33 OT - B: messengers sent

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

Have you ever had to stay calm while scary things were happening around you? How did you do that? What tactics did you use to not let the adrenaline take over? I would guess most of the time we did this because we had to stay calm for someone else, for instance a child who is under our care and responsibility. I have a friend who cannot stand the sight of blood but, when her daughter dropped a glass bowl of popcorn, my friend was the one to calmly wrap her finger in a paper towel and apply pressure until they could hand her daughter off to the ER staff.

Deep in the heart of Autumn and starting to head to Winter, our readings turn to the cold reality of Apocalyptic literature. We focus on the end times, or the tribulation as Jesus called it. Let me admit that I’m going to use this word very differently than the writers of the Left Behind series use it. If you look at the previous few verses between last week’s passage and this week’s, Jesus issues five warnings. First, he says the Temple will be torn down, a reality that happened somewhere around the year 68 when the Romans stopped a Jewish revolt of their leadership by destroying the Temple. Then Jesus warns of wars and insurrections, some of which happened before the destruction of the Temple and some after. Next, Jesus warns that they will be taken before councils and tried, a reality we know that happened to both St. Paul and St. Peter and would be the norm for the first four hundred years of Christianity. Fourth, and most cryptically, Jesus warns of a “desolating sacrilege”, a phrase that also appears in the Old Testament Book of Maccabees to describe a statue of Zeus that was put in the Temple by the Greek occupiers of Jerusalem. It’s not entirely clear what Jesus means by using this phrase, possibly the fact that the Temple was used as a war planning center before it was torn down but it’s also possible that the Romans did terrible things on the Temple Mount after. Lastly, and possibly most challengingly, Jesus warns that false messiahs will appear and there will be a lot of people claiming to have knowledge of his second coming but Jesus makes it clear that we aren’t to listen to them. Why?

There is certainly a lot of tribulation, reasons to be afraid. If I were to go throughout the church, I bet each of us has something that causes us concerns. I would also bet that, the person or activity that is causing one person a lot of concern may well have the opposite effect on other people. Not being all that far from a rather ugly election, you probably understand to what I’m referring. Personally, the worst part of the past election was how much time all the media spent making us afraid of what the other side said. They spend so little time telling us about most of what any given politician actually believes and focuses on what they find scary about them and then they report that in the scariest way possible. And then they say that religion uses people’s fear.

If we listen to Jesus, he acknowledges that there will be tribulations. Yet, he makes it clear that, when the second coming happens, it won’t be because of a virgin birth in Bethlehem. He’s coming with power and glory from the clouds and the whole world will see it. He’s taking the guesswork out of it for us, in a sense. 

In the heart of this passage, Jesus says, “he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky…” The word “angel” means messenger. We tend to, quite rightly, think of the purely spiritual beings fighting satan on our behalf when we hear this word. One commentary reminded me, however, that St. John the Baptist was called a messenger and, indeed, we are called to be messengers of God’s Good News to this world. I think this is what Jesus is really trying to get across to us in this passage: while the world is filled with tribulations, we have to keep spreading the good news, keep going out to gather people from all over the world to come to know Jesus before he comes again. Our lives are finite. Fear is finite. Jesus calls us to be messengers to others of his hopeful message of eternal life.  

32 OT B: She gave more

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Dr. Peter Kreeft relates a story in his commentary on today’s gospel. “A six-year-old boy had a three-year-old sister who had a disease that she would die of if she did not have a blood transfusion. But she had a very rare blood type, and the only person who could be found with that same blood type was her brother. As soon as he heard this, the brother volunteered to give her the transfusion. While the transfusion was going on, the boy looked sad, and when they asked him why, he said, ‘How long will it take me to die’” 

Imagine being just six years old and not being afraid to die if it will mean your little sister lives. Thankfully, that’s not the way a blood transfusion works but it’s a good illustration of the point that Jesus is trying to get across. The Jewish people, on top of the Old Testament, have a book called the Talmud, which clarifies and further lays out how to live in relationship with God. One of the precepts of the Talmud is that people of inferior Biblical knowledge should greet those of greater Biblical knowledge first. The scribes, being the most biblically knowledgeable, would apparently walk through the market so people would make a spectacle of greeting them and then they would look important. 

From archaeological digs, we know the synagogues of Jesus’ time had benches along the walls and the ones along the wall with the cabinet where the Bible scrolls were kept were reserved for those who were literate, again the Scribes. Everyone else had to sit on the ground, especially if you were poor, with the men on one side and the women on the other. 

Being a scribe would have been seen as a pretty good job. The trouble Jesus has with it is where they make their money. It’s off the Temple taxes that are being collected. Apparently, there were seven trumpet shaped donation buckets in the temple in which the temple tax was deposited. It was designed that the larger sums of money would make a bigger sound going in than smaller amounts. So, people who could put in more would be recognized whereas a poor widow, who can put in one sixty fourth of a day’s wage, which is described as a couple of small coins, would have gone virtually unnoticed. Yet, as he notes at the end, she gave more because they gave from their surplus wealth and she has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood. 

We need to be cautious to hear Jesus the way he wants to be heard. The context and words Jesus uses makes it clear that he’s not commending her for giving her all. She has no choice but to pay this tax. This is a condemnation of those who make money off the poor. Jesus laments the fact that she has to give her whole livelihood to pay off vain people walking through markets to be greeted. He laments that those people are sitting on couches in the synagogue while the elderly and widows are sitting on the floor and that, when invited to their homes, they eat the best food at the most comfortable chairs. 

It’s a challenge to me, probably more than anyone. I have one of the few chairs in church with a cushion. People greet me when I’m out and about at least in part because I’ve got a collar on. And the poor are often the ones putting money in our candle boxes for prayers and putting money in the collection baskets. We need to make sure we are helping the poor as much as possible through MCO and St. Vincent de Paul. 

But we also have to think about things like a casino. It sounds great and I’m sure our politicians will tell us it will help create jobs and create business down here in the time-check area. But, at what cost? The poor are often the ones who go to casinos and spend the money they don’t have in the hopes of winning it big. We don’t need a casino. We need real jobs that will help real people make real money. We need to help those struggling with homelessness and mental illness not take advantage of them. Like the scribes, we deserve severe condemnation if we take advantage of the poor to make money. 

28 OT B : Give!

Friends

Peace be with you. 

Generally around this time of year, priests give a sacrificial giving homily. I haven’t done one since coming to St. Patrick’s so you’ll have to forgive me if this sounds a little clunky. Some priests, in fact, feel so uncomfortable about talking about money that they ask a lay person to do it. In a previous assignment, the pastor would give the lay presenter talking points but they’d have to make them a part of  their own story. One of the talking points was to talk about a time you received something unexpectedly after giving something. People would universally talk about a time they were down to their last twenty dollars and they saw a poor person and gave it to them only to get paid a hundred dollars by a person who owed them money or to find some forgotten cash in a pocket. My concern was that people may get the wrong message about why it’s important to give. 

Our gospel for today tells a story that has provided a lot of discussion for me throughout the years. The question people ask me is if I think this is the last interaction Jesus had with this rich young man. Some are convinced it is not, that he went away but eventually came back willing to give up all that he had to follow Jesus. It may even be that, the reason that the man’s name is not mentioned but his youthfulness is is because he was known to the community Mark is writing to but that he is older at the time. This is, therefore, seen as a moment of youthful indiscretion. However, I’m not convinced. Maybe I’m just a pessimist but I think the reason the man’s name was not mentioned was because he walked away and is now seen as unmentionable by the community. Imagine being the person who walked up to Jesus and asked what he had to do to inherit eternal life and was told that he was already doing it, just follow the commandments. But, that’s not a good enough answer so you ask if you can do more and, when you were told what you could do in order to do more, it’s too hard so you just give up. You abandon Jesus as he is surrounded by people who HAVE given up everything to follow him. Remember, this is the time when it’s easy to follow Jesus. I don’t get why people would think the man would come back when people are screaming “crucify him, crucify him” and he’s being nailed to a cross.

We stand in the footsteps of those apostles who have given up everything in order to follow Jesus. Some of this has to do with giving our time and talents to help serve the fish fries or sit for an hour in the reservation chapel at adoration or help teach Catechesis of the Good Shepherd or volunteer in some other way. But the parish also has financial needs and I would ask you to prayerfully consider how much you can give. As a parish, we have worked to live within the means we have while we do the improvements to our campus like repairing cracked and broken sidewalks and driveways and adding to our parking lots. We have made sure that when things wear out, we replace them with high quality materials that we can afford. I’m exploring the possibility of putting solar panels on the parish hall anticipating that energy prices will continue to rise and we will benefit from the affordability and reliability of the products that are out there. However, as you have undoubtedly experienced, inflation has affected us in things like garbage bags, toilet tissue and other staples. And we need to continue to work to pay our great staff salaries that are a living wage. So, I ask that you look at your financial situation and consider if you are able to increase your overall tithing. You can give electronically or in person, that’s up to you. Also, please consider talking to the Catholic Foundation to include this parish in your will. If, when you die, you want to contribute to St. Patrick’s parish endowment fund, it will ensure that you leave a legacy that will help this parish pay bills long after you have passed. 

Jesus challenges us to give today. We can’t do so expecting that we’ll receive more money afterwards. What we will receive has to do with being unburdened with the distraction of chasing after more and more money and, instead, being rewarded with the freedom of being able to focus on Christ.

26 OT B: Don’t harm the little one’s faith

Friends

Peace be with you.

This past week, while driving in Nebraska, I turned on a podcast about the origins of Angel Studios. In case you don’t know, Angel Studios is a crowd funded television and movie studio that gave us the Chosen, Sound of Freedom, Cabrini, and other morally positive content that the mainstream studios don’t seem to want to produce. I’ve recently joined their streaming service, called the Angel Guild, because I wanted to watch the Story of Possum Trot. I learned from this podcast that the founders are three brothers who developed the Angel App a few years ago, a streaming service that sanitized major Hollywood blockbuster movies of any racy content. They were sued by those same studios for copyright infringement and lost a lot of money because of it. But, in the process, they learned that there was a sizable market of people that wanted movies and television shows that promoted the life of faith and that there were plenty of content creators who were being blocked by the mainstream studios from telling their stories. All of that appealed to me. In the middle of the story, however, they dropped a bomb on me that, frankly, I should have seen coming because the names they choose for their projects always involve the word angel. These brothers are Mormon, or Latter Day Saints as they prefer to be called. At that point in the podcast, I started to question whether I should participate in Angel Studios.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week reflecting on the Ninth Chapter of Mark’s Gospel. The passage we just heard comes from the end of that Chapter. The beginning tells the story of the Transfiguration, which is why I spent so much time reflecting on this chapter. The spiritual direction program in which I’m starting to participate is called the Institute of the Transfiguration. At the beginning retreat past weekend, which is the reason I was gone by the way, we spent an hour a piece praying over each of the three passages that describe the transfiguration. Then, starting on Monday, I kept praying in my holy hours until I got to this passage at the end of Chapter 9. Something kind of interesting jumped out at me when I got there. You see, as Jesus, Peter, James, and John came down the mountain, they encountered the apostles who weren’t called up the Mount of Transfiguration arguing with some Scribes about a man whose son was possessed by a demon that mimicked symptoms of a seizure. They’re arguing because no one seems able to cure the boy. Jesus heals him and, when his own followers ask why they couldn’t, he replies that this demon could only be exercised with prayer. Now, just a few verses later, the Apostle John tells Jesus that there is some guy driving out demons in His name but he isn’t a follower of Jesus. What is he really asking? A few moments before, Jesus’ followers tried to drive a demon in His name and they couldn’t do it because it had to be driven out in prayer and, now, some dude who isn’t even a follower is driving out demons in Jesus’ name. You’d think Jesus would be as outraged as John obviously is but, instead, he says that they shouldn’t prevent him because you generally don’t talk poorly about someone in whose name you are doing mighty deeds. If he isn’t against them, he must be for them. So I guess it’s okay to be affiliated with three Mormon brothers if they are working with us and not against us, right?

Remember also that, last week, Jesus encouraged his followers that, if they wanted to be great, they had to become the least and he placed a child in front of them and said, ““Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” This week, he offers the more negative side of this same argument when he says that, if you harm a little child, it would be better to go jump off a cliff with a rock around your neck. Even as important as protecting little children is, the point that Jesus is driving home is more about the age of people’s faith. He’s really talking to the apostles, and therefore to us, and telling us that we’ve got to be the adults who help people with a less developed faith to grow in it, which may involve having to remove aspects of ourselves that get in the way.

Jesus uses body parts as examples but, in today’s world, the question we may want to ask ourselves is does our need to be right or our impatience or our skepticism of the other affect our ability to reach out in charity to the stranger who may just be beginning a life of faith and, if so, how can we cut it out?

23 OT B Jesus goes on sabbatical and still gets graded!

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

I had four internships in my years of seminary, three that took place in parishes in the Archdiocese of Dubuque and one at a hospital in Des Moines. I found them all to be times when I felt like I was being affirmed on my journey to priesthood. Yet, there were also times when I felt like I was being challenged and totally unworthy of being a priest. Most of the time, this happened at the end of my time when I would sit down with the director of seminarians and the internship director to reflect on my growing edges that need to be softened. A particularly hard evaluation took place at one of the parishes in which I didn’t get along well with the pastor and expected a very poor evaluation. Yet, when I opened up the form on which the pastor had written his evaluation, I was kind of shocked to read glowing reviews. He said things like “Dennis preaches well. Dennis sings well. People feel like they can talk to and relate to Dennis well.” He honestly even wrote “Dennis does all things well.” There wasn't a single negative comment on the sheet. I thought to myself, "I'm not perfect! This isn't right. Where's the negative feedback?" I felt cheated. 

