Abram and Lot

Yesterday's daily reading was about Abram and Lot, two brothers. In modern parlance, we would say they are small family farmers, though that is at least a bit of an anachronism. They decided that they couldn't stay in the same place because there wasn't the resources for both flocks to feed. So Lot moved East of the Jordan valley into modern day Jordan and Abram stays in modern day Israel.

Then it says God blessed Abram with much prosperity. There is no comment about what happens to Lot but we know that, in the future, his wife will be transformed into a pillar of salt because she looked back. The question that haunts me is why did God bless Abram and not bless Lot. What made Abram more special than Lot?

I'm not sure what would cause that but it has caused a lot of reflection on my part as to why my family has had such a (relatively) great life while other people have such difficult lives. I have no doubt this is at least partially explained by the mind of God dealing with humanity's transgression. And maybe I should be happy that, at least for now, my family is more among the Abrams than the Lots.

Stewardship as empowering others to service

One of the tools that I use in my ministry in order to get to know people better is playing games. It’s a skill my parents taught me when we would visit relatives. I learned to play card games such as 500 and Pepper when we would visit my aunts and uncles. And, typically, just as much gossiping…I mean conversation…would happen as cards. In my first assignment, I used my five hundred skills to get in a card club. Now, admittedly, I was the only member of the club under seventy but it helped me connect with some parishioners and listen to their concerns.

When I came here, it was harder to find card players so I find myself playing more board games with some of the people that live in my apartment complex. One of our favorite games is Cycloneopoly. I usually play with two very competitive guys and a not so competitive woman. The other day, we started playing and it became obvious that the guys were winning. They had most of the properties and were working on a deal that would give both of them monopolies. I had one property and the woman had the other matching property. When she landed on the second one, it became obvious what I needed to do. I gave her a monopoly and some money in exchange for a couple of less expensive properties. Everyone realized that I was throwing the entire game just so that the boys would lose.

It probably seems a little bit odd to throw a board game just so that two ultra-competitive guys would not be able to win. It’s almost as strange as this celebration, the solemnity of the birth of St. John the Baptist. There are very few celebrations that the church allows to interrupt the normal flow of Sundays. You see, today should be the twelfth Sunday in Ordinary time. But, there are a few celebrations that are so important that we fix dates to their celebration, December 25th, being just one example. A few other examples include the presentation of the Lord, the Annunciation of the Lord, the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, The transfiguration of the Lord, The Assumption of Mary, and a few others. What makes this celebration especially odd is that, unlike all those other celebrations, this is for someone who didn’t directly experience the central mystery of our faith. In other words, John the Baptist was dead long before Jesus died and rose. You may remember that John the Baptist was beheaded by King Herod when he denounced Herod’s unlawful marriage to his brother’s wife, Herodias. The gospels seem to agree that Jesus’ ministry began after John had left the scene.

So, why is this celebration important enough to make it such a priority. I mean, we don’t even know all that much about John the Baptist in the first place. The pope, in his new book Jesus of Nazareth, points to speculation that John may have been associated with a Jewish separatist group known as the Essenes. They lived close to the Dead Sea in a type of monastic environment. John may have begun a ministry just to the north of them of ritual purification through immersion or baptism, as we have come to know it. The Pope speculates that several of Jesus’ disciples may have originally been John’s. For instance, we know from the gospel of John that Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of John’s followers. The Pope also believes that Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot may have come from this group since the Essenes were likely the group that eventually rebelled against Rome and were called the Zealots. It’s also possible that Jesus was one of John’s disciples before he began his ministry.

All of this may help us understand John a little better but it still doesn’t make it clear why this celebration is important. I’d like to suggest that the reasoning is in the color the church assigns to the garment I’m wearing and the celebration itself. I’m wearing white, a color that, in terms of mass, harkens to Easter and resurrection. I’m not wearing red, a color that points to one who died in witness to the death of the Lord, a martyr. And, the celebration is his birthday, not the day of his death. We are celebrating his life and, in particular, how he prepared the way for Jesus. That is what we all remember about John. He’s the guy that, from the beginning, was chosen to help people have Jesus in their life. It wasn’t all about John. It was all about Jesus and John had to tell people that.

There’s a desire in all of us to be special, to be the best. But, most of us will not be superman, never have the opportunity to reach out and pull the guy away from being hit by a bus, or never find the cure for cancer. But maybe we can prepare those who will. All too often, we can see the gifts in other people clearer than we can see our own. We should be willing to be like John the Baptist and help others recognize the gifts and talents in their own lives. This, I believe, is what the church wants us to see in this celebration of the birth of John the Baptist: that helping to prepare people for God’s presence in their lives is just as important as having our own relationship to God.

Please keep the people of St. Anthony in your prayers

Yesterday was a difficult day for me. It started off with the first time I've been involved with a close relative's funeral from a priestly perspective. My Aunt died and I preached at the funeral. It was hard to lose her since she was such a sweet lady and someone our whole family will miss.

