Just over five years ago, the world lost one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Kobe Bryant, when his helicopter went down, killing all on board. He boarded that helicopter after attending the 7 a.m. Mass at Our Lady Queen of Angels in Newport Beach. Mass, though, wasn’t a rare thing in his life.
Bryant was of course a superstar, but he had been through a lot in his life and had gotten some bad publicity.
Back in 2003, Bryant was arrested. The case never made it to trial; it ended when he settled with a civil lawsuit and issued a public apology to the woman involved, acknowledging that she did not consider the encounter to be consensual.
Bryant denied the crime, but he did admit to marital infidelity. There were consequences in his family life; his marriage nearly ended. At a certain point, he looked at who he was and prepared himself to change.
He soon started looking at his faith, too, getting advice and counsel from his priest. This changed him; it made him a better player and teammate, got him through some tough times on the court and off the court, and he applied that mentality to get done what needed to get done. He and his wife worked on their marriage and reconciled in 2013. The couple, who had two children, went on to add two more to their family.
Bryant regularly attended Mass with his family at his parish. And he connected his Catholic faith to a family commitment to help the poor, through the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation. The foundation helped fund youth homeless shelters and other projects aimed at serving the poor.
Bryant also resolved his multi-year feud with Shaquille O’Neal before he died, realizing it wasn’t worth it to stay angry. The two reconciled. O’Neal gave a powerful tribute to Bryant on TV, following Bryant’s death, about his devastation and said that Bryant was like a little brother to him.
Lent is a time for us to ask ourselves: Who do we want to become and how do we get there?
This week in our readings for the Third Sunday of Lent, we encounter Moses in the time before he became the great leader of Israel. He doesn’t quite know who he is yet. But he humbles himself before the burning bush. He listens. And he changes. How do we do this?
First, Moses lets God take over. Do we do this, too? The bush is not consumed; rather, it is made brilliant because God is illuminating it. God wants to set us free. God wants to consume with a cleansing fire those things that could destroy a soul like a regular fire: ambition, addiction, sensualism, greed, malice. What do we need to turn over to God and let him consume in our soul?
The response to coming to God is the bearing of fruit. Moses changes, like Bryant and like anyone taking faith seriously. The good news is God is patient; he is the one caring for the tree in the garden in our Gospel. How do we bear fruit by being better people, looking at how we love one another and live that out?
God loves us more than we can imagine. The problem we sometimes have is we don’t see it, or we plateau in our faith. Bryant had the Catholic faith as a young man, and he worked for something far greater than a championship ring to understand who he really was. May we strive to do that on our earthly journey, bearing fruit with the help of the Master Gardener.
Father Kammen is pastor of St. Joseph in Rosemount.
Sunday, March 23
Third Sunday of Lent
