Father Dennis

We need prophets with authority just like Jesus

2012-02-01T22:37:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, my homily changed a lot from when I wrote it to the last time I preached it on Sunday morning. In all three homilies I told about how one group of ministers in one town were committed to not doing gay marriages. We all worked on and signed a marriage policy enumerating how we are going to prepare couples for marriage and help marriages in trouble. And we all agreed that we will not perform same-sex marriages. When I approached another group of ministers about it, I was saddened to hear their response. They said they agreed but that their congregations are divided about it so they don't want to speak out about it. They said that they will speak privately to individuals but that they can't commit to it. I then said that I'm not trying to mock non-catholics because I know there are plenty of Catholic bishops and priests who feel the exact same way.

I then talked about how we are in need of prophets who speak with authority. That was the point of the first reading and gospel, after all. Moses was a prophet and Jesus spoke like a prophet. They did so because they spoke God's Word. Both Moses and Jesus put God's word over their own desires and wants. I used more words but, basically that's what I said.

The change that happened throughout the weekend was in the last part of the homily, the practical part. I started off the weekend asking people to be supportive of me when I speak out on controversial issues. But, after preaching that, it occured to me how self-serving that is. And, if I really want to be a prophet, I should expect to be hated and persecuted. So, I shifted things the next day to calling people to speak out about immigration, poverty, death penalty, abortion, same-sex marriage, and other controversial issues.

The strange thing was that I had no idea that I was going to put this message into practice. But more on that later.

Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart

2012-01-01T22:37:00.002-06:00

My Dear friends in Christ

May the grace and peace of Christ ransom you and make you his adopted children in the power of the Holy Spirit.. Are you a person who makes New Year’s resolutions? Going all the way back to 8th grade, I have a box containing all my resolutions. Well, I sort of have all my resolutions. Like most of you, I gave up making resolutions for myself a number of years ago because, surprise surprise, I never seemed to actually do them. I would make them and then forget about them. But, I think I’m going to start again this year, I’m just going to do it better.

Today we celebrate the end of the Octave of Christmas with the celebration of Mary, Mother of God. This is actually a very old feast in the church going all the way back to the third century. Back then, it was used to establish that Jesus was fully human, that he was actually born like any other person. Really this isn’t that much of a controversy in the church today, except for dialogue with Jehovah’s Witnesses who believe that Jesus is some kind of angel. So, what is the focus of the celebration for today?

To me, the focus is on one phrase in the middle of the gospel, “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” This phrase is repeated later on in this same chapter in the context of Jesus being lost in the Temple. After he explains that they should have known he would be in his Father’s house, the gospel of Luke says, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.” Some have indicated that the reason for this phrase is that Mary helped Luke write his Gospel, that she was one of his sources. Others simply believe that Luke is using Mary to represent where each follower of Jesus is after the Ascension.

Unlike the Apostles and the crowds, we didn’t have the opportunity to witness Jesus Christ in action. We have to rely on the testimony of others. Mary gave birth to a child, a very special child but a child nonetheless. She had been assured by an Angel that he was destined for greatness but all four gospels pretty much agree that his life prior to being baptized by John was…not all that spectacular. Other than being the obstinate 12 year old who argues with high priests, a feat which, trust me, is in and of itself, neither all that surprising nor all that impressive. I’ve had my fair share of 12 year olds who think they know more than me! Other than that one event, we don’t hear anything about Jesus growing up years. Mary, nonetheless, kept them in her heart and they were a source of strength for her when the time came for him to carry out that most unselfish act of dying on the cross.

One of the reasons that setting goals for our lives doesn’t work is because we don’t take the time to reflect on them. We set them and forget them. We’d rather spend time in front of the TV or the Computer or doing some other hobby rather than spending time asking God what he wants for our lives and then spending time listening to promptings of the Holy Spirit challenging us to make concrete steps to guide us toward that goal. We’d rather make a wish on New Years and hope that an angel does it for us. On this feast of Mary, Mother of God, we are invited to sit with Mary pondering what it means to be a good disciple of Jesus.

Give the gift of your time.

2011-12-19T21:10:00.002-06:00

My Dear brothers and sisters in Christ

May the grace and peace of God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all as we celebrate this final Sunday of the Advent season. There is a story told about a little boy whose father worked very hard at a very important job often bringing work home with him to do at night. On one such night, the little boy came into his father’s study and stood for a while unnoticed. Finally, his somewhat oblivious father sensed his son’s presence, acknowledged him, and asked what his son wanted. The son asked the normal pleasantry question about what his father was doing to which his father replied something about earning his paycheck. The son then asked how much the father made per hour, a question that seemed to irritate the boy’s father. Figuring that his son was in some kind of silly game of comparison with classmates at school, the father told him that that was a very rude question and that it was none of his business. So, the son left the room but he returned a few minutes later and stood in the same place. The father, annoyed at being disrupted a second time and still thinking about how rude the son’s question was finished the sentence he was writing and then quickly looked up to find his son holding a small ceramic pig with an Iowa State Cyclone emblem on the side. The son opened the bottom of the pig and, much to the surprise of his father, emptied a few quarters, nickels, dimes, and many many pennies onto his desk. The father looked at the tear stained eyes of his son who asked, “I’d like to buy one hour. Is this enough?” The father smiled at his son, put down his pen, and went to spend time with his son. And he never brought work home again.

For the past several weeks, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the obnoxious level of commercialism that plagues Christmas. A lot of people recognize that this is a problem but few offer any kind of solution. I believe that we hear one in the scriptures today. The first reading and gospel are one of the few times when it is apparent that one passage is directly building upon another. In the first reading, Nathan, speaking on behalf of God, promised David an heir who will be great and a son of God. In the gospel, the angel Gabriel, speaking on behalf of God, tells Mary Jesus “will be great” and will be called the “Son of God.” In the first reading, Nathan promises David a kingdom forever; in the gospel, Gabriel tells Mary “of his kingdom there will be no end.” In the first reading Nathan promises David an everlasting throne. In the gospel, Gabriel promises Mary that Jesus will inherit the throne of David his Father.

Yet, amidst all these similarities, there is still one striking difference between these reading, a difference that gives us instruction as we approach Christmas. In the first reading, David feels blessed by God. The Ark of the Covenant, which had been traveling all over Israel to be kept safe, finally arrives in Jerusalem. And David wants to do something nice for God for all the good things God has done for him. So he decides to build a house or, more precisely, a temple. The problem is that God didn’t ask for a house. He didn’t even want one! He was perfectly fine in his tent. But instead of punishing David, as we might expect, God decides that he’s going to build a house for David, a lineage so that all of David’s offspring can serve God.

Mary is also coming off of a pretty good stretch. She has got engaged to Joseph, an event that is very exciting. But, Mary’s first act is not to go out and get a gift for God in thanks. She didn’t sacrifice the fattened calf. Mary, instead, thanked God for her good fortune. She simply spent time with God in prayer. This thankful attitude is what allowed her to be the first tabernacle of the body of Christ.

This, then, is the antidote to the problem of commercialism; to focus on relationships instead of things. In other words, our first and foremost gift this time of year should be more about time than money or trinkets. No amount of money, no perfect toy, no ticket to a bowl game is as important as being with the people we love and being with our God. Now is the perfect moment to take some time to be with those we love and spend time with God in prayer. Don’t make God send a prophet, an Angel, or a crying child to get you to do it.

What if Jesus comes back like that?

2011-12-13T20:58:00.000-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who will come again in glory in the power of the Holy Spirit. I heard a story about a monastery that was undergoing some hard times. It used to thrive and be filled with monks but had fallen on hard times and was down to six cantankerous monks. It had been years since anyone had gone to the monastery for spiritual direction or a young person had tried to join them. When their old abbot died and the new one was chosen, he searched out some advice from a local hermit who was renowned for his holiness. He explained that the monks were very small and were really short with one another in the hallways and he wondered if he should close down the monastery. The hermit thought for a moment and then said to the abbot that one of the monks was the messaih.The abbot was surprised and shot back that it was impossible. But the hermit simply insisted even more severely that one of the monks was the messiah but he's disguising himself with by taking on some personal foibles.

So, the abbot returned to his monastery and for one whole day surveyed the monks to see if he could spot him. There was brother Jack who spent almost every waking moment in the chapel in prayer. But, when he wasn't in the chapel, he was kind of a jerk in the hallway. But maybe that was just covering himself. Maybe he was the messiah. Or maybe it was Brother Dennis who was so jovial and so charitible. He always helped other people with a smile on his face. And you always know how to find him because he's always down in the kitchen sneaking food. In fact, he's there so often that he's really a glutton. But maybe he's the messiah and is using his big belly to cover for it.

The next day, the abbot went to the rest of the monastery and told them what the hermit had told him and explained that he was sure he was right. The rest of the monks did a similar evaluation of their brothers and, over the course of the next few weeks, began to treat each other differently. Soon, their change in attitude became noticed by the local population who started going to them for spiritual direction. Then, they started gaining a few younger monks...a complete and total change.

In today's gospel, John the baptist identifies Jesus as, "...one among you whom you do not recognize..." It's easy for us to sit in judgment of the Jews of Jesus' time. They had the opportunity to get to know the messiah but they just missed the chance. But, remember that they thought there was going to be a lot of fanfare surrounding the messiah. They thought that Elijah would come out of the sky in his fiery chariot and Isaiah the prophet would return with his fiery rhetoric exhorting them to return to the Lord. And, instead, they got John the Baptist out in the middle of nowhere preaching repentance to the poor and outcasts of society and the messiah came in some unimportant town to some unimportant family.

It reminded me of a song that I heard a few years ago by country singer Colin Raye. It tells the story of a homeless bum living under bridges begging food and money from people. He's the type of person who annoys you when you see him on the street, who gets removed from the front of grocery stores. What if Jesus comes back like that? Would we so quickly turn our back on him? Or what about the infant daughter of a pair of crack addicts. The baby shivers in her incubator and the parents, who have no money to pay the medical bills, basically abandon her. The medical care is going to cost millions and she'll likely be mentally and physically handicapped. She's the type of child that you kind of wish could just die in her sleep. But what if Jesus comes back like that? Would you still want them to pull the plug, still want them to just let her die peacefully?

There are so many times that we forget that we are created in the image and likeness of God and that that demands we treat each other with love and respect. That cranky coworker you avoid at work. What if Jesus comes back like that? That annoying child crying in the pew in front of you. What if Jesus comes back like that. They didn't expect him the first time, what makes you think we know for sure the way he's coming the second? What if Jesus comes back like that?

Good News

2011-12-05T20:47:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

May the Good News of our Savior Jesus Christ come upon you in the power of the Holy Spirit and warm your hearts to his love. So how was your last week? Did you watch the news? Was it any good? I picked up a paper on Wedensday and read that someone had been stabbed over in Mason City. I thought to myself, well thank goodness that I don’t live over there, as though it couldn’t happen here. The Penn State sexual abuse scandal continues to be in the headlines as more and more young people come forward claiming to be abused. And, of course, it only took a few days for people to connect this scandal to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Our country’s economy, well to be honest it really is the world’s economy but still, the economy is still in the toilet and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. And I don’t know about you but I hate this time of year. I hate the fact that it gets dark so early and waits so long in the morning before we get to see the sun again.

In the midst of this, we hear in both the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah and in the Gospel from John the Baptist the hopeful message of GOOD NEWS! In the first reading, we heard a rare positive message from the prophet. It took him 40 chapters to finally get there and, in order to get there, we had to slog through warnings of impending doom if the people didn’t reform their ways. But, finally, in the 40th chapter, Isaiah turns to us out of nowhere and says, “Go up onto a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God!” It’s as though God is saying to us that he knows there’s a lot of fear out there. He knows that some of you are wondering where the money is going to come from to make this a special Christmas. He knows that some of you are worried about some hard feelings between you and your relatives that may rear their ugly head at Christmas gatherings. He knows that some of you are worried about finding jobs or keeping jobs. He knows that some of you are worried that you or your parents or someone else you care about might not make it through this Winter and he saying to us, “Fear not…God is here to save you.”

What a great message of hope! Jesus came into the world and now we await his return in glory. We do so as we listen to the words of John the Baptist. John is this wild man living in the desert on whatever he can salvage. We can learn a thing or two from John. God may not provide filet mignon. He may not supply escargot. But he has given us our daily bread; his body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist. But John’s message of Good News is different than we are used to. He points to one mightier than he who is coming after him. He is not worthy to do the job of servant for this one coming after him. Think about that. John is probably the holiest person of his time and he’s not even important enough to be Jesus’ servant. John’s message is one of total humility.

In our world today, we could use a little humble Good News. This is why Fr. Lippstock and the deanery vocation committee have organized this vocation awareness event in a couple of weeks for people who are considering priesthood or religious life. We need people who can tell glad tidings of Good News, especially priests and religious. Yet, in all honesty, we are all called to be people of Good News who spread the light of Christ to all the world. So here’s my challenge to you: This coming week choose some way to interject Good News into your world. It can be as big as trying to organize a Bible study among your coworkers or friends or as small as saying hello to that person you normally avoid at work or school. Let all the world know the Good News that Jesus Christ has come into the world and that he will come again in glory.

The rush from what happened to who is to blame.

2011-11-11T14:15:00.000-06:00

Before I begin this column, I want to start off with a few preliminary remarks. Sexual abuse of any kind, but especially sexual abuse of minors, is a tragedy. It is a reality of this fallen world but a tragic reality and my heart hurts for the victims and their families. In my heart of hearts, I hope that Jesus wasn't speaking figuratively when he warned that drowning violently would be a better death than what is in store for those who hurt a child.

Now on to what I've been tossing around in my head. And these truly are just my thoughts. I'm not speaking in any way on behalf of the church (or the Church, for the matter). For the past week, I've watched with sadness what has taken place at Penn State University. I mourn for the kids and families who went through this crap. As I said before, it is a tragedy. But, to be honest, I'm nervous at how quickly things moved from the stage of finding out what happened to finding out who is at fault. I'm not meaning to cast aspersions on the findings. I'm just asking if there is a step missing that, I fear, will be crucial to stopping this in the future.

Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. You might remember Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords campaign rally a few weeks ago in which a deeply disturbed gentlemen named Jared Laughner brought guns to the event and ended up shooting people. In my opinion, the same step was missed in this. We quickly moved from what happened to who was at fault. Liberals blamed Sarah Palin for putting a gun sight over Giffford's district. Conservatives responded that there was no proof that Laughner even knew about the sight and that he was just crazy. In the end, it seemed as though the rush to blame someone made us miss a crucial point. There is a lot of gun violence perpetuated in this country by people like laughner, people who are diagnosed bipolar or schizophrenic. I feel like we missed a chance to look at the amount of violence done by people who suffer from this mysterious illness and see if we should restrict gun sales to them. I can think of two instances in my own life in which which someone with bipolar disorder has killed someone else because voices in their head were telling them to do so. But, if we just focus on who is at fault in this particular situation, we miss the opportunity to stop it the next time.

So how is that related to this? If I understand things correctly, part of the way Jerry Sandusky was able to abuse kids was by befriending at-risk kids. These are the kids that the rest of us would prefer not to have to deal with. They misbehave in school and cause headaches for their teachers. You always wonder where their parents are and why they are skateboarding on your front steps instead of at their own. These are the kids that break your windows with rocks because they are bored and then lie to you about it when you confront them. These are the "bad kids." This scumbag, Sandusky, took these kids and made them disappear into what appeared to be something good: a mentoring program. They were out of sight and someone else's problem. He then used what I've come to understand as typical abusive psychological manipulation techniques to get these kids to trust him enough so that he could do almost anything to them. It's eerily similar to what a priest I knew seems to have done to kids who were at risk. In the rush to blame, we can't miss the lesson we need to learn: We need to have greater monitoring and accountability in these mentoring types of relationships, especially for at-risk kids. I imagine that, for the most part, these programs are totally on the up and up and do immeasurably great things for the kids that participate in them. But there needs to be a way so that someone who is in the program to abuse children cannot have the opportunity to do so. We can't just trust that the guy who is getting rid of the problem children is doing it for the right reasons. There's just too much room for abuse to take place.

The rush to blame someone is really a way of putting the problem behind us. It centers the problem in someone and removes us from finding the thing that is behind the problem. In some ways, it stops us from getting overwhelmed at all the solutions to problems we need to implement. But it really doesn't help the poor troubled kid who was just befriended by a coach, boy scout leader, or priest from being sexually abused. Only by seeking the root of the problem and dealing with that will we ever be able to fix it.

Fides ET Ratio

2011-11-09T14:57:00.000-06:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you had never entered a church before in your life and most of your friends had never entered a church before but your only experience of believers was off the TV, what would be your perception of church going people? I imagine the perception would be that most of us are simpletons. Think of the character Net on the Television show The Simpsons. He’s a geeky guy with a whiney, high-pitched voice who uses phrases like, “Son of a Didley” instead of swearing. But, Ned also supports his church and his minister and is always willing to give a helpful hand to his neighbors, the Simpsons, even though they seem to always accept his help and then take advantage of his generosity. In many ways, he’s the definition of a simpleton.

There was a time when a religious person would have been portrayed very differently. Recently, I’ve had a chance to watch the shows Going My Way with Bing Crosby and The Trouble with Angels with Jane Russel and Haley Mills. These shows from a bygone era show priests and nuns and religion in general as a place for intelligent and moral people. In fact, the whole point of those movies seemed to be that wise people affiliated themselves with religion while the dregs of society who cared only for themselves fought against it. Today, it seems like you have to shut off your brain to believe in God, or at least that’s the way Hollywood would have you believe. I’m afraid we’ve confused something very fundamental, something that makes us different than most Protestant denominations. In fact, the confusion is so widespread that even some priests get confused about it. The confusion centers around the idea of faith. Some believe that faith is a “best guess scenario.” It’s something an individual has to guess at. You look around in search for proof and, when you can’t find any, you make a “leap of faith.” The only think you can trust is the Bible or, as they may say it, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

For Catholics, faith and wisdom are inseparable. If our faith contradicts wisdom, then one must be in need of a new appropriation. But it must be authentic wisdom not the kind that was praised in the first reading today, which I call knowledge not wisdom. One can have knowledge but not be wise. Think of the professor that knows everything about the way the Universe works but would likely leave for work without wearing pants if a loving spouse didn’t lay them out each day. Or the sports figure who knows everything about the game of football or baseball but couldn’t put together a grammatically correct sentence if Ms. Manners had a gun to his head. These folks have knowledge but not wisdom.

A wise person grapples with difficult questions and is never satisfied with simple answers. She or he realizes that atheism is true futility, true foolishness. Instead, a wise person opens herself or himself up to the possibility that there is a God and then tries to get into a relationship with him. They look at the Bible as a helpful tool that tells us about our ancestor’s relationship to God but they also recognize it’s not a purely historical document. They live life differently that those who do not believe in God, as a consequence. They live life as though Christ could come tomorrow. Indeed, they live as though Christ could come right now and we’d be prepared. That means that we show love to our neighbors, especially those who are oppressed. We live life in order to reach out to those who are not wise in order to let them know where true wisdom resides, in the heart of Christ.

True wisdom is built on vigilantly waiting for God, which is why Hollywood has it so wrong. It’s not we who believe and patiently wait for Christ’s return who are simple. It’s those who give up on God like the five foolish bridegrooms in the gospel who are simple. We who have the faith, hope, and love of Christ and await his return in glory are the truly wise ones. Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory.

Love God and Love one another…two commandments or one?

2011-10-23T17:01:00.002-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

May Grace and Peace be yours in abundance through our Lord Jesus Christ who has shown us the way to the Father in his love for us. This weekend is Sacrificial Giving Sunday, the one weekend when I focus my homily on money. I promise you that, unless something drastic happens, I won’t preach about money again this year. Last week, it was really easy to talk about sacrificial giving to the parishes of Hancock County. The gospel story on the coin with Caesar’s image focused us on who has given us what we have and to whom we should give that in return. This week, it’s a little more challenging. In fact, to be honest, I was ready to give up focusing on sacrificial giving when I first read the readings. But, then it came to me. There’s something missing in today’s gospel that really drives home the idea of sacrificial giving.

In the gospel, Jesus is approached by some scholars of the law to settle a disputed question. He had just settled a question on the resurrection for the Sadducees by telling them, who didn’t believe in resurrection, that the teaching for it actually goes back to the first chapters of one of the books they still had in their Bible, the book of Genesis. When the Sadducees couldn’t trick him, the Pharisees send in one of their own to prove just how superior they are to the rival Sadducees. At the time of Jesus, there were 613 laws recognized by the Pharisees. There were 365 laws that prohibited something, one for each day of the year, and 268 laws that prescribed some kind of action, one for each bone in the human body. Jesus is asked if he can summarize all 613 laws in one short sentence by deeming one as most important. He begins by citing a prayer that every Jew prays daily called the Schema “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is God indeed. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” But, Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes on to give a second one that is “like” the first, which is traced to the book of Deuteronomy, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This answer seems to silence the Pharisees for the time being.

As I said to you, there is something that is amazing about this great commandment, as we have come to know this. After all this is supposed to be the driving force for all Christian legislation. This is supposed to be the way we order our lives. First we are to love God with our entire being and then love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Think about your life for just a second. Is this the way we really order our life? I imagine if we were to write this for today, we’d be tempted to add a commandment and it would likely be first. The commandment would say something like, “Love yourself and be sure to pamper yourself with all that you need because you can’t love anyone else if you don’t love yourself first.” Yet, loving ourselves seems to be the last thing on Jesus’ mind. We are supposed to love others as much as we love ourselves. This does presuppose that we, in fact, love ourselves. But, I think it’s interesting that self love is the last concern on Jesus’ mind.

Let me give a concrete example of this in the way we use our money. When we get our paycheck, don’t we first think about all the bills that we are going to have to pay? There’s the car loan and the mortgage on the house and the credit card bill. Oh, and don’t forget water, gas, and electricity. And, if there’s extra, we probably think about putting it away for a rainy day or maybe putting it in the college fund for the kids. Maybe we even think of something we’d like to buy for ourselves, a book or a nice new sweater or a new wrench. Are we following Jesus’ commandments when we order it in this way? Shouldn’t our first concern be how much of our salary we should give back to God, whether through donating to the church or by giving to the poor and widows and orphans that the first reading was talking about today? We call this Sacrificial Giving Sunday because it challenges us on the sacrifice we can make in service to God. I know many of you already make sacrifices for this parish. You give of your time, talent, and treasure to see to it that this parish has the resources it needs to keep going and I want to thank you for the sacrifices you make. But, I know there are some who have given the same $1 or $5 contribution each week since they were kids and others who don’t give anything because they probably have never thought about the kinds of expenses that a parish has. I’d like to ask the latter two groups of people to take some time to reflect on how much money you can give. I’m not asking anyone to give more than they can but I think each of us, myself included, are called to make certain sacrifices in our own lives to live out the Great Commandment to love God and love our Neighbor.

Render unto Caesar

2011-10-17T22:09:00.000-05:00

My Dear friends in Christ

May the Grace and Peace of God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ come into your heart and remain with you forever. When I was an Associate Pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, once a year, we would get one of the retired priests to celebrate mass in our rural parish in Gilbert so that both Pastor and the Associate could be present at all masses for this homily. It was a fun homily in some ways because we turned it into a dialogue. Most of the time, in the dialogue, I was the dumb guy who didn’t quite “get” what we were talking about and Father Ev Hemann, the pastor, had to explain it to me. Unfortunately, that’s impossible in this current set-up. First of all, I don’t have an Associate Pastor. Fr. Lippstock is a Sacramental Priest and, as you’re probably aware, that means that he is here to celebrate sacraments for us and there are certain things that he doesn’t have to do. Plus, even if we still had an Associate pastor, the number of masses in different towns and distance between those towns would almost make it impossible. So, given this fact, I have to be both people in the dialogue. I will be (standing at the pulpit) young Fr. Dennis the excited but slightly misguided Associate Pastor sent year to learn from (sitting in the chair) old Fr. Miller the seasoned, wise, but slightly cynical pastor. Okay, ready?

At the ambo: Hi! My name is Fr. Dennis and I’m the Associate Pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Student center and I’m here today to be brief and to the point, or at least that’s what Fr. Miller told me. (Laugh harder than the joke deserves) Just kidding. In Today’s gospel we heard Jesus say that we are supposed to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.

At the chair: Oh my gosh. Don’t repeat what you just read in the Gospel like we weren’t paying attention. It’s insulting to your audience.

At the Ambo: Oh, sorry. The past few Sundays, Jesus has had some very hard words for the Pharisees and Scholars of the Law and this one is no different. Three Sundays ago, he said that the scourge of the earth, tax collectors and prostitutes, were entering the kingdom before Pharisees and Scholars of the Law. Then, for the last two weeks, he told parables that all seem to imply that the leaders of the Jews have been behaving so badly by killing and beating people that God is going to get rid of them and replace them with others.

At the chair: Why only go back three weeks? Why not summarize everything we’ve heard since Advent. GET TO THE POINT!

At the Ambo: Right. Today, Jesus is asked a question from those same Pharisees and Scholars of the Law he has upset for the last few weeks who are there in a kind of gotcha interview, as Sarah Palin would say. They ask if they need to pay taxes or not. Now, you need to know that there was a division between two groups in Judaism at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees didn’t like the fact that the Romans were occupying Israel. They sort of tolerated Roman presence but simultaneously worked to get them to leave and worked to enforce laws as though they were still in charge. Their opponents, in a sense, were the Saducees who were very much in league with the Romans. They had become rich by cooperating with them and they even got rid of certain parts of Judaism in order to get rid of anything that would threaten Roman leaders. So, in effect, the Pharisees in asking this question of Jesus are asking if he is a Pharisee or a Saducee, a conservative or a liberal, a Cyclone or a Hawkeye. Jesus response, actually I’m a Panther fan. He’s giving me that look like I should get to the point, so here it is. Jesus answer is tricky. On the one hand, he seems to agree with the Sadducees that we should work with the Romans and pay the taxes using the money with the false god, Caesar’s, image on it. But, what he really says is give to “Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Did Caesar make the world? Did Caesar make the elements? Even if the coin has his face on it, everything that it’s made out of is God’s. Caesar is just borrowing it.
Today we are going to talk about money. The pastor told me that if I do a good job, it’ll be the one time in the year that you’ll have to hear about it. So, here goes brief and to the point. We need your money. Not just some of it, all of it. We have some big bills to pay coming up this winter and we’re going to close your parish if you don’t start giving more money so stop being such cheapskates and give some money…

At the chair: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! What are you doing? We talked about this That’s not the right way to approach a Sacrificial Giving homily. (Move from the chair to one side of the pulpit). You started off so good in emphasizing that everything that we have has been given to us by God but then you totally went off track.

At the Ambo: Really?

At the chair: Yes. The reason we talk about money on this ONE AND ONLY Sunday of the year is not because of the church’s needs. Jesus didn’t say in the gospel that you should give just because we need a new roof or a new boiler. He said that you should give back to God in thanksgiving for everything that God has given to you. You need to tell the nice people just how impressed you are at the generosity of so many of them. Their money is used to pay bills for our parish and salaries for our employees. But, you also need to tell them that there are some of them that don’t contribute as much as they could and ask them to prayerfully consider giving more. Some of them have been giving the same $1 or $5 since they were kids and just as their age has gotten bigger, so their contribution should follow suit. Others probably haven’t thought about the amount of money that it takes to run a parish at all and need to be asked to consider giving something for the first time.

At the Ambo: That’s right. Now I remember. You said that a lot of times a figure of 10% is thrown around, 5% to the church and 5% to other charities, because it’s tithing. But, each individual or family needs to ask themselves what they can afford to give. For some people, giving 10% of their income might not be a sacrifice at all. For others, they wouldn’t be able to eat if they gave away 10% of their income. Especially in these uncertain financial times, we all have to be responsible with our generosity but we are, nonetheless, called to be generous.

At the chair: Very good.Well, Thank you Fr. Dennis for the message. I hope you do better at the next mass or I may just have to do it myself.