As I walked up to the church, my brother told me the church in St. Anthony was burning. I called my pastor who is the dean and told him what was happening. After the funeral, I went to the town and saw what I didn't expect. The entire church was destroyed. The building was at gound level when I got there and I saw the floor collapse.

Even though they had to know that their tiny little parish was going to close soon, (50-60 members), it's hard to lose something that was so important to them. I hope they can find some way to recover from it.

A good lesson learned

I have always thought of myself as a dog owner without a dog. A week ago I went and got a dog and found, in the course of a week, that I wasn't a dog owner without a dog. I would have had to change my life so much that it was clearly not worth it. I like being free to pray for hours on end and being free to read for hours on end. I like being able to be gone for a day or two to visit friends and not have to worry about having someone take care of my dog.

So, I took Hiro back. He was a great dog and he deserves someone who can take care of him. I kind of hope he won't even remember me.

The wisdom confession

The readings for the eleventh Sunday in Ordinary time all deal with the importance of being accountable before God. God knows of our transgressions before, during and after we commit them but we still need to actually ask for forgiveness to receive it.

And I'm back...

I had one full week of being a priest "incognito", still a priest but no one knew. I wore shorts all week and saw a few of the very rare archaeological sites that are in the United States. It was wonderful. Now I go off for a few days of convocation and then I've got to get started preparing for next school year. My month of relaxation is quickly coming to an end.

Gone again!

I will be leaving tomorrow, June third, for a vacation and won't really return until the fifteenth. I make a brief pass through next Sunday for a mass for the good people of Sts. Peter and Paul in Gilbert Iowa before starting three days of priests' convocation. I will do my best to update my blog but don't count on much until I get back. Then you'll all be blown away at how exciting and fresh my ideas will be!

That in all things God may be praised.

Spirit of Wisdom, wisdom of Father and Son

Who would you say is a truly wise person? Stephen Hawking? Probably most of us would agree that Stephen Hawking is truly wise. Despite his tremendous physical limitations, he is a world-renowned theoretical physicist complete with a type of radiation named after him that comes from black holes, as well as other scientific contributions. Of course, I’ve never met Stephen Hawking before so I don’t know that first hand. And, especially in this academic community, we know that there are people who intelligent who may not be very wise. There are, after all, different kinds of knowledge out there. Some people are incredibly book smart but not very street smart or vice versa. Someone may be very good with managing money but have no knowledge of how to take care of cars and property. And there’s always that academic that could wax on poetically about any subject you could ever want to know about but is such a jerk that you don’t even want to talk to him. I imagine we all have our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to knowledge and the appropriation thereof. And, I may even go so far as to say that we all believe that our knowledge plays a very important part, if not the most important part, in making this world run smoothly and that, if more people just cared about the knowledge that we care about, the world would be a better place.

One of the traits that characterized the renaissance that, I fear, has been lost today was a sense of continuity in knowledge. In other words, if something was true for theology then it necessarily must be true for natural science. And, if something was true for sociology, then it must be true for law and theology and political science. And so forth. All too often, in contemporary civilization, either points of disagreemtn are seen as irreconcilable and, therefore, points of multiple truth or divergent sides of a chess match in which people must choose as to which competing truth they will believe. Either you are pro-evolution or pro-creation and never the twain shall meet. This view is not only myopic and unsatisfactory but it gives into a kind of hopelessness that politicians thrive on.

On this Trinity Sunday, the church attempts an answer to this conundrum of conflicting comprehensions. Last week, we spent some time talking about the Holy Spirit and the personal gifts She gives to individuals. Today we reflect on the gifts that She gives to all of creation, to believers, and to the church. I refer to the Holy Spirit in the feminine today because of the first reading from Proverbs which images wisdom as a woman. She was God’s first creation before anything else and, in the chapter previous to the one we heard, provided the Lord with a blueprint for the earth. It is the Holy Spirit who is begotten, or “possessed” to use the biblical image, by God and is portrayed as wisdom dancing before God to his delight. While this is probably a little too anthropomorphic for modern sensibilities, it speaks about the nature of the relationship of Father and Spirit that pre-exists the creation of human beings and exists as the basis of wisdom.

The Spirit is operative in the lives of believers because, according to the second reading, we who have faith have been given peace through Christ. This wisdom can seem to contradict the wisdom of the world in what it prizes. The world will tell us to look for what is comfortable and easy and the wisdom of the Spirit will tell you to find the peace of Christ amidst the trials and troubles of this world. We find our hope in Christ Jesus and the peace that he offers to us in the chaos of his death and resurrection. The wisdom given to the believer is faith regardless of the wisdom of the world that seems to stress comfort, safety, and security above all else. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving into the very multitude of truths that I’m positing do not exist inasmuch as acknowledging that, we who have been given faith and have appropriated that faith into our lives, are going to have certain expectations placed upon us in this life. This is not denying the continuity of wisdom inasmuch as acknowledging a multiplicity of ways that the Spirit expects us to respond to that wisdom.

