Dear Danny,
I found a picture of us from Christmas Day, 1971. I was fourteen; you were five. We’re sitting on the floor playing what looks like a new game, the Christmas tree shining behind us, its colored lights casting that warm, familiar glow across the living room. I remember the year because my arm is in a sling from a sports injury. In the photo, I’m looking down at the game, but you’re looking up at me. Your eyes, so full of affection and joy, seem to be smiling even now from that frozen moment in time.
My heart aches as I try to recapture that moment but cannot. What did we talk about? Did I return your affection? Did I smile back? I hope I did.
You were a beautiful child, and as the years passed your good looks, thick dark hair, sharp mind, and eager smile became your trademarks. Yet your greatest feature was your heart, so large, so trusting, so open to anyone who needed a friend. You had a radar for people in pain.
I remember how excited you were to become an altar boy at our parish. Then came the horror no child should ever face: the sexual abuse you suffered at the hands of the pastor who should have protected you. He gained your trust and affection, grooming you for months, only to betray and wound you. We did not learn of that dark chapter until years later, when you were in drug rehab, struggling with addiction and the HIV/AIDS diagnosis that came with it.
I am so sorry that I was not there for you, Danny. Maybe if I had looked more closely, noticed that your eyes did not shine as brightly and that your smile came less often, I would have seen. But by then I had moved away, too absorbed in my own life. For that, my stomach still turns.
Since then, I have met many men and women who were sexually abused as children. There are millions who carry that silent wound. Most never tell their stories; shame locks them inside. Sometimes I see it in their eyes, the same pain I once saw in yours.
Yet by a twist of divine irony, through rehab and illness, you found your way back to the very Church that once betrayed you. This time, you met a faithful priest who saw Christ in you. When you grew too weak to leave your room, he brought you the Eucharist and heard your confession.
After one visit he told Mom, “There’s a little saint in the making in that room.” You had found your way home. And soon, you would lead me home, too.
I never told you this, but around that same time, twelve hundred miles away, I was on my knees for the first time in twenty years. My marriage seemed to be crumbling; a gulf I did not have the power to close had opened between my wife and me. In desperation I prayed, “God, do you have a plan for my life?”
I imagine God smiling: “Yes, Jack, I have a plan for your life. You’re just not following it very well.”
As I rose from my knees, the phone rang. It was Mom, calling from Orlando. You were no longer responsive, she said. Your organs were shutting down.
Miraculously, all four of us brothers made it to the airport and boarded the plane with seconds to spare. When I entered your home, two hospice nurses in the kitchen looked relieved. “Thank goodness you made it,” one said. “Danny’s unresponsive, but you can go in and see him. He’s on the couch in the next room.”
Then came the unexpected.
Moments after you heard our voices, the tendons in your neck tightened. You seemed to be fighting a tremendous internal struggle. One eyelid fluttered. I touched your arm.
“Danny, you can hear us. We’re all here.”
Your eyes opened. Your head lifted slightly. You looked past me toward something, or Someone, in the corner of the room. Then you said, “Let’s pray.”
I was stunned. Your mouth was dry, and I asked, “What, Danny? What did you say?”
You replied clearly, “Pray to God!”
You lay back down, your eyes closing, your breathing calm and peaceful. You did not try to speak again, and I knew that moment was not for you. It was for us. You were the messenger.
I dropped to my knees. My brothers, a cousin, and a few of your friends followed. I tried to pray, but no words came. Again I tried, still nothing. Then, like a forgotten melody, the words of a childhood prayer rose to my lips:
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
As we prayed, your eyes opened and closed slightly. The air in the room thickened. Whatever you had seen in that corner was now surrounding us, a Presence, palpable, peaceful, and strong.
When we finished, another prayer came unbidden:
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”
And as we reached the words “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” I knew. The Presence in the room was God.
That evening, before you passed away on September 20, 1995, I sat in your kitchen trying to put words to what had happened. I wrote:
“Danny lay very still while we prayed, his eyes opening and closing just slightly, a sign that he was with us. He asked us to pray, a parting gift. In a divine mystery, I believe the Holy Spirit allowed one last moment between Danny and his brothers so that he could leave us a simple message: ‘Let’s pray to God.’”
It was that freely given gift that changed my life. That encounter opened the door for me to discover God’s plan.
You wanted to be cremated, and a memorial Mass was set at your parish chapel. We thought its hundred seats would be plenty. They were not. More than two hundred people came: co-workers, neighbors, friends, even your doctors, and nurses. They told us stories of how you had touched their lives, lifted them, loved them.
When I rose to speak, grace filled the chapel. And when I approached the priest for Communion, the same Presence from your room met me again. As I received the Eucharist, a wave of love surged through me; my knees weakened and tears streamed down my face.
He was there. In the Bread. Given to me.
Later, I tried to describe what had happened. Reading Archbishop Anthony Bloom’s Beginning to Pray, I found words that matched my own experience. He wrote:
“While I was reading the Gospel of Mark, I suddenly became aware that on the other side of my desk there was a Presence. The certainty was so strong that it was Christ standing there that it has never left me.”
That was it. The Presence, the same one that filled your room and met me in the Eucharist, has never left me.
It’s late now, brother. I have much more I could write, but I will save it for another time. Thank you again for your parting gift. Keep me in your prayers. Time is flying, and God willing, I will see you soon.
I will sign off with one of my favorite quotes from Pope Benedict XVI:
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
Love you,
Jack
P.S. My best friend Jeannie and I are still married.