It Wasn't Only Me

September 16, 2026

Do you know how you can tell if a priest is delivering a really good sermon during Sunday mass?

It’s when the whole congregation becomes so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

And then, suddenly, everyone starts laughing.

I have always thought there was something interesting about those two moments.

The silence comes when something about what the priest is saying seems to reach directly into the private lives of the people sitting in the pews.

For a moment, you look up in surprise and wonder how he knew.

How did he know I have felt that way?

How did he know I have entertained those thoughts?

How did he know about this thing I have been carrying quietly inside me?

How did he know about me?

Of course, he didn’t.

And then someone laughs.

Someone else does too.

Soon the whole congregation is laughing, and perhaps part of the laughter comes from realizing the absurdity of what everyone had been thinking only moments before.

But I think there is something else in that laughter.

Relief.

Because when everyone else begins to laugh, you realize that whatever the priest touched in you, he touched in them too.

It wasn’t only me.

There is something comforting about discovering that something we thought was private is also human.

There’s something comforting about knowing that you are not alone.

Perhaps this is what happens when a poem, a song, a story, or a few simple words find us at exactly the right moment.

We wonder how someone who has never met us could possibly have known.

How could they have written the thing I could not say?

How could they have described something I thought belonged only to me?

How did they know about me?

Maybe they didn’t know us at all.

Maybe they simply knew something about being human.

And somewhere, another person is reading the same words, hearing the same song, or sitting quietly in another pew, wondering exactly the same thing.

Until someone breaks the silence and laughs.

And suddenly, we know.

It wasn’t only me.