RonRolheiser,OMI

You Must Have a Wonderful Mom

October 12, 2026

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There is an instance in the Gospels where, while Jesus is speaking, a woman from the crowd calls out to him: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” (Luke 11, 27).

In effect, she is saying: “You must have a wonderful mother! Look how you turned out!” Jesus responds by saying: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

It’s easy to misunderstand his answer because on the surface it sounds like he is downplaying the compliment to his mother. But his response is really: “Yes, I have wonderful mother, but it’s not because she gave me biological birth that makes her special; it’s her faith that makes her special and particularly wonderful as a mother.” In essence, he’s saying: “Yes, my mother, like all mothers, is wonderful in her biology, but my mother is particularly wonderful in her faith.”  When Jesus says, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it, he has his mother specially in mind.

The renowned scripture scholar Raymond E. Brown points out that the apostolic community gave Mary such a special place, not particularly because she was Jesus’ biological mother, but because of her special faith.

Among the various lessons contained in that is this: For Jesus, faith trumps biology. For him, real family is defined by faith, not biology or anything else. Who are my actual brothers and sisters? For Jesus, it’s those who hear the word of God and keep it.

I write this next part only with this caveat: Biological family is a foundational anthropological structure, coming from God and nature, and it needs to be nurtured and defended, especially today when it is under siege from many sides. A healthy society needs healthy families; a healthy Church needs healthy families; a healthy country needs healthy families: a healthy world needs healthy families; healthy liberals need healthy families; healthy conservatives need healthy families; and healthy individuals tend to come from healthy families. Moreover, many of our deepest joys are experienced within a biological family. The biological family needs to be defended. The same holds true for all our other families.

But, that being respected, we must also have the courage to say that, for Jesus, faith trumps biology, denomination, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, and gender. Our deepest, real, forever family has faith as its root.

  • Who are our brothers and sisters? Our biological family makes for real family, but our deepest, forever family is made up of all others who have faith in God, which does include our biological family if they share faith with us.
  • Who are our fellow church members? Our fellow church members are all fellow Christians, irrespective of denomination, who have a sincere faith in Jesus Christ. In faith we are all one family.
  • Who are our fellow pilgrims as we journey through this world? Our deepest, forever fellow pilgrims are all women and men, irrespective of their religion or honest agnosticism, who are sincerely searching for truth, goodness, beauty, and justice.
  • Who is our real ethnic family? It’s everyone on this planet, irrespective of skin color, mother tongue, or racial history, who is sincerely searching for a community within which differences will make for harmony and unity.
  • Who are our fellow citizens? Our fellow citizens, fellow patriots, are not necessarily those with whom we share a country and a common history; more deeply, it’s people from every country in the world who, with us, share one land given equally to us all by God. For Jesus, there can be no Christian nationalism.
  • Who constitutes my ideological, political family? It’s not those who share a liberal or conservative temperament and ideology with me. My deepest, forever ideological family is made up of those for whom truth and justice lay waste to all ideologies, both liberal and conservative.
  • Who is my family in terms of gender? Male? Female? LGBQ? My real family is inside the Body of Christ, within which “there is no male or female.” (Galatians 3, 28)

When Jesus asks who are my brothers and sisters and then identifies them with those who are listening to him, (Matthew 12, 48-50) he is teaching that our true, forever family is not rooted in biology, denomination, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ideological temperament, or gender, but in a shared faith which transcends all of these.

So, like the woman who wanted to compliment Jesus’ mother, go out to that good friend of yours who is a pious Muslim, and to that honest colleague of yours who voted the opposite of how you did, and to that struggling immigrant you’ve ignored whom you see living in a fear you have never shared, and go out to that gracious, bubbly New Age neighbor of yours, who has just brought a casserole to your door and who once gave you a rainbow keychain, and say: You must have a wonderful mom! Look how you turned out!

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Relating To Our Loved Ones After They Die

October 5, 2026

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In nineteen seventy-nine, Sheldon Vanauken published a book entitled A Severe Mercy; in it he tells the story of the death of his wife, Davey. The book is an account of an extraordinary romance, cut short while still in full bloom by Davey’s premature death.

This story has intrigued many people, both because of the extraordinary relationship between Sheldon and Davey before her death and because of the relationship between them after her death.

Vanauken describes how after her death he still felt her presence strongly and vividly. She was gone, in that brutal and irrevocable way death takes loved ones away, but he still felt her presence—as real as he had before she died.

In the early months after her death, her presence to him was constant, guiding, sure, consoling, the same as it had been while she was alive. She had died, but inside himself he felt her present – as wife, lover, best friend, soulmate. And during those months he always carried her wedding ring in his pocket, which he fingered tenderly many times each day. Touching it helped keep him aware of her presence.

One day, while on a ship crossing the Atlantic, he felt her presence change. In the silence of his heart and soul, he felt her speaking to him, telling him that, up to now, they had needed that kind of presence with each other, but that this now needed to change. They needed to move to a different plane in their relationship. She was telling him that she needed to “let him go” in the way she had been present to him until now and she needed to ask him to “let her go” in the way they were now present to each other. It was a difficult moment, but Sheldon understood its meaning. He took the ring from his pocket and quietly dropped it into the ocean.

From then onward, Davey was still present to him, but now in a new way. Her presence now was less explicit, though not more distant. Now her presence was less that of the earthly wife, soulmate, and best friend, and more the presence of a person who loves you and holds you in a way that’s harder to describe.

