My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. One of the most powerful things that I get to do as a priest is exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. That’s what we do when we set that large metal stand, called the monstrance, on the altar so that people can adore and pray in front of the Host or Blessed Sacrament, for a period of time. I find this to be an extraordinarily powerful time of quiet meditation. Yet, regardless of how profound my experience of Adoration is, there is this little uneasy dance that happens in my heart towards the end of almost every session. I begin to wonder if people are bored. I begin to worry that people are remembering days when their mother or father forced them to come and do this. I begin to worry that people are resolving never to do this again. I begin to think that I should cut it short so that people don’t get more frustrated than what they already are. But, I stick it out for the full amount of time and stand, with all these doubts running through my head, to return the Blessed Sacrament to its place in the tabernacle. I kneel with my back to the people and invite them to open to the back of the hymnal and sing that classic chant, “Tantum egro sacramentum” and I hear voices of people who never crack a hymnal at Sunday mass singing out this song that was first sung before it’s singers knew there was a North America. Then, I approach the monstrance to bless the people and, on their faces, I see looks that bespeak respect and love. Not only do the people not feel the way my heart was trying to say they do, most of the time people wish they could have adoration more often. I even had one woman openly admit that she wished it could be much longer. I’ve never had anyone tell me that they thought mass was too short but, for this woman, she didn’t have enough time to adore the presence of the Lord. I think people see in this form a prayer a memory. And, I don’t mean that people sit around and think about the good old days, I think we are reminded of the respect that we have in our hearts for what we eat and drink each week.
That is what is at the heart of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord. We are invited to focus on the Eucharist and its importance in our lives. Our readings focus on the respect that we should have for the Eucharist. The first reading from Deuteronomy reminded our Jewish brothers and sisters, just as surely as it reminds us that the Eucharist is a gift from God. Jesus, in the gospel, takes this message a step further and reminds us that the bread that we eat is his flesh and the wine that we drink is his blood. Just as God gave the Israelites bread in the journey toward the promised land so God gives his pilgrim church bread on our earthly journey.
As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist is what constitutes the church. Without the Eucharist there would be no church and without the church there would be no Eucharist. The Eucharist connects us to Christ and to each other. It connects us to Christ because, as we heard in the Gospel today, we aren’t just receiving bread and wine. We are receiving Christ himself; his body, blood, soul, and divinity, when we receive the Eucharist. But, by receiving this gift of God, we are made a part of the church. Therefore, it connects us to one another as well. It is the great commandment we have been given to love God and love our neighbor.
Sometimes, in the church, there is a perception of a division between so-called liberals who are more social justice oriented and so-called conservatives who are more prayer oriented. This solemnity really challenges this division. I think of Mother Teresa, for instance, who would spend hours each day praying before the Blessed Sacrament while also spending hours reaching out to the poor in Calcutta. I think of Mary Jo Copeland, who runs a series of homeless shelters in the Twin Cities and prayerfully washes the feet of several of the people who come to her shelters. I think of St. Katherine Drexel who used her own personal fortune, 20 million dollars, to help impoverished African-Americans and American-Indians that society had forgotten. Yet, she would spend hours each day kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
Mass is where we come to encounter the love of God, the God who laid down is body and blood for our sins. But mass also empowers us to live out that encounter in our daily lives, to be the love of God to others. We may do this by starting or serving at a homeless shelter or reaching out to someone that we know is hurting and fixing a meal for the person or organizing a group of people to help him or her. In whatever way, we feel called, let us live out the love that we feel in prayer by helping those in need to know the love God has for them.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today we gather to celebrate Trinity Sunday. When I was a kid, weekends in summer meant camping. I, in fact, remember camping with such fondness that I have purchased a camper of my own that I use on my day off. Most of the time that we went camping, we would go to Twin Acres Campground, which is located between Colo, Iowa and Nevada, Iowa. My parents, being good and observant Catholics, didn’t believe that vacation was a vacation from church so, of course, we had to get dressed up on Saturday afternoon and head to St. Mary’s Church in Colo for mass. The priest there was very stern. For example, he didn’t want someone using their left hand to receive the Holy Eucharist so he would reach down and adjust their hands if he felt like they were wrong. But, what I remember most about mass in Colo was that they would always sing the same four songs. I'm not sure if they were the only four songs the organist knew or if they were the only four songs the priest allowed. Regardless, one of them was called “Sing Praise to our Creator”. It had three verses, each extolling the three persons of the Holy Trinity. But the chorus was always the same: Oh most Holy Trinity, undivided unity, Holy God, Mighty God, God immortal be adored.
An updated version started appearing in music books a couple of years ago and I do use it for daily mass on occasion. Yet, I don’t just love the song because it reminds me of a simpler time of my life. I also love it because it portrays a teaching about God that, I fear, has been lost in a lot of Catholic teaching, namely the transcendence of God.
Our readings today are all about the transcendence of God. In the first reading, we hear about Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. You will notice that, despite the fact that God is said to have appeared to Moses, there is no description of him. Moses falls on the ground in worship because, in the mindset of the Old Testament, if one were to see God, you would surely die. So Moses’ act of falling to the ground was just as much about preserving his life as it was about his love for the Lord.
Given this understanding of God, you can understand why the early church had such a difficult time communicating the message of Jesus to the Jews. In some way, the Gospel today is an attempt bridge this gap in understanding by communicating the relationship of Jesus to his heavenly Father. God could have sent his son into the world to condemn the world. We have all fallen prey to the sin of Adam and God could have sent Jesus here to wipe us all out. He almost did it in the flood. He could do it again. But, instead, he sent his son to save us from those sins.
