A Voice in the Wilderness

The other day my father told me that he finally found someone who agrees with him in the craziness of this world.

My father was born during the Great Depression. He served in the Korean Conflict. He worked 30 years for the post office and 20 years for the newspaper. He has seen a lot and knows a lot. Because of that, he doesn’t need email, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media. He’s very old school. He reads the newspaper and listens to the news every day.

And he still rides around town looking for anyone who will talk with him, preferably over a can of Miller Lite.

As postmaster, my father wrangled budgets and government politics and all assortments of stresses and demands. He claims he could fix the national deficit and other social ills. Something tells me he probably could.

The other day he told me that he finally found someone who agrees with him.

My father has seen a lot and knows a lot but he hasn’t read the Pope’s new document Evangelii Gaudium because he doesn’t do the computer. Yet the other day he read an editorial that gave him enough feedback to know what our Pope had to say and my father was impressed.

My 82-year-old father isn’t often impressed. If anything, age and wisdom makes one cynical to the youthful doltishness spreading rapidly around them. A person is slowing down and everything and everyone is changing too fast, too furiously, too frantically.

Yet every now and again there comes a voice of reason, perhaps just a whisper, a yielding throughout the wilderness, ever calming, that speaks with joy and truth and prayerful wisdom.

The voice vibrates hope into a bleak and cynical world. It speaks hope to a new generation and reassurance to one who is old. It’s the voice of an orphan who has been cast aside. It’s the voice of a healing father. It’s a voice the world hungers for. It’s the voice of Peter’s successor. It’s the voice that learns from the poor, the hungry, the aged, and the rejected.

It’s the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit crying out into the wilderness.

It’s the voice of the Catholic Church.

And the world listens intently…because this voice has listened to us…in the wilderness.

Copyright 2013 Cay Gibson