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!
Monday, November 08, 2010
Monday, November 01, 2010
No homily again!
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.
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.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The short version
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
"But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
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?
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?
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
I know my people and they know me.
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.
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.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.
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.
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.
Sunday, October 03, 2010
It’s not long after we feel a sense of fatigue that a sense of frustration sets in...yet hope prevails
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.”
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.”
Monday, September 27, 2010
More thoughts on the rich man and Lazarus
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?
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?
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Don’t forgot that once you were foreigners in a foreign land
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.
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.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Another thought on titles
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.
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.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
We must design our lives to give up everything and follow Christ
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?
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?
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Those who humble themselves shall be exalted
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.”
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.”
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Seek to enter through the narrow gate
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.”
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.”
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Something to ponder
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.
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.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Either our faith grows or it dies. It will not just sit there.
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?
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?
Thursday, August 05, 2010
What might be the fall out...
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.
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.
Monday, August 02, 2010
One more thing
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.
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
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.
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?
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? ”
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? ”
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Short version
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."
"...What if there are at least ten there?"
(The Lord) replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it."
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Vengeance is mine!
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Welcome to being a pastor!
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Good Leaders, Good Shepherds
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.
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.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Ora et Labora
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.
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.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Back normal and a few other things
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.
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.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
New responsibilities. New Opportunities
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.
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.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Learning from suffering
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.
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.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Silent Passivity
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Figuring out how to say goodbye without needing to know you did a thing.
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Change in Blog Policy
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
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."
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The trinity: A Community of Hope
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.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Something from my next assignment
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.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is an Advocate?
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.
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