2011-10-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

My Dear friends in Christ

May grace and peace be yours in abundance through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Every year, around late July or early August, I get an email or note from a parishioner that goes something like this…

Dear Fr. Miller

In general, I think you are doing a good job as our pastor. You have a very beautiful voice and sometimes you even have a good homily. But, you need to do something about all these women that don’t wear the right clothes to church. And I’m not just talking about young girls. I’m talking about women who should know better wearing spaghetti straps and shorts. Don’t they know they are coming to church? I find this very offensive. I don’t come to church to look at bare shoulders and back acne. (I’m not kidding about the back acne comment!) Church is supposed to be a formal place where you wear your finest clothes, not the swimming hole with Opey and Andy.

Yours in Christ
Older, respected woman in the community

I couldn’t help but think of these communications when I was reading this passage. If I were to apply this scripture passage literally, the message is clear: those older, respected women in the community are exactly right and I should have the ushers throw out anyone who comes to church without the right clothes on. I should set up a dress code that everyone has to meet, especially the women. I’m thinking full length ball gown with a mantilla covering the women’s head is going to be part. Guys will have to wear a suit with a bow tie, preferably a tuxedo but I understand that not every man can afford a tux so any suit would suffice except for a leisure suit. What do you think this is, a disco mass?

I am, of course, being facetious. I have no intention of implementing a dress code. Having worked on a college campus, I’ll admit that I have seen it all. I’ve seen girls with tight fitting shirts, short shorts, and thigh high boots come and kneel down in the front row of church. I’ve seen guys with baggy pants, baggy shorts, body-piercings and tattoos visible everywhere spending time in front of the tabernacle. And I've seen guys in khaki pants, a shirt, and tie come in and act like total idiots in church. I don’t think Jesus was advocating setting a dress code for mass in this parable. He’s using a common convention as an analogy to a deeper, issue.

The King in this analogy is God and, as we know, God first made a relationship to the Jewish people. In the first reading, we heard that the end-time was supposed to be like a great banquet that the Lord of hosts would provide on his mountain. But, when God invites his chosen people to attend, at first they refuse to come and then they beat and kill the servants inviting them. The servants that invite them are, of course, the prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus himself. So, the King has to give up on the guests he first invited and sends the remaining servants out to invite anyone and everyone. Yet, when he does this, someone shows up not wearing clothes fit for a wedding. But what tells me that there’s a deeper meaning than simple church regulation is that the result of being thrown out of the banquet is wailing and gnashing of teeth. It seems clear that Jesus is using people’s outward appearance to talk about what’s happening in their heart.

I think of the politicians that come to mass dressed in the same suit that they wore after voting to ease restrictions on abortion. Or the man who comes to mass with his beautiful family after cheating on his wife the night before. What about the nicely dressed woman who stole money from work the on Friday and then comes before the Lord in the Holy Eucharist on Sunday. Those are the garments that matter to the Lord.

Don’t get me wrong. I do think there are times that women could dress more modestly because their dress could facilitate a guy’s imagination and cause him to sin. Guys tend to be more visual than woman and don’t need a woman’s help to objectify them. But, guys, we can't let that be an excuse! Have custody of your own eyes. We're the only ones that can decide if we treat women with dignity or not.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts has provided a feast of rich food and choice wine, on this mountain the Lord has provided the body and blood of his only Son. We put on the wedding garments of good works to come to this mountain, even if our outward clothing isn’t always perfect.

Short version of this week's homily

2011-09-25T19:46:00.001-05:00

This weekend's gospel was the parable of the two sons. It's kind of the short version of the prodigal son. A man with two sons goes to his first son and asks him to help in the vineyard. The son says no but eventually goes. The other son says yes but never quite gets there.

Jesus is using this parable to point out that some who seemed to be on the fast track to hell ended up changing their ways and going to heaven. Whereas some people who seemed so holy were sinning but not repenting, let alone even coming to recognize their sin for what it was.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us are perfect. That's why we have the sacrament of Reconciliation. It keeps us humble and helps us get the job done.

Being duped by God for humility

2011-09-01T12:26:00.000-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
           May grace and peace be yours in abundance through Christ our Lord as we gather to worship and praise God’s name. As I meditated on the readings for today, I couldn’t help but think of a situation that happened to me in my seminary days. The second year of St. Paul Seminary was known to be a very difficult one. In fact, they referred to it as the washout year, a year in which the professors made a deliberate effort to so pack your schedule that the “undesirable” seminarians would leave. As I looked over my schedule at the beginning of the year, I realized that the reading for the classes alone could take up all my time. Yet, on top of the reading, I was expected to participate in daily common prayer and go out to a local parish to observe and learn from the pastor. The crazy thing was that, during the first semester, I really felt like I was succeeding and this was supposed to be the more difficult semester of the two. In several classes, I had read material that my fellow classmates simply hadn’t. I would get back papers with the best grades I had gotten in my post-secondary education, which was good since any grade below a C would mean that you automatically were asked to leave the program. I even had thoughts that I could become a bishop some day if I did well. I made it to finals and was looking forward to going home for break. All I had to do was take three oral finals in a row on Thursday morning and then I would be free to leave. The first one, on Original Sin and Grace, went okay. The second one, on the Eucharist, started off rough but quickly was amazing. I even used the Greek term for the sacristy, skeuophylakion, at one point, which made the professor’s eyes light up with joy. I walked into my last final and sat down ready to be done with a difficult year. The professor told me I could choose the question I wanted to answer. I looked at the paper with the questions and chose the last one I had been working on, one of the harder questions. As I started saying the answer, I remember thinking about a minute into it that I had started answering incorrectly but I didn’t know how to gracefully get around to the right answer. I felt like a semi truck driver going downhill with no brakes. After ten minutes, I finally gave up. I asked if I could try another question, and the professor kindly but firmly told me that I could not. I had a choice. I could come back the next day and take a written form of the test or I could take the F on the test and probably fail the course. I was devastated. I went back to my room and started to cry. I was convinced that I would fail the course and would, therefore, not be ordained. I felt like I had been duped by God into believing that I was intelligent when, clearly, I was not.
          In some ways, both Peter and Jeremiah feel duped by God in today’s readings. You might remember that last week Peter was called the rock on which the church is built by Our Lord and was given the Keys to the Kingdom, which is why we honor him as the first Pope. But, when Peter tries to exercise leadership this week, Jesus calls him Satan and says that, instead of building up the church, the rock is acting more like a stumbling block. And, while Jeremiah has been doing exactly what the Lord has asked him to do, prophesying about the ramifications of the Judeans sinful actions by the hands of the Babylonians, by all appearances Jeremiah is the one who is going to be punished instead of the Judeans. The word that Jeremiah uses today is translated as duped but it would be better to use the word seduced. For both Peter and Jeremiah, God made their leadership positions so attractive that they felt like they couldn’t turn him down. But, it quickly becomes clear that God seduced them by only presenting the best parts. Now that they’ve accepted, he tells them about the crosses that are also involved.
          I imagine the same is true in your life. Didn’t we all dream of having a job that we loved, the kind of job where we feel like we make a good amount of money and make a real contribution to society? You probably didn’t think about becoming dissatisfied with job conditions or having your position eliminated and being forced to work in a job for little pay with long hours. Or, if you are married, you were undoubtedly seduced by the best parts of family life. You probably thought of having a loving spouse to be your companion throughout your life. You probably thought of having children you would raise to be responsible citizens. You probably didn’t think about having disagreements that seem to go on and on with a spouse who is sometimes very hard to love or children that come home one day with body piercings or tattoos. Haven’t you ever wanted to turn to God and say, “You seduced me with all the good stuff and now you expect me to put up with the crosses of all the bad as well? Where’s the justice in this?!##$@#”
          I am convinced that, part of the reason we have these experiences is to teach us humility. Ultimately, we may feel like we are in charge of our own fate but we are not. A disagreeable spouse reminds us that we are in a relationship of equals and that compromise is essential in such a relationship. A rebellious daughter or son reminds us of the things we did to our parents and all the hardship we caused them. Even a failing grade in seminary can seem like an opportunity to learn resilience and a lesson in why I will never, ever, ever, ever become a Bishop. It is what St. Paul was talking about in offering our lives as a living sacrifice. We offer up all the disappointments, all the sufferings and hardships, to the one true God as part of the cross that he invites us to carry knowing that he carried it for us first in forgiveness of our sins.

The keys

2011-08-21T08:23:00.001-05:00

<p>In this Sunday's homily, I preached about the keys that Jesus bestowed on St. Peter. Keys are a sign of authority. You control access to an area and control of a vehicle with them. Jesus did this because Peter answered the question, "Who do YOU say that I am" in faith. We each answer that question every day. Is Jesus an acquaintance we only acknowledge on Sunday? Do we tend to use Jesus' name as a swear word? What are we saying about him when we do that? Or do you approach Jesus each day as your Shepherd and Messiah who leads you to everlasting life? Who do you say that Jesus is?

Forgiving others before they ask for forgiveness

2011-08-14T22:19:00.001-05:00

Last night someone jumped the fence in my garden, stole four of my watermelons, and smashed one on the road outside my church. At first I was mad. Then I wanted revenge in the presence of an electric fence. But I think I've forgiven them now.

I imagine it was a group of High School kids who hang around a nearby park. They have mopeds and they race down the street late at night. They park their parent's car along the street and the boys and girls try to impress each other. In short, they're miserable. They feel powerless and invincible at the same time...if only they were in control.

They're like the Israelites in the desert with new found freedom while complaining that God isn't listening to them and they haven't yet experienced, nor do they trust that it will get better. The are truly hopeless.

So if the choice was having them act out their frustration by committing suicide, beating up some unpopular kid, or smashing my watermelons, I'm sort of fine with losing all the work that went into them. I just hope they make amends to someone when they reach their promised land.

God’s SUPERABUNDANT Goodness

2011-07-31T16:00:00.002-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the incredible power of the Holy Spirit. I keep reflecting on how wonderful it was to gather a few short weeks ago for Fr. Hertges going away party. On the one hand, it was very edifying to see some of you see coworkers and friends that you may have not even known were Catholic. But, as it was a potluck, it was also incredible to look at all the food and realize that I was going to have a lot of difficulty fitting a sample of everything on one plate. And, as always, there was more food there than there was people.

When I went to Loras College, I heard a lot of great homilies from great priests. But, I once heard a priest preach on this gospel in a way that was very enlightening. To sum up, he said that we tend to emphasize the miraculous nature of this story. But, in truth, this is a morality tale, a story meant to impart a moral message on the listeners. He said that what really happened was that the people listening to Jesus message were hoarding all their food. But eventually a little boy came forward and gave his meager supplies, five loaves and two fish, which made everyone else so guilty that they all started giving their hoarded food to the disciples until there was enough to feed everyone with some left over. Of course, the point of the story according to this priest was the importance of charity and making sure that everyone has some before worrying about storing up for later. That’s a good Christian message. However, as I discovered later, it has NOTHING to do with this gospel passage and putting forward that message misses the point entirely.

Jesus has just heard that his cousin and his role model has just been put to death by the government. So, he goes off to mourn. But, he looks out at all the people who have come from far away and realizes that they are there because they are mourning too. These are the sick, the possessed, the poor, and the outcasts. So, he begins to heal the sick, to minister to them. But, when evening comes, his apostles tell him that he should dismiss them so they can go to the local villages and get food. Bear in mind that there’s probably somewhere between twelve and fifteen thousand people out there and they have just enough food for the apostles and Jesus, five loaves and two fish. But Jesus has a larger purpose there. He takes those five loaves and two fish and breaks them until everyone is fed. It wasn’t magic. He didn’t put it in a basket filled with food and just keep pulling out more and more of it. He just keeps breaking it and there’s always more. It’s not magic. It’s a miracle.

I believe that, oftentimes, when we ask God for something, we tend to be too small. We pray for something and, when God doesn’t answer our prayer, we ask for something smaller. In fact, one of the things that really annoys me about some of our evangelical brothers and sisters is listening to their prayer. They say something like, “Lord, I just want you to…” and “I just…” But God is not the God who gives us just what we need. God is the God of superabundance. We ask him to take away our sins and he takes away the sins of the world for all time. We ask him to save us from death and he prepares a place for us. We ask for a dollar and he gives us a million. We shouldn’t put limits on our expectations of God. It doesn’t mean that he’ll give it to us. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a miracle when he does. But, he definitely won’t give it to us if we don’t ask.

A full Saturday

2011-07-30T20:57:00.001-05:00

Saturdays tend to be challenging for priests. I woke up worried about something that's unresolved from my parishes. I hate it when that happens.

I heard confessions for a half hour and then walked around the block before returning to my house at 10:45. After that I got organized for a wedding prep session with one couple and witnessed the marriage of another.

After the wedding, I looked at my Sunday homily one last time before going to hear more confessions and celebrating evening mass. After mass someone requested to be anointed and then my day was done.

Four sacraments in eight hours in three different towns. Fairly typical and very satisfying. I love being a priest.

From my phone

2011-07-28T23:38:00.001-05:00

I just downloaded an ap for my smartphone that will allow me to post here. The good news is that I no longer will think of something to blog about and then forget it by the time I get to a computer. The bad news is that the filter that naturally happens because of the lag has also disappeared. I'll do my best to not turn my blog into twitter.

The Search

2011-07-28T17:42:00.000-05:00

My Dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, Our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes, when I think about prayer, I think of the gospel from Ash Wednesday. “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” As an introvert, this appeals to me. In fact, I have even coverted what should be a sun room into a private prayer space in the rectory in Garner. And, even though I think we should all have our favorite place to visit daily for prayer, whether they be an emptry room at home, a favorite outdoor shair, or a daily visit to the Blessed Sacrament, I don’t think that Jesus was saying that this is the ONLY way that Jesus wanted us to pray. The context of this message, which comes from the same gospel we read tonight, Matthew, is that we shouldn’t pray just so that others will see us and admire us for how holy we are. Prayer is a conversation with God, not a way of making ourselves look good to others.

A few years ago, I was camping with my family at Adventureland Campground just outside of Des Moines. At the time, I had a fold-down camper and my parents still had their large, hard-side camper. I went to bed around 10:30 since we were going to be going to Adventureland park the next day. At midnight, a flash of lightning illumined my camper immediately followed by a loud cannon shot of thunder. For a half hour, this lightning storm in the sky made it impossible to sleep but eventually it was silent again so I rolled over and went back to sleep. About an hour later, a heavy rain shower with some light hail moved through that sounded gunfire. But, eventually that stopped and I rolled over and went back to sleep. At three fifteen, I woke up annoyed because someone’s alarm was going off. But, of course, it wasn’t someone’s alarm. It was the tornado sirens. I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. Thankfully, my dad came and knocked on my door before he ran off to the shelter house. I put on a shirt and some shoes before I opened my camper door to follow dad to the shelter house. I remember being very disoriented and feeling the rain and wind hit my face. I rand toward what I thought was the shelter house only to discover that it was really a locked front office. I had no idea what to do. If I ran to a different building, there was no guarantee that it would be unlocked and the only building I knew would be open, the bathroom, was the opposide direction from the way I had ran. I was afraid that if I ran for it, it would hail or the tornado would come and pick me up like in the Wizard of Oz. Only I had no delusions of ending up in Oz! So, I did the only thinkg I thought I could do. I prayed. I wasn’t locked away in my chapel, though I would have rather been there. I was under a bench in the middle of a fierce storm asking God, through the intercession of the saints, to end this so that I could get back to my camper, change my clothes, get into bed, roll over, and go back to sleep.

Let’s face it, if religion is confined to the purely private recesses of our houses, we are the ones that are going to suffer. We need God just as much in our daily lives as we do in the times set aside for prayer. That old truism that there are no atheists in foxholes reminds us of a truism that our evangelical brothers and sisters often understand better than we do: It’s oftentimes harder to believe in God when life is good than when life is challenging. We may thing that the goal of the ideal spiritual life should be to bring us peace but that’s not authentic Christiand spirituality. St. Paul reminded us of this in the second reading. He said, “We know that all things work for God for those who love God.” Now, this isn’t Paul’s way of saying that it will get better or all good things come to those who wait. Paul is expressing that, in the midst of suffering and persecution, God still brings good things to us as long as we love him. And that’s the journey each of us is called to.

The life of the Christian is not meant to be easy. In the gospel, Jesus uses two images of searching for treasure and a willingness to give up everything to have that treasure in order to convey this message to us. That’s why we need to stay connected to God both in the good times and the bad so that we can draw strength from him when we need it and be attentive to our brothers and sisters who are suffering when we don’t. Prayer needs to be the bedrock of our lives for us to be part of the Kingdom of heaven.

The Eucharist constitutes the church

2011-06-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. One of the most powerful things that I get to do as a priest is exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. That’s what we do when we set that large metal stand, called the monstrance, on the altar so that people can adore and pray in front of the Host or Blessed Sacrament, for a period of time. I find this to be an extraordinarily powerful time of quiet meditation. Yet, regardless of how profound my experience of Adoration is, there is this little uneasy dance that happens in my heart towards the end of almost every session. I begin to wonder if people are bored. I begin to worry that people are remembering days when their mother or father forced them to come and do this. I begin to worry that people are resolving never to do this again. I begin to think that I should cut it short so that people don’t get more frustrated than what they already are. But, I stick it out for the full amount of time and stand, with all these doubts running through my head, to return the Blessed Sacrament to its place in the tabernacle. I kneel with my back to the people and invite them to open to the back of the hymnal and sing that classic chant, “Tantum egro sacramentum” and I hear voices of people who never crack a hymnal at Sunday mass singing out this song that was first sung before it’s singers knew there was a North America. Then, I approach the monstrance to bless the people and, on their faces, I see looks that bespeak respect and love. Not only do the people not feel the way my heart was trying to say they do, most of the time people wish they could have adoration more often. I even had one woman openly admit that she wished it could be much longer. I’ve never had anyone tell me that they thought mass was too short but, for this woman, she didn’t have enough time to adore the presence of the Lord. I think people see in this form a prayer a memory. And, I don’t mean that people sit around and think about the good old days, I think we are reminded of the respect that we have in our hearts for what we eat and drink each week.

That is what is at the heart of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. We are invited to focus on the Eucharist and its importance in our lives. Our readings focus on the respect that we should have for the Eucharist. The first reading from Deuteronomy reminded our Jewish brothers and sisters, just as surely as it reminds us that the Eucharist is a gift from God. Jesus, in the gospel, takes this message a step further and reminds us that the bread that we eat is his flesh and the wine that we drink is his blood. Just as God gave the Israelites bread in the journey toward the promised land so God gives his pilgrim church bread on our earthly journey.

As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist is what constitutes the church. Without the Eucharist there would be no church and without the church there would be no Eucharist. The Eucharist connects us to Christ and to each other. It connects us to Christ because, as we heard in the Gospel today, we aren’t just receiving bread and wine. We are receiving Christ himself; his body, blood, soul, and divinity, when we receive the Eucharist. But, by receiving this gift of God, we are made a part of the church. Therefore, it connects us to one another as well. It is the great commandment we have been given to love God and love our neighbor.

Sometimes, in the church, there is a perception of a division between so-called liberals who are more social justice oriented and so-called conservatives who are more prayer oriented. This solemnity really challenges this division. I think of Mother Teresa, for instance, who would spend hours each day praying before the Blessed Sacrament while also spending hours reaching out to the poor in Calcutta. I think of Mary Jo Copeland, who runs a series of homeless shelters in the Twin Cities and prayerfully washes the feet of several of the people who come to her shelters. I think of St. Katherine Drexel who used her own personal fortune, 20 million dollars, to help impoverished African-Americans and American-Indians that society had forgotten. Yet, she would spend hours each day kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Mass is where we come to encounter the love of God, the God who laid down is body and blood for our sins. But mass also empowers us to live out that encounter in our daily lives, to be the love of God to others. We may do this by starting or serving at a homeless shelter or reaching out to someone that we know is hurting and fixing a meal for the person or organizing a group of people to help him or her. In whatever way, we feel called, let us live out the love that we feel in prayer by helping those in need to know the love God has for them.

Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans

2011-06-19T12:14:00.001-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today we gather to celebrate Trinity Sunday. When I was a kid, weekends in summer meant camping. I, in fact, remember camping with such fondness that I have purchased a camper of my own that I use on my day off. Most of the time that we went camping, we would go to Twin Acres Campground, which is located between Colo, Iowa and Nevada, Iowa. My parents, being good and observant Catholics, didn’t believe that vacation was a vacation from church so, of course, we had to get dressed up on Saturday afternoon and head to St. Mary’s Church in Colo for mass. The priest there was very stern. For example, he didn’t want someone using their left hand to receive the Holy Eucharist so he would reach down and adjust their hands if he felt like they were wrong. But, what I remember most about mass in Colo was that they would always sing the same four songs. I'm not sure if they were the only four songs the organist knew or if they were the only four songs the priest allowed. Regardless, one of them was called “Sing Praise to our Creator”. It had three verses, each extolling the three persons of the Holy Trinity. But the chorus was always the same: Oh most Holy Trinity, undivided unity, Holy God, Mighty God, God immortal be adored.

An updated version started appearing in music books a couple of years ago and I do use it for daily mass on occasion. Yet, I don’t just love the song because it reminds me of a simpler time of my life. I also love it because it portrays a teaching about God that, I fear, has been lost in a lot of Catholic teaching, namely the transcendence of God.

Our readings today are all about the transcendence of God. In the first reading, we hear about Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. You will notice that, despite the fact that God is said to have appeared to Moses, there is no description of him. Moses falls on the ground in worship because, in the mindset of the Old Testament, if one were to see God, you would surely die. So Moses’ act of falling to the ground was just as much about preserving his life as it was about his love for the Lord.

Given this understanding of God, you can understand why the early church had such a difficult time communicating the message of Jesus to the Jews. In some way, the Gospel today is an attempt bridge this gap in understanding by communicating the relationship of Jesus to his heavenly Father. God could have sent his son into the world to condemn the world. We have all fallen prey to the sin of Adam and God could have sent Jesus here to wipe us all out. He almost did it in the flood. He could do it again. But, instead, he sent his son to save us from those sins.

So, given the complete “otherness” of God, given the fact that God is completely transcendent, how can we love God. It’s hard to love and to know the love of something that is totally unknown and unknowable. To me, that is why God revealed himself to us as a trinity of person. This means that the nature of God is relational. There’s diversity among the unity of God. So, even though, as it says elsewhere in the gospel of John, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one, nonetheless, they are three persons of the godhead. Therefore, we come to understand in a fragmentary and imperfect way, a bit of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit in our own relationships with one another.

This is also why God gave us the church. For most people, salvation is not based solely upon one’s ability to have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. Such a relationship is important to be sure but it is just as important that we be a part of Church of Christ. We need each other to correct our faults, to lean on in times of suffering, and to stand in solidarity during times of persecution. We need each other to support our faith and challenge that faith when it becomes too simple. And, in these relationships, we experience the love that is God.

O most Holy Trinity, undivided unity. Holy God, Mighty God. God immortal be adored.

Sorry for the silence

2011-06-14T20:21:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted my last three homilies because, to be honest, I haven't preached a homily worth posting since then. Three weeks ago, I had a wedding, a funeral, and Sunday masses after a heck of a busy week. My homily was...thin. Two weeks ago, the Ascension, I had another busy week and another wedding but the homily just wouldn't come together. I never did write the thing down because it was just blech. Then, last weekend, I had a further crazy/busy week, the last wedding, and the deacon preached. I'm thinking that things are going to start to slow down now and I'll finally get to spend adequate time in preparation.

In my leadership training course, we talked about how, when you are learning a new skill, you go through a process of losing energy until you've achieved an adequate level of competence. I can see how true that is. In the past three weeks I keep thinking about how Brother Dennis Miller, the Benedictine Monk from Conception Abbey who assists Brother Blaise taking care of the grounds, wouldn't have to worry about budgets, litigation, weddings, and excessive civic parochialism. He'd just pray and work all day. After a couple of minutes of this kind of day dreaming, I remind myself that, if I was supposed to be at Conception Abbey, I'd be at Conception Abbey. For some reason, the Archbishop wants me to be here. If he has this much confidence in me, I should probably stop day dreaming and get to work.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

2011-05-23T18:15:00.000-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

May the Grace and Peace from our resurrected Lord be with you as we continue through this Easter Season. I’m a little disappointed. I don’t know if you had heard this but I heard that the rapture was supposed to take place today/yesterday at 6:00 pm Eastern Time so I didn’t think I was going to be preaching this weekend. Of course, it’s not too late. It could happen now. (pause) Or now. (Pause) How about now? (Pause) I guess God really is in charge of when and how it will take place. The Bible doesn’t contain a secret code contained in disparate passages that only fundamentalists can read explaining exactly how it will all come to an end. Oftentimes, what the fundamentalists read as things that will take place at the end times are passages describing what life was like living in a world where both Jews and Gentiles hated us and wanted to kill us. And yet, we are still faced with the whole issue that, as we say in the creed each week, we believe that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. How should we prepare ourselves to be judged?

Believe it or not, two of our readings deal with the end times. The first one, the gospel, is easy to see. Jesus speaks words of comfort to us to give us an insight into the end times. To me, this is the difference between the Catholic approach and the approach of Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, writers of the Left Behind books. Jesus tells the disciples that they will know the way to the Father and the Apostle Thomas, still doubting, asks how they know the way if they have never been there. Jesus responds to Thomas that he is The Way. He has to repeat this statement to Philip later who still thinks that Jesus can just give him GPS coordinates to heaven. Jesus is The Way. He isn’t just going to show us the way to the Father. He IS the way to the Father. Our responsibility, then, shouldn’t be to be seeking signs of Jesus’ return or trying to predict when it will take place. We should be trying to get to know and love Jesus so that we can get to know and love the Father.

The other reading that points to the end-times is the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. At this point in church history, the disciples thought that Jesus’ return would happen within their life-times. So, they have combined up most of their property in preparation. But, in order to make sure that everyone is fed in this group that is constantly increasing in size, the Apostles are taking more and more time each day giving out food and less and less time each day for prayer. We can all probably sympathize with this. Remember in High School and College when all you had to do each day was study and work a couple of hours at a job? Some of you never had this experience so bear with me for a moment. If you did have this experience, you probably had your parents to rely on to take care of the bigger problems of bills and repairs around the home. Do you remember that time when you looked around and realized that your life got a lot more complicated? You have to pay all the bills and make sure you’re not late or else you don’t have insurance or lights or gas. It’s so easy in these times of stress to quit doing things like reading books, praying, and studying. The Apostles knew they couldn’t let this happen so they asked the community to appoint deacons to assist them by bringing food to the Greek-speaking widows who felt neglected in the daily distribution. The point was that prayer needed to be a central place in each day for them to survive. It reminds me of a monastery visit I made in which a monk who had an hour of work still to do, put everything away because he knew it was time to pray and, had he finished, he would have missed prayer. He knew he had to spend time with the Way to the Father if he intended on being ready for eternal life.

In the end, as Catholics, we don’t get wrapped up in looking for the rapture or the beast or any of that stuff. We aren’t going to get lost looking in the Bible for clues to the end-times, as though the Bible were a mystery novel and we’ve been sent to solve it. Instead, through the sacraments and our prayer life, we draw closer each day to the one who alone knows how it end because he is the Way that leads to the Father. We take comfort in Jesus’ words: Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, have faith also in the way.

Stay with us, Lord

2011-05-09T18:58:00.000-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

May the Grace and Peace of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ be with you as we continue to celebrate this Easter season. I have a friend who is a priest that I always see at priest gatherings. In a one-on-one situation, he’s a great person to talk to. He keeps the conversation going and always has interesting stories to tell. But, if you get him in a group, I hate talking to him because, as you talk to him, he is constantly scanning the room looking for someone else to talk to. I just want to grab his head, turn it towards me, and say, “Please pay attention to me while we are talking!”

