Waitin' for da big one: my father's last years

Commonweal, Feb 13, 2004 by Michael J. Baxter

Yet the cross signifies a further reality, one that has to do with more than suffering, for it involves and evokes God's mercy. The fruit of Christ's Passion comes to us in the flesh, through the works of mercy: my mother helping my father through the long ordeal of getting to the bathroom; my sister sitting with him for hours; we and our friends finally burying him. Works of mercy that my father brought to many others too, which were surely on our minds as we laid him to rest in a cemetery only a hundred yards from the baseball diamond where, sixty years before, he played as a kid. What I thought of that morning in May was the many times my father had brought me to that same ball field when I was a kid, and patiently taught me how to catch, throw, and hit. It was a glimpse of the patience by which all of us, after wavering throughout our lives between patience and mortal impatience, are brought home to the presence of God.

Michael J. Baxter, CSC, teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.