Day two of the 2017 Simbang Gabi novena brought a familiar celebrant–Father Jack O’Hara, who was vicar at the neighborhood parish back in 2005 when I returned to faith. Father Jack’s and my paths have crossed numerous times in the intervening years, most recently at last month’s viewing for his colleague of 13 years and longtime friend, Father Gerry Creedon.
In his homily, Father Jack remarked on the simplicity of John the Baptist’s life. Making the way of the Lord straight involves simplicity, and “we live in a difficult world, a complicated world,” he said. He also paid some homage to Gerry, calling him a “prophetic voice of the diocese for justice and peace,” who was willing to sit down with people and listen.” It was Gerry’s willingness to listen to the Filipino community 
that brought Simbang Gabi to the parish twenty-one years ago. It started with about a dozen people, and now it’s the rare dawn that doesn’t draw more than 100.
Father Jack also spoke of Pope Francis, who turns eighty-one today, noting his “ministry of humility, mercy, and service,” much like the saint whose name he took, Francis of Assisi.
It was about then that my friend’s humility struck me. Here he was, back at the parish where he had been a fixture, along with Gerry, less than a month after he was a co-celebrant at Gerry’s funeral. I thought of the memories that must have evoked, and yet Father Jack came to be of service and testify to the Light in the predawn darkness.
Breakfast conversations also brought discussions of dark and light, of conclusions and beginnings, in people’s lives. Perhaps it was fitting that as I walked into the home office, I saw the final burst of a magnificent sunrise.