I’m sure most of us would say that, when it comes to God, we want to put all our attention on our relationship with him. And yet, our readings today present us with three situations in which we’d probably prefer God wasn’t there. The first is illustrated in the gospel account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. One commentator that I read said that this may have been Cleopas, whose father may have been the brother of St. Joseph, and Mary, his wife, who was present at the crucifixion next to the Blessed Mother and Mary of Magdala. If so, it stands to reason that this husband and wife, one a first cousin of Jesus and the other an eyewitness to his death, would have been very disappointed in the results of Good Friday and very skeptical of the women’s reports of the empty tomb. As they’re walking along, Jesus comes to them and starts talking to them but their eyes are prevented from seeing him. It’s only when he takes bread, blesses it, and hands it to them that the scales fall from their eyes and they are able to see. As one commentator put it, “Jesus miraculous presence is hardly necessary when one has his presence in the Eucharist.” Yet, honestly, how many times to we come to mass, not pay any attention to the prayers, barely listen to the readings or homily, scuttle to the front of the communion line, consume the host, and have no real sense that the Lord was here among us the whole time? Stay with us Lord when our spiritual blindness prevents us from recognizing you in the breaking of the bread.

In the second reading, the Apostle Peter exhorts us that, if we call God our Father, which we do each time we pray the Our Father, then we have to accept God as a father. Part of what isn’t communicated as well in today’s society as it would have been even 40 or 50 years ago is that we call God “Father” because he is head of the household. I’m not trying to diminish the role of women, especially on this day, Mother’s Day. But, one of the sad things that has happened to men in modern media is that we often view fathers as total buffoons. From Al Bundy to Homer Simpson to Peter Griffin to Doug Heffernen to Phil Dunfey and the list could go on and on and on, most fathers on television are shells of the real dads I’ve met who love their wives, work hard, and, yes, occasionally discipline their kids when they’re bad. I can’t help but notice that, as our image of fatherhood has been so diminished and distorted, so has our image of God as Father. We don’t like to think of God as being in charge or God as having the master plan. Stay with us, Lord, when we misunderstand you and distort who you are for our own convenience.

And, lastly, there’s the first reading. In this first Papal Address made by our first Pope, Peter courageously speaks to the people he blames for the death of Jesus, his fellow Jews. He addresses them and witnesses to them about how Jesus has appeared to him. In our modern era, religion is considered by many to be a private matter. Part of the reason for this is because we don’t want to seem like a Bible thumpers, right? First of all, most of us (myself included) don’t know enough Bible passages by heart to be a bible thumper but, just as important, we don’t want that image. And, yet, believing in Jesus demands that we speak to others about him, that we let others know about the love God has for them in sending his son to be our savior, especially in this time when there is so much misinformation out there about the church. Stay with us, Lord, when we are with others who need to know you.

We may think that we always want God to be close to us but there are times when we may think it would just as good if he wasn’t. In those times, it’s most important that we echo the prayer of two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Stay with us, Lord.”

Some Reflections on my first Easter Vigil as a pastor

2011-04-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for the moment when I start to feel like I belong here. Things are starting to seem "normal" here instead of like everything is constantly changing.

This Easter Vigil was very special for me. It was the first time I celebrated it as a pastor. I'd done my best to avoid celebrating it before because I said that the pastor should always be the one to bring people into the church. I was able to sit and listen to all the wonderful Old Testament readings (We did five) and I chanted probably 75% of the prayers (including Eucharistic Prayer I) and I managed to use incense and not spill the coals (unlike Holy Thursday!).

Probably the time that just hit me was when my butt hit the chair after communion for a few moments of reflection/thanksgiving. The choir started singing Regina Coeli Latare and I thought to myself: Rejoice, O Church for he who Mary bore has truly risen. Alleluia.

He is Risen. He is truly risen.

Allow hope to overcome fear

2011-04-23T22:54:00.001-05:00

My dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in our Risen Savior as we gather here for the Easter Vigil. The case is often made that, as Catholics, we never read the Bible. Well, you can’t say that about this mass. We seem to have covered almost the entire Bible tonight. As I was praying over the readings, I couldn’t hope but notice a theme. God continually drives out fear with hope. We heard in the first reading how he made the earth and gave us a special role in it with a dominion proper to men and women. It’s not until the next chapter with the story of Adam and Eve that fear enters the world through sin. This was the fear that Abraham overcame when he travelled three days into the wilderness to slaughter his son, Isaac. God ultimately spared the Son of Abraham. And because of his obedience to the unfair request of God, Abraham is told that his name will be a blessing to many nations, and it is to anyone who calls themselves Jew, Christian, or Muslim. Yes, God spared the son of Abraham in hope and did not spare his own son to put an end to fear and start a new beginning of hope to all the nations through Jesus.

It was fear that caused the Moses and the Israelites to question whether God would save them from the oncoming Egyptian force. Yet, God had their back by sending his angel to protect them so that the Egyptians could not get close. Then he opened a way through the waters of the Red Sea so that only His people could pass, not the Egyptians. He used the waters of the Red Sea to point to the hopeful waters of Baptism, which drive out the fear of death.

This is what St. Paul was talking about in his letter to the Romans. Baptism is, for us, an entrance into the resurrected life of Jesus. He has died for us and we enter into his death in the waters of Baptism. He died for us so that we may no longer be a slave to sin. To me, the ultimate symbol of hope overcoming fear is in the gospel. There is an earthquake because the Angel of the Lord has moved the rock that blocked the way to the tomb of Jesus. The Angel, who appears in dazzling white, scares the guards so much that they become like dead men. Fear can be paralyzing like that sometimes. Yet, the women who have faith can see through the tumult of an earthquake, the hope that lies behind it. They hear the hopeful words of the Angel that he is risen. They ran fearful but overjoyed to the disciples. The fear is natural but Jesus had to get rid of it so that they could be completely hopeful witnesses so he, likewise, appears to them to drive out any vestige of fear they may have.

At our 13 hours, Fr. Hertges talked about how hope drives out fear. I kept thinking of all the things in this world that so easily deflate the kind of pithy hope that most people have. Internationally, the United States is in a four front war in the Middle East. There have been so many natural disasters; earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, etc. that it’s hard to keep up with it all. Gas prices keep going higher and higher and the economy keeps getting worse and worse and, to be honest, I’m not sure any politician has the selflessness, let alone the intelligence, to be able to deal with it. Our church’s struggle with sexual abuse has diminished our voice on moral matters to the extent that it seems to be ignored by everyone. And, still, there’s hope. In the face of all this tumult, the angel of the Lord looks at each of us and says, “Do not be afraid!” God has conquered sin and death. Jesus is raised from the dead. Alleluia! Alleluia!

We are to be like the women in the gospel today and announce the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection to the whole world. Like the women, we are undoubtedly afraid to do so because we may be spurned, mocked, and ridiculed. Allow Jesus, who comes to us tonight in bread and wine, to open your heart to his call to evangelization. Go tell your brothers and sisters to go to church, here they will see him. Here they will find hope to overcome fear. Here they will die with Christ so as to rise with him.

Reflections on the Good Friday Service

2011-04-22T13:26:00.001-05:00

Before Lent began, I met with the Forest City Ministerial Association to talk about the things ministerial associations normally talk about; pray together, work on a communal charitable effort, and get to know each other so we don't demonize each other. I found out that we do an ecumenical Good Friday service and they asked for a speaker. No one spoke up...one of the worst things that can happen to a "helper" personality like mine. I volunteered and then completely forgot that I had volunteered until I was reminded LAST WEEK! Yikes! Thankfully, the other minister they had paired with me had put great thought into it and had an entire service in mine. He even brought his own musicians along.

I wore my cassock and sat nervously next to the only other minister wearing a clergy collar. We sang hymns and heard John 19:1-30 and then I stepped forward to preach. Now, in the past three days, I've had two absolute train wrecks happen. First, in the middle of the chrism mass, I had to leave because over being overheated. Then, at the end of Holy Thursday mass, I spilled a coal from the censor and nearly started myself and the church on fire. So, I wondered what was next.

Nothing was next. I preached. No one was hurt. I had great compliments. And the people said, "Amen."

...Hell trembles in fear.

2011-04-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

Dearly Beloved in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we come together from our various Christian Communities to remember the events Good Friday. I’d like to begin my reflection today by quoting an ancient reflection typically read on Holy Saturday. I think it’s just as applicable today as it is tomorrow.

“Something strange is happening--- there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh, and hell trembles with fear.”

The Gospel of John’s account of the death of our Lord offers some incredibly beautiful insights for us to reflect upon in this Good Friday celebration. Despite the fact that Pilate believes he is in control, it becomes clear that he is not. The question that comes to mind as he is trying to decide how to treat Jesus is who is in charge? Is it God? Is It Caesar? Is it the devil? At different points throughout John 19, it seems like any one of these three are in fact in charge. When Pilate indicates that he is willing to release Jesus, the Jewish leaders proclaim fidelity to Caesar. Indeed, it seems that Pilate most fears that, by releasing Jesus, he may be releasing a competitor for his bosses’ job. Jesus focuses him back where he belongs and reminds him, “You would have no power over me at all if it had not been given you from above; that is why the man who handed me over to you has the greater guilt.” In some ways, Jesus is expunging Pilate of the guilt of passing sentence by saying that there is one who has committed a worse sin by handing him over to be crucified. Who is Jesus condemning here? Who handed him over? Judas merely handed him over to the Jews, who have not authority to crucify. He had no idea what his actions did. Plus, he has already gone to his death and is at the mercy of the Father. Some have suggested that this a reference to the High Priest, Caiaphas. I’d like to suggest that there is something deeper happening here.

In trying to decide what to do with Jesus’ clothes, there is one garment that is left undivided. This was done, as John the Evangelist said, to fulfill sacred scripture, Psalm 22, “Many dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.” Yet, John the Evangelist sees in this action a symbolism for the need for Christians to be united. That’s why it is so fitting that we would gather together on Good Friday to remember the death of Our Lord and to pray for greater unity among all Christians, that we may be one as Father, Son, and Spirit are One. From now on, Jesus will seek to make sure that there is greater unity among the people all the way until he breathes his last. From the cross, he makes sure that his elderly mother is cared for by his apostle, John.

At the end, he breathes a phrase that could sound, in most Bibles, like utter frustration, “It is finished.” Jesus has suffered enough. He is ready to stop fulfilling prophecy, to stop fighting, and give up his Spirit. It sounds like a cancer patient who has fought bravely against the illness giving into the inevitable. Jesus can do no more so it’s time to stop fighting.

If we were to believe that, we couldn’t be more wrong. Jesus isn’t, in frustration, throwing up his hands. He is saying that everything is in place now, everything is complete, everything has been fulfilled. In this statement, we finally get an answer as to who is really in charge and who is really the one who handed him over. The devil, in hell, thought he had pulled off the perfect coup, as he had done in the garden. Just as he had convinced Adam and Eve to commit the first sin, to clothe themselves with garments of shame, and to be thrown out the garden, so he now thinks that he has clothed the king of Glory in the shame of death on the cross, with the mocking clothes of a King on his body. Yet, now all is set for the conquering of death in the resurrection, the folly of the garden overcome by the glorious death of the cross. It is finished, it is fulfilled…and hell trembles in fear.

We await the resurrection of the body

2011-04-13T00:22:00.002-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. In a past assignment, I was asked to go and officiate at a graveside service for someone whose funeral mass has been in Denver, Colorado. It was one of those situations where the person died in Colorado but wanted to be buried back here in Iowa but the priest (for obvious reasons) didn’t want to tag along for the burial. I arrived at the rural cemetery on a typical Iowa summer day. It was somewhere between 95 and a hundred million degrees outside. And the farmer that had the field adjoining the cemetery decided it would be the perfect day to fertilize his crops so the fresh smell of hog manure greeted us as we stepped out of our vehicles. I decided then and there to be brief. There was only a few family members present along with the urn that contained the cremains of their father. I did all the burial prayers, “Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust…” but felt relief when it was all over and I could finally leave. As I opened the door to my truck, one of the daughters of the man who had passed away came up to me with two small boxes approximately the size of ring boxes. She asked if I would bless them. I asked what they were and they said the crematorium provided small “take home” portions of the cremains for each child but put the majority in the urn. I couldn’t believe it. The church is very clear about cremains. We don’t have a problem with them as long as they are kept intact and buried in one spot. Yet, the hot smell of hog manure was so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was get away as quickly as possible. So, instead of doing what I should have done and told them to put them in the grave, I said a blessing, got into my truck, and inhaled for the first time in fifteen minutes.

As I look back on that experience, I have to admit to my own confusion surrounding the church’s teaching on burial. Why should we believe we need to buried in one spot? I think of the number of people who have died in airplane and helicopter accidents in which no bodies were recoverable. Or the people who have lost a limb throughout their life that aren’t buried with the limb. Or, what about all the saints whose bodies are put into altars throughout the world. Why would the body of a saint, who we’re sure will one day be resurrected, be allowed to be scattered around several churches, perhaps even in several different continents if being buried in one spot was so important?

The Greek Philosopher Plato who believed that we are made up of body and soul, the body being evil and the soul being good. Christians take our understanding of the body from the Jews. The Jews believed that the human being is made up of a body and a soul and that one without the other is not a real existence. A souless body is dead. A bodiless soul is an evil spirit seeking to take possession of a body. When body and soul are matched up by God then he puts his spirit which holds them together.

Our readings today talk a lot about this dynamic. Focusing on the gospel, we hear about the death of this man Lazarus. Jesus is confronted by his friends Martha and Mary that had he been there, their brother would still be alive. They are, understandably, struggling with the reality of the loss of a loved one so you can’t be too hard on them. The trouble is that, despite the fact that they should know him better than most people, they only seem to have faith in Jesus the healer. He needs them to have faith in himself as the resurrection. So, in order to show that he was the resurrection, he brought their brother back to life.

Part of the reason the church asks that we not scatter our ashes all over the place is to show respect for the body. Some people believe that, after death, we become pure spirit and live in heaven as such. But, each time that we gather together for church we profess in the Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We aren’t just referring to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. We’re talking about the resurrection of our own bodies. We are given a body and a soul from God. Both are gifts given to us to be used with care and respect. As we prepare for the great victory over sin and death that is the cross, let us remember that we hope to raised body and soul in Spirit.

The weekend and why my homily will take a while...

2011-04-04T12:06:00.001-05:00

This weekend started off good enough. The weather was going to be warm with chances of rain in the evenings, which was really good considering how horribly my last week had gone. It was just a very busy week with way too many 13 and 14 hour days. I got to Friday and realized that, if I didn’t do something stupid, I may actually have an entire evening free. I got caught up on some emails and telephone calls and I tried to focus on the readings for Sunday Mass. Nothing was coming to me. I couldn’t find a message my people needed to hear. I went to bed confident that it would come.

On Saturday, I slept in a little. I’d had some short nights the previous week and thought it would be good to try and catch up. I prayed, had confession, and did some laundry. After confessions were over, I returned to my homily and prayed over the readings some more. Still, nothing was coming to me. For four hours I prayed and for four hours nothing would come to me. I went to the my files and pulled out a homily from six years ago that I wasn’t satisfied with but that had to do. In the middle of preaching at my first mass, the homily came to me. It was like I was hearing them for the first time with clarity. I went to my other rectory and wrote down what I wanted to say and even managed to get to bed early.

On Sunday, I woke up and preached the new homily at the two morning masses, went to an Eagle Scout ceremony, had two communal reconciliations and then collapsed back in my other rectory. I read a little of the Pope’s new book (Jesus of Nazareth 2) and went to sleep. All in all, a good, full day.

I remember being in Ames in my last assignment and thanking God that these incredibly busy days were few and far between. I tend to remember the days when I would be able to spend time with students or days I would take some time to go work in my garden around the little church in Gilbert. It takes days like this to remind me of those other days; days when I would sleep poorly thinking about all the appointments I had for the next day or days when I had to go home to let off some steam after a particular trying staff meeting. I’m glad I don’t think about those days all the time.

The woman at the well

2011-03-29T22:03:00.000-05:00

I preached this weekend about how the woman at the well was hurting because of her married life and how Jesus came to her and forgave her. I talked about how Jesus, as the stream of living water, was articulating a theology of baptism, which is a sacrament of entrance into the church and forgiveness of sins. I also talked about how being baptized demands that we tell others about the forgiveness of sins offered to us in baptism. We all know people who are hurting, people who need to feel the loving forgiveness of Jesus and, as baptized people, we must be like the woman at the well and lead them to the source of living water.

Unfortunately, because of two funerals, an extra mass for a retreat, and preparation for 13 hours, my homily remained as an outline and not the full text.

Could we start again, please?

2011-03-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

My Dear friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we delve deeper into this Lenten season. One of my favorite plot schemes in modern television and movies happens when a character is faced with a future version of himself coming back to give him guidance. This plot scheme is a staple of the Science Fiction industry, of which, I hate to admit, I am an addict. I like the plot scheme because it makes me wonder when I would return to my former self to intervene. Think about it from your own life. Is there something you’ve done that you would like to go back and witness or something you did you wish you could go back and change. I could go back and stop myself from being hit by that car when I was a kid or go back and watch my priesthood ordination. I think the hardest thing to do would be to pick the point that I would want to go back to.

In today’s gospel, Jesus chooses right now to reveal something to his disciples. We’re at seventeen out of twenty eight chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, a long time away from the crucifixion, and Jesus reveals to his disciples a glimpse of himself as Messiah. The glimpse is eerily similar to an incident involving Moses in the Old Testament. In chapter thirty four of Exodus, Moses and two of his associates go up a mountain and leave the rest of the Israelites at the foot of the mountain. While there, Moses’ face shines white while reflecting the glory of God and the law is revealed to him. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus face was, likewise, changed along with his clothes. The biggest difference is that, whereas Moses was reflecting the glory of God, Jesus was the glory of God. His face shines and his clothes shine as well. He is the light, not the reflection of that light. And, to underscore this difference, Moses and Elijah stand beside him to represent the Law and the Prophets. Jesus is showing that he has been the light guiding the Jewish people to salvation all along.

Each year that we read this reading, I think to myself; wouldn’t this be more suitable during Easter? Lent is supposed to be a sad time, a time of mortification. Shouldn’t our readings focus us on sad things? The closest thing to something sad you can experience in the Transfiguration is how impetuous Peter behaves. Rather than simply take in what is happening, Peter feels like he has to interject something. “Let us make tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” In some ways, Peter acts like the guy who tries to steal the spotlight from an otherwise incredible evening. And yet, Peter is actually getting the point of the exercise. One of the Jewish Holidays that Jesus and the Apostles participated in was called Succoth. It was a holiday reminding the Jewish people that God met Moses in a tent and that he called them to live in tents for forty days and forty nights while on their way to the Promised Land. Peter’s suggestion, then, fits in perfectly. He recognizes that Jesus, as Messiah, should be in a tent similar to the tent of meeting. Peter didn’t realize that this vision he, James, and John were sharing simply wasn’t going to last long enough for any such construction. Instead, as at Jesus baptism, we have the image of the trinity as the voice of God overshadows the son through the Sprit-filled cloud which declares Jesus as the Son.

We are now two and a half weeks into Lent. For me, this is the time when my spiritual practices begin to waver. I may have slipped up and had a burger on a Friday by accident or forgot to allow enough time to get my entire holy hour in or I look over at unmade rice bowl still sitting where I threw it after Ash Wednesday mass. I tend to feel tempted to give up. I think that’s why we have this image of the Transfiguration in the middle of Lent. Sure it’s happy. But there’s nothing that says Lent has to be a miserable time of suffering. Lent should be a time of renewal, a time to shed the things that weigh us down in our journey toward God. Perhaps the best thing that we can do is do what Jesus and his inner circle did: Go away to a deserted place and open ourselves to the presence of God to allow our hearts to be transfigured so that we can renew our Lenten commitment.

Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving

2011-03-11T23:47:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit be with you as we begin the Lenten Fast. We begin today by focusing on fasting. Our readings tell us what value fasting has for us. The first reading talked about it in the context of the reconciling nature of fasting. The Prophet Joel says, “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.” Jesus speaks of fasting as something that we should do in secret. We are to wash our face and anoint our head. Fasting is one of the central penitential practices of the Catholic Church, certainly something that is closely associated with our tradition.

Once I was visiting with a deacon candidate who said that he was pondering how much sense the church year makes. He said that, in winter, we tend to add a few pounds and we need a time in the church year to diet to lose those pounds, and that is what Lent is all about. I told him that he might want to rethink that analysis. The reason we fast during Lent is not to lose weight so we’ll look good in a swimsuit. That’s the reason we diet. Dieting is not the same thing as fasting. One goes on a diet in order to have a healthier, better looking body. One fasts in order to have a healthier, better looking spirit. We fast to remind ourselves that the one thing that we cannot do without, the one thing that would stop our existence is the absence of God. We can fast from facebook, from the computer in general, from swearing, from alcohol, and even from something that we know we need like food. But we cannot make it a single day without God.

One of the things Fr. Hertges and I have learned at our leadership training course, however, is you can’t just fast from something without replacing it. Otherwise, you just sit around and think about what you’re trying to fast from. The church offers two ideas that can fill our time in the wake of fasting; prayer and almsgiving. We can use the time we gain from fasting to spend more time in prayer or, if we do enough prayer, to spend time doing some charitable act for someone else.

Ultimately, Lent is meant to offer a change of heart. That’s why Jesus encourages us to keep these acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to ourselves. They aren’t meant to be used to impress people. They’re meant to live out the message of St. Paul from the second reading, “Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

What are your priorities?

2011-02-28T11:48:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet with the ministerial association of Britt. During part of that time, we talked about how we handled Last Sunday’s ice storm. We all hate to cancel church on Sunday and, believe it or not, none of us cancelled them in Britt. Unfortunately, Fr. Hertges and I felt we had to cancel the late masses in Garner and Forest City because the weather had just got to the point where no one should have been out. One of the pastors commented that he had a much smaller congregation than normal and was surprised to see that some of the people who felt it was far too treacherous to go to church on Sunday were willing to travel all the way over to Mason City the next day to the West Hancock girl’s basketball game. He said that the weather was worse on Monday, having snowed all day on top of the ice that we got on Sunday.

In today’s gospel, Jesus exhorts us to not worry about our life. He asks us why we worry so much about the clothes we wear or the food we eat. In some ways, it’s hard for us to truly appreciate what Jesus is saying considering how available food and clothes are for us nowadays. We have refrigerators and freezers to store food and grocery stores to readily supply us with food. It would have been a bit different in a completely agrarian society where you would be expected to grow your own food and store enough to last through the winter. And we have department stores where we can go to buy clothes. Imagine if you would have had to shear the sheep to make wool which eventually would become clothing for you. I imagine that a lot of time each day would have gone towards figuring out how much food you can eat today and have for tomorrow and whether pieces of clothing needed to be patched or thrown away and replaced. Paying attention to clothes and food would have been the mark of adulthood, in some way. And Jesus is trying to get across to his listeners that one shouldn’t be so preoccupied by taking care of the basic necessities of life that we forget the one who supplies those necessities in the first place. He says, “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow with take care of itself.”

What are the activities that you wake up and think about first in the day? If you’re in debt, it might be how you’re going to get out. If you’re sick, it might be how you’re going to be healthy. It could be that game on Facebook that you play. It might be making sure that you set your DVR correctly to record your favorite television show. Whatever it is that keeps you awake at night with worry or makes you wake up in the middle of the night, let us once again listen to the words of Jesus, “Can any of you by worrying add a single minute to your life-span?”

We are just a short week and a half away from Lent; the time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As Catholics, we are trained to ask each other what we are giving up. This year, our readings challenge us to take to hear the real reason for the season. As we look at those things that add worries and stress to our lives, is there some way that we can fast from the worry and stress and replace it with prayer and charitable acts? How can we stop worrying so much about food, clothes, and money and use that energy to draw closer to God?

Loving enemies

2011-02-23T11:04:00.002-06:00

My Dear brothers and sisters in Christ

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you forever. In last week’s gospel, Jesus continued his Sermon on the Mount with a series of statements that take the law and ratchet it up a step. He says repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you.” In last week’s gospel, Jesus gave four examples of how his disciples weren’t going to live by the bare minimum of the law but, instead, live moral lives that surpassed it. He continues today with the last two examples that he offers both on how we are to love. To summarize, he says first: don’t take revenge on those who harm you, instead remain unaffected by them and go the extra mile for someone in need. And, second, don’t just love those who will love you back. Instead, make a special effort to love those who won’t love you back. I find both of these injunctions incredibly difficult. When someone harms me either with words or actions, my first reaction is to fight back. I really have to calm myself down and ignore that first impulse. I imagine we all do. It’s not natural, for instance, when someone slaps your right cheek to not recoil or put up your hand and, instead, cock your head in the other direction and get ready to be slapped on the other cheek. It’s not easy to be sure to show the same kindness to someone who hates you that you would to someone who loves you.

Yet, there’s a side to these two passages that bug the heck out of me. For instance, I wouldn’t in a million years say to a wife whose husband abuses her or her children that she just needs to turn and offer him her other cheek. Nor would I say to a High School-aged guy whose classmates were bullying him that he should love them and let them do horrible things to him. In both those cases, my blood starts to boil at just the thought of the person feeling trapped and abused and I feel like I must intervene. Would Jesus condemn me for telling a wife whose husband is abusing her that she deserves better and should go somewhere safe? Would he take away my priesthood for telling bullied teenager that it’s okay to report those who are bullying him, that, in fact he’s being stronger by doing that than by keeping quiet?
Part of what Jesus is trying to get across in the gospel today is that, even though we are entitled to do so, we shouldn’t get wrapped up in seeking retribution. If someone slapped you in his day, you had the right to demand a certain amount of money as recompense for the grievance. And if someone was considered an enemy, it was expected that you would exclude them from celebrations and wouldn’t do anything nice to them. In both cases, Jesus is trying to get us to see how destructive it is to get wrapped up in that tit-for-tat litigiousness. Holding a grudge just gets in the way of being perfect like God is perfect. Ultimately, God could remember everything that we have ever done that deserves punishment but, through Christ, he has set us free from those punishments so that we can walk in the freedom of his Children. Don’t get wrapped up in punishing those who hurt you unless you yourself want to be punished by those you have hurt.

Laws are meant to define the minimum. Loving God demands total sublimation of the will

2011-02-13T12:18:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath day. When I still in grade school, my older brothers had a Lenten tradition that I would occasionally get to participate in. Some of you may have had a similar tradition. During Lent, my mom was a little more stringent than the church and would make us fast, not only from meat, but also from eating between meals. The church only mandates that we do that on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Nonetheless, my brothers would wait until 11:37 pm then and call Dominoes Pizza to order a pizza that would be delivered to our house a little after midnight. They were definitely fulfilling the law, just barely. Like the kid who’s asked to take his laundry to his room who puts in on the floor right inside his bedroom door or the kid that’s asked to pick up her toys who simply pushes them all to the corner of the room, we just did enough to make sure that we didn’t get into trouble.

When Christianity was being formed, there was a debate within the church as to the role the Old Testament law would play. If you simply read St. Paul, you could get the impression that we should view the Old Testament as a museum, something that used to be important that is no longer. Yet, to balance this out, we have today’s rather lengthy gospel. Jesus begins by saying that the law hasn’t passed away. In fact, Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the law but to bring a perfection to it by fulfilling it. He then shows what that fulfillment looks like by using a total of six examples, of which we hear four. First, don’t just avoid killing people. Avoid becoming angry with your neighbor and do what you can to reconcile with him. Secondly, don’t just avoid committing adultery. Don’t look with lust at someone, especially someone who isn’t your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse. Thirdly, don’t divorce despite the fact that Moses allowed for it. Lastly, don’t just avoid swearing false oaths. Don’t swear oaths at all. Instead, just live your life in such a way that you fulfill the agreements that you make so that you don’t need to make oaths. Each of these examples takes a law that was already on the books and ratchets up the expectations. It definitely challenges the people who think that Jesus wasn’t about rules or laws but only cared that we be nice to one another. Jesus wasn’t a hippie pacifist. He expected that his followers obey the law and that they do so to a degree that others in the world didn’t.