So, given the complete “otherness” of God, given the fact that God is completely transcendent, how can we love God. It’s hard to love and to know the love of something that is totally unknown and unknowable. To me, that is why God revealed himself to us as a trinity of person. This means that the nature of God is relational. There’s diversity among the unity of God. So, even though, as it says elsewhere in the gospel of John, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one, nonetheless, they are three persons of the godhead. Therefore, we come to understand in a fragmentary and imperfect way, a bit of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit in our own relationships with one another.
This is also why God gave us the church. For most people, salvation is not based solely upon one’s ability to have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. Such a relationship is important to be sure but it is just as important that we be a part of Church of Christ. We need each other to correct our faults, to lean on in times of suffering, and to stand in solidarity during times of persecution. We need each other to support our faith and challenge that faith when it becomes too simple. And, in these relationships, we experience the love that is God.
O most Holy Trinity, undivided unity. Holy God, Mighty God. God immortal be adored.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Today we gather to celebrate Trinity Sunday. When I was a kid, weekends in summer meant camping. I, in fact, remember camping with such fondness that I have purchased a camper of my own that I use on my day off. Most of the time that we went camping, we would go to Twin Acres Campground, which is located between Colo, Iowa and Nevada, Iowa. My parents, being good and observant Catholics, didn’t believe that vacation was a vacation from church so, of course, we had to get dressed up on Saturday afternoon and head to St. Mary’s Church in Colo for mass. The priest there was very stern. For example, he didn’t want someone using their left hand to receive the Holy Eucharist so he would reach down and adjust their hands if he felt like they were wrong. But, what I remember most about mass in Colo was that they would always sing the same four songs. I'm not sure if they were the only four songs the organist knew or if they were the only four songs the priest allowed. Regardless, one of them was called “Sing Praise to our Creator”. It had three verses, each extolling the three persons of the Holy Trinity. But the chorus was always the same: Oh most Holy Trinity, undivided unity, Holy God, Mighty God, God immortal be adored.
An updated version started appearing in music books a couple of years ago and I do use it for daily mass on occasion. Yet, I don’t just love the song because it reminds me of a simpler time of my life. I also love it because it portrays a teaching about God that, I fear, has been lost in a lot of Catholic teaching, namely the transcendence of God.
Our readings today are all about the transcendence of God. In the first reading, we hear about Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. You will notice that, despite the fact that God is said to have appeared to Moses, there is no description of him. Moses falls on the ground in worship because, in the mindset of the Old Testament, if one were to see God, you would surely die. So Moses’ act of falling to the ground was just as much about preserving his life as it was about his love for the Lord.
Given this understanding of God, you can understand why the early church had such a difficult time communicating the message of Jesus to the Jews. In some way, the Gospel today is an attempt bridge this gap in understanding by communicating the relationship of Jesus to his heavenly Father. God could have sent his son into the world to condemn the world. We have all fallen prey to the sin of Adam and God could have sent Jesus here to wipe us all out. He almost did it in the flood. He could do it again. But, instead, he sent his son to save us from those sins.
So, given the complete “otherness” of God, given the fact that God is completely transcendent, how can we love God. It’s hard to love and to know the love of something that is totally unknown and unknowable. To me, that is why God revealed himself to us as a trinity of person. This means that the nature of God is relational. There’s diversity among the unity of God. So, even though, as it says elsewhere in the gospel of John, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one, nonetheless, they are three persons of the godhead. Therefore, we come to understand in a fragmentary and imperfect way, a bit of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit in our own relationships with one another.
This is also why God gave us the church. For most people, salvation is not based solely upon one’s ability to have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. Such a relationship is important to be sure but it is just as important that we be a part of Church of Christ. We need each other to correct our faults, to lean on in times of suffering, and to stand in solidarity during times of persecution. We need each other to support our faith and challenge that faith when it becomes too simple. And, in these relationships, we experience the love that is God.
O most Holy Trinity, undivided unity. Holy God, Mighty God. God immortal be adored.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Sorry for the silence
I haven't posted my last three homilies because, to be honest, I haven't preached a homily worth posting since then. Three weeks ago, I had a wedding, a funeral, and Sunday masses after a heck of a busy week. My homily was...thin. Two weeks ago, the Ascension, I had another busy week and another wedding but the homily just wouldn't come together. I never did write the thing down because it was just blech. Then, last weekend, I had a further crazy/busy week, the last wedding, and the deacon preached. I'm thinking that things are going to start to slow down now and I'll finally get to spend adequate time in preparation.
In my leadership training course, we talked about how, when you are learning a new skill, you go through a process of losing energy until you've achieved an adequate level of competence. I can see how true that is. In the past three weeks I keep thinking about how Brother Dennis Miller, the Benedictine Monk from Conception Abbey who assists Brother Blaise taking care of the grounds, wouldn't have to worry about budgets, litigation, weddings, and excessive civic parochialism. He'd just pray and work all day. After a couple of minutes of this kind of day dreaming, I remind myself that, if I was supposed to be at Conception Abbey, I'd be at Conception Abbey. For some reason, the Archbishop wants me to be here. If he has this much confidence in me, I should probably stop day dreaming and get to work.
