The unspoken faith of my father was an "incredible thing"

We have seen incredible things today. (Luke 5:26)

The power Jesus received from His Father in Heaven to forgive sins on earth is certainly at the core of this Gospel. But the power of faith also teaches that the bigger our faith, the better a friend we make! When the paralyzed man's unwavering friends couldn't get him in front of Jesus because the stretcher was too unwieldy to bring through the crowd, they carried him up to the roof and lowered him through the roof tiles into the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus! What a struggle that must have been! While this act of love isn't as astonishing as Jesus healing the man, we must ask ourselves – would we go that far for one of our friends?

Reading and hearing this gospel today, the day after the Feast Day of Saint Juan Diego and two days before the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, reminds me of a story my mom told me several times about my dad that, to me, speaks volumes about what true faith is in real life and the lengths to how far some will go to help others in their faith.

Some of the details are sketchy, but here is what I remember:

Mom and Dad lived in Mexico for a short while early on in their marriage. They lived, in Mom’s words “within shouting distance” of the local convent.  When the nuns found out Dad was a pretty good handyman and fluent in Spanish, he was often called upon to help them fix things when they were broken.  Mom said that despite not being paid for his efforts, Dad never complained.  He told Mom that the smiles (and sometimes the lunches) the ‘ladies’ gave him was enough.

Every December 12^th, the nuns would put on a play for the community to help celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  One year, they enlisted my dad’s help in building a lot of the props for their play and, as usual, he did a terrific job.  The night before the play was to take place the nuns reached out to my dad for another favor.  They explained that the man they had been “grooming” to play the part of Juan Diego fell ill suddenly and would not be able to perform the next day.  Then they asked my dad if he would fill in!  He reminded them that he was not Catholic, and actually “Mormon in name only”, they replied “That’s OK!  It’s not a speaking part.  You just have to do a bit of walking and wear the cloak we’ve made.  You won’t even have to rehearse. But you are the only one who can save our presentation!”  He took the ‘part’ and ‘saved’ the day (at least in the eyes of the nuns)!

I laughed every time my mom told me this story!  But I also keep it in my heart to remind me of the power of love for our neighbor.  It was this story, and countless others like it that my mother told me about Dad that proves what a close priest friend told Mom as Dad lay dying in the hospital—“Cappy is more Catholic than a lot of ‘catholics’ I’ve ever met!”