Walking in Valleys of Darkness

by Albert Holtz

  Then I noticed Adele, who had come to me after mass a couple of months ago to introduce herself and invite me to drop by for Sunday dinner to meet her husband and her several children. That had been just at the time when we were beginning to think seriously about starting some sort of “new” school. As it had turned out, her husband, Carl, a successful businessman, had in the space of two months become our community’s most important paraclete, attending meetings to offer his encouragement and practical ideas. He had certainly been an important help to me personally in my moments of doubt and fear. Last week, in a dramatic vote of confidence, he had enrolled his son Tim as one of the first students in our non-existent school. “Now that’s a paraclete,” I said to myself as the procession arrived and I started accepting the gifts of bread and wine.

  As I turned around to carry the gifts to the altar, which was now glowing with Pentecost light from the windows, it occurred to me that the Holy Spirit was certainly present in our congregation that Pentecost morning—the place was full of paracletes.

  Reflection

  1. Which translation of parakltos best conveys what God has been for you lately: Helper, Encourager, Strengthener, or Consoler? Reflect on some ways in which God plays, has played, or could play that role for you.

  2. The passage from 2 Cor 1:3–4 cited on the previous page says that we have been given the Spirit so that we can be of service to others in need. When have you acted as a paraclete for someone by your support or encouragement?

  3. Think of a few times when someone served as a paraclete for you.

  Sacred Scripture

  1. The noun parakltos appears in John 14:16 and 15:26.

  2. The noun paraklsis appears in Luke 2:25 (where Simeon was awaiting the “consolation” of Israel).

  3. The verb parakale appears in Luke 3:18; Acts 16:40; and 1 Thess 4:18. It is the verb in the beatitude, “Blest are they who mourn, for they will be comforted [parakale]” (Matt 5:4).

  Rule of Benedict

  You must relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing (Chapter 4, “The Tools for Good Works,” vv. 14–19).

  1. Neos (neh´-os) is used in such English words as neonatal and neoclassical.

  2. Kainos (kahee-nos´).

  3. Phobos (fob´-os), fear, terror.

  4. Deilia (d´-lee´-ah), the adjective form is deilos (d-los´), “fearful, timid.”

  5. At the Last Supper after telling his disciples that he will soon be leaving them, Jesus says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid [deilos]” (John 14:27). In Revelation 21:8 “cowards” [deilos] head the list of those destined for punishment.

  6. Sphronismos (sof-ro-nis´-mos), from the roots ss, “safe, sound” and phrn, “mind.”

  7. Distaz (dees-tad´-zo), “to doubt,” from di-, “double” plus stasis, “standing;” literally: “stand in two places at the same time.”

  8. Parakale (par-ak-al-eh´-o) “to console, strengthen, encourage” comes from para, “beside” plus kale (kal-eh´-o), “to call.”

  9. It is used in this original sense of Jesus himself in the passage “But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate [parakltos] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one” (1 John 2:1).

  10. In the next two citations from John, the word “Paraclete” is translating parakltos.

  11. Paul uses a related word to tell the Romans, “Whatever was written previously was written for our instruction, that by endurance and by the encouragement [paraklsis] of the scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

  12. Each italicized word in the following passage is a translation of the word paraklsis or the verb parakale.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LEARNING TO LET GO

  Knee Surgery

  One freezing December afternoon in 1980 I was playing on the faculty team during the annual student-faculty touch football game at the “new” St. Benedict’s, now in its eighth year. During the course of the game, as I was running full-tilt across the frozen field my left foot slipped, causing my leg to whip out behind me. The pain in my knee made me scream as I fell to the ground, praying that the agony wouldn’t make me pass out. I had completely torn the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee, and would have to spend part of Christmas vacation in the hospital undergoing surgery to repair it.

  This painful experience forced me to admit that at thirty-eight I was no longer young. In addition, the eleven wearisome weeks I spent on crutches gave me plenty of time to absorb a number of other valuable lessons about such things as patience, love, ambition, and depending on others. The following reflections deal with four of those discoveries.

  5. Weaving the Web of Love

  I WAS PLAYING DEFENSIVE END FOR THE FACULTY in the annual student-faculty touch football game. A December cold snap had left the grass of the football field frozen. I could hear it crunch under my feet as I sprinted to head off a speedy sophomore named Vernon, who was trying to turn the corner and run down the sideline with the ball. To this day I believe I would have caught him if my left foot hadn’t slipped on the treacherous, icy grass. My leg snapped out behind me like a whip and the next thing I knew I was rolling on the field clutching my knee, my vision blurred with the horrible pain of a dislocated kneecap and a torn ligament. After a few agonizing seconds my kneecap went back into place and I opened my eyes to look up into a circle of concerned and curious faces peering down at me. I heard a familiar voice trying to calm me with reassuring words about my being all right.

  “Can you walk?” a second voice asked me as a couple of my teammates began lifting me carefully to my feet. I found that I couldn’t put any weight on the bad leg, but could hobble along if I leaned on someone.