In my leadership training course, we talked about how, when you are learning a new skill, you go through a process of losing energy until you've achieved an adequate level of competence. I can see how true that is. In the past three weeks I keep thinking about how Brother Dennis Miller, the Benedictine Monk from Conception Abbey who assists Brother Blaise taking care of the grounds, wouldn't have to worry about budgets, litigation, weddings, and excessive civic parochialism. He'd just pray and work all day. After a couple of minutes of this kind of day dreaming, I remind myself that, if I was supposed to be at Conception Abbey, I'd be at Conception Abbey. For some reason, the Archbishop wants me to be here. If he has this much confidence in me, I should probably stop day dreaming and get to work.
Monday, May 23, 2011
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ
May the Grace and Peace from our resurrected Lord be with you as we continue through this Easter Season. I’m a little disappointed. I don’t know if you had heard this but I heard that the rapture was supposed to take place today/yesterday at 6:00 pm Eastern Time so I didn’t think I was going to be preaching this weekend. Of course, it’s not too late. It could happen now. (pause) Or now. (Pause) How about now? (Pause) I guess God really is in charge of when and how it will take place. The Bible doesn’t contain a secret code contained in disparate passages that only fundamentalists can read explaining exactly how it will all come to an end. Oftentimes, what the fundamentalists read as things that will take place at the end times are passages describing what life was like living in a world where both Jews and Gentiles hated us and wanted to kill us. And yet, we are still faced with the whole issue that, as we say in the creed each week, we believe that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. How should we prepare ourselves to be judged?
Believe it or not, two of our readings deal with the end times. The first one, the gospel, is easy to see. Jesus speaks words of comfort to us to give us an insight into the end times. To me, this is the difference between the Catholic approach and the approach of Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, writers of the Left Behind books. Jesus tells the disciples that they will know the way to the Father and the Apostle Thomas, still doubting, asks how they know the way if they have never been there. Jesus responds to Thomas that he is The Way. He has to repeat this statement to Philip later who still thinks that Jesus can just give him GPS coordinates to heaven. Jesus is The Way. He isn’t just going to show us the way to the Father. He IS the way to the Father. Our responsibility, then, shouldn’t be to be seeking signs of Jesus’ return or trying to predict when it will take place. We should be trying to get to know and love Jesus so that we can get to know and love the Father.
The other reading that points to the end-times is the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. At this point in church history, the disciples thought that Jesus’ return would happen within their life-times. So, they have combined up most of their property in preparation. But, in order to make sure that everyone is fed in this group that is constantly increasing in size, the Apostles are taking more and more time each day giving out food and less and less time each day for prayer. We can all probably sympathize with this. Remember in High School and College when all you had to do each day was study and work a couple of hours at a job? Some of you never had this experience so bear with me for a moment. If you did have this experience, you probably had your parents to rely on to take care of the bigger problems of bills and repairs around the home. Do you remember that time when you looked around and realized that your life got a lot more complicated? You have to pay all the bills and make sure you’re not late or else you don’t have insurance or lights or gas. It’s so easy in these times of stress to quit doing things like reading books, praying, and studying. The Apostles knew they couldn’t let this happen so they asked the community to appoint deacons to assist them by bringing food to the Greek-speaking widows who felt neglected in the daily distribution. The point was that prayer needed to be a central place in each day for them to survive. It reminds me of a monastery visit I made in which a monk who had an hour of work still to do, put everything away because he knew it was time to pray and, had he finished, he would have missed prayer. He knew he had to spend time with the Way to the Father if he intended on being ready for eternal life.
In the end, as Catholics, we don’t get wrapped up in looking for the rapture or the beast or any of that stuff. We aren’t going to get lost looking in the Bible for clues to the end-times, as though the Bible were a mystery novel and we’ve been sent to solve it. Instead, through the sacraments and our prayer life, we draw closer each day to the one who alone knows how it end because he is the Way that leads to the Father. We take comfort in Jesus’ words: Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, have faith also in the way.
May the Grace and Peace from our resurrected Lord be with you as we continue through this Easter Season. I’m a little disappointed. I don’t know if you had heard this but I heard that the rapture was supposed to take place today/yesterday at 6:00 pm Eastern Time so I didn’t think I was going to be preaching this weekend. Of course, it’s not too late. It could happen now. (pause) Or now. (Pause) How about now? (Pause) I guess God really is in charge of when and how it will take place. The Bible doesn’t contain a secret code contained in disparate passages that only fundamentalists can read explaining exactly how it will all come to an end. Oftentimes, what the fundamentalists read as things that will take place at the end times are passages describing what life was like living in a world where both Jews and Gentiles hated us and wanted to kill us. And yet, we are still faced with the whole issue that, as we say in the creed each week, we believe that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. How should we prepare ourselves to be judged?
Believe it or not, two of our readings deal with the end times. The first one, the gospel, is easy to see. Jesus speaks words of comfort to us to give us an insight into the end times. To me, this is the difference between the Catholic approach and the approach of Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, writers of the Left Behind books. Jesus tells the disciples that they will know the way to the Father and the Apostle Thomas, still doubting, asks how they know the way if they have never been there. Jesus responds to Thomas that he is The Way. He has to repeat this statement to Philip later who still thinks that Jesus can just give him GPS coordinates to heaven. Jesus is The Way. He isn’t just going to show us the way to the Father. He IS the way to the Father. Our responsibility, then, shouldn’t be to be seeking signs of Jesus’ return or trying to predict when it will take place. We should be trying to get to know and love Jesus so that we can get to know and love the Father.
The other reading that points to the end-times is the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. At this point in church history, the disciples thought that Jesus’ return would happen within their life-times. So, they have combined up most of their property in preparation. But, in order to make sure that everyone is fed in this group that is constantly increasing in size, the Apostles are taking more and more time each day giving out food and less and less time each day for prayer. We can all probably sympathize with this. Remember in High School and College when all you had to do each day was study and work a couple of hours at a job? Some of you never had this experience so bear with me for a moment. If you did have this experience, you probably had your parents to rely on to take care of the bigger problems of bills and repairs around the home. Do you remember that time when you looked around and realized that your life got a lot more complicated? You have to pay all the bills and make sure you’re not late or else you don’t have insurance or lights or gas. It’s so easy in these times of stress to quit doing things like reading books, praying, and studying. The Apostles knew they couldn’t let this happen so they asked the community to appoint deacons to assist them by bringing food to the Greek-speaking widows who felt neglected in the daily distribution. The point was that prayer needed to be a central place in each day for them to survive. It reminds me of a monastery visit I made in which a monk who had an hour of work still to do, put everything away because he knew it was time to pray and, had he finished, he would have missed prayer. He knew he had to spend time with the Way to the Father if he intended on being ready for eternal life.
In the end, as Catholics, we don’t get wrapped up in looking for the rapture or the beast or any of that stuff. We aren’t going to get lost looking in the Bible for clues to the end-times, as though the Bible were a mystery novel and we’ve been sent to solve it. Instead, through the sacraments and our prayer life, we draw closer each day to the one who alone knows how it end because he is the Way that leads to the Father. We take comfort in Jesus’ words: Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God, have faith also in the way.
Monday, May 09, 2011
Stay with us, Lord
My Dear Friends in Christ
May the Grace and Peace of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ be with you as we continue to celebrate this Easter season. I have a friend who is a priest that I always see at priest gatherings. In a one-on-one situation, he’s a great person to talk to. He keeps the conversation going and always has interesting stories to tell. But, if you get him in a group, I hate talking to him because, as you talk to him, he is constantly scanning the room looking for someone else to talk to. I just want to grab his head, turn it towards me, and say, “Please pay attention to me while we are talking!”
I’m sure most of us would say that, when it comes to God, we want to put all our attention on our relationship with him. And yet, our readings today present us with three situations in which we’d probably prefer God wasn’t there. The first is illustrated in the gospel account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. One commentator that I read said that this may have been Cleopas, whose father may have been the brother of St. Joseph, and Mary, his wife, who was present at the crucifixion next to the Blessed Mother and Mary of Magdala. If so, it stands to reason that this husband and wife, one a first cousin of Jesus and the other an eyewitness to his death, would have been very disappointed in the results of Good Friday and very skeptical of the women’s reports of the empty tomb. As they’re walking along, Jesus comes to them and starts talking to them but their eyes are prevented from seeing him. It’s only when he takes bread, blesses it, and hands it to them that the scales fall from their eyes and they are able to see. As one commentator put it, “Jesus miraculous presence is hardly necessary when one has his presence in the Eucharist.” Yet, honestly, how many times to we come to mass, not pay any attention to the prayers, barely listen to the readings or homily, scuttle to the front of the communion line, consume the host, and have no real sense that the Lord was here among us the whole time? Stay with us Lord when our spiritual blindness prevents us from recognizing you in the breaking of the bread.
In the second reading, the Apostle Peter exhorts us that, if we call God our Father, which we do each time we pray the Our Father, then we have to accept God as a father. Part of what isn’t communicated as well in today’s society as it would have been even 40 or 50 years ago is that we call God “Father” because he is head of the household. I’m not trying to diminish the role of women, especially on this day, Mother’s Day. But, one of the sad things that has happened to men in modern media is that we often view fathers as total buffoons. From Al Bundy to Homer Simpson to Peter Griffin to Doug Heffernen to Phil Dunfey and the list could go on and on and on, most fathers on television are shells of the real dads I’ve met who love their wives, work hard, and, yes, occasionally discipline their kids when they’re bad. I can’t help but notice that, as our image of fatherhood has been so diminished and distorted, so has our image of God as Father. We don’t like to think of God as being in charge or God as having the master plan. Stay with us, Lord, when we misunderstand you and distort who you are for our own convenience.
And, lastly, there’s the first reading. In this first Papal Address made by our first Pope, Peter courageously speaks to the people he blames for the death of Jesus, his fellow Jews. He addresses them and witnesses to them about how Jesus has appeared to him. In our modern era, religion is considered by many to be a private matter. Part of the reason for this is because we don’t want to seem like a Bible thumpers, right? First of all, most of us (myself included) don’t know enough Bible passages by heart to be a bible thumper but, just as important, we don’t want that image. And, yet, believing in Jesus demands that we speak to others about him, that we let others know about the love God has for them in sending his son to be our savior, especially in this time when there is so much misinformation out there about the church. Stay with us, Lord, when we are with others who need to know you.
We may think that we always want God to be close to us but there are times when we may think it would just as good if he wasn’t. In those times, it’s most important that we echo the prayer of two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Stay with us, Lord.”
May the Grace and Peace of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ be with you as we continue to celebrate this Easter season. I have a friend who is a priest that I always see at priest gatherings. In a one-on-one situation, he’s a great person to talk to. He keeps the conversation going and always has interesting stories to tell. But, if you get him in a group, I hate talking to him because, as you talk to him, he is constantly scanning the room looking for someone else to talk to. I just want to grab his head, turn it towards me, and say, “Please pay attention to me while we are talking!”
I’m sure most of us would say that, when it comes to God, we want to put all our attention on our relationship with him. And yet, our readings today present us with three situations in which we’d probably prefer God wasn’t there. The first is illustrated in the gospel account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. One commentator that I read said that this may have been Cleopas, whose father may have been the brother of St. Joseph, and Mary, his wife, who was present at the crucifixion next to the Blessed Mother and Mary of Magdala. If so, it stands to reason that this husband and wife, one a first cousin of Jesus and the other an eyewitness to his death, would have been very disappointed in the results of Good Friday and very skeptical of the women’s reports of the empty tomb. As they’re walking along, Jesus comes to them and starts talking to them but their eyes are prevented from seeing him. It’s only when he takes bread, blesses it, and hands it to them that the scales fall from their eyes and they are able to see. As one commentator put it, “Jesus miraculous presence is hardly necessary when one has his presence in the Eucharist.” Yet, honestly, how many times to we come to mass, not pay any attention to the prayers, barely listen to the readings or homily, scuttle to the front of the communion line, consume the host, and have no real sense that the Lord was here among us the whole time? Stay with us Lord when our spiritual blindness prevents us from recognizing you in the breaking of the bread.
In the second reading, the Apostle Peter exhorts us that, if we call God our Father, which we do each time we pray the Our Father, then we have to accept God as a father. Part of what isn’t communicated as well in today’s society as it would have been even 40 or 50 years ago is that we call God “Father” because he is head of the household. I’m not trying to diminish the role of women, especially on this day, Mother’s Day. But, one of the sad things that has happened to men in modern media is that we often view fathers as total buffoons. From Al Bundy to Homer Simpson to Peter Griffin to Doug Heffernen to Phil Dunfey and the list could go on and on and on, most fathers on television are shells of the real dads I’ve met who love their wives, work hard, and, yes, occasionally discipline their kids when they’re bad. I can’t help but notice that, as our image of fatherhood has been so diminished and distorted, so has our image of God as Father. We don’t like to think of God as being in charge or God as having the master plan. Stay with us, Lord, when we misunderstand you and distort who you are for our own convenience.
And, lastly, there’s the first reading. In this first Papal Address made by our first Pope, Peter courageously speaks to the people he blames for the death of Jesus, his fellow Jews. He addresses them and witnesses to them about how Jesus has appeared to him. In our modern era, religion is considered by many to be a private matter. Part of the reason for this is because we don’t want to seem like a Bible thumpers, right? First of all, most of us (myself included) don’t know enough Bible passages by heart to be a bible thumper but, just as important, we don’t want that image. And, yet, believing in Jesus demands that we speak to others about him, that we let others know about the love God has for them in sending his son to be our savior, especially in this time when there is so much misinformation out there about the church. Stay with us, Lord, when we are with others who need to know you.
We may think that we always want God to be close to us but there are times when we may think it would just as good if he wasn’t. In those times, it’s most important that we echo the prayer of two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Stay with us, Lord.”
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Some Reflections on my first Easter Vigil as a pastor
I've been waiting for the moment when I start to feel like I belong here. Things are starting to seem "normal" here instead of like everything is constantly changing.
This Easter Vigil was very special for me. It was the first time I celebrated it as a pastor. I'd done my best to avoid celebrating it before because I said that the pastor should always be the one to bring people into the church. I was able to sit and listen to all the wonderful Old Testament readings (We did five) and I chanted probably 75% of the prayers (including Eucharistic Prayer I) and I managed to use incense and not spill the coals (unlike Holy Thursday!).
Probably the time that just hit me was when my butt hit the chair after communion for a few moments of reflection/thanksgiving. The choir started singing Regina Coeli Latare and I thought to myself: Rejoice, O Church for he who Mary bore has truly risen. Alleluia.
He is Risen. He is truly risen.
This Easter Vigil was very special for me. It was the first time I celebrated it as a pastor. I'd done my best to avoid celebrating it before because I said that the pastor should always be the one to bring people into the church. I was able to sit and listen to all the wonderful Old Testament readings (We did five) and I chanted probably 75% of the prayers (including Eucharistic Prayer I) and I managed to use incense and not spill the coals (unlike Holy Thursday!).
Probably the time that just hit me was when my butt hit the chair after communion for a few moments of reflection/thanksgiving. The choir started singing Regina Coeli Latare and I thought to myself: Rejoice, O Church for he who Mary bore has truly risen. Alleluia.
He is Risen. He is truly risen.
Allow hope to overcome fear
My dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in our Risen Savior as we gather here for the Easter Vigil. The case is often made that, as Catholics, we never read the Bible. Well, you can’t say that about this mass. We seem to have covered almost the entire Bible tonight. As I was praying over the readings, I couldn’t hope but notice a theme. God continually drives out fear with hope. We heard in the first reading how he made the earth and gave us a special role in it with a dominion proper to men and women. It’s not until the next chapter with the story of Adam and Eve that fear enters the world through sin. This was the fear that Abraham overcame when he travelled three days into the wilderness to slaughter his son, Isaac. God ultimately spared the Son of Abraham. And because of his obedience to the unfair request of God, Abraham is told that his name will be a blessing to many nations, and it is to anyone who calls themselves Jew, Christian, or Muslim. Yes, God spared the son of Abraham in hope and did not spare his own son to put an end to fear and start a new beginning of hope to all the nations through Jesus.
