Mtr Mary Trainor

Dear friend,

I never knew my maternal grandmother. I was 23 months old when she died at age 57. Travel by car between California and Texas was a much more involved journey then than it is now. And my parents were busy with children and work. It’s a common story. They thought they had more time to introduce Mamie Wilder to her only granddaughter.

My grandmother knew she didn’t have much longer to live. Everyone else did, too. Her tired heart was failing after a lifetime of non-stop caring for her people.

Even in her last weeks, when she was supposed to be on bed rest, she was working.

One story has survived for decades. She was up to all hours cutting cloth and sewing dresses for her developmentally challenged youngest daughter. When asked to slow down or stop, she said, “I will stop only when God says stop. My daughter needs clothes.”

Our Office Gospel today (Matthew 14:22-36) contains much that is familiar.

Immediately following the feeding of “five thousand men besides women and children,” Jesus dispatches the disciples to get into their boat and go ahead of him to the other side. Then he dismisses the large crowd, and goes up a mountain to pray.

The disciples meanwhile are being knocked about on the sea and, early in the morning, Jesus approaches. What occurs is one of the most familiar miracles from scripture: Jesus walking on water.

This is such a famous account that it must be the focus of today’s Gospel, right? Maybe it is for most people most of the time, but today I am drawn to what frames it. The before and after. The crowds.

Before and after the disciples are nearly swamped by the sea, Jesus is nearly swamped by the crowds who need his help. And if he thought the boat ride might provide respite, it would not. Even in private time with his team, he must be at the ready to tend to their needs.

Jesus is always on call. He is drawn to address the insurmountable needs of people. Fulfilling God’s mission continues to compel him.

I will stop only when God says stop.

When I look up from my own needs I don’t have to look far to see a world desperate for loving attention.

A block from this campus people are begging for money and food. Within this city, there are people desperate for resources, who are ill and/or homeless and/or lonely and/or...

Like the desperate crowds who searched out Jesus wherever he went, who were hoping for something as simple as touching the hem of his garment; like the countless generations between then and now, people today also long for a touch of God in their lives.

I can easily feel overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. Then I remember the lives of the saints, including some more recent saints like Mamie Elizabeth Wilder, who responded to the needs set before her.

Given limited time, Mamie could not do everything that was needed, so she focused on the most pressing: She made dresses for her daughter.

I will stop only when God says stop.

Mtr. Mary