March 6, 2009
Taking the Time to Make a Difference
Who moved my coat?
BY PAUL R. LEINGANG
It was a small event, but I keep thinking about it. Maybe it has greater meaning than what it seemed to be.
In the middle of a winter day, not too long ago, I came back early from lunch for a meeting with a reporter. Instead of going to my office on the second floor, I went straight to the reception desk on the first floor, just as the reporter arrived.
The television reporter wanted to talk about the impact of the sour economy on diocesan ministries. We walked down the hallway to a meeting room for the interview, and along the way, I hung up the leather jacket I had worn to lunch — and I hung it up on a rack I had never used before.
After the interview, I went back to my office upstairs. I forgot to pick up my coat. I didn’t even think about it until much later in the day when I went to the hook behind my office door, where I usually keep my coat — and I discovered it was not there.
Even more surprising, after I remembered the circumstances around the midday interview, my coat was not where I had left it.
My first thought was, somebody moved my coat. My second thought was, somebody took my coat. I hoped my first thought was correct, but I began to fear the second.
It was a troubling thought, even to suspect that someone who came to the Catholic Center offices would steal a coat. I didn’t want to believe that. But the suspicion crept into my thoughts, even as I tried to maintain hope that there was an easy explanation for my missing coat.
An hour later, still at work and after fruitless searches of hallways and hangers, I had an in-house phone call from the young woman who makes sure the doors are locked and the lights are out at the end of a day. She had found a coat in a darkened room behind a closed door — and it was mine.
I soon learned that someone had moved it to a place where it would be safe. There was no intention to deprive me of my property; there was rather an intention to protect it.
I felt bad about my suspicions. I felt somewhat foolish to have given up hope of finding my coat. But most of all, I just felt good that I once again had my warm coat on a cold evening.
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The Vatican Information Service recently published portions of a message given by Pope Benedict XVI in advance of the next World Youth Day.
“We are all aware of the need for hope, not just any kind of hope, but a firm and reliable hope.” Pope Benedict wrote. “Youth is a special time of hope because it looks to the future with a whole range of expectations.”
I am not a youth — far from it — but the thoughts about hope struck a chord in me.
“When we are young we cherish ideals, dreams and plans. Youth is the time when decisive choices concerning the rest of our lives come to fruition,” the pope continued. “Perhaps this is why it is the time of life when fundamental questions assert themselves strongly.”
When we begin to examine our expectations, the pope said, “We then ask ourselves: where can I obtain and how can I keep alive the flame of hope burning in my heart?”
The pope’s answer to his own question was clear: Our hope must be in Jesus. “Hope is not simply an ideal or sentiment, but a living person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . . If we are not alone, if he is with us, even more, if he is our present and our future, why be afraid?”
* * *
Pope Benedict advises young people to continue to search for Jesus, to make space for him, to pray and to participate in liturgies and parish life. Not bad advice for all of us.
If our hope is in the Lord — and in the presence of the Lord among those around us — then neither a misplaced coat nor an uncertain stock market will be a reason to lose hope.
Our hope is not in things but in the Lord, and in each other. That’s easy to say, but it may take all of Lent, or all of a lifetime, to accept.
Comments are welcome at office@cfm.org or the Christian Family Movement, P.O. Box 925, Evansvsille, IN 47706-0925