Three Things

Homily by Assistant to the President and Alumni Chaplain Rev. Gerry Blaszczak, S.J., at the Mass to honor Rev. Charlie Allen, S.J. on September 19 at Fairfield University.

Bishop Caggiano, my fellow Jesuits, Dr. and Mrs. Nemec, members of the Allen Family, friends of Fr. Allen, dear Charlie,

In early September a number of you received an e-mail from me. It was an appeal for help. I wrote:

I am humbled by Charlie’s request that I preach at the Eucharist on September 19. But I am also daunted. I am probably not going to be able to distill everything into three points. I certainly won’t warm people’s hearts and lift their spirits the way Charlie always did. Please help by sending me your own reflections and suggestions.

Here is a sample of the responses I got, gentle listeners:

-“You’re right; you’re no Charlie Allen. Good luck.”

-“Charlie had the practice of always saying ONLY THREE THINGS. You would do well to follow his example.”

-“Keep it brief. People will be hungry. Remember that they came to hear Charlie, not you.”

So… let me offer three points. Three reflections, really, on how we can find our way into the meaning of today’s Gospel as we celebrate Charlie.

1.   It would never occur to Charlie to do what the apostles do in today’s Gospel. Charlie would never waste his energy or time trying to establish that he was the first, the best, the most important, the person most deserving of esteem, honor, or prestige. Charlie is not driven to perform, to say and do things in order to buttress his own sense of self-esteem. It would never occur to Charlie to try to appear to be someone he isn’t. There is in Charlie no put-on, no pretension. No facade, masks, games; no drive to impress or win over. Charlie is always and everywhere himself.

What does Charlie know that, at this point in their own journey, the apostles didn’t? I don’t know how precisely he came by it, but it is obvious to all of us who know Charlie that he lives out of a freedom, a peace, a confidence that is rooted of his own experience and absolute confidence in the unconditional love of God has for him. The love of Christ set Charlie free and set him on fire with the ability and will to share the love of God made manifest in Christ Jesus. That unshakable confidence in God’s love has, I venture to say, allowed Charlie to weather reversals and disappointments in his own life. And, I would suggest, is the source of Charlie’s radiant joy, his unquenchable optimism, his resilient, buoyant spirit. But more on that in a minute.

2.   I similarly do not know how Charlie learned that life is about serving others, and putting them first, which Jesus is at such pains to teach the apostles in today’s Gospel. I don’t know how Charlie came to see that the center of his focus, the preoccupation of his life needed to be, as it was for Jesus, emblematically, the child. The child, who in the Palestinian Society of the first century is not the symbol of innocence and simplicity, purity and beauty, but the representative of the non-person. It is hard for us to fathom that in the ancient world a child had no social standing, and no rights. A child did not contribute to the world of trade, warfare, government, religious learning or philosophical discussion. A child, consequently, was a being of no account, at most a potential resource for the future.

Yet Jesus calls the child from the periphery, positions the child center-stage and embraces him. (By the way, I defy you to find any reference in the literature of antiquity to a philosophical or religious leader, prophet or sage doing such an outrageous thing.) How and when did Charlie learn the heart of Christ, and that to follow Him would mean to make the other the center of his life? How and when did Charlie learn that to be Jesus’ companion must mean to imitate Jesus in identifying himself with the joys and sorrows, the needs and aspirations of the person most marginalized and most disdained, most systematically devalued and ignored? How did Charlie learn to receive, to embrace, to accept and to welcome so sensitively, so inclusively, so warmly? I don’t know, but he did.

Here is a claim I know for a fact I cannot make about myself: No one has felt unimportant, unvalued, insignificant in Charlie’s presence. And how keenly, intuitively, unconditionally we have sensed that it was not just Charlie who acknowledged, accepted, received us, but that it was Christ himself who had sent Charlie and who was somehow present in and through him.

One of you wrote to me: “Charlie was a champion of students of color and women, which, in my experiences on this campus at that time, was rare and unique. If I had one word to offer, it would be ‘gratitude’ to Charlie for who he is and how he made me feel.”

Another wrote: “Fr. Allen always made me feel connected to him as a person, i.e., he was always PRESENT and very focused on you when you were with him. In this way he manifested his own connection to Jesus and Jesus to me.”

3.   My third and last point. Charlie’s irrepressible good spirits. The crazy games he plays, the jokes he tells, the laughter he loves to provoke and participate in, the upbeat quality of his preaching, his ability to lift spirits whenever you met him, his wry, playful sense of humor that finds its way into everything he does and says. Are we just talking about some particular character trait of Charlie’s, some quirk of his personality? There is more to it than that.

Charlie’s humor and joy and ability to lift us all up, I feel certain, has its source in the experience of God’s pervasive, faithful and unconditional love. A love that draws us ever more deeply into God’s own endlessly sharing, self-giving life, into the very life of the Trinity, where, emptied of crippling self-concern, progressively freed from enslaving ego-driven obsessions, we become more and more channels of God’s liberating, life-giving love for the world.

Dear Friends, toward the conclusion of the Last Supper Discourse in the Gospel of St. John, Jesus spells out his motive for the preceding instruction he has offered: “These things I have told you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15.11). Today as we gather for Eucharist, we give thanks to God for the gift He has given us in Charlie Allen, for all that Charlie has shown us, shared with us, been for us. Perhaps most of all, we thank God for the joy that fills Charlie’s heart, that overflows into all his ministries, friendships, relationships. We ask, dear God, that that joy, rooted and grounded in Your love for us all, continue to flow through us to touch, heal and renew all whose lives we touch.