  I limped off the field with my left arm draped over the shoulders of Jack, our head basketball coach, who had taught me freshman history twenty-four years before. I could still picture him behind his teacher’s desk in that classroom. As the two of us worked our way slowly to the locker room, I thought of all the many ways I was connected to people around here: to my brothers in the monastery, to my students, to my fellow teachers—and even to a couple of my former teachers.

  One time I was at a meeting in a nearby parish when someone began being extremely critical of a person who was not present. A woman from Ghana broke in on the critic to warn her to be careful about speaking ill of others. “Back home in my village we have a saying: ‘People are like pumpkins in a field; we are all interconnected by vines, but there are so many vines and they are so intertwined that you can’t tell who is related to who.’ So if you speak ill of someone in the next village, that person might turn out to be a distant relative of yours. And then you would be disgraced.”

  Ever since that evening, I’ve prized that saying not as a proverb about complex tribal genealogies but as a down-to-earth image of the unseen web of countless interconnections and relationships of love that link all of us to one another.

  Over the next fourteen weeks of casts and crutches, I was to see that network of love in action: students would hold doors and carry my books for me, my brothers in the monastery would go out of their way to do little tasks that I couldn’t do for myself and offer to drive me to the doctor’s, and various relatives and friends would call to offer their help or to ask how I was doing. When I thanked one cousin for being such a real help to me she said, “Hey, this is what it’s supposed to be all about, isn’t it?”

  In the gospels our Lord doesn’t talk about pumpkin fields, but rather about grapevines. John gives to the image of the vine tremendous power and depth by combining it with one of his favorite words, the verb, men,1 “to dwell, to remain.” He uses it in the last supper discourses to describe the deep, intimate, mutual indwelling that binds Jesus with the Father who dwells in him (John 14:10). No other word captures better the mystery and intensity of Jesus’ relationship with his Father. Later on Jesus expands the scope of the verb to include not just the Father and himself bu
t also his apostles, inviting them to share in the deep, mysterious, intimate life of the Trinity itself. At one point in his discourse to his disciples at the last supper he uses men ten times in seven verses:2

  Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit. . . . Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. (John 15:1–10 passim, NAB)

  Now, with this speech Jesus has included his apostles and all future believers in the vine of divine love that had begun with him, his Father, and the Holy Spirit.

  But the image evoked by men—the divine, mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son, the dwelling of Christ in the Christian, and the dwelling of the Christian in Christ—is not about merely hanging around together in some staid, static relationship in which nothing happens. Rather, divine indwelling involves vibrant activity. For John the universe was created by love and is kept in existence by the vital, all-encompassing Spirit of love that unites the Father, the Son, all of humanity, and indeed the entire universe. Love takes on human form every time we “are there” for a brother or sister to bring someone through a time of pain or discouragement—or to carry their books or drive them to the doctor’s office.

  Finally Jack and I reached the locker room where I let go of his shoulder and lowered myself gingerly onto a bench. I didn’t know as I sat there that I was about to begin three months on crutches. Nor did I suspect that as the long weeks wore on, the care and concern of so many people would make me so aware of how interconnected we all are in the network of love.

  Looking back now, I realize that, because I experienced how good it felt to have someone do a simple favor for me when I was on crutches, I would become much more aware when someone around me needed someone to hold a door open for them or carry something up a flight of stairs. I found, too, that passing the love along to others was another way of experiencing the meaning of that beautiful verb men, the fact that we are all connected with one another, with God, and with the universe in an infinite, mysterious, mutual indwelling love.

  I still see the love continuing to grow quietly each day, connecting us like a wonderful lush vine that reaches around the world into homes and hospitals, offices and factories, classrooms and shopping malls— and even across frozen football fields.

  Reflection

  1. Reread slowly the shortened version of John 15:4–10 that appears on the previous page, watching for the various intimate, inward connections expressed by men.

  2. When do you feel most connected with Christ, the vine? What is the “fruit” that you bear when you are connected to Christ? How can you strengthen the web of love in the world?

  3. What can make you feel cut off or disconnected from the vine? Think of some steps you might take to stay more closely connected to Jesus and to the network of love he came to give us.

  Sacred Scripture

  Men meaning “stay” is found in Luke 1:56 and Acts 18:3; men as “endure over time” is used in John 6:27 and 1 John 2:17.

  Rule of Benedict

  This, then, is the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love: They should each try to be the first to show respect to the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior (Chapter 72, “The Good Zeal of Monks,” vv. 3–5).

  6. Leaning on the Lord

  I WAS SPENDING CHRISTMAS MORNING in the hospital in a Demerol-induced fog, my throbbing left knee wrapped in Ace bandages after surgery on my torn anterior cruciate ligament. I was staring absently at the tan rubber drain coming out of my bandaged knee when there was a gentle knock on the door. I whispered hoarsely “Come in!” and was surprised to see a man, a woman, and two children walking slowly into my room and wishing me a Merry Christmas. They introduced themselves and said that they had been coming to the hospital on Christmas morning for years to sing carols in patients’ rooms. I managed a weak smile and a thank you.

  As they began to sing I couldn’t wait for them to leave—which made me feel ashamed for being so ungrateful to these good-hearted people who were being so kind and loving to me, a stranger. They made me feel uncomfortable, and not just because the Demerol was starting to wear off. No, there was something else going on.

