Brothers,

Thursday night, my bride and I joined the long walk around Washington Park at dusk for ‘Light the Night’, a Blood Cancer United (formally Leukemia & Lymphoma Society), annual event across the nation. Hundreds of people carried lighted balloons, bringing light, life, and love into the darkening sky around us. Red honored those undergoing cancer treatment and those supporting them; gold remembered those who have gone to their reward; white marked the survivors. The white balloons were the smallest group.

My bride has known fourteen years of healing since a serious blood cancer. We also saw a brother deacon and his wife, herself a survivor. I felt gratitude › › for the years we have been given, even as I held close friends in prayer and thought of those still facing treatment.

It is hard to walk among those lights and speak easily about what is fair. Some people we love are still here; others are not. Some have received good news; others are waiting for a call they dread. Ezekiel’s question, “Is it my way that is unfair?” - speaks to divine mercy and justice from God, retribution and conversion of sin. However, I submit to you that the question itself has a different weight when someone is suffering. I do not hear it as a prompt to explain another person’s pain. I hear an invitation to bring even our hardest questions before the Lord.

The psalm offers words when our own fail: “Remember your mercies, O Lord.” That prayer belongs to the person in treatment, the family missing someone beneath a gold balloon, and the survivor whose gratitude lives alongside memories that have not faded.

St. Paul asks us to have the attitude of Christ, who emptied himself - kenosis. For us as deacons, that may look like sitting beside a hospital bed, listening without rushing to answer, or calling again after the first wave of help has passed. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can offer is our presence.

In the Gospel, the first son says no, then changes his mind and goes into the vineyard. I find hope in that “afterwards.” Perhaps we have meant to make a call or visit someone, but the days slipped by. We can still go today.

Above is a picture from that night. When you see those red, gold, and white lights, please pray for the people and families behind them. I am praying for my bride, our brother and his wife, our dear friends, and all in our deacon and parish communities who know this road. May we keep walking with them.

Deacon's Wife

In Christ the Servant + Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Receive + Believe + Teach + Practice