Narrow the Road with Fr. John Girotti
One day, when I was about 10 years old, I was part of a carpool to violin lessons with a Lutheran pastor and his daughter. Not realizing what God was doing in my own young heart, I remember being completely fascinated by his ministry and asking him all sorts of questions about his life.
He told me that he had just celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of two of his parishioners. Fifty years seemed like a long time to me, and I remember acting rather surprised. He then turned to me and said, “You know, John, when people have been married a long time, something very special happens. They start to look like each other.”
Surprise and shock must have shown on my young face, and he just smiled and said, “Someday, when you’re older, you’ll understand.”
I have never forgotten what he said, and I have turned it around and around in my mind through the years. I initially thought that he had gone completely mad to say such a thing! That is simply not possible, biologically or genetically. How could a husband and wife start to look like each other over the years? And yet, through the years, I have come to find that he was right.
And not just in marriage. I have ministered to countless numbers of families who have adopted children. Walking with the parents and seeing their joy on the adoption day of their son or daughter has been quite moving. But what has struck me is the frequency of these adopted children, through the years, starting to look more and more like their adoptive parents. Even if they had come from different races or nationalities, they have started to look … the same.
This is a very mysterious thing. It is rarely written about or spoken of, and yet many of us have witnessed it. Love brings people together, and they become one. Beyond biology or genetics, love binds people together so deeply that, bit by bit, they begin to resemble each other. How very strange this phenomenon is. How profoundly beautiful.
As followers of the Lord Jesus, we should not be too surprised at this. We know that Jesus and his church are one — that the two have become one flesh. The unity of Jesus with all of us is represented through the seven sacraments, particularly in the Sacrament of Marriage and in the Holy Eucharist. The husband and wife become one flesh — their children are enfleshed realities of this.
When we receive Holy Communion — the Body of Christ — we receive Jesus into ourselves and we become the Body of Christ. Additionally, this is why we depict images of the saints with a halo of light surrounding their heads. Being in the presence of a holy person, we see reflected in this light their oneness with God and the presence of God shining forth in their lives. And there are many such examples.
In our ever-divided world, where we are increasingly separated from each other by choice or circumstance, it is important to recognize the signs of our unity with each other. Because the mysterious reality is that when people love each other — truly and deeply — they begin to look like each other.
Through the years I have befriended a number of older priests, men who have faithfully served in the vineyard of the Lord for many years. I have found their faith and perseverance inspiring. Reflecting on this recently, the thought occurred to me that these older holy men all looked pretty much … the same.
They were all individuals, of course, not related to each other. How was this possible? And then it dawned on me – these men, who had lived lives of service to God’s holy people, all had begun to look like the church whom they had loved and served for so many years. Later that day, as I walked by a mirror, I paused and wondered.
There are so many mysteries in life, and this is certainly one of them. Love looks like something. “And the greatest of these is love.”