Brought to Life By Mercy and Grace

Dear Friend,

A recurring memory of my childhood – one I’ve shared with you in past letters: sitting in front of the stereo with my younger brother, both of us listening intently to the soundtrack of the Broadway musical “The Music Man”. I’ll never know what inspired my parents to buy this record; sadly, I never really asked them. All I know is that in my growing up years the record brought me hours of delight.  

In the story of the “Music Man,” the huckster travelling salesman, Harold Hill, promises small-town families that their children can become musically proficient by mastering what he calls the “think system”. With this method their sons and daughters need only “think” of the note to play and it will (magically?) come out of their band instruments. No need for complicated training, just buy the instruments (and uniforms), apply the method, and soon enough you’ll behold the beauty. Before anyone catches onto the madness of it all, Professor Hill is on a train out of town, money in hand….

The whole scheme falls apart – and the story really begins -- when Professor Hill falls in love with the town librarian. My brother and I ate it up. We just did.

Looking back, I see the fine line separating comedy from tragedy. Our psalm this week voices an aching loneliness; it’s lamentation over human charades finally backing an entire nation into a deadly corner called exile. What about St. Paul? He was dead, he says, when the inbreaking of divine power knocked him down and woke him up. He was brought to life by mercy and grace. Lethal shadows are real, and our Gospel assures us that loving, not thinking, scatters them - God’s way of loving which I learn slowly, over many Lents, through Jesus Christ.   

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm