Former US Ambassador to Malta Douglas Kmiec writes the second of four excerpts from his new book Lift up Your Hearts – From Malibu to Malta.
In today’s sceptical and always online, busy life with its preference for ‘just-in-time’ information presented in 140 character Tweets rather than meticulously researched reflection and analysis, few of us ponder life’s meaning and purpose.
It is a heavy cross to be accountable for the absence of a humble, parish priest- Douglas Kmiec
Maybe we remember a few big-think questions from college, but even then we are more likely to dredge up out of memory Camus’ existential quip that “you never live, if you’re always looking for the meaning of life”.
As we age, these ultimate meaning questions loom larger, but life is busy and we find convenient ways to push off getting down to the nub. It is hard enough to keep a job and hold onto the family home, we say to ourselves, are we expected to resolve the secrets of the universe as well?
Meanwhile the years pass, life happens, and one day, there is death. For many, that cycle begins with father or mother, but it could be a brother, sister, life partner, or worst of all, a child. These departures knock us back on our heels, but we tend to deal with them as anomalies, especially deaths of those younger than ourselves. Yet, the pattern continues and suddenly, all of life’s ‘why’ questions fall over themselves demanding answer.
2010 demanded my answer. Mother was already gone, my father died in late May; my mother’s sister, who filled in for mom in many ways, followed in July. A short, but cherished friendship with Guido de Marco ended in early August.
And then, in a circumstance of devastating shock and sadness, two very close and dear friends, Mgr John Sheridan and Sr Mary Campbell succumbed to injuries from a single-car accident when a rental car took a four-second slide off a canyon road into an adjacent drainage ditch. Sister died immediately; monsignor grimaced in pain for three weeks before his 94-year-old body said enough. The driver, too, was seriously injured and airlifted into the trauma unit at UCLA alongside the monsignor. I was the driver.
John started each morning during his life exclaiming, “Ah blessed, blessed day!” In ways unseen but more present than the monsignor would ever acknowledge, the Theology of Kindness, as I attribute it to John, resulted in friendships that would find him giving advice to the principals seeking peace in the Middle East; providing resolve for the Church hierarchy’s opposition to the Iraq war; and permitting him the opportunity to share his thoughtful exposition of “the rule of law and love” with a new Justice of the US Supreme Court.
John’s influence on my life was no less profound and every bit as subtle and to those who did not know of our often daily discussions over “tea and toast” altogether unseen.
As I prayerfully reflect now, I see John’s intelligent witness of kindness in my meagre efforts in the small public light that has privileged me to serve as legal counsel for two Republican presidents and as a diplomat for the current Democratic one.
The Kmiec family had a history of staking out atypical, independent spots on the political globe to inhabit. My earliest political memory was campaigning for John F Kennedy with my dad as a child.
Dad was highly involved in the Regular Democratic Party of Cook County, which some historians record delivered just enough votes (not all from living voters, it is claimed), to secure the election of JFK in 1960. I would work in my own right in the late 1960s for Robert Kennedy before his assassination.
Robert Kennedy’s death temporarily stole the political passion in me that my father sustained all his life through some important political friendships.
John Sheridan may well have been one of the wisest, most beloved prelates of our time. It was no accident he was chosen to deliver the nationally televised eulogy for President Kennedy. Some years later, watching Ethel Kennedy and her daughter Kathleen interact with monsignor following a sparsely attended Mass at Our Lady of Malibu brought to mind the last joyous moments of Bobby’s life. Today among my treasured photographs is one of Bobby full of promise running with his pant legs rolled to his knee on the beach where the monsignor would stroll along the bluffs.
Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana when word came that Dr Martin Luther King had been murdered. A whole lot of people frenetically urged the Senator, for his own safety, to cancel his Indianapolis speech to a largely African-American audience. Kennedy disregarded that advice and gave one of the finest improvisational speeches in American political history on the importance of kindness, compassion, and above all, non-violence.
From the monsignor? I cannot say definitively, but friends do influence friends. All I know is that the very same monsignor who brought out the best in the famous as well as the obscure was fatally injured while in my care. It is a heavy cross to be accountable for the absence of a humble, parish priest whose witness of love and kindness was so Christ-like that it was changing the world for the better largely without its notice.
Such speculations are part of the wrenching sadness for me, but the good news for others is that the accident of August 25, 2010, prompted the effort to gather John Sheridan’s homiletic thinking. Happily, the reader will find that neither the monsignor nor this book leaves any doubt of the ability of love to affirm the faith that conquers death.
Next week: The accident and the horrifying discovery of Sr Mary’s immediate death and praying with the monsignor on simple string rosaries given in celebration just minutes before.
For publication availability, write to ambassadorbook1@gmail.com