  It was only after they had finished their three carols and had left that I realized why their visit had been so unpleasant for me: I had been uncomfortable with being on the receiving end. As a priest, I was used to always being the giver: I gave homilies, distributed communion, offered blessings, and gave absolution in confession. As a teacher, too, I was a professional giver of lessons, homework, grades, and advice. Heck, come to think of it, I’d even played my guitar and sung for people in their hospital rooms. But, now that I was on the receiving end, it was taking some getting used to. I had to accept that relatives and friends were going out of their way to come to visit me, that others were bringing me my meals and medicine, and people I didn’t even know had just given up their Christmas morning to come and sing me carols. I had certainly been forced out of my usual role of “helper.”

  A few minutes after the singers left, I wanted to use the bathroom. The surgeon had said that I was allowed to, but getting out of bed was a challenge—especially because it required asking someone to help me. I rang the buzzer. Since I didn’t have a cast yet, the slightest bending of my bad knee would send sharp, stabbing pains up my leg. So if I wanted to swing my knees over the side of the bed, someone would have to hold my left leg perfectly straight for me. After a few minutes, a nurse came into the room, wishing me a Merry Christmas and asking how I was. Not wanting to spoil her Christmas, the helper inside of me lied and said I felt great. Then I asked her if she could help me get out of bed to use the bathroom.

  “Sure. Let’s go. But take your time and be careful.”

  She didn’t need to tell me to be careful. I wanted to tell her to be careful! But she seemed to know from experience that she had to lift up on my heel so as to keep the knee from bending as I swung my leg over the side of the bed.

  “Slide over more towards your right . . . That’s it . . . Okay now very slowly, swing your legs over the side and I’ll hold your heel to keep your knee from bending . . . Ready?”

  I watched as she gently and confidently took my heel in her expert hands, then I focused on her kind face as I started to swing my knees across the bed. I wondered when she would celebrate Christmas with her family. “Good; okay,” she said. “That’s it. Keep coming now. Slowly . . . slowly.” I was holding my breath, waiting for the stabs of pain. But she obviously knew how important it was not to let that knee bend. “Okay. Almost there,” she announced. She kept a firm hold on my heel, keeping the knee straight as I lowered both feet toward to floor. Then I shifted my weight a little. Bad move.

  “Yow!” I gasped, “Ow!” I actually saw bright flashes of pain for a second or two. “Sorry!” she apologized, sympathetic but unfazed. “Okay, we’re just about there. You’re fine . . . There we are. Good job!”

  I breathed a deep sigh as I rested my two feet on the floor, beads of clammy perspiration starting to form on my forehead. She was right, though, the hard part was over. I took a deep breath and raised myself carefully onto the crutches that she held out for me. As I stood there leaning on my crutches, trying to slow my racing heartbeat, I realized what a powerful lesson I’d just had: For the first time that I could remember, I, the professional helper, had given myself completely, trustingly, and quite literally into the hands of someone else!

  The role reversal was challenging. But it had a sort of biblical ring to it: “into your hands. . . .” The Bible is always challenging us to trust more in God. But we find out that trusting God requires not only courage but also a single-mindedness that keeps us from placing our trust in other things instead. A while ba
ck I came across a helpful New Testament word that put that Christmas morning experience into perspective.

  The Greek verb peith, “to trust in, to rely on”3 highlights some of the challenges that people have in trying to trust in God alone. Some people, for example, put their trust instead in material possessions (Psalms 49:6–7), and others in the temple and religious practices (Jeremiah 7:3–8).4.

  Under the nurse’s watchful eye I hobbled carefully across the floor, leaning on my crutches. I smiled when I remembered that Paul says that his sufferings in Asia had taught him to rely on God: “for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely [peith] not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8–9). I saw that I was in the middle of learning the same thing Paul had learned, namely that suffering can teach you that you can’t rely simply on yourself.5

  Arriving at the bathroom I leaned my shoulder for a moment against the door jamb because I was getting lightheaded with the effort. I could tell that I was in for a long, humbling, uncomfortable, and even painful learning experience.

  Many times since then I’ve had occasion to put my trust completely in the Lord; and sometimes, as I’ve placed myself in God’s hands, I’ve remembered vividly that Christmas morning in St. Mary’s hospital when the kind nurse said, “Okay, swing your legs over the side and I’ll hold your heel to keep your knee from bending . . . Ready?”

  Reflection

  1. Can you think of someone you know personally who seems able to trust wholeheartedly in the Lord?

  2. Slowly read Matthew’s account of the crucifixion (Matthew 27:36–50). Some of the bystanders taunt Jesus with the prophetic remark, “He trusted [peith] in the Lord, let him deliver him now, if he wants to” (Matthew 27:43). They are quoting Psalm 22, verse 9: “He trusted in the Lord, let him deliver him. . . . ” Reflect on Jesus’ total self-abandonment to the Father; he has nothing left to hold on to: no material possessions, no religious rituals, no self-satisfied virtue, no accomplishments—nothing but God. Think of some situation in your life where God may be asking you to abandon yourself into the Father’s hands.