As we hear in the gospel, all wisdom comes from God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. The wisdom that we receive was why Christ came into this world; to impart his wisdom to us, and to give glory to God through his wisdom. The Spirit, the giver of wisdom, will guide the church and enlighten the disciples to a fuller understanding of Christ, therefore giving glory to Christ. Thus, all wisdom comes, not from us, but from the Holy Spirit.

This demands a certain kind of humility, therefore, for all people and especially for the intellectual community. We cannot look at wisdom as something that we have to the exclusion of others. True wisdom has been given to us to use to the glory of God. If we are honestly discovering truths, we are learning more about God and God’s creation. It should put us into a greater relationship with the human community, not a lesser one, and call us into greater service of one another. I mean, after all, one of the most shocking things that we have learned in the last 2000 years is that God, who is one, is in a relationship of persons within the unity of himself. If even God, in this unity, is in a relationship of persons, we must see wisdom, the gift of the Spirit, as forcing us into relationship with one another.

lectio continua finale

So, after two comments, some email suggestions, and some thoughts on my own here is the final list.

D7
1. Rule of Benedict (my spiritual father)
2. Apostolic Fathers (St. Ignatius, St. Justin Martyr, St. Iraneus, St. Clement, St. Cyprian)
3. The Apostolic Tradition of Hypolotus
4. The Prophets/Sabbath by Abraham Joshual Heschel
5. Documents of Vatican II
6. One of the many documents of John Paul II
7. Summa Theoligica by St. Thomas Aquinas

Now I just have to remember each day to find three minutes and do this. It's the snail method of reading them.

The "profesionalization" of priesthood

On retreat, I had the opportunity to reflect on the ramifications of having priests who are thought of as a professional. There are obvious positives but there are also negatives. In the wake of the priesthood sexual abuse crisis, it probably seems to make sense to be more professional. To talk about "boundaries" and the importance of privacy.

But, there have been movements to make the church look more like IBM than Jesus Christ and that concerns me. Christ didn't tell us that we only need to take up our cross during office hours. In fact, in the gospel of Mark, it becomes clear that those times that he most wants a break are the times that he doesn't get one. And, he calls his disciples to not want to take breaks but to pour out one's life for one's friend.

Boundaries are safe and, for some, they are incredibly important things. But, they can also shield us from being "Father" or "Sister" and turn our celibacy into the bachelorhood. I think we need to look into our history before we move too quickly on this.

END LITURGICAL ABUSE...hahaha

I got these from a friend several months ago and I just found them again. They cracked me up. Anyone know who deserves credit?

lectio continua

My spiritual Director during my retreat, Fr. Adam Ryan, told me about a Benedictine tradtion known as lectio continua, of which a person has several things that he reads small sections for the rest of his life. He divided it up in two different ways.

S 7 (or scripture seven) which I intend on doing exactly the way he does it.
1 Torah/Pentateuch
2. Historical writings
3. Wisdom writings
4. Prophets
5. Gospels
6. Pauline writings
7. Non-Pauline, non Gospel New Testament writings

A 8 (or Adam eight)
1. Rule of Benedict
2. Life of Anthony
3. Sayings of Desert Fathers
4. Philokalia
5. Apostolic Fathers
6. Térèse of Lisieux
7. Thomas Merton
8. Something else he couldn't remember

I don't think I'll use his eight. I've come up with the D7...but here's where I need your help...
1. Rule of Benedict (my spiritual father)
2. letters of Ignatius of Antioch
3. The Apostolic Tradition of Hypolotus
4. The Prophets/Sabbath by Abraham Joshual Heschel
5. Documents of Vatican II
6. One of the many documents of John Paul II
7. ?????

I NEED YOUR HELP!!! I can't think of a seventh reading and you cannot end on six. Six is the number of incompleteness! It is the number after five and before seven. It's a passing note. It would be like ending a symphony on the fourth in a chord...the world and my prayer needs resolution. So, either email me and offer a suggestion or leave it in the comments section below. I'll announce the winner this Friday so your time is limited!

Pope visits "bad parents"?

If I am right (and I've been wrong before), Pope Benedict agreed to visit two parents who routinely locked their kids in their Portuguese hotel while they went out to party at night. I think I'm correctly connecting this story with an earlier one that I read, but I can't find the original one. I heard that they left their four year old in charge of her two two year old siblings for thirteen days in a row. And that they were surprised whey they came back and she was abducted. If I'm wrong on this, let me know and I'll pull this post. But, if I'm right, while I feel nothing but sadness for little Madeleine McCann, I can't help but think that her parents' sort of had it coming. It was just a question of time.

