
for their parent, their spouse, and sometimes their friend
or God forbid, their child.
They find inside themselves a strength
in the other person’s vulnerability, in their suffering.
Something inside of them comes out,
and they simply serve.
They do what is needed to be present in those moments.

I was reminded of this very same cycle in my own life
about a month ago when my close friend, Monsignor Pat Browne,
who had been my mentor for over twenty-plus years,
had been diagnosed with bone cancer.
He had been told that it was curable,
it was not just treatable, but curable.
And so, he had gone through several rounds of treatment,
but he remained weak, and he was getting weaker each day.
He was in a convalescent home,
and I went to visit him a couple times
and realized something inside of me said, I need to respond.

But I have to be honest with you,
there was a temptation in me that I had so many things to do,
so many people to visit, so many jobs to do, all good stuff.
The temptation was to wait till the pressure came off,
to wait until I got through all the seasons,
whatever that season was.
For me, it is just one after the next.

The temptation was to listen to that busyness,
even in the goodness of the busyness.
But again, something inside of me said,
no, you need to make time, you need to be present.
And so, at the end of every day,
I went over to visit him and spent an hour,
more, sometimes less, sometimes more.
And we sometimes chatted, sometimes I listened,
sometimes we just sat in each other’s presence.

Nothing particularly heroic, nothing particularly magnificent,
just simple presence.
One of those nights, he died.
It was really unexpected, and I was so glad that I had gone.

I know there are many of you who are dealing with sick relatives,
and you are showing up, you are doing the very thing
that I have talked about, and you know what that is.
You do not know where the strength comes from,
because you cannot identify it, but it is inside of you.
It came out because of somebody else’s suffering,
somebody else’s pain, and you are in that moment now,
and so, you are doing the service.

But for many others of us,
we are caught up in the busyness of our days.
We are not bad people.
We are good people doing good things,
but we sometimes miss the opportunity to be present
to those who are in the midst of a difficult time in their life.
Maybe it is a relative, or maybe it is a distant relative,
or maybe it is a neighbor, or maybe it is somebody else,
but sometimes we have to open our eyes to see it.

See, this is where Jesus meets us.
Jesus meets us like He does the disciples,
and He gives us an example of what to do.
He sees His disciples, He loves His disciples,
but remember, He knows He is going to die.
He knows this is His last night.
This is not an accidental or incidental example.
This is His Magna Carta of ministry.
This is do as I have done for you, do for others.
And what does He do?
He does something that was unheard of in that time.

He got down and washed their feet.
That was not something we would do,
it was something that a slave would do.
Not only just a slave, but the lowest of the slaves.
Like the slave who had no rank at all.
You think there is no rank among slaves?
Yes, there is rank among slaves.
The slave who had no rank,
and if there was no slave, then it was a child who did it,
and if the child could not do it,
then the woman of the house did it.
But never, never did a man do it, ever.
It was unheard of.

And so now you see the reason why Peter has this reaction.
He just immediately reacts,
“You cannot do this, you are not going to do that to me.
I cannot let you do that.”
And Jesus says, if you cannot let me do this,
then you can have no part of me.
That is a very peculiar word,
that part means communion.
You cannot be part of me,
there is a communion, you cannot be in union with me.

And then Peter says,
“Oh, in that case, then wash every part of me.”
All the resistance disappears.
He realizes that he is on the wrong side.
And he only lets him wash.

Then Jesus says to him,
“Now, do you understand?
You do not fully understand this.
You will, but you do not yet.”
He says, do as I have done for you.
Get down on your knees and wash each other’s feet,
serve one another.
See, that is the command he gives every one of us.
And as he does it in the context of the Thanksgiving feast,
this is what we are called to learn.

Tonight, we are going to do what Jesus did for his disciples,
we are going to do for one another.
Now, I understand for some of you,
that is very uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable.
It is meant to be. It is meant to be uncomfortable.
If it was comfortable, it would not be symbolic.

You see, if you are thinking,
I am not going to have my feet washed,
not my feet, I did not clean them enough today,
I have only washed them twice today.
We have to allow somebody to do that.
And why?

Because the first thing we have to do
is to be humble enough to let somebody wash our feet,
which is harder than you think.
Because when you are sick and when you are vulnerable,
the first thing that goes is your ability to do for yourself.
That is the hardest thing when you are sick and when you are old,
when you cannot do for yourself,
because you have spent your whole life doing for yourself,
and now you have to let others do for you,
and it is deeply uncomfortable.

And yet, it is the most powerful thing we can do
for our loved ones is to let them serve us.
Until you have been there, you do not know what it is like.
It is really, really hard to let somebody else put on your shoes,
somebody else put on your clothes,
and the hardest of all, let somebody else put on your underwear.
It is really, really hard.
And when you are in that moment,
then you know what it means to let somebody serve you.

So, we are going to do that symbolically tonight
by allowing somebody to wash your feet.
And once you have been humbled by that,
then I ask you to turn around
and to wash somebody else’s feet.
And as you wait in line,
I want you to think through a couple of things.
I want you to think about who are the people in your life?
Who do you need to serve?
Who do you need to stop being served by and to serve?

Maybe you are in the position
that you might let somebody serve you now,
because, in fact, it is time,
because you need their help, and you have been resisting it,
and you have been holding back, and you have not asked.
It is time to ask.
It is time to let your children,
or your grandchildren serve you.

Tonight, as you come forward,
I ask you to understand what Jesus has done for us.
He has given us a model to serve, to serve one another.
I get that that is deeply uncomfortable,
not just the symbolic thing tonight, but also in our lives.
It requires us to pause and to look around,
who in my life needs service? Who in my life needs me?
That is going to take some thought.
So, as you wait, think about it. It is a profound reality.

Do you understand what I have done for you?
You who call me master and teacher, and rightly so,
what I have done for you, I ask you to do for one another.