“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart.” — Jeremiah 1:5
As I approached my 71st birthday last Sunday, I found myself really missing my parents and wishing I could thank them one more time for the countless ways they loved and supported me.
I had been cleaning up some old files as part of a decluttering process and discovered my baptismal certificate from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Ridgewood, NJ — my parish home growing up where all five Kirnan kids graduated from their grammar school. As I pored over the document, I remembered what my Mom had shared with me one afternoon, a few years before her passing and the onset of early-stage dementia.
She told me that when I was born at Valley Hospital on January 11, 1955 the doctors didn’t think I would survive as severe stomach issues were causing continual weight loss for me. Baptisms in the Catholic tradition are typically planned months after birth, but when a baby’s life hangs in the balance, everything changes. For me, that meant baptism in the hospital four days later—January 15, 1955—with my Mom’s younger brother Donald as godfather and my Dad’s sister Marion as godmother.
As I continued to stare at that baptismal certificate and the precious few photos I have of my Mom holding me in that first year of my life, I thought about how hard that must have been for her. A cesarean delivery and a week-long hospital stay—then another month before I was well enough to come home. Meanwhile, my 6-year-old sister Cathy and 2-year-old brother Dennis needed their mother at home. My Dad was only 30 years old, working the grueling 11pm-7am night shift at a printing company in New York, taking on the added demands of heavy overtime to pay the bills while Mom stayed home with the children.
Once I became a Dad, Mom would tell me that she had suffered three miscarriages between my difficult birth and Matt’s birth more than 5 years later.
All of these feelings came together for me at last Sunday’s Mass at St. Margaret Church in a way I could not have imagined as the Gospel reading centered on The Baptism of the Lord, that moment where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. As Fr. Andrew began his sermon, I got very emotional because my parents had told me many times growing up that I was actually named after John the Baptist, something that to this day fills my heart with profound gratitude at this stage of life.
We learn early on in our faith journey as Catholics to “stay awake, for you know neither that day nor the hour” when God will call us home from this life but I really believe that I survived those precarious days of my early life because of the unconditional love my parents gave me and the many sacrifices they made for all of their children to have a better life than they had.
Their deep faith became their greatest gift to me—helping me navigate what St. Ignatius called “cannonball moments,” those profound life-changing experiences:
- Dad losing his job when I was 16
- Dennis’s unexpected death when I was 17
- Surviving a near-fatal car accident at 23 on my way home from graduate school
- Getting cornered by a knife-wielding assailant in a Bronx parking lot shortly after Jean and I got married
- Racing down 32 flights of stairs during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing when our building at 7 WTC shook violently not knowing whether it might collapse
- Losing my senior management position at First Boston in 2003
- Emergency heart stent surgery in 2017 with my main artery 85% blocked
But that unexpected baptism 71 years ago also opened the door to countless joyful moments in my life that I thank God for every day — falling in love with Jean and raising three wonderful children; becoming a grandfather to Aurora, Redding, Irene, and Pete; and discovering through each major life transition, the gifts and talents that I never knew God had given me.
As I work with my clients and fellow parishioners navigating their own transitions and losses, I’m reminded that our most difficult beginnings and transitions often hold the seeds of our greatest purpose.
So how about you — what difficult beginnings have shaped your own journey and life transitions?