I hope the Pope uses his time to not only tell them that he will pray for them but to gently scold them for being so lax in protecting their kids. I'm sure there are cultural differences but I can't imagine a culture where a four year old can really take care of two two year old kids for any length of time. A four year old can't take of herself. How can she deal with two crying babies?

The Spirit's gifts

I preached this weekend about how the Spirit is connected with Ascension. After the Ascension of the Lord in Luke last weekend the Apostles were sent by our Lord to the upper room to wait. Today, they are sent out. This is the life of the church, like lungs. We gather (breathe in) and scatter (are sent out) all in the name of Jesus. The Spirit does both. But, the Spirit doesn't just scatter us with nothing. He gives each of us individual gifts just as he has given the church specific general gifts. Our responsibility is to discern what gifts we have been given and then use them to build up the body of Christ.

I was fortunate in my little country parish to be able to use an image in a stained glass window of the Holy Spirit as a dove descending. I told them that that image was put there to remind us each time that we gather (inhale) that the Spirit is what gives us gifts, helps us understand how to use them and sends us forth.

Now I have a complete day to finish reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth last two chapters. What an incredible book. This is a man of profound trust that the church hasn't been misled constantly. He offers us hope that the Spirit is really leading us and won't lead us astray.

Back from retreat

I just got back from a superb retreat and found that it's hard to come back to the "real world". The monks in the mastery in which I stayed would be quiet during supper. They are quiet when they walk around the monastery. They chant beautifully during their prayer times. I will miss the 6 am Office of Readings. I came back to a raucous wedding rehearsal and I couldn't help but miss the monastery. I had to come back home because of the noise. I will miss the silence of the monastery. I need to work on cultivating that.

Along the time on my retreat, I came up a with a few ideas to blog about including the professionalizing of parish live, finding the right question, and another search for help. At some point, I'm going to ask you to recommend a reading that I could do every day to complete what I'm calling the D7.

Even bigger news!

Faithful readers of my blog know of my concern for China's tight control of the catholic church. In the communist state, they insist on appointing their own bishops and jailing legitimately ordained catholic bishops. But, I just heard about this story that says the pope may have been invited to come to China at the end of this year. If true, it would be incredible! The Chinese government had better look out, however. Other communist regimes have thought they could have the Vicar of Christ visit with little or no consequence. And other communist regimes have fallen because of their message of freedom.

God bless our German Shepherd.

SO EXCITED!

I arrived at work today with the usual clamor. Someone had come and needed me to fill out a "parishioner in good standing" sheet but I'd never seen him before and he admitted that he'd never been here for mass. I told him that I couldn't do that because, not only was he not in good standing, but he wasn't a parishioner. He left with a smile on his face...a smile that seemed to say, "I'll be the one that puts the flaming bag of dog poop on your door."

I walked around to my mailbox to see if there was anything in it and, sure enough, it had arrived. My copy of Pope Benedict's new book "Jesus of Nazareth"...in perfect time for my retreat! I'll be away on retreat starting this Sunday and going to Friday. I plan on reading the substance of it while sitting outside of the monastery in the sun, two chapters per day.

Heaven,

I'm in heaven

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When were out together reading Benedict

proof that I'm really a liturgical geek

I read Zenit.org as often as I can and I found the story about priests' vesture while blessing both very informative and a great question to answer. I get questions like this from good hearted little old ladies all the time. Some slightly mistaken priest may have given them information that seems more like superstition than anything else and they are confused. I'm glad when Fr. McNamara clears it up for us.

A weekend of relaxation with family and friends

I'm basically just getting back from one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. I took my camper out on Thursday and pulled it back in on Sunday. Mom and Dad and my brother Dave went camping with me along with our family friends, the Hoffmans. It really was a nice weekend, despite hight winds on Sunday and just a good weekend to be with Mom, since it was mother's day.
I decided to preach about the idea of change and how we cannot fear it but we also can't get lost in it. Change has been a part of the Catholic Church more so in the last forty years than in the previous four hundred. I'm always afraid that Catholics will either embrace the fact that the church will always change and lose the transcendent nature of certain truths (trinity, divinity, begotten, Christ, etc.) or that we will get tired of all the change and become putrefied. Ultimately, love forces us to go wherever it wills us to go. It isn't always where we thought we'd be but it's where the God who is love wants us to be.

I finished my bit of relaxation by having an outing with a group of young priests. The gossip was thick. The conversation somewhat rarefied but these are the men that understand my situation better than anyone else. I did have to laugh, however, when I realized that the guy who is a year younger than me is a pastor already while I am praying to remain an associate for a few more years...

Looks like more controversy

It will be interesting to see how the secular media covers this story. Pius the XII has become little better than Hitler since the sixties and the church will be villified for canonizing him.