That was kind-of my reaction to today's gospel. We're used to criticism being heaved at Jesus from all sides. He gets criticism from the Pharisees, Sadducees, disciples, and crowds. It's very rare that people say, "He does all things well." What’s surprising is where he is when he gets these rave reviews. The area called the Decapolis incorporates, as the Greek name suggests, ten towns. Think “deca” as in decade, ten years, or decathlon, ten sporting events. And the last part, polis, is the Greek word for town, which is why Minneapolis, Indianapolis, and Annapolis end with it. The fact that the word derives from Greek tells you that these probably aren’t predominately Jewish towns in nature. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, which, from archaeology, we know had a large synagogue capable of fitting almost the whole town in it, so it was predominantly Jewish. When Jesus preached in that synagogue, he couldn’t heal anyone because of the hardness of their heart and they got so upset at him because of that, that they almost threw him off a cliff to kill him. Yet, now that he’s on a kind of sabbatical in this diverse town with Jews and Gentiles alike, he finds such tremendous faith that, right from the start, he heals a deaf man. Now this man will be able to hear him preach. He even tries to tell the people who are present for the healing not to speak about him but it says, the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They say,  “He does all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” This is the evaluation he gets from strangers while his friends and family try to kill him. 

At a recent conference, they talked about negative self-talk. That’s that inner monologue we have that says we’re not good enough. Garth Brooks described it as “a tape of my failures playing inside my head”, which I think is really good description. Negative self talk says we can’t do something even before we try usually because we tried before and failed. Negative self-talk says our heart is bad because we make mistakes. Negative self-talk says that person doesn't like me because I’m not likable or lovable. Negative self-talk hears about original sin and says we can never be free of it, that we can never walk as free children of God. Negative self-talk says God may care for people in general but He doesn’t care about me in particular. Negative self talk sees only the bad things that happen and says we deserve them. Negative self talk is a self-defeating prophecy. It’s a false sense of humility that, ultimately, stifles the spirit inviting us to throw into the deep or go places to spread the gospel because we aren’t worthy. But you are worthy, not because of how talented you are or because you do all things well but entirely because Jesus does all things well and wants to open your ears to hear his word and your mouth to proclaim his praise to the ends of the world. 

How does negative self talk stop you from seeing Jesus do all things well for you and proclaiming that to the world?

22 OT B Finding what was here all along

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

The other day, after showing a video in the Fireplace Room on the first floor of the rectory, I picked up my Roku streaming device and started walking it back up to my apartment to put it away. Before I hit the first step to go upstairs, I thought to myself that I needed to grab the remote control for it. So I retraced my steps back to the TV but it wasn’t there. I had gone into the kitchenette to put away my plate so I must have put it there. But It wasn’t there. I walked to the place where I was sitting for the video to see if it was sitting on the table but it wasn’t there. I started to get frazzled wondering how you misplace something in such a small space, a feeling I have often by the way, and then looked down at my hands and realized I had been carrying the remote control the whole time. 

This past week, we celebrated the Memorial of one of the most influential theologians in church history: St. Augustine. One of his most quoted sayings comes from a book called The Confessions. It says…

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! 

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you…”

St. Augustine was admitting that, in his search for God, he was a bit like me looking for that remote control that was in my hand. God was nearer to him than he could have ever imagined but he was looking everywhere else for him. Moses, in talking to the Israelites in the first reading, says that the whole point of the law is to remind the people how near God is to them, how close to them that they are to Him. Their neighbors will see how they prosper because they know what God wants. It’s like the people of the Old Testament will be the best baseball or football team because their coach worked directly with them and showed them how best to live a holy life. That’s the role of the law, to show the people how to live such a just life that they begin to live a life like God would live if he were incarnate. Which is what makes it so uncomfortable when he did become incarnate and, instead of worrying about living the way God wants them to live, they have taken a law that was intended for a specific group of people in a specific situation and applied it to everyone in every situation. The priests were meant to wash their hands before they served in the temple and that somehow became a demand for everyone to wash their hands before they eat anything. The point obviously isn’t that you shouldn’t wash your hands before you eat, which is a good hygienic thing to do, but that a rule broadened by their ancestors to apply to everyone is being treated as just as important as God’s laws. But God’s laws show how close God is to His people and how much He cares for them. 