Thousands of persons who have lost loved ones to death, including myself, can identify with that story, both in terms of feeling the presence of a deceased loved one inside ourselves, and in terms of feeling this relationship, at a point, develop and move to a new plane.

In my own case, I lost both parents when I was twenty-three years old. For nearly two years, like Sheldon Vanauken, I felt their presence as sure, guiding, and parental (they were still very much my mom and dad, still very much with me); though, in my case, it was not always a consoling and warm presence. The pain of their loss would occasionally bring me feelings and tears that were not warm. My mom and dad were still with me, but at this early stage their deaths still left a cold scar.

However, sometime between the first and second year after their deaths this changed. For me, unlike for Vanauken, there wasn’t a clear moment when this happened. It happened gradually and imperceptibly, their presence to me and within me changed.

But, parallel to Vanauken’s experience, what I experienced was a shift in presence from one plane to another. I still felt their presence, just as before, but now something had let go, even as something else took its place.

I felt their presence now as a deep consolation and their loss no longer hurt as before. I no longer felt a need to pray for them. Instead, now I felt a need (which I still feel today) to pray to them.

They were still my parents, but something had changed. I hesitate to use words to describe this because they might sound vague and wishful, but what I felt can only be characterized this way: They were still my parents—alive, deeply concerned for me, and more present in my life than they ever could be while still in this life. But now I felt that presence as something higher, more universally shared with others, and more tied to God’s love and presence to me. It became harder to differentiate their presence from the general feeling of divine providence that I sense in my life,

I come from a large family. Basically, all my siblings had a similar experience. Moreover, many people have shared similar stories concerning how they continue to feel their relationships with their deceased loved ones change and grow even after their deaths.

Vanauken’s story of an ongoing, developing relationship with a loved one who has died is paralleled everywhere. Relationships continue to grow and develop even after death. Exotic stuff? No! Tis the stuff of dogma. One of the essential articles of our faith teaches that death doesn’t end a relationship.

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An Anniversary

September 28, 2026

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In telling his faith story, C.S. Lewis shares that at the moment of his conversion, he was “the most reluctant convert in the history of Christianity”, but that he gave himself over to Christ because “God’s compulsion is our liberation”.

That phrase spoke to me recently when, on September 8th, I celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of making my first vows as a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate. I was eighteen years old then, far too young by today’s assessment to be making that kind of commitment.

But I wasn’t too young. Intuitively, I knew what I was signing up for. I wasn’t starry-eyed and unaware that taking religious vows is a serious business. The decision I made to enter religious life with the hope of becoming a priest was the most difficult decision I have ever made in life and wasn’t predicated on a natural attraction to that vocation. The opposite. That was something I didn’t want, but something I felt called to and not morally free to resist. I was a reluctant novice, but there because of God’s compulsion. Here’s the story.

Until one month before I entered novitiate as a novice, I resisted the call, planning instead to go to university to become psychologist. I made the decision to pursue religious life and the priesthood during the summer immediately after my high school graduation. During that summer I worked on a farm and spent long hours alone on a tractor working in fields. During those long hours alone, a tension that I had long suppressed began to build up in me, namely, one between my natural desire regarding my choice in life and a call, a compulsion, inside me that simply would not go away, calling me to the priesthood. Eventually I gave in. I said yes to that call.

So, at the tender age of seventeen, I made the most difficult (but paradoxically, the clearest, freest, and most life-giving) decision I have ever made. And as I look back on it now, sixty-one years later, I see it as pure grace. There have been some difficult times, but there have been no regrets. From day one, I knew that this was right for me. All these years later, I have only deep gratitude for the grace to have made that decision and the ocean of grace that has surrounded me throughout these sixty years.

The renowned novelist Morris West published his autobiography sometime after his seventieth birthday. It’s a slim little volume entitled A View From the Ridge and begins with these words: When you reach the age of seventy there should only be three phrases left in your vocabulary: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

 I’m over seventy years of age now and were I to write an autobiography, like Morris West, I would begin with the words: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

And I remember clearly that day of my vows, sixty years ago. My mother and father were there, proud of me. I have a cherished photo of them with me, made even more precious because both of them, still young, died within the next six years. As well, I have sixty years of cherished friendship with some of my fellow novices – a couple of them who were even younger than I was.

And so, in celebrating this anniversary, I want to say thank you.

First, to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate for accepting me and through sixty years providing me with support, good community, friendship, exceptional educational opportunities, and with grace-filled, life-giving ministries. In these sixty years, I estimate that I have lived in community with over four hundred different men. That wasn’t always without its tensions, but it was aways supportive and life-giving – and full of the kind of healthy banter that breathes oxygen into a room.

As well, a huge thanks to my family, a large amorphous tribe, now spanning three generations. We have managed to stay close, despite distance, and I have always felt their unfailing support. They are still an anchor, a home, which helps steady me when things get confusing.

Next, and no superlative is up to the task here, a huge thank you to the untold number of people, friends and others, whom I have met in ministry through these sixty years. I was ordained sacramentally by a bishop but have been continually re-ordained by the people in my life. They’ve shown me what priesthood means. The highlights in my priesthood have been hearing the word “thank you” from people with whom I have had the privilege of being with.

Finally, the biggest thank you of all to God. Thank you for calling me. Thank you for the compulsion and the persistence in that call, for knowing what was best for me. Thank you for sustaining me during some difficult, obsessive, and depressive periods in my ministry. Thank you for staying with me all these years.

Indeed, God’s compulsion is our liberation – and pure grace.

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