Nonetheless, as I said before, there is a tension in scripture that is very much still present in the church today. Paul says that the law is unimportant, Jesus says that he is the fulfillment of the law and that his followers will follow every letter and then some. The way we feel the tension is, often, in certain hot-button moral issues. For example with the issue of homosexuality; Church leadership says that scripture and tradition are clear that homosexual actions are not allowed even if the person is to be treated with dignity. Some theologians and many gay rights activists say to us, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” The church advocates maintaining the law as it is and gets criticized for being mired in the law, which was abolished by Jesus Christ. Really? Did they read today’s Gospel? Or, as another example, a few years ago, the church put out a statement clarifying that artificial nutrition and hydration, the use of feeding tubes and IV’s, should not be considered extraordinary measures when it comes to end of life issues. In other words, if someone would be able to live given the presence of food and water, even if the quality of their life might not be what we consider worthwhile, the person should continue to be fed and receive water. There were some who said we were invading people’s private choices and imposing an unfair moral mandate for something that should be left to a person’s conscience.

The law was meant to define minimums for us; the least that we have to do to be okay in the eyes of God. Both Paul and Jesus agree that the problem with the law is that we shouldn’t define our lives by asking: What’s the least I have to do to get into heaven. We should be constantly seeking to grow deeper in holiness. God asks that we lead our lives in radical conformity to his will.

Let your Light shine!!

2011-02-08T14:52:00.000-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit into the world to be its light. As most of you know, I’ve spent almost all of my priesthood, in one way or another, working full or part time with either college or high school aged people. One of the things that always amazed me about this age group is how excited they are for service projects. At St. Thomas, we would get between thirty and fifty students to give up their spring breaks in order to travel to different places in this country and abroad to dedicate time for constructing roofs for the poor, playing with hundreds of homeless children, or bringing clothing to the poorest of poor people. And I’m pretty sure activities like this take place at every college campus. What was truly amazing is how it changed the students. They would go away thinking that they were going on a vacation and come back with a sense of purpose. It taught them that homeless and impoverished people aren’t that way because they are lazy or drug addled. It was amazing to watch a young person realize just how good their life is compared to most people.

The readings this week talk about how important it is for us to let our light shine for all the world. This is a kind of code that the first reading and gospel use to talk about how we, as Christians, all bear the responsibility of evangelization. Oftentimes, when we think of evangelization, we think of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses going door to door asking us if we want to talk about Jesus. In the past few years, there have been some Catholic Commentators who believe that this is a direction we should go. There’s a fellow named Scott Hahn who talks about going into the house of a person he was attempting to evangelize when a Jehovah’s Witness came to the door at the same time. The person seemed very understanding and told them both to make their best sales pitch. To me, this sounds like the worst case scenario. And I’m a trained theologian. But, even I will admit that I’m sure there’s a passage of scripture that the person could bring up that I’d be hard pressed to explain. I have a feeling that if we Catholics mandated that every person has to go somewhere and evangelize as a year of service to the church like the Mormons do, we’d lose probably lose a good number of you. And, to be honest, if we really listen to the scriptures for this weekend, we may feel justified in this attitude.

In the Gospel, Jesus is continuing his sermon on the mount. Last week we heard the beginning of the sermon with the beatitudes, those commands that turn the world’s values on their head. You are truly blessed when you are poor in spirit, when you mourn or are meek, when you hunger and thirst for righteousness, when you are merciful and clean of heart, when you are peacemakers, or when you are persecuted. It’s those times when we are most thankful for the gifts that God has given us not when we are comfortable, well fed, and taken care-of. Jesus follows up that teaching this week with this command to let our light shine. It seems to me that part of what Jesus is doing is alluding to the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah. In that reading, Isaiah says that if we share our bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed, and homeless, clothe the naked when we see them, and don’t turn our back on our own that our light shall shine and God will hear our prayer. The prophet isn’t mandating that we go from door-to-door and give a high pressure sales pitch to get people to come to church. He’s just saying that, when we see someone who needs our help, we should offer it. And, when we do that, people will know that we are a believer and will know that this good act comes from God.

So, our real challenge is to figure out what our light is. What is it that God is calling you to utilize in order to offer him praise? For some of you, it may be reaching out to a charity to share your money with them. For others, it may be organizing a group of people to reach out to someone in need. Still others may purchase some food for someone they know doesn’t have the money to buy their own. Others of you may be part of an organization like the Knights of Columbus or the Catholic Daughters that frequently make donations to charitable organizations. In whatever capacity you are called by God, let your light shine so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

Marriage is a way to participate in the Kingdom of God

2011-01-31T17:09:00.002-06:00

My dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who humbled himself to come among us to set us free from sin in the power of the the Holy Spirit. On June 22 of 2002, I was ordained a priest but my assignment didn’t begin until July 9. That probably doesn’t seem like a huge amount of time and, to be honest, there’s a part of me who would love to have three weeks to myself nowadays but I was incredibly excited just to get started. I can remember being filled with nervous energy during those weeks before I got started. I did a lot of things around my parent’s house that week and packed and repacked all my stuff in an effort to get rid of all the stuff that I didn’t want or need. When I arrived, my pastor told me that I would be having a wedding very shortly after I got there, I believe it was the following Friday. I remember meeting with the couple and asking them why they chose the readings they did and receiving the message that they weren’t really sure why they chose them. They just kind of liked them. One of the readings they chose was the gospel for today, what we call the Beatitudes. I have to admit that I was really hoping that they would have a great reason for choosing this reading, like they were involved in Habitat for humanity or that they were going on the Peace Corps after their wedding. But, nope, they just liked the reading.

This reading is one of those readings that I feel like we hear quite often but we don’t always live by it. It’s definitely another reading that most fundamentalists don’t take literally. These Beatitudes, these series of statements about what life is like in heaven, challenge each of us here. Each of these eight statements turns what the world holds as important completely on its head. Being poor in spirit, being meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being clean of heart, being peacemakers, being persecuted…all of these things aren’t on most people’s bucket lists. Let’s face it. They challenge us. We may be tempted to say that Jesus is speaking spiritually, especially for the more challenging ones. Jesus doesn’t really expect us to be peacemakers in our community or expect us to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. He expects us to do this in our prayer. But, I would contend that Jesus is really meaning that, as the church, we should be thankful when we are poor of heart, when we are meek, when we are peacemakers, when people are persecuting us, etc. One of the things that I love most about the church is that, despite all the anger and hatred that is flung at us, most people continue to do the good work of God and don’t get wrapped up in an angry exchange. I think of Mother Teresa wiping the wounds of the leper in the political turmoil of India and Pope John Paul II visiting the man who shot him in order to offer forgiveness. It’s exactly what Paul was talking about in the second reading today when he said, “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The world may think that we are worthless, spineless, gutless and weak but God sees in us one who has done great things for him.

On the Saturday after I got to my first assignment, I looked out at that married couple and told them that I think this is a good message for a wedding. Marriage, likewise, turns the values of this world on its head and demands a kind of humble service. The world tells you to be most concerned about what makes you happy, what is good for you. Marriage challenges you to look out for the good of others; spouse and children, before you look out for your own comfort. It challenges you to be poor in spirit, humble, meek, and persecuted. Yet, if you live your marriage covenant well, you will find that it is truly a blessing and a reward unto itself. Truly the reign of God is yours.

What I put in the bulletin this past weekend.

2011-01-26T11:03:00.000-06:00

From Fr. Dennis Miller, your pastor

Once in my previous assignment in Ames, I was standing in the gathering space of church greeting people. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young man walking into church. He was wearing a shirt that seemed about four times too large, though at least it matched the size of his jeans. He had inch to inch and a half large disks in his ears and had one tattoo showing just over the top of his shirt on his neck. I won’t lie to you. My first thought was that this slime bag is probably here to cause trouble. But, thankfully, my cooler head prevailed and I decided to give him a chance. As I started walking towards him, I noticed that his head was pointed toward the floor while he looked out of the top of his eyes to navigate around people. I could tell he was trying to not make eye contact with me so that he wouldn’t have to talk to me but I wasn’t going to let him by without doing so. I reached out my hand and looked him in the eye and introduced myself and asked his name. He curtly told me it while continuing to look at the ground. I asked him if he was an Iowa State student, which seemed really dumb at the time but it kept the conversation going. He told me he was a Gen Ed major but that he was hoping to get into engineering. I told him that there were a lot of engineers that came to the church and maybe some of them could help him. At this point, for the first time, he raised his head and looked me in the eye, although he still looked scared. I told him that I glad he was here and that he could sit anywhere. He smiled as he walked past me and sat down. After a few weeks of seeing him and greeting him as warmly as I could, he confided in me just how scared he was to come to church that first time. He didn’t like the direction of his life and knew that he needed the church but feared walking into mass because of people’s judgment.

I’m reading a book with the Britt Ministerial Association called No Perfect People which, despite having a flawed view of grace, does challenge Christians to create a “come as you are” climate in church. The author says that we shouldn’t have expectations of people who come to our church but accept them as they are with the knowledge that, as they attend church and become a part of the body of Christ, they will be transformed as God wants them to be. Often, we set up expectations of our fellow mass goers that have nothing to do with spreading the gospel. We expect that people know exactly how to treat their crying child. We expect that people wear their Sunday best and have perfect hair and nothing unusual in their appearance. We expect that people not cough or make other noises. Basically, all too often, we expect not to be bothered when we come to church. But the whole point of church is to transform us from the inside out.

I know that I would never have seen that young man in Ames again if I would have approached him and told him to go and change his clothes. As it turned out, he ended up bringing other people who were deeply in need of knowing Christ with him to church in the next few weeks. In my time since coming to these six parishes, I’ve heard stories of people leaving church upset because of an unkind word from someone about the person’s appearance. I’m asking that this immediately cease. You never know what’s happening interiorly for that person and it’s important that we not give into the vain belief that what a person wears defines who the person is. If the person’s appearance bothers you so much that you cannot pray or participate, perhaps that speaks more about what you need to do interiorly than about anything they need to do.

Prepare for transitions

2011-01-25T23:20:00.000-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit to guide and direct the Church. One of the things that priests have to learn how to both do and teach well is transitions. As you have experienced in the past few years, priests are asked to move to a new assignment quite often and, as one who has lived in five different residences in the last eight years, I can tell you that it’s a challenge. I’m hoping that I’m not going to have to make any transitions anytime soon but, as you all know, it’s not really up to me. That’s the Archbishop’s call. Part of the challenge of transitions is spatial and part of the challenge is relational. The spatial part is, in some ways, the easier to deal with. You take all your stuff and move it to a new place and try to find the best arrangement for it. In my mind, the harder transition is relational, having to say goodbye. Both Fr. Hertges and I have remarked how much we miss people in our previous assignments. We aren’t in any way discounting the new relationships we will make. In fact, we are counting on them. We are just mourning the loss of old relationships.

The readings today are all trying to deal with transitions, each in their own way. Starting from the middle and working out, in the second reading, Paul is communicating with a church he founded that has several problems transitioning away from Judaism and Roman pagan religion to Christianity. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that they have splintered into different groups. Some associate themselves just with St. Wenceslaus, others just with St. Patrick, still others just with St. Boniface…wait, I’m sorry. That’s not right. Let me try that again. Some with St. Paul, others with a fellow named Saint Appollos, and still others with St. Peter or, as St. Paul calls him, Cephas. These groups are independently developing their own traditions and may even have been formed because of the minister that came to town to baptize the people in the groups. But, ultimately, Paul worries that the divisions will not allow for the unity that needs to be a component of the church. He asks, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” The answer to all of these questions is, of course, “No”. Paul emphasizes for them that the Jesus should be the one that draws them together not “the wisdom of human eloquence.”

In the gospel, Jesus is likewise dealing with a transition. His cousin, John the Baptist, has been arrested and this indicates that it’s time for him to stand up and begin to lead. He moves out of his parents’ house and moves to the big city of Capernaum. It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ first public message is basically the same message as John the Baptist gave, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He, then, goes on to begin recruiting help. He had to be concerned about John, but he knew that his time had come and that he needed to begin his public ministry.

I imagine each of you has had to deal with transitions in your life. It could be sickness or death of a parent and realizing you are now the one who has to be the “adult” for your family. Maybe it’s dealing with your own financial problems or health concerns. Maybe you’ve been part of a group that used to do things to help people and the group has had to face tough realities like declining membership or funding decreases because of the economy. These are difficult transitions and ones that are best met, as I imagine Jesus did in the gospel, with a great deal of prayer and discernment as to what God wants you to do next. Yet, we find hope in the first reading that Jesus, likewise, found hope in the gospel. Despite bad times in the past, eventually “The People who walked in darkness (will see) a great light…” Transitions can be difficult and frustrating and there’s always a part of us asking why we have to undergo them. Yet, if they are done well and with hope, we hope to echo the words of Isaiah the prophet, “Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness…upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shined.”

A little background into the bottom homily

2011-01-19T12:21:00.000-06:00

At the end of December, the chaplain at Waldorf College invited me to preach at their weekly chapel service. It took me a while to get back to them but we eventually decided that it should be this week. The text on which I preached was 1 Samuel 3:1-10 but, as you can tell below, I really preached on the first five chapters on 1 Samuel.

I was incredibly nervous, partly because this wasn't the format with which I was most familiar and partly because this wasn't the congregation with which I was most familiar. But, I think things went well as I got a lot of compliments and made a few contacts at the college that I probably wouldn't have had otherwise. And I think it was a good chance for me to learn about the expectations of a pastor.

Vocation

2011-01-19T12:08:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I’d like to begin this reflection by thanking Kelly for inviting me to preach during this week dedicated to Christian Unity. I’ve heard there was a time when there was not a lot of love between St. James Catholic Church and Waldorf College and I, for one, am glad that some of those old feelings of suspicion and fear have disappeared from both sides and we can work together to build up the Kingdom of God. There is much work that still needs to be done to undo the suspicion that our Christian Communities have for each other but it is situations of prayer like this that continue the grace-filled process of healing that is crucial to that ongoing dialogue. Now onto the reflection.

I chose to preach about the story of God’s call of Samuel to continue the reflection on vocation that Kelly began last week. What always strikes me about this story is that Samuel doesn’t know who God is when he calls. Why not? It says in the text that, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; prophecy was not widespread.” We know that Eli, the high priest who is training Samuel, had very corrupt sons who used to steal from the meat of offering and threaten the people who would point out that immorality. Yet, one wonders if they got this way because God didn’t speak to their childhood selves as he did to young Samuel. There’s no record of their mother singing the song of dedication that Hannah sang for Samuel. Was it the love of the mother that opened the silent Word of the Father for her son? We do not know why God chose to speak to Samuel, just that he did.

Samuel hears the call from God clearly enough to believe that Eli was the one who called. Three times he hears the call and three times he innocently asks Eli what he wants until finally Eli recognizes it for what it is: the call of God. Does this mean Eli heard this same voice at one point in his life? Is that why he can help young Samuel respond, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”? One wonders if part of the reason that it took Eli so long to recognize God’s call was because God never called his own sons who would probably have slept in the same area as young Samuel. And, yet, when Samuel tells Eli all about the revelation God made to him, that God was going to punish Eli’s house for the excesses of those sons and no apologetic act could undo it, Eli accepts the sentence saying merely, “He is the Lord; He will do what he deems right.”

God’s call is often murky and difficult to recognize. We may need the assistance of a mentor, pastor, priest, or professor, even one who is as fallible as Eli. Oftentimes, there are people who we believe would be much more capable of doing what God wants us to do and, yet, if there’s one thing that we can learn from Samuel, it’s that, when God’s will is made clear to us, we must do it regardless of how difficult it is. After all, “He is the Lord.” We must do what he deems right.

It is too little

2011-01-16T22:42:00.000-06:00

My dear friends in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that we first received from Christ in baptism. As some of you probably know, Fr. Hertges and I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week at our leadership training class. This time we talked about leadership of the entire parish. It incorporated a lot of what we’ve already learned but it also forced us to recognize three different kinds of leadership situations. There are new initiatives, problems, and ongoing improvement. I imagine, if you think about it, you all have these three categories of activities in your life. You have the things that you want to start new, like a project around the house or something that you’ve always wanted to do but just haven’t had the time. You probably also have things that aren’t working in your life, areas that you know need work but you just haven’t got to them yet. And then there’s the stuff that is working right now but that you have ideas of how it can improve. According to the leaders, we should have between three and five new activities going, one to two problems we’re trying to solve, and one to two programs we’re trying to improve. I felt this great sense of relief when I heard those parameters defined. The leader said that, if we get any more than that, we are overloaded and need to admit that we simply cannot take on more. Yet, it also lets me know if I’m just being lazy by saying no or if I’m legitimately too busy to take on another project.

I was really struck this week by one phrase from the first reading in connection to this. The Prophet Isaiah is addressing an Israel that has been taken to exile in Babylon. He is talking to a people who feel demoralized, a people he warned to reform their ways before God got fed up with them and sent them into exile. And, yet, his message isn’t that they are just getting what they deserve. He tells them about a hopeful future. He preaches the Word of God to them that God still cares for them and still wants what’s best for them. In fact, God so cares for them that, not only will their release from exile be a source of salvation for themselves or just their fellow Jews. God says to them, “It is too little…for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel. I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation reach to the ends of the earth.”

What a big job! I’m sure that there had to be at least one person who said that being a light to the nations is just too big, just too difficult. And yet, God called them to not dream too little, to not act too diminutively. And, what’s really amazing is that God is calling them to do this despite the fact that the nations to which they are called to be lights are the very same ones that just invaded their lands, beat them militarily, did bad things to their women and children, and took the best and brightest back with them to be their servants in Babylon. It would be tempting to think that their goal should be just to go back home and reconstitute Israel. But God has bigger plans for them.

The same is true in the gospel today. John the Baptist, who seems to forget that he leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when he first met Jesus, claims points out to his followers what it means for Jesus to fulfill and complete his ministry. It won’t be a simple baptism to remove sins any longer. Now it will involve receiving the Holy Spirit. There’s something different with Christian Baptism that other people’s baptism and it involves receiving the Holy Spirit. The people that originated because of John’s ministry but later became Jesus’ follower are given something new, something bigger than a removal of their own personal sins. The Holy Spirit connects us to the life of the trinity and makes us all connected to the life of Christ.

Part of what I love about the formula that our class gave us is that we tend to image the church as an institution that has everything pretty well settled. Go to mass every week. Go to confession once a year. When you’re sick, call a priest. And you’re doing pretty good if that’s what you do. God says to the church, “It is too little…” We must advocate respect for human life from natural conception to natural death. We must be a voice that seeks understanding and tolerance between the members of various religions. We must testify with John the Baptist that the Christ is the Son of God to those who feel lost and alone without God. In some ways, each of these things aren’t new but the way we do them must be continuously renewed to speak to new challenges and new people. It is too little if we just fix problems and try to keep refining what we’ve done in the past. We must keep our ears open to what God is calling us to do that is new.

Responding to rudeness

2011-01-12T23:23:00.000-06:00

In my time as a priest, the most surprising and most frustrating parts of the vocation quite often have come from email and the US postal service. It's amazing how personal people will make criticism of homilies and columns I've written. It's not that I don't welcome a little dialogue on a subject or people seeking clarification. Quite the contrary, most of the time when people challenge me on a subject I end up learning and teaching a few things.

The difficulty for me comes when you put some theological statement out there about a controversial issue and then receive criticism that is personal in nature. You say that America is plagued by the scourge of abortion and then are accused of not being held enough as a child. Or you ask people to keep things more social before and after mass instead of conducting business and they tell you that you are a bad priest who can't handle the job and that you should ask for a transfer.

The thing that I never know is whether I should respond or not. On the one hand, I feel like you give people credence to make other personal attacks if you do respond. I also feel like it makes it seem like there's merit to a personal attack. But, if you don't respond, you could be making the same argument. A bully thrives when the person they're pushing around doesn't fight back and gains power by being bullying.

If you look to scripture, things aren't much clearer. On the one hand, we are told to turn the other cheek, be passive when attacked. But, we are also told that if you're brother sins against you, you should correct him. If he persists, you should take one member of the church and if he continues then two or three members and so on. What do we do?

Unfortunately, we will never have perfect agreement on all fronts among the members of the body of Christ. But, I'd hope that one thing that we could count on is that a member of the body of Christ would first and foremost keep love in the midst of a dialogue. Love the sinner, hate the sin. But, what does that love look like? Is it a gentle but firm parent making a phone call and asking an errant child to back down the rhetoric. Or is it a firm but gentle parent ignoring the middle child who seems like no amount of attention is ever enough?

The inspiration of the Kings

2011-01-02T12:32:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we join the Magi in their silent homage on this feast of the Epiphany. While studying in Israel during the fall of 2000, I had many eye opening experiences. It was the first time I lived in a place in which I was a minority; a white guy who couldn’t speak Hebrew or Arabic. I learned what it was like to be calm around 17 and 18 year old soldiers carrying guns. And, I learned a lot from a man named Baruch Schwartz. Professor Schwartz was a conservative Jew who was asked to teach my class all about the prophets. We walked into his classroom the first day with a great deal of skepticism. We all wondered how a Jew would teach Christians anything of value about the prophets. I mean, would we even interpret the Bible in the same way. My class was talking on the way there about how we had all had arguments with Christian fundamentalists in which we quickly discovered that we would never agree because we were interpreting the Bible differently. They would take a passage, say that it doesn’t say something, and then say that means the Catholic Church is wrong. Oftentimes we, on the other hand, had trouble debunking them because we didn’t know the chapter and verse number, let alone the complete quote we were searching for. So, as we sat in the room waiting for our professor to arrive, I remember there being a certain unusual tension hanging in the room.

In the gospel today, we hear about the visit of Magi to the newborn Christ-child. We often associate these figures with kings because of the Old Testament verses, present both in the first reading and responsorial psalm today; kings from Tarshish and the sea coasts. These are actually the representatives of kings, the equivalent to presidential advisors. They were intellectuals who followed the star to where Jesus lay with his mother. What’s striking, of course, is that these are not Jews. They wouldn’t have known anything about the Old Testament predictions of their coming. They simply see something unusual in the sky, a star that guides them to the house where Jesus lay. And, yet, these are the ones who are among the first to fall down prostrate in awe and respect of the newborn king. It’s as though God is signaling through these priestly representatives of foreign kings that his works are always mysterious, always grander than our meager minds can accept, and never confined to one group or person. God works in and through whomever God wants to work.

Oftentimes, we have a great deal of skepticism toward people of other faiths. We hear about terrorism and violence between Christians and Muslims, we see how strangely that a Hindu dresses, or we hear the knock of the Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon at the door and we start to feel fearful because their traditions are so different than our own. And, yet, if we start from the differences, we may never find what connects us. That’s what my classmates and I discovered in that Prophets class in Israel. As he started talking about the Prophets, we found out that we agree on most things. We agree with our Jewish brothers and sisters that Prophets are, first and foremost, warning the people to repent and return to their lives of faith. Prophets are not setting forth a secretive agenda about the future that only a few “in the know” can understand. They are telling people that, if they follow the way of the Lord and do what he commands that, “Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance” to quote the first reading.

This is why the Second Vatican Council said, “From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.” As individuals, we need to forge closer ties with all people of faith. Part of the way we do this, believe it or not, is to be comfortable enough as Christians that we don’t fear people who have different beliefs than our own. And, we must focus on points of agreement instead of rushing to areas of disagreement, even if the only agreement we can find is a basic belief in God or a Higher Power. Sometimes this is particularly frustrating because the person with whom we are conversing may make ignorant statements about Christianity or Catholicism that make us want to fight back. But, remember, in those situations, that the earliest defining characteristic of Christians is that we loved even those who hated us. To, again, quote the second Vatican Council, “We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any(one), created…in the image of God. (Humanity’s) relation to God the Father and his relationship to humanity are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly

2010-12-25T22:41:00.002-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father and his Son, or Lord Jesus Christ whose birthday we remember in the midst of this liturgy. We come together to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Great King of Kings and Lord of Lords celebrated in the first reading. The Prophet Isaiah said of him that he would be called, “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Each of these terms is chosen to represent a specific element of leadership. The Messiah must be Wonder-Counselor to be able to make the best decisions for his people. He must be God-Hero to ensure that he is the strongest and most able to reign. He must be Father-Forever as one who cares for his people and looks out for what is in their best interest. And, lastly, he must be Prince of Peace to make sure that the peace is kept among his people from without and within. Each of these traits describes the ideal leader. And, yet, so few of them apply to most of our leaders.

One of my favorite historical figures is Abraham Lincoln. His mere election as President was enough to split this country in two. If you were to look into his life, you would discover that he lost more elections than he won. When he put together a cabinet of advisers, he was so naïve that he actually hired all his competitors, all the people who lost to him in the primary, and expected that they would put aside any differences they had to serve the country. Sometimes he was justified in this belief but often he was not. He was incredibly patient with his generals, arguably too patient with men who believed they could retake lost territory by playing a defensive game. And, yet, despite being far from a “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace”, Lincoln is remembered as one of the best presidents in American history by almost everyone.

Today we celebrate the birth of the long-awaited Messiah who, in some ways, shares more with Lincoln than you might expect. Jesus was not born in a castle and raised on the finest foods. He was born among animals, seemingly in shame. It’s interesting to note that, despite being back in his home town, there’s no mention of visits from other family members to Jesus’ nativity. They may have come and paid their respects but they may also have been avoiding this man whose wife was having a child who was clearly not conceived in wedlock. Instead, the people who come and pay their respects are the shepherds, men often were considered necessary but religiously unclean because they dealt with the blood of animals at the animal’s birth and death. They are the ones informed by the Angels of the birth of Jesus and who are privileged to hear the angelic chorus sing “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace to his people.

It’s amazing how we tend to only expect great things from those who are born into great wealth and great power and how that always seems to disappoint us when those people have affairs, financial malfeasance, and other sordid activities. And, yet, over and over again, to paraphrase the song of Mary, God casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. Part of what I find so encouraging about living here in the United States is how we seem to exalt when this happens. On the one hand, we have incredibly greedy people who seem intent on not sharing their gifts with those around them, the scrooges if you will. But, on the other hand, there are people who will take a homeless African-American kid into their family and help raise him. There are those of you who won’t even hesitate to help a a sick neighbor in getting the crops out of the field. And, in the last month, I’ve felt privileged to see some of you reach out to those who are truly struggling with bills and food to try to lift them up. In some ways, when we do this, we are standing beside the Angels heeding the call they received to give respect and honor to a simple infant wrapped in swaddling clothes who is truly “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” May the peace of the Christ-child guide you in all your decisions.

Ask for a sign from the Lord

2010-12-20T21:29:00.000-06:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been disappointed by God? Ever asked for something from God and not gotten what you want? A few years ago, I was riding with a good priest friend of mine named Fr. Bob Davies. Fr. Davies has, since then, passed away but he used to accompany me four times a year to the Twin Cities to watch plays with some other priests. One time, we were talking about budgeting frustrations that he was having with his two rural parishes. Now, to understand why this next comment is so shocking, you have to understand something about Fr. Davies history. Prior to becoming a priest, he was involved in local and national politics. If you travel to Hampton and mention his name, they will probably remember him best as the county recorder. He was a whiz with numbers and budgets. He was one of the guys that Senator Harkin relied on to work behind the scenes on his finances and make sure he wasn’t overspending. So, as we were driving along Interstate 35 close to where it intersects with interstate 90, you can imagine how surprised I was to hear him say that he thought parishes take budgets too seriously. This is man who, prior to priesthood, dedicated his life to being the guy who said to politicians that they can’t spend something because it would go over budget. But, according to Bob, by being so strict about staying in budget, they missed out on the possibility that God may be calling us to do something more. At the time, I was just a new Associate Pastor but it still struck me and continues to strike me the more I think about it.

Today’s first reading and gospel are a definite exercise in point, counter point. In other words, two people are presented with similar situations and end up with complete different solutions. Both Ahaz and Joseph have to make a life or death decision. Ahaz is in charge of Judah which is situated between two countries that wanted to wage war with two countries on his southern border. Ahaz thinks that he can remain neutral but one of the southern countries is Israel, a sister Judaic country. He has to know that he’s going to get drug into this war somehow, even if he isn’t sure whose side he should be on. Joseph, on the other hand, isn’t dealing with war but with a personal life or death situation. To be engaged at the time of Jesus was a serious commitment. If someone were to have relations with another person, it would result in their death. Yet, since the marriage hasn’t happened, the couple is not allowed to have relations. In both cases, God approaches the men even before they ask. God seems willing to allow Ahaz to keep Judah neutral and will even protect him if he asks. God tells Joseph to marry Mary quickly and protect her from shame. This is where the two stories both diverge and interlock. Joseph does as the Angel tells him and sets up for us what we will celebrate at the end of this week. Ahaz, on the other hand, basically says he’ll deal with things his own way and won’t ask God for help, despite the fact that God told him to do so. You can’t tempt a God who is telling him to ask for help. Since Ahaz refuses to ask God for help, God tells him that he will be replaced by someone who will. As Christians, we believe that this child is the Christ, the one whose earthly father did what the Angel wanted.

