Extending our merciful hands to do God’s work
A dozen years ago, I became pastor of a parish whose priest had retired a year earlier. The town was quite small, and though the church was truly lovely, it was over 100 years old and set on an open hillside near the sea.
Dec 18, 2014

By Fr David O’Rourke
A dozen years ago, I became pastor of a parish whose priest had retired a year earlier. The town was quite small, and though the church was truly lovely, it was over 100 years old and set on an open hillside near the sea.
So, for a hundred years, its wooden sides had borne the brunt of winter storms rolling in off the ocean. There hadn’t been a priest living there for six months – and it showed. In my younger days, I had worked as a maintenance man in an old, decaying paper mill during my summers off from college. I knew what to do: You roll up your sleeves and you get to work with your hands.
I recall crawling up and down the aisles of the little church with a roll of duct tape in one hand, tearing off chunks to tape down the many torn ends of carpet so our older folk wouldn’t trip and fall.
I was ordained over 50 years ago. As part of the ceremony – an important part – the bishop anoints the hands of the new priest with sacred oil. It is the same oil used in baptism and confirmation. Anointing the hands is no quick action. I still remember the moment as the bishop rubbed and rubbed the oil well into the palms of my hands.
Maybe he figured I needed it. I remember that particular moment because, in the past half-century, my hands have played an important role in my life and ministry.
Just this past week, I spent what seemed like hours untangling the Christmas lights from the mess I always seem to leave them in each year. It’s a tough job for my stiff, arthritic fingers. They’re getting so bad now that I even have a hard time grasping the Host from the ciborium at Communion time.
At Christmas, we renew our belief that God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We read that in the Gospel on Christmas morning, in the words of St. John: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
Centuries ago, that all-essential passage was set in Latin letters right into the stone floor, in a circle at the spot where Mary heard the message of the angel telling her that she would be the mother of the Messiah: Verbum caro hic factum est, or “Here the Word was made flesh.” It was absolute simplicity in the holiest of our holy places.
Over the years, in the course of my work, I have come to realize how we also are to be messengers of that same holiness. We live in God’s merciful hands. That is a beautiful image. But in a sense, that is all it is, an image. For God has no hands, except ours. The reality is that our hands are the hands of God’s mercy.
There are many religions that make much about having clean and pure hands. We are not among them. Our hands, whatever their travels and histories, are to be merciful hands. Flawed, scarred, battle-sore, our hands are still God’s merciful hands, and they have to be because there are no others, except ours. Ours are the only ones there are.
The Word was made flesh and the Word had human hands. There are few things in this world holier than merciful hands, and that is not a poetic image. It is a human reality.
I don’t know why our little church, barely surviving, is so full on Christmas. But, somewhere in there is the need to renew our sense, no matter how clouded or tired it becomes, that our hands, whatever their histories and flaws, are still God’s merciful hands.
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