The LORD’s Web (8/30/2023)

As a faith formation catechist, an activity I frequently use with the students to illustrate our connections with one another as daughters and sons of the Almighty Father, disciples of Christ, and instruments of the Spirit in the work of the Kingdom is “The Web.” We use a string, tossed across a circle many times to form the web. Then we practice touching the web in different places and experiencing movement across the web. It helps us understand that what we do impacts more than just us. It helps us to see our connections to one another.

I know about the spiritual web from experience. I know that I have felt the negative impact personally of other’s actions as well as the love of others even though they were not initially directed to me. I know that over the years, I have learned of the things I have done that rippled out and touched others, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Probably one of the greatest examples of the web at work is our families. What happens in our homes, the love we receive, the formation we receive, it doesn’t stay there; we take it out into the world and the world is impacted by it. The greatest example would be, of course, the faith community that gathers together in prayer, worshiping our LORD, allowing the LORD’s Word to form us, allowing the LORD to feed and sustain us, growing in our sense of unity with one another, and going out into the world transformed ourselves as instruments of the LORD.

One of the most powerful examples of the Spiritual Web of the LORD became apparent to me over twenty years ago. My father was suffering from cancer. He was really struggling. My sister and brother-in-law offered to bring him and my mother to visit me in Wisconsin. Upon hearing that they were coming, I called the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa to ask if my father could pray with Fr. Samual Mazzuchelli’s prayer chain. I got approval to bring my father to Sinsinawa.

The family caravanned to Sinsinawa. We entered the Motherhouse and found the office where we were to check in. A Sinsinawan Dominican sister took us down to the museum area while we waited. As we went through the museum, I mentioned that I had been educated by sisters of this community who founded and ran Edgewood College. My father surprised us all when he said he’d been educated by sisters of this community as a boy in Jackson, Nebraska. None of us had realized the connection before that day. Then the sister brought Mazzuchelli’s prayer chain to my father and led us all in prayer for my father, seeking the intercession of Mazzuchelli.

As we prepared to leave, we asked my father how he was doing. He told us that he couldn’t explain it, but he felt different. My father who had been told he had only a little while lived for several years after that. We all attribute it to that time of pilgrimage and prayer, especially my dad.

As I look back, with the web in mind, I think of the work of Mazzuchelli and how it was felt by others who responded by becoming Dominican Sisters, how it was felt by others who were building faith communities all across southern Wisconsin, how it was taken all the way to Jackson, Nebraska, how it spanned centuries and generations. Did Samuel Mazzuchelli realize as he served as a priest in a foreign country that his efforts would be felt across so many geographical as well temporal zones?

As I sit here this morning, coming to my computer from prayer on my porch, I wonder what impact my life will have had when all is said and done. I recognize anew and most powerfully how every life matters, that is not the question; the question is not if but how.

Will our lives as daughters and sons of the LORD resonate across the web with others? Will others feel the draw to Christ through our words and actions? Our lives matter. How will they matter in the scheme of the LORD’s divine design?

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.