It was fear that caused the Moses and the Israelites to question whether God would save them from the oncoming Egyptian force. Yet, God had their back by sending his angel to protect them so that the Egyptians could not get close. Then he opened a way through the waters of the Red Sea so that only His people could pass, not the Egyptians. He used the waters of the Red Sea to point to the hopeful waters of Baptism, which drive out the fear of death.
This is what St. Paul was talking about in his letter to the Romans. Baptism is, for us, an entrance into the resurrected life of Jesus. He has died for us and we enter into his death in the waters of Baptism. He died for us so that we may no longer be a slave to sin. To me, the ultimate symbol of hope overcoming fear is in the gospel. There is an earthquake because the Angel of the Lord has moved the rock that blocked the way to the tomb of Jesus. The Angel, who appears in dazzling white, scares the guards so much that they become like dead men. Fear can be paralyzing like that sometimes. Yet, the women who have faith can see through the tumult of an earthquake, the hope that lies behind it. They hear the hopeful words of the Angel that he is risen. They ran fearful but overjoyed to the disciples. The fear is natural but Jesus had to get rid of it so that they could be completely hopeful witnesses so he, likewise, appears to them to drive out any vestige of fear they may have.
At our 13 hours, Fr. Hertges talked about how hope drives out fear. I kept thinking of all the things in this world that so easily deflate the kind of pithy hope that most people have. Internationally, the United States is in a four front war in the Middle East. There have been so many natural disasters; earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, etc. that it’s hard to keep up with it all. Gas prices keep going higher and higher and the economy keeps getting worse and worse and, to be honest, I’m not sure any politician has the selflessness, let alone the intelligence, to be able to deal with it. Our church’s struggle with sexual abuse has diminished our voice on moral matters to the extent that it seems to be ignored by everyone. And, still, there’s hope. In the face of all this tumult, the angel of the Lord looks at each of us and says, “Do not be afraid!” God has conquered sin and death. Jesus is raised from the dead. Alleluia! Alleluia!
We are to be like the women in the gospel today and announce the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection to the whole world. Like the women, we are undoubtedly afraid to do so because we may be spurned, mocked, and ridiculed. Allow Jesus, who comes to us tonight in bread and wine, to open your heart to his call to evangelization. Go tell your brothers and sisters to go to church, here they will see him. Here they will find hope to overcome fear. Here they will die with Christ so as to rise with him.
Grace and Peace to you in our Risen Savior as we gather here for the Easter Vigil. The case is often made that, as Catholics, we never read the Bible. Well, you can’t say that about this mass. We seem to have covered almost the entire Bible tonight. As I was praying over the readings, I couldn’t hope but notice a theme. God continually drives out fear with hope. We heard in the first reading how he made the earth and gave us a special role in it with a dominion proper to men and women. It’s not until the next chapter with the story of Adam and Eve that fear enters the world through sin. This was the fear that Abraham overcame when he travelled three days into the wilderness to slaughter his son, Isaac. God ultimately spared the Son of Abraham. And because of his obedience to the unfair request of God, Abraham is told that his name will be a blessing to many nations, and it is to anyone who calls themselves Jew, Christian, or Muslim. Yes, God spared the son of Abraham in hope and did not spare his own son to put an end to fear and start a new beginning of hope to all the nations through Jesus.
It was fear that caused the Moses and the Israelites to question whether God would save them from the oncoming Egyptian force. Yet, God had their back by sending his angel to protect them so that the Egyptians could not get close. Then he opened a way through the waters of the Red Sea so that only His people could pass, not the Egyptians. He used the waters of the Red Sea to point to the hopeful waters of Baptism, which drive out the fear of death.
This is what St. Paul was talking about in his letter to the Romans. Baptism is, for us, an entrance into the resurrected life of Jesus. He has died for us and we enter into his death in the waters of Baptism. He died for us so that we may no longer be a slave to sin. To me, the ultimate symbol of hope overcoming fear is in the gospel. There is an earthquake because the Angel of the Lord has moved the rock that blocked the way to the tomb of Jesus. The Angel, who appears in dazzling white, scares the guards so much that they become like dead men. Fear can be paralyzing like that sometimes. Yet, the women who have faith can see through the tumult of an earthquake, the hope that lies behind it. They hear the hopeful words of the Angel that he is risen. They ran fearful but overjoyed to the disciples. The fear is natural but Jesus had to get rid of it so that they could be completely hopeful witnesses so he, likewise, appears to them to drive out any vestige of fear they may have.
At our 13 hours, Fr. Hertges talked about how hope drives out fear. I kept thinking of all the things in this world that so easily deflate the kind of pithy hope that most people have. Internationally, the United States is in a four front war in the Middle East. There have been so many natural disasters; earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, etc. that it’s hard to keep up with it all. Gas prices keep going higher and higher and the economy keeps getting worse and worse and, to be honest, I’m not sure any politician has the selflessness, let alone the intelligence, to be able to deal with it. Our church’s struggle with sexual abuse has diminished our voice on moral matters to the extent that it seems to be ignored by everyone. And, still, there’s hope. In the face of all this tumult, the angel of the Lord looks at each of us and says, “Do not be afraid!” God has conquered sin and death. Jesus is raised from the dead. Alleluia! Alleluia!
