Editor’s note: A member of St. Joseph in West St. Paul, Tim McGuire wrote this reflection, shared it with The Catholic Spirit and granted permission for publication.
Some graces are a long time in the making. Until they fully materialize, we have no idea that they are in process but, as Isaiah says, “the Lord longs to be gracious to you, and therefore he waits on high to have compassion on you” (Is 30:18).
I visit the elderly in their homes to bring them Communion. In the spring of this year, I was asked by my parish to see a 93-year-old woman named Mary Ellen Storms, a widow who lives alone. She had the same last name as that of my best friend in grade school, Paul, who lived three houses away where we grew up near Presentation of Mary in Maplewood. His family moved in the fourth grade. In 1960, 10-year-olds didn’t keep in touch with each other after a move. I was only to use the phone if I received a call from a disgruntled paper route customer, or from a fellow altar boy who needed a substitute. When I arrived at her home, I asked her if she had a relative named Paul. She replied, with surprise, “He’s my son!”
We both felt a sudden leap of joy from what we knew to be a grace that accompanied our coming together over the Eucharist. We connected immediately and quickly started sharing the memory books of our minds, starting with how much I missed Paul after their move. I was very glad to learn he was still alive and, like Mary Ellen, lived just a few miles from me. Mary Ellen said she and my mom were best friends, even soulmates. She regretted that they lost contact with each other, due primarily to each of them responding to the daily demands of family life.
In subsequent visits, with a trust born of faith in the one who brought us together, we shared some of the joys and griefs that our families went through. By exchanging photos and stories of our grandchildren and Mary Ellen’s great-grandchildren, we found that we stepped into a real-time experience of, and understanding of, the grace proclaimed by Zephaniah: “He will take great delight in you” (Zep 3:17). God takes delight in our delight.
I mentioned to Mary Ellen how difficult it was for my parents that my youngest brother, Kevin, born when I was 8, was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. He was placed in a group home directly from the hospital; none of his eight brothers and sisters were allowed to meet him. Mary Ellen said she remembered Kevin because on at least one occasion she drove my mother to the group home and went in with her for the visit. Kevin died from pneumonia at 18 months. The first time his siblings saw him was in a casket at the funeral home. All my fifth-grade classmates attended his funeral Mass, it being a school day. As much as I told myself I would not cry in front of my classmates, I could not restrain the tears as our family left the pew and walked down the aisle with his casket. Sixty years later, I was talking with the woman who had visited him with my mother, and my tears started again. “… he waits on high to have compassion on you” (Is 30:18).
Mary Ellen, too, had her share of tragedy. When she was 4, her 8- and 10-year-old brothers died when the cave they entered to dig for sand collapsed on them. As an adult, her husband died suddenly from a heart attack at age 46, driving to a work meeting. This devastated her and their six children. She still recalls one of her sons, then a freshman in high school, walking through the door full of the joy he was bursting to share with his dad about winning a tennis award at school that day.
I related to Mary Ellen how another brother of mine died at age 17 in a one-car crash that my father and I heard from the house. By God’s grace a priest was driving behind him, pulled over and, sensing the seriousness of my unconscious brother, administered the last sacraments.
We shared these memories, still infused with the emotions of those long-ago first moments, and felt a present comfort. In my smile, Mary Ellen said she sees the smile of my mother. In her, I felt my mother’s unshakable faith, a faith which valued tolerance of others with less faith. As we sat in a loving recall of the past, we both felt at home in the present. “The Lord longs to be gracious to you … ” (Is 30:18).
Over the years, after these events, three other brothers of mine passed away, as well as my parents and my wife’s parents, and Mary lost a son to cancer. These were sad, difficult times for each of us and, as is often the case with the death of loved ones, the lingering impacts of those times return.
Despite those difficult events in each of our families, we both also experienced so much joy. Sitting together after Eucharist, we feel the calm that comes from God’s presence; a communion within Communion.
Looking back on those years, Mary Ellen and I talked about the hard times, but little did we know back then that one day, through our being brought together, God was arranging for our paths to re-cross. Mary Ellen now refers to our time together as her “Tim time.”
At age 10, I lost a baby brother and a good friend but then the long arc of God’s grace began its journey like a slow-motion sunrise that took 60 years to reach daybreak. And what made it all even better was that Paul and I reconnected and resumed our friendship. Julian of Norwich’s well-known, and prescient observation was right: “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
McGuire, 72, and his wife, Diane Vandeberg, celebrated 50 years of marriage in June. They have three children and four granddaughters. McGuire serves in the parish ministry Eucharist to the Homebound. He also writes to three men in prison through the Knights of Malta pen pal program. An amateur pianist, he performs regularly at St. Therese’s senior living facility in Woodbury.
