Rector’s Reflections

October 26, 2025

 Dear People of God,

Next weekend is Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. As a small child, I always looked forward to this wonderful day. Choosing a costume and mask filled my October calendar – along with watching the Chicago Bears on a Sunday afternoon! My earliest Halloween costume recollection was in kindergarten. I walked around the neighborhood as Mr. Magoo — the wonderful TV cartoon character!

Halloween connects with costumes, treats, and masks. However, many of us spend the entire year wearing a mask to cover up our pain, anger, disappointment, and fears. We spend a lot of energy focusing on what we lack, forgetting the many gifts God has blessed us with in our lives, or we cover life’s hurts with a mask. As we approach Halloween, I’d like to share a reflection that was given to me. Read and pass it on…

Please Hear What I’m Not Saying

Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the mask I wear.

For I wear a mask; I wear a thousand masks; masks that I’m afraid to take off, and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature with me, but don’t be fooled — for God’s sake, don’t be fooled. I give the impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny, unruffled with me, within as well as without; that confidence is my name and coolness is my game; that the waters are calm and that I’m in command and I need no one. But don’t believe, please don’t.  

My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever-varying and every-concealing mask. Beneath lies no smugness, no complacency. Beneath dwells the real me, in confusion, in fear, in loneliness.

But I hide this, I don’t want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness and of being exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated façade to help me pretend, to shield from the glance that knows. 

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation, and I know it. That is, if acceptance follows that glance, if it’s followed by love. It’s the only thing that can liberate me. I am afraid that you will think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh will kill me.

I’m afraid that deep down inside I’m nothing, that I’m just no good, and that you see and reject me. So, I play games, my desperate, pretending games, with a façade of assurance on the outside, and a trembling child within. 

And so begins the parade of masks, a glittering but empty parade of masks. And my life becomes a front. I idly chatter with you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that’s really nothing, nothing of which is everything, of what’s crying within me.

So, when I’m going through my routine, don’t be fooled by what I’m saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying; what I’d like to be able to say; what, for survival, I need to say but I can’t say. I dislike the hiding, honestly, I do. I dislike the superficial, phony games I’m playing. I’d really like to be genuine, spontaneous, and me; but you have to help me. You have to help me by holding out your hand, even when that’s the last thing I seem to want or need. 

Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you are kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings. Very small wings.

Very feeble wings, but wings. With your sensitivity and sympathy and your power of understanding. I can make it. You can breathe life into me. I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose to.

Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stares of the breathing dead. Please choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble; you alone can remove the mask; you alone can release me from my shadow world of panic and uncertainty, from my lonely prison.

So please do not pass me by. Please do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls, and there lies my only hope.

Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive; and I AM a child.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man, every woman, every child…every human you meet. 

On the journey with you,

Fr. Greg