Mychal Judge

New York City: Mychal Judge

May 1st 2012

In the process of trying to work out what matters and what doesn’t there are some people I came here seeking, and one of those people was Fr Mychal Judge.

I knew nothing about Mychal until I came across this picture in The Guardian, reprinted on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The picture is of the Fire Service Chaplain being carried out of the World Trade Centre, about to become the first recorded fatality of that day. 

He died giving the last rites to a fireman and I discovered later that he was well-known in New York City, and considered a friend by firefighters, police, homeless men and women, people with HIV and those in recovery from addictions. 

He  was often to be seen in his brown Franciscan friar's robe, walking the streets talking to people. Clyde tells me that he was who people say he was.

Part of my fascination with Mychal is of course that he was a priest. I can relate to him, out there that day, doing his job, like many of us do.

As I read more about him though I learned that he had brought to the task of priesthood some things, some wounds, which he had found a way to share in the light, so that they could be of use to the people he served. 

His father died when he was six and he would speak freely about his sadness that he had no one to call "Dad". He struggled with authority, often getting up the noses of those around him. In seminary it was strongly recommended that he should not be ordained. Some time into his ministry he became an alcoholic and spent the rest of his life in recovery from his addiction.

A big clue about Mychal lay in his Franciscan orders, his openness to God and a certain a kind of contemplative distance from anything which might act as a barrier, which might use up emotional energy which could be better placed elsewhere.

Friends recorded that he would often greet them when they entered his room in the friary: 

" take whatever you want, it isn't mine, I am just glad to be alive" .

What an extraordinary phrase to live by. I come back to that phrase again and again and contemplate the freedom it offers. Friends and colleagues knew that there was no point giving Mychal anything because he would just give it away. I can only imagine what enormous space and freedom that level of openness to life brings. To get really good at giving things away, especially our inappropriate attachments to stuff and to bad relationships and to old hurts. Can you imagine what space inside that frees up in us?  To have nothing to protect or to defend inside ourselves. It might enable us to see one another properly and to love without agenda and to give what is really needed and not what we  think we need to stay alive.

I think that how far we are away from being able to say that " take whatever you want, it isn't mine, I am just glad to be alive" provides a measure of where we are on our own spiritual journey.  Most of us are at baby stage, but Mychal seemed to have nailed it, and people could see it a mile away. He had space for them because he had learned how to handle his own internal battles and his own preoccupations. Losing his life to gain it.

But its a good thing to practice. Asking ourselves how much of our work is a cover for fear, whether we are using energy defending the indefensible because it makes us feel safe.

I say that phrase out loud as if I mean it and then wait and see what jumps out.