We live in a very cynical, pragmatic world. So often, when we need help there is a temptation to believe that we either do it ourselves or it won’t get done. Yet, as believers, we are challenged especially by today’s readings. Miracles do in fact happen. Not everything is so predictable that we can write the story even before it happens. Sure, we need budgets and auditors to make sure that we don’t go off the handle. And, as your pastor, I do my best to make sure that we live within our budget. But, that will never stop me from dreaming for a miracle. Please don’t stop dreaming for that miracle cure or that problem resolved. For, soon we will remember the greatest miracle of all time: the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Great Quote from the movie "Going my Way"

2010-12-17T20:53:00.000-06:00

Bing Crosby "Bishops are like umpires. You have to have them to call the close decisions."

Last Bulletin's Article

2010-12-13T15:39:00.001-06:00

Because of all the bad weather we had last weekend, most of my parishioners didn't get to have a bulletin. Here it is with a few amendments...

You might remember a few weeks ago, I asked you to submit questions you’d like addressed in bulletin columns. These are the first two:

Are we having mass on Christmas evening to fulfill your Sunday Obligation?

Since Christmas is the second-most important holiday in the Catholic Calendar, we are unable to celebrate a Sunday vigil mass on Christmas Day. So, both Duncan and Buffalo Center masses will be cancelled that weekend and I ask those people to go to a neighboring parish on Sunday for Mass. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Does SCAP fulfill your Sunday Obligation?

For those of you who do not know what the acronym SCAP means; Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest. This celebration takes place on a Sunday when a priest cannot get to a given church to celebrate mass. It’s among a list of liturgical celebrations that are what I call “oops!” celebrations (ex. general absolution, confirmation by the parish priest, and lay baptism in an emergency situation). In these situations, the church provides for times in which the norm is impossible.

To fulfill your Sunday Obligation, a catholic is obliged to participate in mass on either Saturday evening or Sunday. Mass is the only liturgy that can fulfill your Sunday Obligation. It says in paragraph 12 of the Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest

The following are the principal requisites for the Sunday assembly of the faithful.

1. the gathering of the faithful to manifest the Church, not simply on their own initiative but as called together by God, that is, as the people of God in their organic structure, presided over by a priest, who acts in the person of Christ;

2. their instruction in the paschal mystery through the Scriptures that are proclaimed and that are explained by a priest or deacon;

3. the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice, by which the paschal mystery is expressed, and which is carried out by the priest in the person of Christ and offered in the name of the entire Christian people.

We have the very interesting situation here in this pastorate of a scheduled SCAP on the first Saturday Night of each month in Buffalo Center. This is done with the permission of Archbishop Hanus because it is impossible to have mass there that weekend. Some of the people, having read this question, may well wonder if they should attend SCAP or drive to another parish. I want to emphasize that you should all continue attending SCAP when it is offered. If the Archbishop or I expected you to drive elsewhere that weekend, we would simply ask Deacon Popowski or Jody Smith not to offer SCAP. The fact that it is offered indicates that we expect you will it.

One way to look at is is that, by attending SCAP, you have done all you can do to fulfill your Sunday Obligation. The fault does not lie with you. You have done two of the three components listed above. You have gathered as a community in Christ and have heard the Word of God. The parts that are missing are that the priest can't preside over the assembly or offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice. But you cannot control that.

One of the things that has impressed several of the priests in the past few years as well as our Episcopal Vicar, Msgr. Wilgenbusch, is that the SCAP is as well attended as the Sunday Mass in Bufffalo Center. This speaks to the need for it as well as the vibrant sustainability of your parish. As we go foarward, it is possible that we will need to offer SCAP in more parishes on a more consistent basis. I will look toward you, the people of St. Patrick's, to assuage any fears associated with SCAP and to speak to the positive effect is has had in your life and the life of your parish.

On a related note, in the 80’s and 90’s, there arose a practice on weekdays when a priest could not celebrate a daily mass for a lay person or a sister to celebrate a Word and Communion service. Both the Vatican and Archbishop Hanus have recently asked that we discontinue these. There is no obligation to attend mass on weekdays and, quite often, these services promoted scandal within the church as the preacher may be untrained in theology or may have a theological “axe” to grind. The one possible exception to this rule is distributing communion to the sick in a nursing home or hospital, if the pastor gives his approval.

Blizzard Warning

2010-12-12T18:28:00.000-06:00

At the beginning of this week, I took a great deal of solace knowing that I would reach 6:00 on Sunday night, although I had no idea what was going to happen between Monday and Sunday.

On Monday, I concluded the Priest's Council meeting that began a week ago. We talked about the issues that are affecting the diocese and tried to offer some solutions. I came home that evening to a meeting with a couple, something that I never do on my day off if I can avoid it. I woke early on Tuesday for a meeting in Britt with the ministerial association. We talk about a book one of the minister's has recommended. I went back and worked in my office for most of the day on Tuesday but then had the first of my Immaculate Conception masses. On Wednesday, I drove to Garner for some business but I had a meeting with a couple of people regarding rental assistance so I had to hurry back. And then ended the day with two masses for the Immaculate Conception, one in Forest City and one in Lake Mills. On Thursday, I went to a funeral for a long-time church worker in Buffalo Center. It took a long time to actually get to the cemetery for the burial so I headed straight to Garner for a meeting with my Associate and supper. I finished off that day with Pastoral Council in Forest City. The next day, I had to be in Cedar Falls by 9:00 for a leadership training class I've been taking for the last year and a half. We finished at 3:00 and then I headed back to Forest City. I posted a comment in Facebook that I was relieved to finally have a significant amount of time to sit and relax. The only thing that concerned me was that the priests were at my leadership training camp were saying that this weekend's snow was going to be bad.

Now, before I get into the heart of the weekend, let me preface things a little. This weekend, we were supposed to have a talk by a religious sister about the Retirement Fund for Religious. This happens once a year in all the parishes in the diocese. However, when I got home on Friday, I called her and told her not to come. I was afraid she'd get here and we'd have to cancel masses on Saturday night. Also, Deacon Dennis Popowski was supposed to preach in the masses I celebrated. Notice the word supposed in the last sentence....

I awoke on Saturday morning, ready to face the day. It had rained since about midnight the night before, which caused some concern for me. As I walked toward the church, I started noticing the first hints of snow amidst the rain. After morning confessions were over in Forest City, I called my Associate and we both agreed that we need to cancel the masses for Saturday night. The rain had frozen and was being covered by snow, making for hazardous conditions. I figured that conditions would improve by morning so I did nothing with regard to Sunday. However, at 9:00 that night, I heard that the Iowa State Patrol was requesting no unnecessary travel through mid morning on Sunday. I called my Associate Pastor and he agreed that we should cancel. So I called the media, who must have been overwhelmed at that point as none of my calls and emails were ever published, and called some of the parishioners. It really was a blessing as both my Associate Pastor and I were still trapped in our houses as of 8:30 the next morning. The plows would clear our parking lots and then the wind would blow it back in. We each got to celebrate one mass, he in Garner and I, without a deacon preaching, in Forest City. We even had to cancel the communal reconciliations we had scheduled for this afternoon because the wind continues pushing the cleared snow back out on the roads. And I've spent more time in the rectory in the Forest City Rectory than I have since I was assigned here. It's now 6:00 on Sunday and I've cancelled all but four of the original fourteen liturgies I was supposed to do this weekend.

In the future, I hope I can make my decision by noon on Saturday and it's better to be safe than stuck in a ditch somewhere between here and Lake Mills. Although, hopefully this will be the last time we'll get a snow storm on Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn't that be great?

What kind of tree are we?

2010-12-06T16:29:00.000-06:00

My Dear friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ on this first snowy weekend of winter. A few weeks ago, the National Christmas Tree came through Britt. From what I understand, one of the guys who is in charge of taking it from Wyoming to the Nation’s Capital wanted to stop through Britt to pick up some cookies from his grandma and, from that request, Britt became a stop along the route. If you read the write up in the newspaper, you know that it arrived on time and left on time. You know that there were songs by children and several politicians spoke, even politicians who only spoke at most a sentence or two. You know that we sent ornaments to President Obama and the First Lady to hang on the Christmas tree. There were a lot of really nice things in the article. You know what was totally missing? Any mention that the ministerial association put together a program involving a reading of the traditional story The Tale of the Three Trees or that one of the minister’s in town read a prayer at the ceremony. I don’t mention this because we demand attention inasmuch as to point out that the religious elements intentionally or unintentionally were complete excluded from the story.

The gospel today tells the story of John the Baptist. Last week we started hearing from the Gospel of Matthew and you can kind of tell that Matthew has a great deal of respect for John the Baptist. First of all, he writes that John appeared in the desert of Judea, which almost seems magical. Elijah was supposed to appear when the end times were near so it seems as though Matthew is indicating that John the Baptist is Elijah who has returned. You might remember that the Old Testament figure of Elijah was taken up in a fiery chariot. John the Baptist may not have the fiery chariot but his rhetoric is fiery enough to take its place. John dresses like a crazed prophetic monk wearing clothing made of camel’s hair and a leather belt. He enjoys a balanced diet of honey and locusts and, yet, despite appearing to be totally nuts, draws all kinds of people to his baptism of repentance. He’s the exact opposite of a mega church pastor in lifestyle with the same popular result.

John’s message to both the liberals and the conservatives of his day was the same: “Produce good fruit! …every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” I prayed about this and something occurred to me that makes this statement quite striking. John is preaching this message from the desert, a place where a tree is valued simply because it can provide shelter. When you are in desert heat, you may not need figs or apples or pomegranates. Just having a place where a person could sit and rest outside of the heat of the sun makes the tree worthwhile. But, not for God. Trees that just sit there not producing good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. They not only need to look pretty, they also need to be a source of nourishment.

So, John is telling us that we need to produce good fruit or we will be cut down and thrown into the fire. What are the good fruits that God expects us to produce? It seems to me that the first reading helps us know what our good fruit should be. “…the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them… There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea.”

There is so much hurt and so many divisions in our world, our church, and our family. That’s what upsets me so much about how the article didn’t mention the fact that a group of ministers put together one program to help people remember that the Christmas tree is more than just a storage place for presents. Our Churches are not yet united but at least we’re working on accomplishing the good work we are called to by our heavenly Father. Yet, not only churches are called to heal divisions. All of us are called to this work of forgiveness and unity, especially during this Advent season. Isn’t it time to call up that relative that you got into a fight with years ago and offer forgiveness? Maybe it’s time to call up that old friend that you haven’t talked to in some time and reconnect. Or maybe it’s time to sit down with your mom and dad and admit that you were the one who stole that $20 from them and that you’re very sorry. Now is the time to produce good fruit and stop sitting around hoping to be shade for someone.

Be Prepared

2010-11-28T18:40:00.002-06:00

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit as we enter into the watchful season of Advent. Prior to coming to this assignment, I sat on a board at Iowa State University called the Institutional Review Board or IRB. The IRB was responsible for making sure that research done on human subjects was being carried out in as ethical a manner as possible. Most colleges and universities have and IRB. We would be handed the paperwork for anywhere between 8 and 20 research studies and, in the course of one week, have to read everything and make sure the people participating in the research wouldn’t suffer unnecessary hardship. Most of the time that we found a problem, it was something very technical like they forgot to have a space where the person could print their name as well as sign a form of consent. But, sometimes we would find that a student hadn’t thought about how their research could affect a person with diabetes or with a heart condition or someone who didn’t have English as a first language. It was our responsibility to make recommendations to help the person be prepared.

Our Readings today help us enter into this holy season of Advent, a season which seems almost fixated on preparation. The second reading today from Paul’s letter to the Romans, in particular, uses several images to encourage us to be prepared. Paul encourages us to be awake, to throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Paul also encourages us to put on Christ. One of the commentaries that I read said that what a person wore during the time of Christ marked who they were. That’s probably not too surprising for us. Even today, when I’m in Buffalo Center, I see people the blue of North Iowa. When I’m in Lake Mills, I see the Blue and Gold of Lake Mills. When I’m in Forest City, I see a lot of the Red of Forest City. Each of these, obviously, delineates support of your local High School. What does it mean to put on Christ in today’s world? In early October, I started seeing and hearing advertisements for Christmas sales. The clothing of secular society means that Sunday afternoon should be spent in the mall searching for that perfect gift. The clothing of Christ says we should honor God on the Sabbath. The clothing of the world says that we should set out our Christmas decorations and start listening to Christmas music right now so that we’re sick of it by December 25, let alone January 6 when the Christmas season comes to an end. The clothing of Christ knows that we need to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ before we celebrate his coming.

The gospel warns us to be prepared. Jesus uses the story of Noah and the flood as well as the parable of the thief to illustrate the unexpected nature of Christ’s coming. He says, “Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. Therefore, stay awake!” As we enter into this preparation for the coming of Jesus, I think this is the most important message for us to hear. Don’t get lost in the gift giving and decorations of the season. If you were to look Jesus in the face tomorrow, what would be your greatest regret? What do you have to do to be free from that remorse?

Sometimes you get short homilies

2010-11-24T18:56:00.002-06:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit. For the past year and a half, Father Hertges and I have been in a leadership training course called Good leaders, Good Shepherds. We have been learning techniques that will help us be better pastors. The challenge has always been to make sure that we are following Gospel values of leadership first and foremost and using skills of business when they support and correspond to those Gospel values.

The gospel today shows us Christ’s vision of leadership. As he is hanging on the cross, he is mocked by powerful soldiers to use his power to come down from the cross. Even one of the convicts being crucified with him wants to preserve his earthly life and echoes the mockery of the soldiers by asking that Jesus remove himself from the cross. There is only one convict that truly understands that Jesus true power is in salvation. He says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

On this Christ the King Sunday, we don’t think of a king in beautiful robes seated on a royal throne. We contemplate the King of heaven and earth enthroned on the cross for our sins and echo the sentiments of the good thief, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

It’s a call to discipleship not a secret plan to blow up the world!

2010-11-14T14:00:00.000-06:00

My Dear brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy spirit on this cold and snowy weekend. As we get to the end of the liturgical year and approach the season of Advent, I’ll admit to you that I think most Catholic priests do a crummy job of preaching these readings. Most of us don’t want to deal with them because they do seem so vengeful and not at all the loving, forgiving, hugging God we want to preach. Our first reading talked about the proud and evildoers being burned to death. The gospel has a whole litany of things that will precede the end times: wars, insurrections, plagues, famines, awesome sights and mighty signs from the sky, and even persecution from the government, family, and acquaintances. I can understand why most priests would rather talk about the second reading from St. Paul where he says that we are all expected to contribute to the body of the Christ, the church, instead of just taking from it whatever we can get. If you don’t work to bring people to the church than you shouldn’t eat the body of Christ, or at least some priests will say this weekend. And, don’t get me wrong, I agree. It’s an important message. Just not for today.

Today, we focus on the end time. Why do we do so? If you turn(ed) on a TV on Sunday/this morning around 7:00 and watched a televangelist, you know why. They read passages like we read and then point to things happening in the world as though there is a one to one relationship. There’s an earth quake in Haiti and it mentions earthquakes in the gospel. We’re clearly in the end times. There’s a famine in Africa which is also mentioned in the gospel. End times. There’s a mysterious plume of smoke in California. That’s clearly a awesome sight and mighty sign from the sky. I think I can Jesus from here! They say that all these signs point to the end times and then start a narrative about how it will all come about. There seems to be three components that they aren’t sure about the order of: tribulation, judgment and paradise. Some say that we will be judged and taken up into heaven before the tribulation begins. Others say that we will be judged and taken up to heaven in the midst of the tribulation. Still others say that judgment will happen after the tribulation has ended. I can still remember talking to a shocked fundamentalist preacher who asked what the Catholic Church’s stance was on this. I looked at him and told him that we don’t believe in a theology of the end times that didn’t exist prior to 1800 and one that seems intent on missing the entire point of the gospel when it comes to the end times.

In the Gospel, Jesus acknowledges that there will always be suffering. Even if we could find a way to make peace throughout nations, there will still be natural disasters, disease, and the presence of evil to make life difficult. Jesus isn’t giving a secret treasure make to those who understand about how things are going to unfold in the end times. He’s trying to encourage us to be active evangelists, to speak and live our lives as though the Gospel does matter. The gospel is a mighty fire that will burn us alive if we don’t live out its precepts and invite others to do so as well. Jesus even says not to worry if you feel unworthy or unprepared. He will speak through you and tell you what to say if you have your heart open. I’ve heard many people say they don’t feel as educated about the Bible or about the faith as others, in particular our Protestant brothers and sisters. Do not be afraid! You may be surprised what Jesus will do through you if you are opn to it.

What’s what we have to keep in mind about these upcoming end-times readings: they aren’t there to scare us. They aren’t there to give us a detailed account of the end of the world they are there to encourage us to witness to the power and the glory of Jesus Christ in our everyday words and actions. Huh. Maybe my brothers priests are right. Maybe the whole point of the end times is that if we don’t work to build up the body of Christ, we shouldn’t eat and drink the body of Christ.

One of the crazy things about being a priest...

2010-11-11T13:18:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you get to know one of your parishioners and really like him. Your personalities click; he likes to talk and you like to listen. You laugh with him. He opens up to you and tells you his greatest hopes, dreams, fears, and aspirations. You tell him what you love about priesthood and why you can't imagine yourself ever being happy being anything but a priest. He is one of the few people you talk to who can see that priests and married people have more in common than not. You get to know his family and look forward to seeing them at church and visiting them.

And then their family calls you and asks you to come and be with them as he dies. You wan to be there so you go and are strong with the family, praying the prayers for a good death as everyone breaks down around you.

And then they call you and ask you to do the funeral. You do what you can to make it a meaningful celebration of the life of this man and give people hope in darkness. You walk with them to the cemetery and help them to say goodbye led by the ritual of the church.

And then, as a priest, you jump right back into the rest of your life. Brides still want to schedule their weddings. The next funeral needs to be planned. That one parishioner needs to come talk to you about something of great importance in his church. That other parishioner wants to come and complain because I'm not spending enough time with someone. And all you want to do is sit for a few hours and mourn the fact that your friend died. You want to be sad for his wife and his kids.

There's a part of me that admires the priests who keep a distance from their parishioners. Unfortunately, I don't think I could do that. It's not me. My heart is on my sleeve. It's one of the crazy things about priesthood. We have to be immersed in the life of our people so that they trust us while being separated enough to help them in times of trouble. Please keep us in your prayers.

We believe in the resurrection...

2010-11-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. As I reflected on this week's readings, it reminded me of a story that I heard from a Baptist. I make one slight alteration to the story.

“There was a man who died and went to heaven and was being shown around by St. Peter. As they went from cloud to cloud they came to various doors which St. Peter would open. One showed a large group rolling on the floor and talking in tongues. "Our Pentecostals" he said. Next was a serious ritual. "Our Jewish people" he replied. Then another ritualistic service. "Our Episcopalians". At the next cloud, he didn't open the door but instead put his forefinger to his lips in the hush motion and they both tip toed past. Once past, the man asked what that was all about!? "Those are the Catholics", he explained. "They think they are the only one's here".

Our readings today deal with eternal life. The first reading and gospel, in particular, make some very interesting clarifications about eternal life. The first reading is taken from a book of the Old Testament that you will find in Catholic Bibles but not in Protestant or Jewish Bibles. Both 1st and 2nd Maccabees describe some of the most violent, horrific stories in all of scripture. There are stories about war and torture. This story of the seven sons is particularly gruesome. It tells the story of a mother and her seven sons who are being tortured to death because they will not violate Jewish dietary laws. The three sons each add an interesting detail about the afterlife as they are being killed. The first professes faith that there will be a resurrection, a fact that was still relatively new at the time this book is supposed to have been written. The third son speaks about a bodily resurrection that will restore a certain wholeness to his body. In other words, if a part of your body is ever removed for some reason, according to this son, it will rise and be returned to you on the last day. The fourth son adds another interesting wrinkle to the whole story by saying that, not only will he and his brothers be raised, but his executioners will not be. All of this probably sounds rather matter of fact to us but, for them, they would have been professing faith in something totally new and not clearly understood in the Old Testament prior to this.

The Gospel, likewise, tells a story involving seven brothers but it’s really doubtful that the Sadducees were referring to the story in Maccabees when they posed this question to Jesus. The Sadducees were partly a religious group and partly a political group. They were strongly in league with the Romans who were occupying Israel and very wealthy because of that association. They believed that only the first five books of the Bible were authentic and, since, as I said before, resurrection is not mentioned in the first five books of the Bible, they didn’t believe in it, which was a good thing since the Pagan Romans likewise didn’t believe in it. They concoct a story about a barren woman who marries seven brothers, all of whom fail to have children with her. The question is raised regarding whose wife she will be in heaven. Jesus’ response avoids their question altogether and, instead, answers the real question they are trying to ask. They aren’t really concerned about marriage. They’re concerned about the afterlife. To prove this, Jesus looks at their scriptures to prove to them that it exists. On Mt. Sinai, when God revealed his name to Moses, he refers to himself as the “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And, since God is not God of the dead but of the living, they must be living in God’s eyes and, therefore, there must be an afterlife.

Now, we may look at this argument and say that it’s pretty weak. But, keep in mind he’s talking to Jewish Rabbis! This would have been an incredibly strong argument in their eyes since he used the scriptures they think of as holy to prove it.

In the end, part of what is making Jesus’ response seem anemic is that we cannot fully understand what it means to be in heaven. And there is so much mystery, confusion, and fear surrounding death because of this. On the one hand, our faith tells us that we should be confident that those who have died in faith will rise on the last day. But, on the other hand, it’s not like we have incontrovertible evidence that heaven exists. Who will get to go to heaven? What will heaven be like? Are there really gates surrounding heaven? Did St. Paul really make it to Spain before he died or is that just a legend? Who killed John F. Kennedy? Will I wear clothes in heaven? These are the questions that just pop into my mind when I think about eternal life. The toughest part about heaven is that we won’t know much about it until we actually get there. In some ways, heaven is like a gift, a present. We don’t know what’s inside it but we know it’s going to be incredible!

No homily again!

2010-11-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend in Ames watching a dominant Iowa State football team crush the hopes of Kansas in finally getting a win this season. It was so good to see former students and residents and hang out with friends. Being back there gave me hope that I will know most of the parishioners in my parishes and not just know their faces.

I also heard one of the finest preachers that I've had the privilege of calling my pastor preach. The central message that Father Jon Seda preached was that God loves us just as we are and loves us too much to let us stay that way. While acknowledging the seeming contradiction of those two statements, he did a wonderful job of saying that it points to the enormity of the mystery of God. God can hold two things together that we believe are contradictory because he is God and we are not. It really was a beautiful reflection on God's love for us.

The short version

2010-10-25T21:23:00.001-05:00

I never had a final version of my homily for this weekend. I had a first version that got slightly revised and re revised on Sunday. I'll try to type up a better version in the next few days.

The point of my homily from this weekend was that both pride and humiliation make us not want to be part of the community. Pride makes us believe we are better than every one else. Humiliation makes us feel like we are worse. The real gift that the tax collector has is that he recognizes that his sin, his actions, have cut his relationship to God and neighbor off. He comes to seek forgiveness from God to be justified as part of the church.

Part of the reason I included humiliation in the homily despite the fact that it wasn't explicitly in the readings was because of all the media attention on high school and college students who committed suicides. People don't often know that, by showing others who commit suicides, it makes suicide seem like an appropriate response. I tried to emphasize that nothing is so humiliating as to be beyond forgiveness. I emphasized that anyone who is thinking about suicide should talk to someone they trust; parents, teachers, me, or any other adult they trust. But I know that students who are in this position either feel like they have done something that is beyond forgiveness or that they have a problem that is beyond solving. We have to keep our eyes and ears open to the hopeless around us in order to be the hope of God.

"But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

2010-10-19T10:42:00.000-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. By now, you’ve probably all figured out that I’m an Iowa State fan. I know it probably comes as a total shock to discover that it’s not because of Iowa State’s dominance in sports. It actually goes back to my neighbor who would invite me and my brother to Iowa State games with him when his wife couldn’t use their season tickets. It was always a lot of fun to go to the game even the years when you were fairly certain that Iowa State was going to lose. I can remember one Saturday, not all that different than this one, when I was home alone watching Iowa State on the TV. For once, it was a really close game and Iowa State had the ball with not too much time left in the game. They had a long drive down the field filled with mistakes and setbacks but they managed to convert on third down each time. And I was praying the whole time. I even went to the wall and took our sick call crucifix (pull it out) and set it up on the floor next to me so that Jesus could watch the game with me and I started to pray my newly learned prayer, the memorare: Remember, O most gracious virgin Mary that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you, o virgin of virgins, my mother. To you I come. Before you I stand sinful and sorrowful, o Mother of the Word Incarnate. Despise not my petition but in your mercy hear me and answer me.”

I prayed it over and over again and it seemed like, when I would pray, they would move the ball forward and, when I stopped to celebrate or get a drink, they would flounder. With seconds remaining, Iowa State scored a touchdown that turned out to be the winner when they stopped the run back by the opposing team. I jumped up and celebrated and then it hit me: Iowa State had won and IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF ME!

I felt like Moses must have felt as he watched the battle proceeding in the first reading. As long as his arms are raised, the Israelites succeeded in their quest of winning. When he got tired and dropped his posture of prayer (put your arms out) a posture Jesus would have had on the cross, they lost. With the help of Aaron and Nur, he contributed to the battle by invoking God’s blessing. I kept my prayers going to God and, therefore, Iowa State won. The question that always comes up when something like this happens is why did God listen to my prayer and not to the fans of the other team? Did we just have more fans praying? What did I do right that time that didn’t work the next time? And, If it is an act of God, how can we get God to do it when something more serious happens like cancer? This past week, I’ve had several interactions with some really sick people, people who knew they were probably going to die because of the sickness they have. I prayed with them, anointed them, and did my best to cheer them up. However, I know from experience that a lot of times I will see these folks again when I celebrate their funeral. Why wouldn’t God heal them from their disease? What’s the use in letting Iowa State win if people are going to die?

The gospel today provides a really interesting answer to this question. Jesus tells of an unjust judge who answers the plea of a poor widow because she is so persistent in asking for his assistance that he just wants to be rid of her. He says, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" In other words, the point of God’s answers to our prayers is that we may have faith in him. But faith shouldn’t be something forced on us. There’s got to be an element of trust despite some evidence to the contrary in faith. If God answered all our prayers and solved all our problems, we would feel dependant on God instead of manifesting faith. God would basically be a sugar daddy that we call upon when we need something instead of a loving Father with whom we long and yearn to spend eternity.

We rejoice when God answers our prayers the way we want but it must manifest in us faith. Otherwise, when God doesn’t answer them the way we want, we will lose faith. If God doesn’t answer your prayer the way you want him to, will he still find faith in you?

I know my people and they know me.

2010-10-13T15:56:00.000-05:00

This week is what I jokingly refer to as "birth week". It started last Saturday on the Memorial of St. Denys and finishes this Saturday on my actual Birthday. I try to use it as a time to reflect on what's happening in my life positive and negative. I tend to look on this as a deeply personal experience of self improvement and renewal. And, to be honest, I know there are a lot of very negative things that I need to work on and a few good things that I've changed from last year.

This morning, after mass in Duncan, I went with the kaffeeklatsch people to Hardees for breakfast. As you can read in this past weekend's homily, I really do think of this as a great chance to interact with a group of my parishioners to hear what's happening in their communities. For instance, I learned that the farmers aren't even having to dry their crops this year because the moisture level is just perfect. That saves them money and means that they'll hopefully be taking home more money.

