Dear Friends,
Today I am thinking of a man who will never be remembered in
Jim Memmott’s Democrat & Chronicle column about Remarkable Rochesterians. His name was
Bernard Aloysius O’Byrne. Bernie’s funeral was held 30 years ago last weekend
at the then Corpus Christi Church.
As a child, Bernie was judged to be one of those people who
would never amount to much in life. In some bystanders, that conviction grew
over the years. Bernie was a stutterer – and in a less patient, less accepting
time, people put stutterers in a category all their own. Bernie was also an
alcoholic, although eventually a recovering one. No one knows when or why he
came to Rochester, but he spent his last 28 years here, washing dishes, going
to AA meetings and using his personal money to help AA folks. Bernie died at
Isaiah House, without money, without friends, without family, without any
apparent success to mark his efforts. At the end of the funeral liturgy, the
ushers took up a collection to send Bernie O’Byrne’s remains back to Carbondale,
PA for his burial. He had hoped to rest in his family’s burial site. Now his
wish would be granted.
Seven-hundred people came to Bernie’s funeral – people whom
Bernie had touched, largely through AA. He had inspired, cajoled, championed,
humored AA members to stay in their recoveries, to rebuild their lives and not
be ashamed of illness of any kind.
These 700 people are a local living example of what James
says in today’s second reading. They respected Bernie for who he was. Neither
poverty, nor alcoholism, nor a speech impediment prevented them from honoring
this man in death because he had touched them in life. Bernie was among the
beloved of God.
Bernie was never cured of his stuttering. His mouth was
never opened in the way you or I think valuable and necessary. But he was
opened in a different way. God had brought about in Bernard Aloysius O’Byrne’s life
a reversal of circumstances according to God’s design, not ours.
There is something especially poignant about the sensitivity
of Jesus in healing the deaf – mute in today’s Gospel. Jesus drew him away from
the crowd to save him embarrassment. As the deaf-mute watched, Jesus spat on
the ground to communicate his intention to heal. In those days, spittle was
understood to be curative. Jesus touched the man’s eyes and tongue. Among the
Mediterranean people, the mouth and ears allowed for the heart’s expression.
Jesus looked up to heaven in order to indicate that he acted in union with God.
And the man – a foreigner – was made whole. “Ephphatha! Be opened!” Jesus
said to him. Jesus cured this man, but not every sick person He met. It is the
reversal that’s important – and the gateway to reversal for Bernie and for each
of us is Ephphatha! Be opened!
In our personal lives, Ephphatha can mean be open to
recognizing and dismantling the fears that keep us from speaking the truth in
love, be opened to new and deeper experiences which can be ours if we stop living
on the surface of life, be opened to the heritage of our families and church,
open to a God who offers limitless hope instead of hopeless limits. Ephphatha! Be opened!
~Sister Joan Sobala