We are to be like the women in the gospel today and announce the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection to the whole world. Like the women, we are undoubtedly afraid to do so because we may be spurned, mocked, and ridiculed. Allow Jesus, who comes to us tonight in bread and wine, to open your heart to his call to evangelization. Go tell your brothers and sisters to go to church, here they will see him. Here they will find hope to overcome fear. Here they will die with Christ so as to rise with him.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Reflections on the Good Friday Service
Before Lent began, I met with the Forest City Ministerial Association to talk about the things ministerial associations normally talk about; pray together, work on a communal charitable effort, and get to know each other so we don't demonize each other. I found out that we do an ecumenical Good Friday service and they asked for a speaker. No one spoke up...one of the worst things that can happen to a "helper" personality like mine. I volunteered and then completely forgot that I had volunteered until I was reminded LAST WEEK! Yikes! Thankfully, the other minister they had paired with me had put great thought into it and had an entire service in mine. He even brought his own musicians along.
I wore my cassock and sat nervously next to the only other minister wearing a clergy collar. We sang hymns and heard John 19:1-30 and then I stepped forward to preach. Now, in the past three days, I've had two absolute train wrecks happen. First, in the middle of the chrism mass, I had to leave because over being overheated. Then, at the end of Holy Thursday mass, I spilled a coal from the censor and nearly started myself and the church on fire. So, I wondered what was next.
Nothing was next. I preached. No one was hurt. I had great compliments. And the people said, "Amen."
I wore my cassock and sat nervously next to the only other minister wearing a clergy collar. We sang hymns and heard John 19:1-30 and then I stepped forward to preach. Now, in the past three days, I've had two absolute train wrecks happen. First, in the middle of the chrism mass, I had to leave because over being overheated. Then, at the end of Holy Thursday mass, I spilled a coal from the censor and nearly started myself and the church on fire. So, I wondered what was next.
Nothing was next. I preached. No one was hurt. I had great compliments. And the people said, "Amen."
...Hell trembles in fear.
Dearly Beloved in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we come together from our various Christian Communities to remember the events Good Friday. I’d like to begin my reflection today by quoting an ancient reflection typically read on Holy Saturday. I think it’s just as applicable today as it is tomorrow.
“Something strange is happening--- there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh, and hell trembles with fear.”
The Gospel of John’s account of the death of our Lord offers some incredibly beautiful insights for us to reflect upon in this Good Friday celebration. Despite the fact that Pilate believes he is in control, it becomes clear that he is not. The question that comes to mind as he is trying to decide how to treat Jesus is who is in charge? Is it God? Is It Caesar? Is it the devil? At different points throughout John 19, it seems like any one of these three are in fact in charge. When Pilate indicates that he is willing to release Jesus, the Jewish leaders proclaim fidelity to Caesar. Indeed, it seems that Pilate most fears that, by releasing Jesus, he may be releasing a competitor for his bosses’ job. Jesus focuses him back where he belongs and reminds him, “You would have no power over me at all if it had not been given you from above; that is why the man who handed me over to you has the greater guilt.” In some ways, Jesus is expunging Pilate of the guilt of passing sentence by saying that there is one who has committed a worse sin by handing him over to be crucified. Who is Jesus condemning here? Who handed him over? Judas merely handed him over to the Jews, who have not authority to crucify. He had no idea what his actions did. Plus, he has already gone to his death and is at the mercy of the Father. Some have suggested that this a reference to the High Priest, Caiaphas. I’d like to suggest that there is something deeper happening here.
In trying to decide what to do with Jesus’ clothes, there is one garment that is left undivided. This was done, as John the Evangelist said, to fulfill sacred scripture, Psalm 22, “Many dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.” Yet, John the Evangelist sees in this action a symbolism for the need for Christians to be united. That’s why it is so fitting that we would gather together on Good Friday to remember the death of Our Lord and to pray for greater unity among all Christians, that we may be one as Father, Son, and Spirit are One. From now on, Jesus will seek to make sure that there is greater unity among the people all the way until he breathes his last. From the cross, he makes sure that his elderly mother is cared for by his apostle, John.
At the end, he breathes a phrase that could sound, in most Bibles, like utter frustration, “It is finished.” Jesus has suffered enough. He is ready to stop fulfilling prophecy, to stop fighting, and give up his Spirit. It sounds like a cancer patient who has fought bravely against the illness giving into the inevitable. Jesus can do no more so it’s time to stop fighting.
If we were to believe that, we couldn’t be more wrong. Jesus isn’t, in frustration, throwing up his hands. He is saying that everything is in place now, everything is complete, everything has been fulfilled. In this statement, we finally get an answer as to who is really in charge and who is really the one who handed him over. The devil, in hell, thought he had pulled off the perfect coup, as he had done in the garden. Just as he had convinced Adam and Eve to commit the first sin, to clothe themselves with garments of shame, and to be thrown out the garden, so he now thinks that he has clothed the king of Glory in the shame of death on the cross, with the mocking clothes of a King on his body. Yet, now all is set for the conquering of death in the resurrection, the folly of the garden overcome by the glorious death of the cross. It is finished, it is fulfilled…and hell trembles in fear.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we come together from our various Christian Communities to remember the events Good Friday. I’d like to begin my reflection today by quoting an ancient reflection typically read on Holy Saturday. I think it’s just as applicable today as it is tomorrow.
“Something strange is happening--- there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh, and hell trembles with fear.”