I noticed at mass that there were a larger number of people than normal. I figured that the mass intention really drew the people. Then, a larger number than normal came out for coffee. I figured that it was because they were finishing work in the fields and had the time to come back to mass. Then, they handed me my Birthday present: AN AWESOME IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY HOODIE! They were there for me. Wasn't that nice of them to do that? I was very happy. So happy, in fact, that I was kind of speechless. It reminded me briefly of my second year at Iowa State when a group of students did the same thing for me. People love their priests.

Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.

2010-10-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on this incredible weekend. What an incredible joy to be with you this weekend. Hasn't it just been a beautiful this past week to watch the trees begin to turn colors and watch the fields begin to be cleared? And I have to admit that I was at least a little afraid when it got so cold last week that we were headed for an early winter and, instead, praise God! We got a few days of 80 degree weather. What a great joy!

Part of what I love about this assignment is that, for three of the seven days of the week, my breakfasts are covered. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, I get invited out with a group of parishioners for breakfast. It's great for two reasons: First because it lets me sit and get to know the daily mass folks and hear some of what's happening in their lives. Second, because I usually get a free breakfast because one of them picks up my tab. I always appreciate the people who buy the food for me but I have to admit that sometimes I forget to say thank you. I think it's just one of those times when a kindness becomes so automatic that we can forget that important spirit of thankfulness.

In both the first reading and gospel, something unusual happens, something miraculous. In b oth cases, men were suffering from a then unknown skin and upper respiratory disease that was called leprosy that we would probably call Hanson's Disease. It had a somewhat similar social stigma (Alliteration!) as AIDS or other incurable illnesses have today. Although, since the transmission process was a mystery, there was even more of a feeling of avoidance on the part of people. So, in both the instance of Elisha the prophet and Jesus, they are putting their ministry in jeopardy by approaching these lepers.

In the case of Elisha, he orders the man to be washed seven times in the Jordan River, This act, in which Christians see the foreshadowing of baptism, purifies the Gentile Naaman of his awful disease. Naaman is so excited to be free from leprosy that he becomes Jewish. He sees in his miraculous cure, a mark of the one true God and so becomes a Jew to give thanks to God for the gift that he was given.

Jesus, on the other hand, doesn't just encounter one leper, but an entire colony of them. Part of this may have been due to the fact that, if you had leprosy, you were expected to live outside the confines of the city. So, rather than fed for themselves, the lepers probably formed a sort of shanty town and took care of themselves there. That's what the scripture writers are probably referring to when they said that Jesus was entering a village. It was, in a sense, a place where people went to die so you wouldn't separate out people of different races or religions. That's why it's amazing that, when Jesus sent these ten lepers on their pilgrimage by which they are cleansed, only one returned. It's not that the others weren't giving thanks to God. Each of them would have headed of to their respected temples, the Samaritans to Mount Gerizim and the Jews to Jerusalem, where they would have given thanks to God and been cleared to lead a normal life. Only one goes back to thank the person that did it for him instead of first trying to be able to get cleared to lead a "normal life".

I think that, in our modern world, it's easy to forget to give thanks to God for the blessings he puts into our lives. We live in a world where cynical, sarcastic comments are considered to be the pinnacle of humor and where people who walk around with a sense of awe are considered simpletons. Just think of Ned Flanders from the Simpsons. He gives thanks to God for things and is considered a moron for doing so. We just think we are entitled to good things and that the truly miraculous things in life deals with God doing amazing things for us like curing leprosy, winning the lottery, or being given a 42 foot long Winnebago with Iowa State logos and two bathrooms...not that I expect anyone to get one for me. Yet, if that's our attitude, we miss so much that God gives to us. We miss the times when people give us a drink of water or break off part of their sandwich for us. We miss the simple joy of seeing a healthy, active child being screaming his way out of church. We miss the mundane joy of watching leaves turn colors because it happens every year. What's the use in getting excited about them? All of this was put here by God for us to let us know how much he loves us. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give Him thanks and praise.

It’s not long after we feel a sense of fatigue that a sense of frustration sets in...yet hope prevails

2010-10-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful, if a little chilly, Sabbath eve/morn. I was recently visiting with a friend who, at one point in his life, worked cleaning houses. By all accounts, he was fantastic at it. He didn’t charge very much so that busy, middle-income families could afford his services. I even talked to one of his clients who told me that he worked incredibly hard and got things extremely clean. He’d vacuum, mop, and shine all the floors, dust and do even that most dreaded of all cleaning responsibilities, windows. He always told me about the little old ladies who would say to him as he left that they had never seen their houses as clean as they were when he did them. Yet, if you were to walk into his house, you’d never even think it possible that he could clean anything. There is junk of the floor everywhere, the windows are covered with dirt, and his sink is filled with dirty dishes. I always tell him that it reminds me of walking into a college dorm room. He just laughs and says that when he and his wife get home, they don’t have time or energy to do housework. They’d rather spend time with each other or with their kids. My friend realized that he could clean people’s houses and then walk away and not care what they did with them for a week. But, he couldn’t have the same attitude toward his own house. Every time he and his wife would clean the house, his three sons would have the first part dirty by the time they finished the last. So, rather than play catch-up all day long, they just gave up and let their house go to pot.

I believe it’s not long after we begin to feel constantly fatigued that we also begin to feel an overarching sense of frustration. We only have to ram our heads against a wall three or four times before we realize that it’s not helping but, when he can’t find something that does help, don’t we often look towards the wall and wonder if we just weren’t doing it right?

Last week we read the gospel of the Apostles being sent forth to do ministry for the sake of the kingdom of God. Today, as the Apostles return, we hear some of the processing that took place with them to help them make sense of what happened. It appears from what Jesus is saying, that some found the time rather trying. Some of the apostles were using the powers that Jesus gave them last week to make themselves feel important and powerful. Jesus is trying to emphasize to them that they need to have the same humility that they expect from a servant who serves his master after a long day of work. The attitude Jesus is trying to foster is one of humbly and constantly working to do God’s will while helping others to do the same.

I believe that this is a direct challenge to us as Catholics in today’s world. Even though there are still the more obvious attacks on human life, we live in a time in which there are more subtle, less direct attacks on human life than ever before. There are more abortions taking place in this country than ever before, with the most per capita in the world taking place in our own back yard, in Iowa City. Stem cell research, invitro fertilization, and other medical procedures are used by the very people that we rely on to preserve and prolong life to end it prematurely. It's possible to spend all your time just on that issue and debunking the myths and lies the pro abortion forces put out. But, if we do, we miss out on the poor and hungry. There are tens of thousands of people who die each day because of hunger. Even when we as a country promise to help those who are suffering from hunger, the way we did for the people of Haiti, all it takes is one senator to hold up the funding. There are so many issues that demand our attention. The problem is that it takes so much time and energy to combat that culture of death that it seems overwhelming. Learning the facts to counteract the lies told us by pro-abortion pundits could alone be a full time job and abortion is just one of the issues in the larger fight to protect human life. It’s much easier to hope that church leaders and other moral people will do it or, worse yet, to bury our heads in the sand in frustration and let the culture of death continue to darken our world. We can’t lose hope. We need to do whatever we can to combat the culture of death and show respect for the gospel of life in our country and in our world.

I believe it’s not long after we feel a sense of fatigue that a sense of frustration sets in. We are a people of hope, a religion of hope. We are people who gather because we believe that one who died has come back to life. We must live that hope in our lives. We must speak out for those whose voices are not heard; the unborn, the poor, and the oppressed. We must be their voices despite the fact that so often we are ignored, misunderstood, and maligned. And, when we have done all that we have been commanded, we can look in God’s loving, joyful face and say in all honesty and humility, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were supposed to do.”

More thoughts on the rich man and Lazarus

2010-09-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

One of the things that struck me about the story of the rich man and Lazarus after I had prepared my homily is how selfish the rich man is throughout the story. In life, he only cares about his own comfort and in death he will do and say anything to get out of torment and return to his good life.

The thing is, I don't think most people, myself included, notice when we are being. In the past, I've worked with some of the most selfish people in the world. And these were church workers. They would only do projects if they could be in charge of them and stand at a microphone at some point to take credit for what they'd done.They would scream about collaboration and working together while only showing up to and working on their own projects. It seemed like collaboration meant that people should stop what they're doing and work with them on what they're doing. And, in the heart of it, on more than one occasion, I had to face the fact that I was behaving the exact same way as they were.

So what can I learn from the rich man and Lazarus to help me not fall into this trap in the future. In other words, what should the rich man have done for Lazarus? In some ways, all the rich man was doing was going about his daily life and expecting Lazarus to do the same. There's no sense from the story that Lazarus ever asked for help. There's no sense that the rich man had even the slightest bit of knowledge about the plight of Lazarus. Is that the real "crime" of the rich man? That he didn't pay attention to one Lazarus at his door who longed to eat the scraps that fell from his table? It would have been easier to change that attitude back then. He could have asked Lazarus to be a servant and paid him in food. There weren't labor laws. There weren't unions. The government didn't "interfere" in what you did as an employer. But, let's say that he just basically didn't need Lazarus. He's got more than enough servants as it is. Lazarus would just go from laying outside the house to laying inside it. Sure, he would have been more comfortable but why is that the responsibility of the rich man? Wouldn't his house have simply become filled with Lazaruses eating the scraps from his table?

Some have seen in this parable a call from God to divest ourselves of any unnecessary property. Basically, they say that we should not have so much in our lives when there are so many in this world that have nothing. I totally agree that is one message from the parable. Yet, a parable is given that name because it is more like an onion than a stop sign. It doesn't just have a one-for-one corresponding meaning but, instead, has layers of meaning that get stronger and stronger the deeper you go. And, for me, a slightly stinkier part of this story is that the rich man still only views other people as servants to make his life easier. The first time he pays any attention to Lazarus was when he asked Abraham to send him on an water errand. I imagine, however, that the rich man would say that he's not selfish at all. He didn't know about Lazarus during his life and now, instead of wanting to get out of Sheol, he simply wants to leave to tell his brothers to avoid the place. He simply wants to be the hero that keeps his 5 brothers from coming to this place. I bet that if you pointed out the very thing that Jesus pointed out, that if they won't listen to the wisdom of their religion they aren't going to listen to anyone, that he would still just want to get the hell out and go where his brothers are.

How many Lazaruses are out there that we cannot see because we are so focused on our own comfort or the way we think our lives should go?

Don’t forgot that once you were foreigners in a foreign land

2010-09-26T19:49:00.000-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath eve/day. One of my favorite things to do on my day off is go camping. When I was growing up, my parents had a small Winnebago that my family would pile in to take weekend getaways with friends and escape the telephone, television, and other complications of life in order to focus on building our own little community. My parents would sleep in the camper but one mark of getting older and more mature was being able to sleep in a tent next to the camper. One of the first major purchases I made shortly after I was ordained was to buy a small pop-up camper, sort of a tent on wheels. I have since purchased a slightly larger one with hard sides but I still feel like it’s important to feel like I’m sleeping in a tent so the area I sleep in is actually made of tent like material. But, my reasoning why is slightly different than when I was a kid.

One of the things I experienced in Israel was what the Jewish festival of Sukkoth. Sukkoth is a religious feast in which the Jewish people sleep outside in makeshift tents made of bamboo rods and palm branches to remind themselves of what it was like for their ancestors wandering in the desert. They’re not supposed to have electricity or telephones. They’re even supposed to leave one side of the tent open so that they have to experience nature fully. It’s literally supposed to be roughing it.

Our readings today seem both particularly apt and particularly challenging to us this weekend. All three in their own ways warn of the challenges of living a good life. In the first reading, we heard that the people who have such a luxurious life that they can sleep on couches with ivory decorations, who feast on the animals that should be reserved for sacrifice, will be the first ones sent into the struggle of living in exile. It’s this same reversal that happens to the rich man in the gospel today. To quote the statement of heavenly Abraham, “My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.” Part of what is being told here is a principle of Catholic social justice called Preferential Option for the Poor. This concept says that, as Catholics, we need to make sure that those on the margins of society, those who often have no voice, are taken care of. We need to do this both on the parish level and on the personal level. In other words, even though each of our parishes supports the less fortunate in one way or another, each of us as individuals need to make sure we aren’t stepping over the poor at our door on the way to other things. We need to give preference to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked before we worry about having a second car or having the latest piece of technology and we need to make sure our Government also takes care of the poor.

But another part that is challenging us today as Catholics is that we shouldn’t become so comfortable in our lives that we forget where we came from. Many of you don’t know that there was an entire political party in this country known as the “No Nothing Party” built on the notion that Catholics shouldn’t be allowed here because, if we are, the pope will try to take control. Some of you remember the remnants of this attitude that President John F. Kennedy had to deal with when he was elected. In some ways, we have not only forgotten what it was like for our German, Irish, and Czech ancestors to come to this country when that attitude was prevalent, but now we’ve moved from being the persecuted to being the persecutors. I hear a lot of people who speak poorly of Mexican immigrants because they speak a different language and have different traditions. Have we become so comfortable as Catholics in this country that we’ve forgotten how our Grandparents and Great grandparents spoke a foreign language and made strange smelling food? Have we become so much like the rich man in the comfort of our houses that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be Lazarus? Maybe it’s time we rough it for a while to remind outselves.

Another thought on titles

2010-09-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

Fifty years ago it would have been unheard of to call a priest by any other name than "Father (insert last name here). At some point, probably about the same time that churches started looking more like malls and less like places of worship, there began a transition. It started with Father (insert FIRST name here ) which eventually just became (insert first name here). My generation of priests express frustration at the lack of a title. We often get accused of trying to be separate from the world or of having a misguided sense of authority and power by insisting on being called Father (insert last name here). I've even been told it was during the height of clergy power and authority that the sexual abuse crisis took place, which seemed to imply to me that I should just be called by my first name or I am a sexual abuser. Of course, pointing out that the same guys that argue for only using the priest's first name are usually the ones that make unilateral decisions (it's just that their decisions are unilaterally ecclesiastically liberal) is fruitless.

I was watching reruns of West Wing this morning. President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen called a friend who is a priest to visit him. Despite the hypocrisy of the fact that the President kept calling the priest by his first name, I couldn't help but reflect that there is a certain translational property that can be applied to what President Bartlet says to what my generation of priests is asking for...

Priest.: I don't know how to address you.Would you prefer "Jed" or "Mr. President".
President: To be honest, I'd prefer "Mr. President."
Priest. That's fine
President: You understand why, right?
Priest: Do I need to know why?
President: It isn't ego.
Priest: I didn't think it was
President: There are certain decisions I have to make when I'm in this room; do I have to sent troops in harm's way, which fatal disease gets the research money.
Priest: Sure.
President: It's helpful in those situations not to think of yourself as the man but as the office.
Priest: Then "Mr. President" it is...

One could certainly argue that the decisions the president has to make in any given day are much larger than any priest does most years. I don't have my finger on a button controlling a bundle of nuclear weapons. I certainly don't determine financial policy affecting millions of dollars and people. But, as a priest, I need to be constantly reminded that my life of service shouldn't shouldn't be determined by who I like and who I don't like, who is nice to me and who isn't nice to me. When someone comes to me for confession or wants to be anointed, they get it because they ask for it and they get my time because they need it not because they are attractive, not because they have money, not even because I see them on Sundays. I am called to emulate the Father, to be the image of the Father in personae Christe and I need you to remind me that that is the office to which I was ordained.

We must design our lives to give up everything and follow Christ

2010-09-05T17:59:00.000-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath Day be with you. I hope you are all having a beautiful Labor Day weekend. I love Labor Day but I also hate it. I hate the fact that I tend to use Memorial Day to work outdoors in order to start getting prepared for winter. I believe there are two types of people in this world; those who pick things up right when they notice a mess and those who wait for a designated time to clean up everything. I know this is a simplification of people’s personality but it has often helped me understand why I am different than a lot of other people. I tend to be the latter of the two; the person who designates one day a week, usually Monday, as cleaning day. This past week, my Aunt and Uncle called on Monday to tell me they’d like to visit. They wanted to see my rectory and take some time to catch up. I quickly looked around the rectory and realized that, in many ways, I’m still not entirely moved in yet. And, by the time they got to my place on Thursday, I knew it would be fairly cluttered. So, in between two masses, several appointments, and, of course, the Iowa State game, I had to also plan in a time to clean up the rectory before my Aunt and Uncle got there. It meant for a very busy Thursday!

Whenever I find myself situations like that, I think to myself that I really wish I could just keep things relatively clean all week long instead of doing it all at once. I think of several people; roommates, family members, and priests with whom I shared a rectory, who all tried to get me to pick up my clothes, put dirty dishes in the dish washer, and put my toothbrush away. I couldn’t help but think of that as I was reading the Gospel today. Our Lord has three points that he is driving home. The first is that we need to “hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters and even our very lives” if we want to be a disciple. Jesus is using exaggeration to make a point. He doesn’t want us to become that angry person who hates the world and everyone in it. Remember that Jesus calls us to love one another in other places of the gospel. Most scripture scholars I read said that Jesus isn’t talking about feeling hate toward other people inasmuch as hating what they can do to us. In other words, the type of hate that Jesus is talking about is probably closer to the way Iowa and Iowa State football teams feel toward each other than the way North and South Korea feel toward each other. North and South Korea are willing to kill each other. Iowa State, on the other hand, simply wants to score more points than Iowa and vice versa. They don’t really hate each other inasmuch as having different goals in mind that cannot coexist. If your friends, family members, or your own desires get in the way of being a disciple, then do whatever you can do to isolate yourself from them. That’s what Jesus means by hate.

Secondly, Jesus calls us to renounce all our possessions. In other words, we not only need get rid of everyone who gets in the way of our relationship to God, we need to get rid of everything that does this as well. Sometimes these are vices in our life. Being an alcoholic gets in the way of a relationship to God. Looking at pornography and masturbating gets in the way of our relationship to God. Sometimes its not even a vice inasmuch as an excuse we use to avoid nourishing our relationship to God. I know of a lot of people who make excuses about only coming to church when it’s convenient. If they are out of town or if they stay out the night before with friends they think this is a good reason to skip mass. It’s actually a good way to not be a disciple.

Lastly, Jesus talks about taking up our cross to follow him. We do this when we make the decision each day to live our lives according to the way God wants us to live. This challenge was taken up at baptism either when the baptismal candidate or the parents speaking for him or her say they will live their lives in the practice of the faith by keeping God’s commandments. This same challenge is given at confirmation when the person is sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of wisdom that guides us in the way of holiness. We renew these promises each Sunday when we come before the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist and affirm that real presence, not only in the consecrated species but in the body and blood of Christ that is the church. In that Amen we are saying that we want to live our daily lives in such a way that truly makes us a part of the body of Christ on earth.

Life is messy. I think that, in the end, there are times when God calls us to keep the messiness of life picked up as we go and other times when a major flaw is pointed out to us and we have to spend some time cleaning it up. What are the messy areas of life that God is calling you to clean up?

Those who humble themselves shall be exalted

2010-08-29T12:51:00.002-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath day. The Archbishop met with the priests at the leadership training conference Fr. Hertges and I attended recently in order to answer a few questions we had. We met with him in a large room at the American Martyrs retreat house in Cedar Falls. I entered the room right at the time we were supposed to meet and noticed I was one of the last ones to show up. The circle of chairs in which the brothers had sat were almost completely full except for the two places right next to the Archbishop. I started to move a chair from outside the circle when I noticed the Archbishop motion for me to sit next to him on his right hand side. So, I casually strolled over to that chair and sat down on his right. Immediately a million different Biblical verses went through my head. From the Gospel of Matthew, “The Lord said to my lord, "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet" from the Psalms, “I bless the LORD who counsels me; even at night my heart exhorts me.

I keep the LORD always before me; with the Lord at my right, I shall never be shaken.” To be someone’s “right hand man” is an expression meaning that you are trusted to completely that they will put you on the side of their body with arm that they would normally use to protect themselves so that you can be the one to protect them. I felt important. I was a pastor and I was important. That feeling of self-importance lasted until I realized that actually it was just that my brother priests are kind of like their parishioners. They wanted to be close to the door so they could be the first ones out of the room.

There’s more to this reading than a simple miss manners lesson on etiquette. Jesus is showing us an image of what it will be like in heaven. What is your image of heaven? I imagine if we were to take a poll, we would all have different answers to that question. The perfect game of golf? The perfect house? A good steak cooked medium rate with corn on the cob and chocolate cake to finish? What if heaven actually was being totally devoid of all of that? No house. No car. No golf. And the way the meals are served, you have to sit next to a stinky, sick, homeless person that coughs a lot. That doesn’t sound much like heaven, does it. And yet, Jesus isn’t giving us advice on how we should set up our dinner conversation. Not even a fundamentalist believes that. Jesus is trying to get us to realize the kind of humility that will be demanded of us in heaven. Heaven isn’t a Subway sandwich shop. You can’t pick and choose what you do want and don’t want in heaven. You just get it the way it is and, to paraphrase what our parents used to say, you’ll be happy with it.

So, what’s the good news about heaven? Why would anyone want to go there if you don’t get to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it? Do you remember what you hated most about Middle School or Junior High, depending upon what they called it when you were there? Remember how it seemed like the only way people could feel good about themselves was by ripping apart everyone around them. You can’t just feel good about yourself because you’re a person created in the image and likeness of God who is loved by God as you are. You have to feel good about yourself by noticing all the flaws of everyone around you and making fun of them for it. The crazy thing is that, even though it’s most intense in Middle School, don’t we sort of keep doing that throughout our lives. We should just feel happy about who we are and the gifts we have been given but we spend an awful lot of time complaining about the people around us. I think part of what Jesus is saying is that heaven will be a place where we don’t care about others having more than we do or being treated better than us, a place where status doesn’t matter and where we learn the freedom of being truly humble. A place where “every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Seek to enter through the narrow gate

2010-08-22T18:55:00.000-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. The gospel imagery of the narrow gate reminds me of time I spent in seminary in Jerusalem. In the fall of 2000, I spent three and a half months there. It was a really cool experience, in part because of where we lived. There are two parts of modern-day Jerusalem separated by a 15-20 foot tall city wall. The new city is all outside the walls and is all built since 1960. The old city, which would be nearly impossible to navigate for people with claustrophobia, was packed inside the protection of the walls. As you walked through the gates, the streets seemed to get smaller and smaller until you reached the center of the Old City. In the place we stayed, there were two gates. The first was a larger gate that three or four people could walk through at once. This gate stayed open almost all the time. But, when fighting broke out, this gate could be shut and a much smaller door could be opened within this gate that only one person could walk through at any time.

One night, three of my classmates decided that they needed to get out and consume some adult beverages and watch the Minnesota Vikings play on Monday Night Football. These classmates decided that they would close the bar down that night, which turned out to be a really bad idea since the custom in Israel is that the bar remains open as long as there are customers there. My job that night was to make it possible for them to get back in. You see, because there was violence between Palestinians and Israelis, we had started locking the smaller gate. Several times in the night, I snuck out and opened the small gate only to have someone else sneak out and lock it back up. Finally, at three thirty, I was too tired to continue so I opened the gate for the last time and went to bed. Unfortunately, this was not only the exact time the guys left the bar but also the last time our director, Fr. Pat, checked the gate to make sure it was locked.

When my classmates arrived home, they approached the gate and, unsuccessfully, tried to open it. I’m not sure what possessed them to make the next move; exhaustion, frustration or the stupidity that comes from having one or two too many beers, but they decided to help the skinniest of them up and over the fifteen foot high wall so that he could unlock the door for the other two. Even though they failed to wake me, they did wake Fr. Pat. He heard the loud crash of a body ramming against the gate, climbing to the top, clumsily falling over the 15 feet, unlocking the gate, as well as the sounds of three adult males laughing like tee-peeing teenagers all the while. Needless to say, Fr. Pat was not happy. Let’s just say that he somewhat forcefully reminded them that they needed to be invited into the narrow gate.

In a sense, Fr. Pat was acting like a prophet that night. We 21st Century Americans tend to confuse prophets with psychics. Psychics claim to predict the future. A prophet’s job, on the other hand, is first and foremost to live, speak, breathe, taste, and even fight for the Kingdom of God. A prophet is one who sees injustice and is compelled to correct it because it goes against God’s will. A prophet is one who warns sinners to return to God before the narrow gate is shut and the people are locked out. In the Old Testament, there are specific people who operate as prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and others. All of these prophets warned Israel that they were falling away from God and told them that they need to follow closer. Isaiah, in our first reading today, warned them that the exclusive right that the Isralites had to God had been revoked and that others would be admitted to worship of the one true God.

This was a foreshadowing to Jesus’ role in salvation. Himself a prophet, Jesus came to open the doors and help all people learn to follow God. Nonetheless, in gospel today, he cautions us about being lazy in regard to the Kingdom of God. In a sense, Jesus calls all believers to have a prophetic role of spirit-filled leadership within our communities. He tells us that we must listen carefully to the Spirit breathing its teaching into our hearts or we may find ourselves, like my classmates, staring at a locked narrow door. Only, unlike my classmates, we won’t be able to limb the wall to get in.

In our times, it has become rather fashionable to believe that everyone will be saved, everyone will go to heaven. We don’t like to believe in hell because it sounds so mean and God is nice. I have yet to go to a funeral where the departed isn’t put into heaven, where mourners don’t say something like, “I know I will see Aunt Margaret in heaven some day.” We declare saints faster than the Catholic church does. Yet, Jesus doesn’t refer to the gates of the kingdom of heaven as narrow simply because we’re all going to have wait in line and take our time, like heaven is a really popular amusement park ride. What we are doing now is, in part, preparing us for the Kingdom of God. We must live our lives not as though we are entitled to go to heaven but as though we must prove to God that we deserve to be there. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough.”

Something to ponder

2010-08-10T09:51:00.000-05:00

One of my former students who is very bright and a deep thinker pointed me in the direction of an article on the website "Big Questions Online." It's a rather fascinating but theologically deep article. What really struck me was this...

It's important to understand the point I'm making here. I'm not mounting (in this post) an argument against gay marriage. I'm saying that it's inevitable, given that the deep culture-shaping power of Christianity has been shattered, and the only religion people are coming to understand is one that has no real power to bind, only to be therapeutically useful. (There's a reason that Rick Warren's model of church is doing so well -- it offers the simulacrum of traditional Evangelicalism, while focusing heavily on practical therapy). In large numbers, we are seeing those 30 and under walking away from the churches -- both liberal and conservative churches -- and not into atheism, but into an unaffiliated, "spiritual but not religious" category. They want to feel some nominal sense of spiritual connectedness, but only insofar as it ratifies their feelings. They could have formal religion that embraced their views on sexuality by becoming Episcopalian, or joining one of the other liberal Protestant churches -- but they're not. Though they still profess a preference for God, they don't want religious institution, or authority. Rieff saw this coming, and indeed said consumerist religion was the logical fallout from the eclipse of Christianity and its teachings as authoritative in the psychological life of Western man.

A religion that "ratifies the feelings" of her followers...very profound. I wonder if this is why people drop out of religion when they suffer hardship and death and why so many people want to get the crucifix out of churches. It doesn't validate feelings to think that Jesus suffered. We can accept a God who wants to hug us and love us. We can accept a Christ who offers sage advice about good living. But, we can't accept a God who calls us to put aside our feelings of personal satisfaction and comfort. Give me salvation because it will make me happy.

Either our faith grows or it dies. It will not just sit there.

2010-08-08T15:43:00.000-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I have a friend whose grandfather passed away in the late eighties. The grandfather wasn’t the richest man in the world but he did have a small farm to pass on to his 5 children. He passed the buildings on to his oldest child, a son who was so upset at the passing of his father that he let everything sit unchanged for several years. He would go and mow the lawn but everything else went totally unchanged. The roof, which was in need of repair when my friend’s grandfather died, had holes in it that let in rain and snow. The garage started to lean as though it would collapse. We used to drive by once a month or so just to see if it had collapsed but his Grandfather had built it too well for that to happen. For thirty years, the buildings that my friend’s grandfather had worked so hard to build and maintain slowly became worthless lumber. Eventually, the only thing for which they could be used was as practice for the local fire department as they burned to the ground when the friend’s uncle finally died.

