Dear Friends,
In late July Pope Francis spent a fruitful week in Canada on
a “pilgrimage of forgiveness,” as he called it. Earlier in the year, a
delegation of First Nation people, Metis and Inuit, came to Rome to deliver a
personal invitation to Pope Francis. They brought with them a small pair of
moccasins, a treasured relic from the times when their children were forcibly taken
from them to go to government endorsed religious schools to become civilized and
made “strangers to their own people.” “Bring the moccasins back when you come,”
his visitors told Pope Francis. How could he not come? He had two missions – to
utter on behalf of the whole church heartfelt words of apology and to bring
back the moccasins.
That got me thinking about other times when shoes of various
kinds figured into people’s spiritual journeys.
When Margaret Clitherow was about to be hanged in post-Reformation
England for being faithful to Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, she made
only one bequest: her shoes were to go to her daughter. “Walk in my shoes,
daughter,” was the message.
One of the historic displays on Ellis Island is a steamer
trunk overflowing with shoes: singles, pairs, worn out shoes, new shoes,
children’s shoes, women’s fashion shoes, work shoes. One wonders: Were they
left or taken away? Did their owners have other shoes? Where did the owners
settle? Or were they sent back? Or died? The United States is a land of the
shoeless and the shoe-d.
On the shore of the Danube at Budapest is a plaza with a
variety of bronze statues. Touchingly, one is a pair of a child’s shoes. The plaque
next to the shoes says the Nazis took prisoners from this place during their
occupation. These shoes were found on the dock after one such raid.
Bridget O’Grady was a senior Irish-born woman who came to
daily Mass at St. Mary’s Church in the 1980’s. We all had a hard time
understanding her form of English, but we could all see that she wore tattered,
sneakers, with rips here and there. Some parishioners wanted to know if they could
get her new sneakers? Yes. A few days after the shopping expedition with
Bridget, she arrived at church in her new sneakers…rips in all the same places
as before. The dawn finally came. Bridget needed a podiatrist. That was (if I
can put it this way) the next step.
The Scriptures have a dozen or so references to sandals, but
only a few references to shoes, like this one in Ephesians 6.15: “Stand with
your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace.”
There’s a lot to think about in that brief line in Ephesians.
Are we to be ready to welcome the Gospel of peace or deliver it elsewhere? When
we put our shoes on, what are we ready to do? Where are we willing to go? In
whose name? For what reason? Is there something of Margaret Clitherow in us? Do
we stand firm in the shoes we are wearing? Do we go to help where people suffer
at the hands of others?
Today, look at the shoes in your closet. Many? A few? More
than you need? Look at your feet now and think, “What shoes do I really need?”
After all, yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey. (Charles F.
Glassman)
~Sister Joan Sobala
