One Creation, 30 Trillion Parts
FLORENCE, S.C. — One Body has 30 trilion cells. We don’t have to go to Church every day — but if I get the chance to be at a Mass, I am there. Here are some new reasons why:
Tuesday we were leaving for vacation. But we were also refinancing and needed to sign papers (the bank opens at 9) so I suggested we go to 8:30 daily Mass near our Brighton, Michigan home before stopping at the bank. Afterward, we drove from Michigan through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and finally, South Carolina.
It seemed way too far to drive from Michigan to Myrtle Beach in one straight shot so we planned to stop but we didn’t yet have a room for that night. So we searched online fruitlessly for deals as we dove and finally, I called Hilton Honors and asked if they had any rooms in Columbia, S.C.
Nope, all booked.
What about Florence, the next good-sized city closer to our destination? Yes, they had a good room at a good price. Done deal. But that meant we needed to drive 75 miles further than we were planning. And we were driving through the Smoky Mountains (at the end of a 13 hour drive) and it was dark and we were tired and soon, it was pouring rain. While winding through mountains — tired. The drive got brutal.
It was 2 a.m. by the time we got to bed. But I got curious, grabbed my phone and searched “Catholic church near me.” Bingo: St. Anthony of Padua was a little more than one mile from our hotel.
So I clicked on St. Anthony’s website, looked under “Mass times” and saw they celebrate morning Mass at 7:30 a.m.
“You’re nuts,” my wife reminded me. “Just go to sleep.”
I, of course, knew she was right. So I went to sleep without setting my alarm, telling myself I would go if God got me up on time. Otherwise, I would get the extra sleep I knew I needed.
We closed the blinds and tried to sleep. But finally I woke up, leaned over, picked up my phone and read “7:20 a.m.”
Ten minutes to Mass time.
“I’m going for it,” I said, putting back on my clothes, brushing my teeth and walking out the door, asking my phone to guide me. Somehow, amazingly, I was right on time.
About 20 of us gathered. We sang that morning’s hymn, which now had more meaning: “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the word. From Heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride; With His own blood He brought her and for her life He died.”
I love that I can walk into any Catholic Church any where in the world and celebrate the same Mass that’s been celebrated around the planet every hour of every day — something that has continued daily for 2,000 years. I especially love that through this Mass, we share and become a deeper, interconnected part of the Body and Blood of Christ.
In the next pew over, I saw a young woman wearing a Dave Matthews T-shirt — and a white chapel veil over her head. Two other women wearing white chapel veils sat with her. A few pews back, there was a young mom and her baby ( the baby was peacefully asleep in a baby seat). Each was and is my sister. The guest book included names of visitors from as far away as Peru.
The priest, Father Robert Morey, told us, “There’s stability in human nature that we can’t change in our needs and in our destiny — it’s not up to us, it’s up to God and so the rules of how to get here, how to behave are His rules and they don’t change.”
Everything happens for a reason
Because Hilton had “no room” in Columbia (getting to Columbia Tuesday night was my Plan), I wound up in Florence.
Stopping in Florence — and waking up at exactly at the precise, perfect and right moment brought me to this particular Mass, reminding me I am one tiny cell in the bigger, living Body of Christ and His Church (I am nothing on my own but part of an amazing and interconnected whole).
This Mass also reminded me I have brothers and sisters everywhere all connected to me through the same Father, through Christ and through the Holy Spirit (who is pure love itself).
Being in Florence, a place I had no plans to visit, now firmly rooted an idea that had been filling my mind about going to Pawleys Island to shop for a new hammock. It was suddenly an easier drive that made more sense.
What was so significant about going to Pawleys Island? We learned how to clean our old hammock there (to save something that looks pretty ragged and messy) but we also came up with a reason to justify buying a new green one.
And all of that took me to a Pawleys Island store where a lady had an 8 by 10 tribute to her brother, who had died in 2011, framed on the walk behind her cash register.
I left the store and a voice nagged at me to “go back” and return. Something made me muster up the confidence to ask the lady “Is this your brother?”
I pointed to the tribute to the fallen man and she nodded yes, that it was her brother.
“Do you know what a miraculous medal is?” I asked. “This is the miraculous medal and this a cross that goes with it.”
I handed over the miraculous medal and the crucifix on a chain and added, “Something told me your brother wants you to have this.”
The lady cried and said “I’ll treasure this forever” and then she ran around the counter and gave me a hug.
Another reason I go to Mass as often as I can is that good ideas (that I could never carry out on my own) come to me because of that Mass and meeting people like the lady in the store reminds me we are all connected in some way, all children of God, each tiny cells within a greater whole.
The Body of Christ has at least a billion cells that I am aware of. Every day, each and every one of those cells has the freedom to choose whether to spin deeper into or away from the Body.
Every single one.
When even one meager cell in that amazing Body messes up or doesn’t do what it is designed to do people try to blame the entire body. My pal’s son in medical school says it’s actually a miracle that so many cells in our body work together at all hour after hour day afyer day— but they do.
Yet each cell in the Body of Christ has the free will to choose whether to go the way of the whole or its own way.
The original Cristians were called the Way because they’d literally found a better way to live.
Many inevitably say that even one flawed or malfunctioning cell means the whole Church, the whole body, is a fraud, a mess, a hypocrite, something unpleasant.
But when cells in your human body fail or malfunction, you don’t try to reject your whole body. You instead focus on healing the broken cells Or broken parts to get the whole body working again.
That’s another reason I get to Mass: trying to heal or repair all — or at least some of — those malfunctioning pieces of the greater whole.