The short version of today’s gospel focuses on the return of Jesus and how important it is to be prepared. We are to “gird (our) loins and light (our) lams and be like servants who await (our) master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes.” The implication is that we to be constantly prepared and not slack off. I think this is related to what the writer to the Hebrews was talking about in his or her definition of faith. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” There is a longing and a yearning that goes along with being faithful and a contemporaneous searching that goes with faith. Contrary to what our fundamentalist brothers and sisters believe, there isn’t a moment in our lives when the light switch goes on, we declare our belief in God, and we are saved. Instead, faith is a life-long journey that becomes more complicated, frustrating, and difficult as we get older. Yet, aren’t the only truly rewarding things in life complicated, frustrating, and difficult?

The example in book of Hebrews is Abraham. Abraham was first told to leave his homeland and travel to a land chosen for him by God. That would be pretty challenging. As one who recently moved, I can tell you that it’s much easier to stay where we are rather than moving. But, Abraham did so because he had faith. Abraham wasn’t just called to leave, he was called to wander in the wilderness before he would settle and it was by faith that he lived in a tent so many years. He had to trust that God would take care of him and provide food for he and his wife. In that land, Abraham was promised that, despite being quite old and passed the age of child rearing, he and Sarah would have so many children that he could start his own nation. It must have taken a lot of faith for Abraham to believe that, though barren up until this point, God could still give him children that would become a nation of God’s own people. And, a little later in this same book, it says that when Abraham thought that his faith could not be tested any more, God asked him to sacrifice the very son that he thought he would never get. This is what is meant by “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is revealed to us partially and we continue the life-long search even as our life and our faith becomes more complicated, frustrating, and difficult awaiting the full revelation of God in heaven.

We maintain our faith by taking time each day for prayer. The rosary, novenas, and the Liturgy of the Hours are but a few of the ways we can do this. One of the best ways we can do this is by making time in our weekly routine for daily mass. I was struck in the gospel today at the thought of a master who comes back from a wedding and serves food to his servants because of their vigilance. To me, this is a wonderful insight into the mass. Despite the fact that God brought us into this world and he can take us out, despite the fact that God is our master and we are his servants, God is the one who feeds us with his body and blood in the Eucharist. This is a great gift of ongoing nourishment for the church.

Ultimately, we are handed on a great gift of faith and we have a choice. We can be like the good servants who kept vigil waiting for the Lord to return or we can be like my friend’s uncle and squander all the good things that come to us. What are you doing each day to maintain the faith God has given you and not allow the difficulties, frustrations, and complications of life rot it away?

What might be the fall out...

2010-08-05T21:04:00.000-05:00

Right now, we are losing one front of the so-called culture war. From what I understand, the pro-life message is making inroads among several young people such that more people classify themselves as pro life than pro choice.

Yet, even as we (hopefully) start to liberate the lives of tens of thousands of children from the unholy scourge of abortion, we now face the cultural experiment of gay marriage. We've had it in Iowa for a while but I sort of believed that, if the most "progressive" among us in California could see the dangers of it, then there was hope that Iowans would get there too. But, once again, the will of the people has been subverted by one person who reminds us why Jesus had such antipathy to scholars of the law. Of course, I can't totally blame the judge for this ruling. The truth is that the people defending the will of the people did a really crappy job of articulating it.

Society needs to promote marriage because it is the only way that society can ensure a next generation. That's the uniqueness of marriage; it's the only situation in which the next generation will be present to "replace us". Homosexual relationships cannot naturally create a second generation. And if, as some have said, they can through adoption and IVF, can't we pretty much say that of any relationship? A single person can adopt. A man and two women can adopt. A man who used to be a woman and hiser lesbian life partner can adopt. It's not because homosexual people don't or can't love as well as heterosexuals. To be honest, I've met a lot of very loving gay people in my life. It's just that they are incapable by their very nature of benefiting society by contributing the next generation to carry society forward.

My concern is that, if we in fact lose this war it will not only affect American society leading to her downfall, but that Christianity will be forever changed as well. It's truly ironic that some of the people who broke from the Roman Catholic Church because we didn't take the Bible seriously enough are now blessing same-sex unions and choosing openly gay and lesbian leaders. Where sola scriptura when you need it? And, even though I know the Catholic Church will never fall victim to this abomination, I just wonder at what point the persecution will begin. How many priests will collapse under the pressure of gay rights lobbyists and carry out a mock wedding ceremony? When will we lose our tax exempt status because of discriminating against a protected class? When will they start putting Catholic priests in jail for committing hate crimes for refusing to marry two homosexuals?

Unless we can somehow help judges see the integral connection of creating new life with marriage, I fear it's just a question of time.

One more thing

2010-08-02T23:18:00.000-05:00

Three posts is a bit much for me in one day. But, I forgot to write this last week and wanted to do it quickly before I go to bed.

A few years ago, one of my previous assignments very sadly closed down. I asked the people in the church if it would be all right to have their presider's chair and server's chairs to use for my personal prayer space. I've used them all for several years to pray but now I've got a church connected to my rectory so I don't really need them anymore. I just walk 10 feet and pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament. In the last move, it was obvious that I need to live a simpler life. I have too much stuff! So I've found them a new home. I took them up to St. Patrick's Church in Lake Mills, Iowa. Their presider's chair kind of looked like a nice living room chair and the server's chairs started out as dining room chairs. The really neat thing is that I can continue to remember the people in the closed church when I celebrate mass in Lake Mills. I'm sure they'd love to know that their chairs are still being used to gather the people in prayer, even if it's a different church in a different location.

Being Pastor

2010-08-02T18:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went to see a play at the Guthrie Theater in the Twin Cities called Scottsboro Boys. Supposedly, the play is going to Broadway, which is really cool. It's filled with gallows humor and times when you were laughing uncertain if you should be. Before I go up to the Cities to watch the plays, I always wonder if the travel is worth it and that was exacerbated by being "in charge".

I go to these plays with one old friend from seminary and two new friends who my seminary friend introduced me to. They asked where I had moved to and I said, "I'm Assoc...I mean, I'm pastor..." And I sort of laughed and went on with my explanation of being assigned to six churches at once. I love being pastor. I requested it from the Archbishop several times before the he finally allowed it. And I've always thought I was glad the Board and the Archbishop waited so long to make me a pastor. I just wonder when being pastor will be old hat...when I'll stop needing to correct myself and get comfortable in this new skin.

… the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?

2010-08-02T17:57:00.004-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath day. History is loaded with examples of people who have been falsely written up in newspapers and websites as dead who were, in fact, still alive. Probably the most famous of these stories lies with Alfred Nobel. We probably remember Alfred Nobel because of the Nobel prizes given out each year, including the peace prize most recently won by President Obama. But, prior to that, Nobel was known for one thing. He liked to work with chemicals and searched for ways to cause larger explosions using chemicals. Eventually, he combined nitroglycerin with an absorbent substance to make Dynamite. In 1888, there was an explosion at a dynamite factory which killed 8 people including Nobel’s brother Ludvig. The initial story got Alfred and his brother confused and proclaimed loudly to the world, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Imagine for a second if that was what you read in your obituary. I’m sure part of the reason Nobel created those awards was because the very substance he created was the reason his brother died. Yet, it seems obvious that part must be attributed to seeing how he would be remembered in that obituary that forced him to change his life and seek ways to encourage peace.

Most commentators, when talking about today’s readings, focus almost entirely on the fact that possessions can distract us from the Kingdom of heaven. And, it’s true, greed is a problem in any society and especially true today. Yet, I have to admit that I think there’s something more profound going on in both the first reading and the gospel than a simple call to simplicity of life. The parable of the rich fool is Jesus’ long answer to someone in the crowd who asks him to negotiate a fair settlement for his brother who had excluded him from an inheritance. The parable talks of someone with a bumper crop who decides to tear down his barns and build larger ones in order to keep all the grain for himself. God, in an unusual speaking role, takes the man’s life and then asks this question, “the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” It’s a rather interesting question because I don’t get the sense from the story that the man was selfishly trying to keep his possessions from anyone. There’s no indication of that anyway. I think the point Jesus is trying to get across is that he had simply paid no attention to anyone else throughout his life except for himself and so his stored treasure may go to some relative who barely even knows him and will, as a result, have no appreciation for all the work he and his servants put in to making the stuff.

This is what Qoheleth from the first reading calls vanity. For him, the deepest vanity is that people work so hard to amass a fortune and then hand it on to children and grandchildren who never had to work a day in their lives. Yet, what connects the first reading and the gospel is that there is a disconnect between one generation and the next. It’s what the song writer Harry Chapin sung about in Cats in the Cradle. “we'll get together then…You know we'll have a good time then.”

One of the things that Americans have been taught is that we are supposed to work really hard in order to make sure that the next generation has an easier life. We are supposed to make any sacrifices we can in order to make sure our children have it easy. In High School, I learned this is the definition of the American Dream. Yet, I’d like to suggest that that is exactly what the first reading and gospel are cautioning us against. Our first priority shouldn’t be making sure that life is easier for the next generation, that they will have enough money to live like a celebrity. Our first priority should be to get to know our children so as to instill within them a love of God and a sense of goodness and right. We shouldn’t rely on the schools or on a visit to faith formation classes and occasional attendance at mass to instill these values. It’s what being a parent and grandparent is all about and what it means to be the domestic church. “…the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong? ”

Short version

2010-07-27T20:02:00.000-05:00

This weekend I preached about the story of Sodom. God wanted to destroy it because of the evil that was taking place there. But, Abraham talked God out of it because there could have been ten good people there. I talked about how we sometimes judge a group of people by the actions of the most and ignore the fact that there are undoubtedly good people. It's even possible that there are good people in Iowa City.

"...What if there are at least ten there?"
(The Lord) replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it."

Vengeance is mine!

2010-07-24T08:57:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out how to stop the Asian pornographer who keeps posting links on my blog! There's a way to allow members to just post things while making non members posts to be approved first. The filth monger struck late on Thursday night but I never allowed the person to post anything. Take that! I promise that any legitimate comment (even one I don't particularly like) will still make it onto the site.

Here's my weekend schedule:
Friday night: Baptism in Forest City (done)
Saturday: Funeral in Forest City with burial in Lake Mills, 110th anniversary parade in Duncan, mass in Buffalo Center
Sunday: Mass in Britt followed by mass in Garner. Afternoon camping somewhere close.

I will be in all six towns for one reason or another. I can't wait for camping. First time since coming here.

Welcome to being a pastor!

2010-07-21T22:34:00.000-05:00

I had a funeral on Tuesday on one side of my cluster of parishes and I'll have another funeral Saturday in the middle parish with a burial on the other side of the cluster. The last funeral I had before this was in February...I think. And the amazing thing is that God just keeps putting me in the right place at the right time for these funerals. I was in Britt when I found out about the first funeral so I could go over and meet his widow. And, I went to visit the man whose funeral is Saturday last night before I saw my nephew play in sub state baseball.

I chose two of my readings for my own funeral. Hopefully, it will be a long time until they're used, but I want to be prepared. I can't decide about the gospel. I'll keep praying about it. If pressed, I could always go with the same gospel from my ordination.

Good Leaders, Good Shepherds

2010-07-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

For the past year, I've been in a leadership training class with the above name. It's a good experience of taking the best practices in the business world, adding prayer and morality, and utilizing it as priests.

Yesterday's session was about problem solving. It emphasized that, when we are presented a problem, we tend to rush through the problem solving process. Priests don't often get to the heart of the real problem, ask for all the ideas for solutions, or troubleshoot problems that could arise because of the solution of one problem. My biggest problem is typical of priests. When someone presents a problem to me, the easiest solution is to personally solve the problem instead of helping them through a process of figuring it out for themselves. And then, next thing I know, I'm sitting in my office on what is supposed to be my day off resentfully solving the problems that someone else should be solving. I can see how, if I'm going to make it for the long haul of priesthood, I really need to pay close attention to this lesson.

Ora et Labora

2010-07-18T18:32:00.000-05:00

My Dear friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Part of the message of the readings for this Sunday is the importance of hospitality. Being your new pastor, I want to thank everyone who has made me feel welcome to these parishes. Fr. Huber told me good things about you and I look forward to getting to know you over the next few years. I hope you will allow me to provide hospitality for you in the same measure that you have measured it out to me.

There’s a story told about an abbot of a monastery looking over all the monks in his monastery trying to decide which one should replace him. Brother Dominic, the person in charge of the kitchen, was very dependable, hard-working, and respected by the brothers. He was generally up before all the other monks getting the food ready for breakfast and stayed late in the kitchen getting ready for the next day. The abbot was so impressed with Brother Dominic that he often thought of giving him an assistant to help him with the work but he knew both that the number of monks didn’t allow for a second person and that Brother Dominic wouldn’t have wanted someone else around to have to supervise. The abbot also thought of Brother Francis who was the most deeply spiritual man he had ever met. Brother Francis, who worked in the small print shop with two other monks, would spend many hours in the chapel each day praying long after the other monks had left. His motto was that work can wait for prayer. The other monks all wished they had as deep a spirituality as Brother Francis, even if they sometimes had to do the work that he had neglected in favor of prayer. They felt privileged just to be in his presence.

The abbot decided to switch things up a little. He put Brother Francis in charge of the kitchen and Brother Dominic in charge of the print shop. After just one day, the entire monastery was frustrated. The monks were all starving because Brother Francis never did get the food cooked and the two monks in the print shop were frustrated because Brother Dominic had done a month’s work in a day and seemed to be changing everything. After just one LONG day, the abbot switched things back to the way they were confident that he knew who his replacement should be.

One commentator that I read summed up the issue from today’s readings in these words, “Is true hospitality found in giving personal attention to the guest rather than in being distracted from that person by the duties associated with hospitality?” In some ways, it would seem that Jesus is saying that one should definitely neglect household duties when a guest is over. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her. And yet, as many women have commented to me in the past, if all we had in church was a bunch of people who spent all their time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, our structures would be in pretty bad shape.

The real lesson that Mary understood is that, at that moment and in this situation, she needed to be at the foot of Jesus more than she needed to be in the kitchen preparing food for him. In the Gospel of Luke, there’s a point when Jesus turns his entire attention toward the cross in Jerusalem. Along the way, he stops in the houses of important individuals including Mary and Martha. While there, he wants to spend time with them and tell them all about what’s going to happen to him but Martha is so busy preparing the meal, that she misses who whole point of his visit. It actually kind of reminds me of a friend that I hadn’t talked to for a long time who called me a couple of months ago. I was kind of excited to hear from him but he was so busy working on his computer while we talked that I kind of felt like I was talking to myself. I wished that, in this situation, he would have been a little more willing to listen to what was happening in my life and been willing to tell me about his own instead of being distracted by his computer.

In the end, the Abbot realized that neither Brother Dominic nor Brother Francis would be good for the job. He needed someone who could be a prayerful worker, someone who could balance the demands of life with the important work of prayer. As I begin this assignment in these six parishes, I ask for your prayers that I may cultivate this same sense of balance in my own life and be the best father I can be.

Back normal and a few other things

2010-07-16T14:54:00.000-05:00

I put the comments back to what I believe is normal. I changed it a little over a month ago because of a spammer and I'm hoping that person has found someone else to pester.

So, here's how a normal parish works. I left my rectory this morning at 7:00 am for 7:30 mass. After mass, we went to the local restaurant for some food and conversation. I get to do this three times a week in three different towns. At the diner, I got two phone calls. The first was my business manager telling me that I needed to pick up some stuff at the bank. The next was the business manager telling me there'd been a death in the town I was eating and they were wondering about arrangements. I finished eating and jumped into my car to find the house of the (now) widow. I visited with her and met some family. I went to another parish to finish filling out some stuff for the banks and then headed back to my rectory.

All in all, a pretty good start to the day. Of course, the fact that the tire for my truck decided to get a sharp piece of metal stuck in it kind of threw a wrench in it. But I got to figure out how to use my jack, which is always a good thing. And I got to drive onto the local car dealership to have them fix the thing and then they'll know who I am when I need to get a new truck. Plus, it could have been worse. I'm heading out tonight to meet a bunch of Winnebago Camper owners tonight as the local town has its WIT rally. I don't know what WIT stands for so don't ask. All I know is that it involves a bunch of people driving their Winnebagos back here where many of them were made. Should make for an interesting weekend with lots of visitors to town as I'm being introduced.

New responsibilities. New Opportunities

2010-07-15T14:01:00.000-05:00

I've arrived in Forest City, Iowa and am officially the pastor of six churches. The strange thing is that, even as I type that, I can't help but think about how little has changed. I tend be a creature of habit and I was sort of able to set up a routine before I left Ames that is working (thus far) here in Forest City. We'll see what happens tomorrow when I have mass a half hour away at 7:30...in the morning. Up until the last six weeks in Ames, I was almost never awake at 7:30 in the morning. I have a few scattered reflections thus far.

1. I wonder when it will hit me that I'm really the pastor and not just subbing for Father Huber. This is my home not just a place I'm visiting for a few days.

2. I already miss the college students. I keep thinking about them because we had a death two days before I left. I wish I was there to help process some feelings. I wish I could give Bridget one more hug.

3. I moved way too much stuff. I need to make a list of stuff that a priest should move and stuff a priest shouldn't move so that I'll know that for when I move again in 12 years. Here's a start...

Do move:
Books
Computer
Clothes

Don't move:
Bed linens
Old liturgical furniture
A Bed

...probably the best thing I could do is fill my truck once with the important stuff and, whatever doesn't fit, isn't important. Of course, that just encourages me to get a bigger truck but I'll deal with that when it happens.

Learning from suffering

2010-07-05T12:57:00.000-05:00

My Dear friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. For the past several weeks, I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on the time I’ve spent here at St. Thomas. Sometimes it happens because a former student emails, text messages, or even calls to reminisce about old times. It certainly happened two weeks ago at the coffee and donuts when you threw me a going away party in listening to the stories that people told. It also happened when I was cleaning out my office and found a note reminding me of something that I should have followed up on two years ago. To be honest, I’m still not certain if it’s too late to call that person back or not. I guess I’ll just leave it for Fr. Jack.

On Friday, I was helping a former student roof his house and, one of the other roofers came up to me and said, “You’re the priest from St. Thomas, right?” I, of course, said that I was, although I’ll admit that I wondered where the conversation would lead. He said that he was present at church when I gave a homily about God’s love. He said, he remembered that one of my examples of showing love was the Obama fist bump with optional explosion. He said it was one of the best he’d ever heard. The funny thing is that I only vaguely remember giving that homily. I sort of remember walking into the congregation to display the aforementioned fist bump but not much else. And the really crazy thing is that, even though I don’t remember that homily, I’ll never forget the ones when I got a complaint email afterwards. I think it’s always tempting to hold on to the struggles and trials of life even when life is much better, the struggles behind us, and we have learned lessons from those trials.

The first reading today from the Prophet Isaiah is dealing with just such a situation. Despite being defeated in war, exiled to Babylon, and suffering as slaves, God tells his people “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her, all you who love her; exult, exult with her, all you who were mourning over her!” The people are told to not look back on past disappointments but to live in their current condition of renewal.

The question then arises, of course, what do we do when we are in the middle of suffering? Paul answers that question in his letter to the Galatians. This letter is somewhat unique compared to Paul’s other letters because he is so disappointed by the Galatians’ willingness to believe in these people called Judaizers who want pagans first to become Jews before they become Christian. You might remember me talking about this group in a previous homily. In this concluding passage, Paul is talking about how he has been marked with the marks of Christ. The suffering Paul has felt is that the Judaizers have put so much focus on the mark of circumcision that they have driven away people he evangelized who have been marked by faith in Christ. Paul exhorts them to remember that the only mark that matters is the mark of Jesus and nothing else. It’s rather doubtful that St. Paul was talking about this but this is the passage that was a source of support for St. Francis, St. Pio of Petriclina and others who were graced to receive the stigmata and truly “bear the marks of Jesus” on their bodies. Their stigmata are a sign of their faith in Jesus and his church. Nonetheless, most of us will never have actual physical stigmata but will wear the spiritual marks of Jesus on our bodies given to us in baptism by faith.

It was in faith that Jesus called 70 of his disciples to go forth in evangelization in the gospel today. He challenges them not to bring a lot of stuff but just to go and he gives them advice on how to handle those who aren’t open to the gospel message. It’s almost like he’s trying to help them to deal with the very things that Isaiah and Paul dealt with in their writings but trying to prepare them ahead of time. On the one hand, a lot of suffering comes from our own dependence of physical objects. Anyone who has ever packed up a house or apartment knows this is true. But Jesus knows that some of their suffering will come from people who are unwilling to listen to the gospel message. Jesus first says not to be concerned if people spurn your offers of peace because your peace will simply come back to you. He goes on to tell the disciples to say as they leave the hard hearted, “'The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.' Yet know this: the kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town." In other words, the disciples had to be prepared to let go of whatever unreceptive people said and did to them as they began to evangelize.

Suffering is a confusing and frustrating thing. We tend to try and avoid having to go through it, hate every second we are in it, and hold onto it too long once it’s done. Suffering gets in the way of our relationship to God and others and makes living a holy life a struggle. Our constant challenge as believers is to know that suffering is one of the marks of being a Christian. It’s what unites us ever closer to Christ who suffered and died for us on the cross. We cannot avoid it. We cannot ignore it. We can’t even always be prepared for it. But, when it comes, we can draw strength from the one who suffered for us.

Silent Passivity

2010-06-27T14:05:00.001-05:00

I talked in my homily this morning how the real punishment that people get with excuses is being left behind. The gospel reading talked about Jesus recruiting his disciples and how several came up with excuses and couldn't go. Their punishment was being left out of the mission of Jesus and, ultimately, the Kingdom of God. But, the first part talked about how the disciples entered a Samaritan village that didn't accept Jesus so James and John, true to being sons of thunder, tried to ask God to destroy the city. But Jesus rebuked them. So, if you don't follow Jesus because you feel like you want the security of a home or want to bury the dead or want to say goodbye to family, the real way that you will suffer is by being away from God instead of something violent.

I remembered with fondness when Pope John Paul II apologized for injustices done by certain members of the church and said that we are supposed to be the persecuted not the persecutors. And then I used this to talk about Sts. Peter and Paul since this week is the patron of my little country parish where I was preaching. My point for them was that we should follow Jesus with our whole hearts just like the disciples Peter and Paul did.

I should have used incense, however since it was their patronal feast day. I regret not doing so. I feel like we only use incense at funerals and that makes it seem like something somber. But, in truth, it's a symbol of celebration and of our prayers rising to God. I'll have to think of that for the feasts of St. Patrick, St. James, St. Boniface, and St. Wenceslaus when I get in my cluster of parishes in just two short weeks. It's hard for me to believe my ride in Ames is coming to an end.

Figuring out how to say goodbye without needing to know you did a thing.

2010-06-15T20:14:00.000-05:00

This coming Sunday morning between the 8:30 and 10:30 masses, I'll say goodbye to the people of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames. The strange thing will be hanging around for three more weeks after I've said goodbye. But, I'm sure it'll go a lot quicker than I think it will and I'll be settling into Forest City before I know it.

I really haven't had all that much to do with the party. It's my responsibility to get someone to talk at it. I'm still working on that. As I do so, the challenge that I feel is from my retreat spiritual director a couple of months ago. He said he was talking to a Protestant pastor after the death of John Paul II. The pastor said that the Catholic Church was in trouble because the next Pope would have big shoes to fill. My spiritual director immediately corrected him and said that the church hates personality. We don't like it when our popes and bishops and priests become celebrities. It distracts us from the real message of the gospel.

A lot of very good people have come up to me the past few weeks and said some really nice things. The most edifying thing they say is that they will really miss my presence to young people or my preaching or my singing or something else. And, the most difficult thing I know however is that, even though they are saying that now, in five years I will basically be totally forgotten. I'll be remembered as "that one priest...you know...the bald one." The college students will have all graduated and moved on. The residents will have either moved to a different town or found things to love about Fr. Jack. It's hard to think that I've given five years of my life to this place and will be lucky to be mentioned in a sentence about associate pastors in a forthcoming history book.

But I guess that's the way it's supposed to be. It reminds me of a story that I heard when I was in Santa Fe New Mexico. There was a church that had a balcony that no one could get to. They figured you'd have to use a ladder since a staircase would take up too much space. The nuns prayed a novena to St. Joseph, patron saint of builders, and a stranger arrived on the ninth day and offered to build one for them. They obliged and left the stranger to his work. When completed, they had a spiral staircase with two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. When they went to ask the stranger what it had cost to build the stairway, he had vanished. The nuns believed that St. Joseph himself came to build it. Maybe they're right. On the other hand, maybe it was just someone who realized the staircase should speak for itself and not have a builder's name attached.

Last Sunday's Homily

2010-06-15T08:28:00.000-05:00

I talked about the importance of women in the ministry of the church last weekend because of the woman who bathed Jesus' feet with her tears in the gospel as well as the separate list of women who were included in Jesus' ministry toward the end. I talked about an important woman in my life, my Mom, who kept me humble as a child and keeps me humble now. And I talked about how one of the great gifts women offer the church is an authentic sense of humility.

I had one of those moments where my mouth was saying something that it hadn't planned to say, however. In talking about the humility of the woman washing Jesus' feet, I suddenly realized that she was prefiguring the very act that Jesus would do on the night he was betrayed to symbolize the humility of the cross. I was caught up in spiritual ecstasy repeating over and over "She was doing the very thing that Jesus would do to his disciples at the Last Supper in order to show how we should all serve each other. She was doing what Jesus wants us all to for each other even before Jesus told us to do it..." I probably read that at some point in my history and it just popped into my head but it was definitely one of those moments where I sort-of had to "pull it together" in order to make the rest of the homily work.

Change in Blog Policy

2010-06-01T10:53:00.003-05:00

As some of you may have noticed, I have an Asian pornographer who has become overly fixated on my blog. He or She will add a comment with Asian characters that are all links to various Asian-themed pornographic sites. At least I'm assuming they are as I only made the mistake of clicking on the links once. So, I'm going to limit comments to people who are followers for a while. I don't get many comments anyway so I doubt that it will affect anyone but you deserve to know not only that it is happening but also why it's happening. Hopefully, in a month or two, I'll remove this provision because the pornographer will find somewhere else to peddle their smut. In the meantime, please join me in praying for this lost soul.

More digging, more learning

2010-06-01T08:50:00.003-05:00

I did a little research into the site of my future "home base" parish in Forest city, Iowa. It appears that the church was linked to several parishes and missions throughout it's life. It moved location at least three times from west of town to downtown to its current location north of town. The parish was founded basically because of a large group of Irish immigrants in the small town of Bristol, Iowa, which I can't wait to drive through to see if the first Catholic Cemetary is still there.

To me, the most intriguing fact of the history book I've been using (that unfortunately only goes until 1937) is, "The missions attached to Forest City at this time were: Lake Mills, Northwood, Thompson, Buffalo Center, and Armstrong." So, a previous priest was responsible for six ecclesial communities. I need to look up this Father John P. Taken and ask for his intercession as I begin this assignment. And, if anyone can find where Lakewood was, (No, not the one that's close to Des Moines! It'd have to be somewhere in North Central, Iowa), I'll appreciate it. I have a feeling I'll file it under the category of "places that aren't really towns in Iowa but the locals all call it that so I better learn that name if I plan to have any credibility with the locals."

The trinity: A Community of Hope

2010-05-30T20:07:00.001-05:00

My dear friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit on this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. We give thanks this day for the revelation of God, which has made clear the divine and subtle mystery of the Trinity. This mystery is definitely one of those that defines who we are as Christians. To my knowledge No other religion in the world, believes that, without compromising the unity or the “oneness” of God, God is also a trinity of persons. We do not have three gods nor are Father, Son and Holy Spirit merely three names for the same person. God has made clear through Jesus that he is one God in three persons. In some ways, it would be a lot easier if we simply talked about God and ignored this dogma of our faith because of how difficult it is to explain. It would be easier if Jesus were merely a prophet, perhaps the greatest of all prophets, sent by God to open revelation to all the world. Unfortunately, it would also mean that we are not justified in the eyes of God and, thus, not saved. Or, it would be easier if we simply believed, like the ancient Greeks did, that the angels were gods so that there are innumerable gods capable of doing whatever we ask of them. But then we would face the difficulty of determining whose god is the strongest. This could be the source a very entertaining reality show but, thankfully, is not.