Thankfully, Jesus simplified this relationship so that it’s not based on obedience to the law but on the grace of being called his brother and sister through baptism. That’s why St. James, in the second reading for Mass today, says that “(The Father) willed to give us birth by the word of truth that we may be a kind firstfruits of his creatures.” We share a unique relationship with the Father through Jesus, the first fruit of all creation, by being reborn in baptism. God is so close to us that he is inside of us. Personally, this is hard for me to understand because why would God want to hang out with a guy who is so often unaware that he is here. I get annoyed if I go visit a friend and they ignore me. I eventually find a reason to leave. Why would God want to keep hanging out with this guy who is so often oblivious or even offensive to him to be around? Yet He does. 

Moses, in the first reading, reminded his people and us of how important it is to listen. I talk too much to God. He’s here with me always. I just need to listen t Him better. Don’t we all? Don’t we all need to stop looking for that remote control in our hand and just listen to Him who is closer to us than we are to ourselves? Isn’t that the whole point of adoration?

21 Ot B: f they can't accept that he came down, how are they going to believe when he goes up

 Friends

Peace be with you. 

In college, some friends asked me if I would remain a Christian if they found the body of Jesus. I hadn’t thought about it but I told them I would. After all, they’re constantly doing archaeology in the Holy Land. There’s a chance they’ll find a tomb or a burial box purported to be the burial box of Jesus, right? I remember going to my spiritual director, Fr. Doug Wathier, and telling him about his conversation and kind of being proud that, even if they found the remains of Jesus, I would stay a Christian. I remember asking him if it would affect his faith and being shocked that he was quite adamant that it would. He said that, if Jesus hadn’t been raised bodily, there’s no reason for us to believe. Further, if Jesus still died after the resurrection and wasn’t taken up body and soul into heaven, then it wasn’t really a resurrection but merely a resuscitation. People are resuscitated every day using CPR and defibrillators. There’s nothing really miraculous about getting the heart to start pumping blood again. Even people who seem to be dead but who are more in a comatose state who awake after days or weeks because of ventilators and other modern medicine isn’t an example of a miracle in the same way that Jesus, who really died and never died again, is.

As we conclude the Bread of Life Discourse from John chapter six, we hear that the people who came to Jesus because he gave them free bread and fish start to walk away from him when he explains that the bread they ate wasn’t just simply food, but was food from heaven and that, unless they eat the Eucharist, they cannot have hope for eternal life. The reaction that the crowd has is, once again, to question the reality of eternal life. Who can accept that they have to eat the Eucharist to have eternal life, they ask. Jesus’ response is, basically, if you’re not going to believe that he became incarnate, how are you going to believe that he resurrected? Think about it like this, these people could see his flesh and touch his body. The incarnation of Jesus wasn’t an issue for them. I think that’s partly why the flesh is of no avail for them, because he’s right there. It’s a challenge for us but not for them. If they can’t believe that the bread they are eating, the true food they are eating, is his flesh when they can see that he has flesh and blood, then how are they or anyone else going to believe in the resurrection when no one will see him any longer? For some of them it’s just a step too far so they walk away. Actually, not just some of them but the text says that many of them walked away and returned to their former lives. For the first time in the Gospel of John, Jesus refers to the twelve apostles at this point, and asks if they’re going to abandon him too. In a typical way, it is Simon Peter who makes the strong statement of faith, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

In every generation, there’s a tendency to water down the gospel, to make Christian teachings more in line with society or more palatable with other religions or religious movements. And, while sometimes we can use connections to other religions as a bridge to true the religion, like St. Paul did at the Areopagus in the Acts of the Apostles or Pope Francis was trying to do with the Pachamama statue a few years ago, we have to be careful not to water down the faith in the process. Joshua, in the first reading, made it clear to the people of the Old Testament that we have to choose to follow the one true God and not the false gods of our neighbors, especially the false gods that we or others create to make the gospel more palatable to a skeptical generation. Jesus was willing to let people walk away in freedom back to their old lives. 

The beginning of our second reading told us that we need to be subordinate to one another out of reverence to Christ before going on to talk about the type of subordination particular to married life. In a previous homily, I talked about how the word subordinate would be better translated as submissive, or under the mission. We all need to be under Christ’s mission, which demands an informed faith. There’s a reason the remains of Jesus have never been found. It’s because they’re not here. The only place you will find the body of Christ is in our tabernacles because it is our food for the journey, his real presence in this bread from heaven. If we can’t believe Jesus has come down in the true bread we eat, how are we going to follow him to heaven?