My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

In one of my courses in social work administration, my professor gave a short line which was meant to guide us in our administration. He said, “Administration is a series of interruptions.”

How often I remember these words of Dr. Mickey Liebowitz when in the course of the day the phone rings or someone wants to see me while I am involved in something else. Administration is truly a series of interruptions. And if one will be a good administrator, he or she should not be annoyed by these interruptions because they truly are the heart and soul of what administration is about. It is about being available to those with whom you work.

In a spiritual sense, we can understand that life is also a series of tragedies which interrupt the happiness of life and tend to disrupt our equilibrium. Most recently, last year our diocese underwent the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy. We still live in its aftermath and so many people here in Brooklyn and Queens still are not in the equilibrium of life that they desire.

This past March, we experienced the death of Bishop Ignatius Catanello after a long illness which gradually took away his strength and beautiful, joyful personality, so that as he died it seemed that the equilibrium of the past had disintegrated.

Most recently, we suffered the tragic loss of Bishop Joseph Sullivan following a car accident which ended a life of advocacy and service to the poor and to the Church that was unique to Bishop Joe. The question for us, however, is how do we deal with these seemingly tragic events in life. Is life truly a valley of tears?

There are two kinds of tears. There are the tears of sorrow, but there are also the tears of joy. Tears are the physical symptom of deep emotion. When we are sad and experience tragedy, especially the death of loved ones, we are prone to cry tears of sorrow. There are those rare moments in life, however, when we too are overcome by emotion and tears of joy can overcome us at the birth of a new child or good news about some tragic situation that has been resolved.

As we look to our own lives, we want to answer this question of how we can maintain an equilibrium necessary for our spiritual and human lives.

Perhaps we must understand the ebbs and flows of life that have participation in the saving power of Christ’s suffering. It was Christ who entered the world and wished to become like us and wished to experience all of the things that we have in the human experience, except, of course, sin. He too knew the valley of tears only to be lead to the Mount of the Transfiguration and eventually to His own Resurrection.

And then we hear the unfathomable words of St. Paul to the Galatians that we make up in our own bodies what is lacking in the suffering of Jesus Christ. This phrase too sticks in my mind, and I try over and over again to fathom what it truly means.

For my part, it seems that what is lacking in the suffering of Jesus Christ is our participation. His sufferings were more than sufficient to redeem the world. What is lacking, however, is our participation in the continual saving of the world through associating our suffering, be it illness or disappointment, or any other human tragedy, with the suffering of Jesus Christ. No human suffering is wasted when it is joined to that of the Savior Himself.

In each tragedy of life we do put out into the deep because we find ourselves alone and wonder to where we should turn in our moments of tragedy or at the loss of a loved one and in the normal tragic situations of life. But in the deep, we find the heart of Jesus Christ who suffered and died for our salvation. It is in that heart in the month of June dedicated to the Holy Spirit where we find consolation and meaning and the will to continue living our lives, not for ourselves, but rather for Him who saved us.