In the most recent round of sexual abuse, I’ve heard a rather consistent and somewhat disturbing message being spread. It is said that the Catholic Church has good people but a bad hierarchy. I remember reading a New York Times op ed forwarded to me by a staff member at St. Thomas that expounded this opinion. I can understand the frustration that would lead a person to believe it. As I said at the Holy Thursday mass, I feel a certain amount of sympathy for people who are really struggling to have trust in their bishops. I was ordained in the middle of the mess in Boston and there’s a part of me that worries about what you all are thinking every time I reach out and pat a kid on the head or get a hug from a grade schooler.

Yet, one of the realities of having one God in three persons is that it means that community and relationship are at the very center of our Faith. The persons of God are in relationship to one another just like we are in relationship to one another. One formula that I heard in seminary was that the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit is the love that binds the two. The Holy Spirit’s love does not destroy the individuality of the Father or the Son but amplifies it so that it spills out into our lives. The Trinity’s relationship built upon love is, thereby, communicated to us, the faithful, in our daily lives. We are called to live lives that value community and take us away from selfishness.

Part of living a life of community is, to use a word coined by St. Paul in the second reading today, affliction. Relationships are wrought with affliction. It could be the affliction of being a teenager and wishing you had more freedom or the affliction of watching your teenager make bad decisions. It could be the affliction of watching an aging parent grow old and feeble or the affliction of job loss. It may be the affliction of being part of a church struggling to deal with sexual abuse or the affliction of hearing an Archbishop tell you that he needs you leave the parish you love to take on a new assignment. If we try and deal with this affliction alone, it is meaningless. When we do so from the perspective of Christian Community, from the perspective of being the body of Christ, then our affliction connects us to the Hope of Christ in Faith. And, as St. Paul reminds us, Hope does not disappoint.

Part of why we have a Christian Community, a church, to guide us that is hierarchically ordered is to keep us united by the wisdom of God. I love the first reading today which describes wisdom as existing before and during creation; joyfully playing at the foot of God and finding delight in the human race. I think this is why Jesus, in the gospel, tells us that the Spirit’s main job is to continue the wisdom, the truth, that he has begun to give to the Apostles. The Apostle’s job was to teach the truths revealed by the Holy Spirit to their successors, the Bishop’s. Yet, wisdom’s job is not done and there is always more clarification that needs to be done. We certainly need to pray for our Bishops as they struggle to understand the best way to deal with this latest round of sexual abuse. Yet, I would hope we can all see that, even as hurt and upset as we may justifiably be, we shouldn’t go to the extreme of getting rid of part of our community because they have caused us affliction. To paraphrase St. Paul again, let us pray that affliction leads us to endurance as we put up with unfair stereotypes and oppression and that the endurance leads us to the proven character of being the first large institution to deal with sexual abuse in a way that protects people and that this proven character will give us hope to help others. Because, truly, hope never fails.

Something from my next assignment

2010-05-28T13:18:00.003-05:00

As a Campus Minister, I could sleep until 8 or 9 in the morning because I would stay awake until midnight or one o'clock. Now as I start to prepare for a new assignment in July, I've been waking up earlier and going to bed earlier. My new pattern is to wake up at 6, pray, breakfast, and be on the bus by 7:30 to that I'm at work when I used to wake up in the morning. I somehow feel a lot more productive since I get all my clerical work done in the morning and go back home around 2 or so. It's amazing.

In my leadership class, I learned that the first thing I should do in the morning is do something that's not urgent but is important. So, I've been researching my future parishes one at a time. In the process, I found out that there were two parishes that have closed that used to be connected to a parish I will be responsible for. It makes sense considering what the current pastor was talking about when he said he's got a couple of extra cemeteries that he oversees. It seems like we're often willing to sell the church building but not the cemetery. One of the things that impresses me about where I'm going is that the three I've researched so far are all very old churches. All three were organized before 1900, even if their church buildings didn't get built until after. And there's a history of cooperation between them before they were eventually separated. Being a fan of history (and historical churches), I can use this as a way to bring about greater unity.

What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is an Advocate?

2010-05-23T00:19:00.001-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit be with you as we conclude this Easter Season today. Today is Pentecost, a term that can be literally translated as 50 days, describing the number of days that have elapsed since Easter. We borrow the term from our Jewish brothers and sisters, although our Pentecost feasts are very different. The Christian understanding of Pentecost, as we heard in the first reading today, is the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles in the upper room. The Jewish understanding of Pentecost, or what they call Shavuot, although taking place 50 days after Passover, is actually a feast of the grain harvest. During the time of the Temple, the Jewish people would have offered some of the harvest back to God on Shavuot as a thanksgiving for the good things God gave them. Of course, we are just starting the planting season on Pentecost so we’re far from harvest time.

Several times during the Easter Season, we heard the same chapter of John’s Gospel, chapter 14, which is a brief explanation by Our Lord to explain all the events that happened between Good Friday and Pentecost. If I were to give it a theme, I would say Jesus is trying to explain to his disciples exactly what he means when he says, “Peace be with you” and “Do not be afraid.” He is trying to explain to them what will happen so that they will be prepared. The apostles have been Jesus’ followers and will now take on the yoke of leadership that Jesus had provided for them during his earthly life. In our calendar, we believe that 40 days after Jesus’ resurrection, he ascended into heaven and that 10 days after that (50 days after Jesus’ Resurrection) the church was given the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. To prepare them to receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus used a very unusual word to describe her, a word that has caused me to ask the question: What did Jesus mean when he called the Holy Spirit the Advocate? This term is usually used describe a lawyer in a trial, someone who is meant to present the best case for us to a judge. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually think about my relationship to God in legal terms. Yet, I think this is the context that Jesus is using today. And, while we may be tempted to believe we have outgrown this image of our relationship to God, let’s investigate what Jesus is saying when he uses it.

Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth in the verses right before our reading begins today. If we view the Holy Spirit as our Advocate before the Father, the first thing that we need to know is that it is the Spirit’s job to get to know our true selves in order to plead our cause. She wants to be in relationship to us throughout our life. St. Thomas Aquinas said regarding this that grace builds on nature. In other words, it’s not as though the Holy Spirit forces herself into the lives of those who don’t want to get to know her in order to force them to a life of holiness. The Spirit comes into our lives as we strive to grow in holiness and builds on and perfects the good work we are already doing. That is why Jesus said the Holy Spirit will, “teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” She not only has placed into our heart a natural law sense of goodness but remains with us in order to tell the Father all that we have done to grow in holiness.

Yet, the Holy Spirit is not only our Advocate to the Father. She is also our Advocate to the world. The Spirit of Truth guides us in our daily interactions to be beacons of light and faith even if we aren’t necessarily speaking about God, faith, or the church. The Holy Spirit gives us gifts that we are, in turn, invited to put into the service of the church. In some ways, this is what connects this celebration to the Jewish understanding of Passover: we are all given gifts and are invited by God to build up the kingdom with those gifts. Part of our challenge is to listen intently to the Spirit to make sure that the gifts we think we have correspond to the gifts we truly do have and to make sure we aren’t so involved in so many things that we cannot effectively use the gifts God has given us. As we celebrate this feast of Passover, let us be reminded of our need to get to know the gifts God has given us and to make sure we are doing our best to use them to build up the church.

Being an Iowan

2010-05-11T23:04:00.002-05:00

I am an Iowan, partially by birth and partially by attitude. I've taken sides in the famous debate over whether Iowa or Iowa State is better (Sorry UNI...you'll always be our cute younger sibling even when you beat both of us), I have visited every part of this state, and I consider pig poop a normal smell that people just need to put up with while driving.

Last week, I was on retreat. I spent a week in Missouri visiting the monks at Conception Abbey. It was an awesome week of prayer and reflection with some truly holy men. But, the crazy thing is that on Friday I felt the greatest joy at crossing the Iowa/Missouri border. It was just so good to be back home.

There's a part of me that hopes that's what heaven is like. I don't really need the perfect city with gems for roads and perfect symmetry in its construction, although if that's the way it is that's cool. I just hope I look around and feel truly at home. No more suffering. No more worrying that something was left undone. No more lying awake knowing that people will send nasty emails to you because you've got to take a stand on a controversial issue. It's like seeing the big sign saying "Iowa, Fields of Opportunities" and realizing that you belong there.

Peace which is Christ’s and not of the world

2010-05-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

May the Peace of Christ be with each of you, especially the mothers during this Mother’s day weekend. On my retreat this past week, I spent some time reflecting on the phrase from our Lord in today’s gospel, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” I couldn’t help but pause to ponder what made Jesus’ peace different than that of the world. I looked in a concordance to see other instances of the use of the word peace in the gospels. For the most part, it is used as a greeting, a use which is still done by both Jews and Muslims to greet one another. “Shalom,” in Hebrew and “Salaam” Arabic. Jesus would have greeted his Jewish followers with peace each time that he saw them just as we greet each other with a hearty hello.

There was, nonetheless, one passage that I found in the gospel of Matthew that says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” This verse prompted a question for me: Is Jesus talking about his own peace or the peace of this world when he said the above? Edward Gibbon in his book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire notes that, at the time of Jesus, there was relative peace throughout the Roman Empire that was largely kept by the sword. There were no major wars or uprisings between 27 BC and 180 AD because, in general, the Roman Emperors favored consolidation ahead of expansion. The Messiah was supposed to come and bring true peace to his people by driving out all Gentiles from the Land and set up a United Israel as a world government. That’s the peace of this world that Jesus is talking about in both the Gospels of Matthew and John that is won by the sword, the kind that he didn’t come to bring. Instead, the peace that he will bring is one brought to the church by the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

So, how will the Holy Spirit’s peace be different than that of the world? One person described the Roman understanding of peace as not so much the absence of war and conflict as the point when your opponent has been so decimated that he or she is wiped out. I think the difference between this and Christ’s gift of peace is clearly seen in the first reading today. This story from the Acts of the Apostles tells about the first real controversy in the church. While Paul and Barnabas are evangelizing in Antioch, certain Jewish Christian believers claim to have authority to explain what it means to be a Christian. They claim that you have to first be Jewish in order to be considered Christian. It would be like an excommunicated priest coming into Ames claiming to have authority to speak about who should be ordained, especially if his view contradicted the views that the bishops and pope have stated over and over again. Of course, such a person would have no authority to speak for the church and would only be causing the same division that the Jewish Christian believers did in the first reading. It’s too bad that the Gentile Christians didn’t simply pay more attention to Paul and Barnabas and simply ignore those who would try to divide them.

Nonetheless, I find Paul and Barnabus’ reaction instructive. They could have simply taken up a counter stance to say that there needs to be a division in the church’s practice. This was the way the Apostles had handled the situation with the deacons, for instance. There were deacons to deal with the Greek speakers so that the Apostles could be focused on the Aramaic speakers. Paul and Barnabas could have said that the Jewish Christians needed to maintain the Jewish laws while the Gentile Christians were free to live a life of grace, basically dividing the church in two. However, that’s not what Paul and Barnabas did. Instead, they went to Jerusalem, to the seat of Apostolic authority at the time, to get a ruling from Peter, James, and John: a ruling that removed almost all of the Jewish ritual laws for all believers in favor of the life of grace offered to the church by the Father through the Holy Spirit. They trusted that the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit and given the charism to lead the church, would not lead them astray. This action of trust ultimately lead to the peace of the church so that we could move forward with the mandate to evangelize the world.

Jesus says to us, his church, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” The peace of Christ doesn’t mean that there will not be war or conflict. As we have seen almost continually since the time of Jesus, there have been and probably always will be conflict, fighting, disagreement, and war. The peace that Jesus offers is a peace that gives us assurance that we are not so separated from God through sin that he would stop loving us. It is the peace of Christ whose death and resurrection has inextricably connected us to the Father in his loving, Spirit-filled plan of salvation. It’s the peace that calls us to trust in the teachings of the church and her apostolic successors who guide us through the violence and strife still present in this world. And it’s the peace that this world cannot give because it deals more with our internal ability to trust the church than our own ability to control and manipulate.

Learning how to be comfortable as sheep

2010-04-26T18:04:00.001-05:00

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, through our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. When I was at Loras my first year, one of my friends basically forced me to go on the Antioch retreat. I say she forced me to go on it because, in all honesty, I had made up my mind that Antioch was not going to be my thing when I first heard about it. I didn’t do retreats. I viewed them with the same kind of suspicion that one has for a cult, that simple-minded people needed them so that they could stand around and sing Jesus songs. But this friend was both particularly persistent and one of those people you just didn’t want to upset so I headed out to my first Antioch during October of my Freshman year. I can remember being surrounded by a bunch of people that I didn’t know, which was intimidating. I can remember seeing a priest not walking around in a polo shirt and jeans and thinking that that was a really weird thing. But, the thing that would have sent me driving back home had I had a car, the thing that I’ve resolved never to do at our Antioch retreats, was when they came around with a brown grocery bag and had us throw our watches into it because we were on “God’s time.” I actually tried to put my watch in my pocked quick before they came by but I got caught. I hated the idea of being deprived of my God-given right to know approximately where the sun was in the sky and what relation we were to Grenwich, England. It was just wrong and unnerving that this cult thought they could take my watch away. How dare they?

This Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday. Both the responsorial psalm and the gospel called God the Shepherd and called us the sheep. When I was in seminary, we had a rather heated debate about the usefulness of this image. In some ways, it is rather patronizing. Sheep are not exactly the most intelligent animals in the world. Being a sheep is often equated with unquestioning loyalty to the point of being willing to jump off a cliff if your friends asked you to do it. It’s what you call the person whose viewpoint you don’t agree with. Democrats believe Republicans were sheep to President Bush with the war in Iraq and Republicans believe Democrats are sheep when it comes to health care. Let’s face it, if we were writing the gospel today we’d probably say something like, “We are the dolphins, the intelligent, helpful, charming herd of the Lord”. Or “We are the Koala bears, the non-threatening, eucalyptus eating, hugging marsupials of the Lord.”

And yet, I’d like to contend that, despite its shortfalls, being a sheep isn’t really that bad. The second reading from the Book of Revelation reminded us of a deep theological reality tied to this image of sheep. The vision that John, the writer of Revelation, is having appears to be of heaven. There is this large gathering of all the saved, a group that is so large that it is beyond counting. The group are all wearing pure white robes, robes similar to the ones you may have see our newly baptized put on during the Easter Vigil and which they continue wearing in church during the Easter Season. This gathering is surrounding God who is referred to as one seated on the throne. Yet, Jesus, being depicted as a lamb, is also seated on the throne because, as we know, Jesus is fully God, “of the same substance with the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God…” And the Lamb will shepherd us by leading us to the life-giving streams of baptism and Eucharist just as blood and water flowed from Jesus’ side on the cross.

It seems to me that the writer of Revelation is saying that we are sheep because Jesus was the lamb. In case you didn’t grow up on a farm, a lamb is a sheep that has not bred more sheep. One could say that Jesus is the innocent sheep while we are the sheep who bring the baggage of original sin. Yet, we are sheep because we are the sinning but redeemed body of Christ on earth.

Part of what I find helpful in the image of being a sheep comes from the last line of this reading. Not only will God give us what we need, it also says that the Good Shepherd will, “wipe away ever tear from (our) eyes.” We, the Iowa State community, have suffered a lot over the course of the last few weeks. We’ve seen three students die: one on spring break and two last week. I’ve been visiting with a lot of you who have friends and family who are either seriously ill or have died and I have a hunch that a lot more of you are hurting about that or Jon, T.J. or Tyler than we here at St. Thomas will ever know. Just know that if you do need to talk to someone, my door and the doors of all the staff members are always open here at STA. We can’t quite wipe away all the tears but our shoulders may be able to take some of them.

Part of what is so difficult about the image the sheep is the loss of control, the same loss of control I felt by giving up my watch on Antioch. And yet, that weekend turned out to be the best thing I would do during four years at Loras College. I connected with God on a deeper level than ever before and I made friends there that would become my roommates for the next three years. I had to give up some of that control and trust God for that to take place. I had to let God be the shepherd in order to be led to life-giving streams and have my tears wiped away.

To go boldly where men have gone before...

2010-04-16T13:19:00.002-05:00

The Archbishop of Dubuque has appointed me to a new assignment. In July, I will become pastor for St. Patrick Parish, Britt; St. Patrick Parish, Buffalo Center; St. Wenceslaus Parish, Duncan; St. James Parish, Forest City; St. Boniface Parish, Garner; and St. Patrick Parish, Lake Mills. If you're not sure where any of those towns are, look at most northern and central two counties of the state of Iowa and you'll find all of them. I'm very excited by the prospect of becoming pastor and a little overwhelmed by the Archbishop's confidence in me. I'll have the responsibility of pastoring six parishes and helping a brother priest (my associate pastor) continue his formation to become a pastor. There's a part of me that wonders if the Archbishop has made a mistake. I mean, I still make mistakes and say stupid things. Lieutenant Riker was still second-in-command to Jean-Luc Picard after like 20 years on the Enterprise. And, trust me, I'm no William T. Riker.

Thankfully, as I have done since June 22nd 2002 in the beginning of the American sexual abuse crisis, I trust in the Archbishop's statement that my own feelings of inadequacy are reminders that being a priest really isn't about me. I didn't choose to become a priest, God chose me. To put it in the words of the ordination liturgy, "Remember that you are chosen from among God's people and appointed to act for them in relation to God. Do your part in the word of Christ the Priest with genuine joy and love, and attend to the concerns of Christ before your own."

Last Sunday

2010-04-16T08:01:00.002-05:00

I really didn't like my homily from last Sunday so I didn't put it here. It was one of those homilies that started out rough on Saturday and never really got polished in four times.

What was cool, however, was being part of a very unusual confirmation. In this diocese, we have three priests who have the title of Episcopal Vicar. They stand in the place of the Bishop for certain events like this. Monsignor Russ Bleich is one and he was supposed to confirm the kids. But, then he got sick. Laryngitis, to be specific. He couldn't talk, one of he few traits still absolutely necessary in order to celebrate mass. So, he gave the authority to the pastors here. The kids got to be confirmed by their pastor. That was very unusual and I'm sure they'll remember it for a long time.

I'm not saying that it should happen every year...maybe once every 20 years or so. It was nice to see the pastors working together in the same way that we ask the confirmation students to do so for the prayer.

What prompted the change in Peter?

2010-04-06T22:42:00.001-05:00

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

He is Risen! He is truly Risen! May the grace of the risen savior, Jesus Christ, come upon you this Easter day and remain with you throughout the 50 day Easter celebration. I’d like to especially welcome those of you who haven’t been here in quite a while.

For one of my summer jobs during college, I decided to become a short-order cook in a small country restaurant in Marshalltown. It was one of the hardest summers I ever had because I had to be awake at 5:30 to be to work at 6:00. I’m not a morning person so this was quite a challenge. The other challenge was the job itself. I would be handed a ticket with a list of food to prepare and I had to know the timing that it took for one piece of food compared to another. For instance, I had to know how long it took to make eggs over easy so that I could have hot hash browns and toast to be served at the exact same time. That was the hardest part of the job for me and, to be honest, I quite often had to call the owner in the kitchen to help me catch up because I’d fallen so far behind. But, I can still remember the day that I finally succeeded. Several tickets all came up at once and I started all the things that took a lot of time right away. I remembered to flip the eggs quickly for the one woman who liked her eggs runny and even remembered to push the toast down. As I completed the last ticket that day, I had this tremendous sense of accomplishment. The owner, who was not known for his warm loquacious demeanor, came back to the kitchen, patted me on the back, and said, “Good job, kid.” I had made it. It felt good.

The focus of the gospel is always Jesus. But, in the background, there are a bunch of people who interact with the savior and we see quite a transformation in one of these people today. Peter, the rock on whom our church is built, has his good times and bad times during Jesus’ ministry. Sometimes he seems to comprehend things perfectly, like when he recognized Jesus for the Messiah he is. Other times, he seems to get things very wrong, like when he thrice denied knowing Jesus during Jesus’ trial. And the amazing thing from today is that the background character is called up to the front in the course of today’s readings. In the gospel, we hear about Peter’s reaction to hearing about the empty tomb. Whereas Mary Magdalene seems to react with doubt and fear by running to tell the disciples that they have stolen his body, Peter runs to the tomb, enters it and sees the burial clothes neatly wrapped up. For him, this is the beginning, a call to faith that will continue to grow for the next several years through the careful fertilization of the Holy Spirit.

Peter makes five speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, all of which are creedal catechetical statements of belief. In other words, the student becomes the teacher by the Acts of Apostles. His bumbling errors are a thing of the past and he now speaks with the clarity of our first Pope, telling the world all about the forgiveness given to us by the cross and resurrection of Jesus. He was a witness and now he’s got to witness.

And, he calls each of us to witness to the faith. We are called to live our lives affected by the resurrection of Jesus by loving one another, especially the persecuted. We are to reach out to the lost individuals in our life and invite them to come to church with us. Maybe for some of us, the best witness you can give is to make church on Sunday a priority in your life on more than just a monthly basis. Maybe for some of you, you need to get the demons such as addiction to drugs, alcohol, or sex out of your life in order to be a witness and you need to join a group like AA or SA in order to kick the habit.

The challenge always is that we don’t feel like we can do it. Maybe we feel energized and excited now but there will be a time when reality will set in and we’ll have to commit to actually doing it. We may even remember past failures and use them as an excuse as to why we can’t witness today. Let us use the inspiration of Peter, the one who first failed before he succeeded, to commit to being witnesses to the resurrection.

Good Friday...heck it was a GREAT FRIDAY!

2010-04-02T22:30:00.003-05:00

I've been a priest for 8 years now. I've done mass almost daily for 8 years of priesthood. The one day that I'm not allowed to do mass is today, Good Friday. For the last three years in a row, I've been out at my little rural parish, Sts. Peter and Paul in Gilbert, Iowa. I know my people out there and they know me. They trust me and I trust them.

We didn't do anything unusual at Sts. Peter and Paul. But there's something awesome about knowing what to expect because I've done it all before. The Passion Gospel was so powerful. I love to speak with the people, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify Him!" It emphasizes just how privileged we are that Jesus really died for our sins.

Probably the most touching thing that happened was during the veneration of the cross. There were several parents holding children allowing the children to touch the cross. There was even a number of High School students that came forward and kissed the feet of Jesus.

I closed my homily with a quote from an early Holy Saturday Homily. "Something strange is happening -- there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear."

The Year of the Priest/Holy Thursday

2010-04-02T17:59:00.001-05:00

My dear brothers and sister in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Holy Spirit to fill us with his grace. This year, Pope Benedict asked all the faithful to pray for priests. As a priest, I really haven’t done much about this. I’ve felt encouraged by people who tell me that they are praying for me and thinking about me. And, as a priest, I can be honest enough to admit that it is always a joy to come here and celebrate with you because so many of you are complimentary of me and my ministry. Nonetheless, I have struggled to preach about the year of the priest because it seems like it would, in some ways, only affect me. Yet, in the past week, I’ve been paying close attention to the unfolding events in Europe regarding clergy sexual abuse. It’s been very interesting to find that our older brother in the faith is just now dealing with the same problems that we started dealing with eight years ago. In this light, I think it’s important to preach about priests on this Holy Thursday, this day that is considered the Institution of the Priesthood.

When the Pope asked us to reflect on priests, he told us to do so through the lens of St. John Vianney so I looked up what he taught on the matter. I found a really great passage from his writing entitled Catechetical Instruction. The Saint says, “(Holy Orders) raises man up to God. What is a priest! A man who holds the place of God - a man who is invested with all the powers of God. "Go, " said Our Lord to the priest; "as My Father sent Me, I send you. All power has been given Me in Heaven and on earth. Go then, teach all nations. . . . He who listens to you, listens to Me; he who despises you despises Me. " When the priest remits sins, he does not say, "God pardons you"; he says, "I absolve you. " At the Consecration, he does not say, "This is the Body of Our Lord;" he says, "This is My Body.”

This is an interesting point about being a priest: We don’t speak on behalf of ourselves. We speak on behalf of God. For me, this has two ramifications: it means that priests need to be cautious about what we say because people will take it as authoritative. And, I ask for your prayers for the priests who have decided to misstate church teaching because it better suits their disposition or beliefs. We should not do that. St. John Vianney says that we must be willing to speak the truth of the gospel even if it means receiving the contempt of the people and, as he says, being shot upon leaving the pulpit.

The other reality is that the priest must be the leader and model in holiness. St. John Vianney says it in the negative, “Leave a parish twenty years without priests; they will worship beasts. If the missionary Father and I were to go away, you would say, "What can we do in this church? there is no Mass; Our Lord is no longer there: we may as well pray at home." When people wish to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest, because where there is no longer any priest there is no sacrifice, and where there is no longer any sacrifice there is no religion.” In other words, the priest reminds people of God’s presence and makes God present. One of my favorite things to do as a priest is to wear my clerical clothes to things like sporting events, plays, and even a bar or two. The priest should be a reminder that God doesn’t just want us for an hour each week but wants to be in relationship with us in all aspects of our life. Since the Second Vatican Council, I’ve think this aspect of priesthood has been on the decline. Many of my brother priests say that the document on the church said that not only the priests should be holy but that all the people should be holy. And, while I agree with them on this point, it did say that we are all to be HOLY, not that we are allowed to be as unholy as we think our people are being. We are to model holiness for our people so that they will likewise want to be holy.

As a priest, I have to admit that I’m not perfect about this. I give in far too often to secular concerns and find it way too easy to allow my tongue to slip towards unkind speech. In this year of the priest, perhaps what we priests need most is for our lay people to remind us of your need for us to model God’s love and mercy. Remind us that you don’t need an entertainer or a best friend, you need someone to bring the grace of Christ into your life in the sacraments. Continue to support and love us but also call us to be the image of the Father that you want us to be.

Archbishop Levada

2010-03-31T23:22:00.003-05:00

I read this lengthy article while watching TV tonight. With a great deal of clarity, it describes the muckraking that has been happening to the Holy Father by the press.

No real homily this weekend

2010-03-27T22:35:00.002-05:00

So, this weekend is Palm Sunday. Go to church to get your palm so that you can make your cross. It's a big Sunday. We read the entire passion narrative from one of the gospels, which takes a lot longer than normal. That comes after we read the gospel about the procession with palms from the gospel of Luke.

My homily generally goes like this: This is the week where we remember the central mystery of our church. From Holy Thursday's Institution of the Eucharist to Good Friday's focus on the Cross and death of the Lord to Easter Sunday and the Resurrection, we remember all of what is at the heart of the church. I strongly encourage you all to make a point to come to church to celebrate all three days. This is our Holy Week.

To be a compass

2010-03-24T18:09:00.004-05:00

For some reason, the following dialog from the movie Mr. Holland's Opus keeps coming up in my conversation. In case you forget, Mr. Holland is played by Richard Dreyfuss and is the new music teacher and Mrs. Jacobs is played by Olympia Dukakis and is the seasoned principal...

Mrs. Jacobs: “Mr. Holland! Just the man I was looking for. We’re forming a textbook committee for next year’s curriculum and I would like to have your ideas and suggestions. We meet next Tuesday in the library.

Mr. Holland: Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Jacobs. I’m I’m I’m very busy.

Mrs. Jacobs: You know for a good four or five months now I’ve been watching you Mr. Holland. I’ve never seen a teacher sprint for the parking lot after last period with more speed and enthusiasm than his students. Perhaps you should be our track coach.

Mr. Holland: Mrs. Jacobs, I get here on time every morning. I’m doing my job the best I can.

Mrs. Jacobs: A teacher has two jobs: Fill young minds with knowledge, yes. But more important, give those minds a compass so that knowledge doesn’t go to waste. Now I don’t know what you’re doing with the knowledge, Mr. Holland, but as a compass, you’re stuck.

I keep thinking about it because that is what I feel to be the difference between a normal parish and a good parish. A normal Catholic parish either seems to just want to do the basics of the faith or has such deep divisions within what is happening that you have to be part of a "camp" in order to feel a part. It seems that the pastor's constant challenge is to be the compass that keeps the parish together walking in the right direction.