The Gospel of John’s account of the death of our Lord offers some incredibly beautiful insights for us to reflect upon in this Good Friday celebration. Despite the fact that Pilate believes he is in control, it becomes clear that he is not. The question that comes to mind as he is trying to decide how to treat Jesus is who is in charge? Is it God? Is It Caesar? Is it the devil? At different points throughout John 19, it seems like any one of these three are in fact in charge. When Pilate indicates that he is willing to release Jesus, the Jewish leaders proclaim fidelity to Caesar. Indeed, it seems that Pilate most fears that, by releasing Jesus, he may be releasing a competitor for his bosses’ job. Jesus focuses him back where he belongs and reminds him, “You would have no power over me at all if it had not been given you from above; that is why the man who handed me over to you has the greater guilt.” In some ways, Jesus is expunging Pilate of the guilt of passing sentence by saying that there is one who has committed a worse sin by handing him over to be crucified. Who is Jesus condemning here? Who handed him over? Judas merely handed him over to the Jews, who have not authority to crucify. He had no idea what his actions did. Plus, he has already gone to his death and is at the mercy of the Father. Some have suggested that this a reference to the High Priest, Caiaphas. I’d like to suggest that there is something deeper happening here.
In trying to decide what to do with Jesus’ clothes, there is one garment that is left undivided. This was done, as John the Evangelist said, to fulfill sacred scripture, Psalm 22, “Many dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.” Yet, John the Evangelist sees in this action a symbolism for the need for Christians to be united. That’s why it is so fitting that we would gather together on Good Friday to remember the death of Our Lord and to pray for greater unity among all Christians, that we may be one as Father, Son, and Spirit are One. From now on, Jesus will seek to make sure that there is greater unity among the people all the way until he breathes his last. From the cross, he makes sure that his elderly mother is cared for by his apostle, John.
At the end, he breathes a phrase that could sound, in most Bibles, like utter frustration, “It is finished.” Jesus has suffered enough. He is ready to stop fulfilling prophecy, to stop fighting, and give up his Spirit. It sounds like a cancer patient who has fought bravely against the illness giving into the inevitable. Jesus can do no more so it’s time to stop fighting.
If we were to believe that, we couldn’t be more wrong. Jesus isn’t, in frustration, throwing up his hands. He is saying that everything is in place now, everything is complete, everything has been fulfilled. In this statement, we finally get an answer as to who is really in charge and who is really the one who handed him over. The devil, in hell, thought he had pulled off the perfect coup, as he had done in the garden. Just as he had convinced Adam and Eve to commit the first sin, to clothe themselves with garments of shame, and to be thrown out the garden, so he now thinks that he has clothed the king of Glory in the shame of death on the cross, with the mocking clothes of a King on his body. Yet, now all is set for the conquering of death in the resurrection, the folly of the garden overcome by the glorious death of the cross. It is finished, it is fulfilled…and hell trembles in fear.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
We await the resurrection of the body
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. In a past assignment, I was asked to go and officiate at a graveside service for someone whose funeral mass has been in Denver, Colorado. It was one of those situations where the person died in Colorado but wanted to be buried back here in Iowa but the priest (for obvious reasons) didn’t want to tag along for the burial. I arrived at the rural cemetery on a typical Iowa summer day. It was somewhere between 95 and a hundred million degrees outside. And the farmer that had the field adjoining the cemetery decided it would be the perfect day to fertilize his crops so the fresh smell of hog manure greeted us as we stepped out of our vehicles. I decided then and there to be brief. There was only a few family members present along with the urn that contained the cremains of their father. I did all the burial prayers, “Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust…” but felt relief when it was all over and I could finally leave. As I opened the door to my truck, one of the daughters of the man who had passed away came up to me with two small boxes approximately the size of ring boxes. She asked if I would bless them. I asked what they were and they said the crematorium provided small “take home” portions of the cremains for each child but put the majority in the urn. I couldn’t believe it. The church is very clear about cremains. We don’t have a problem with them as long as they are kept intact and buried in one spot. Yet, the hot smell of hog manure was so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was get away as quickly as possible. So, instead of doing what I should have done and told them to put them in the grave, I said a blessing, got into my truck, and inhaled for the first time in fifteen minutes.
As I look back on that experience, I have to admit to my own confusion surrounding the church’s teaching on burial. Why should we believe we need to buried in one spot? I think of the number of people who have died in airplane and helicopter accidents in which no bodies were recoverable. Or the people who have lost a limb throughout their life that aren’t buried with the limb. Or, what about all the saints whose bodies are put into altars throughout the world. Why would the body of a saint, who we’re sure will one day be resurrected, be allowed to be scattered around several churches, perhaps even in several different continents if being buried in one spot was so important?
The Greek Philosopher Plato who believed that we are made up of body and soul, the body being evil and the soul being good. Christians take our understanding of the body from the Jews. The Jews believed that the human being is made up of a body and a soul and that one without the other is not a real existence. A souless body is dead. A bodiless soul is an evil spirit seeking to take possession of a body. When body and soul are matched up by God then he puts his spirit which holds them together.
Our readings today talk a lot about this dynamic. Focusing on the gospel, we hear about the death of this man Lazarus. Jesus is confronted by his friends Martha and Mary that had he been there, their brother would still be alive. They are, understandably, struggling with the reality of the loss of a loved one so you can’t be too hard on them. The trouble is that, despite the fact that they should know him better than most people, they only seem to have faith in Jesus the healer. He needs them to have faith in himself as the resurrection. So, in order to show that he was the resurrection, he brought their brother back to life.
Part of the reason the church asks that we not scatter our ashes all over the place is to show respect for the body. Some people believe that, after death, we become pure spirit and live in heaven as such. But, each time that we gather together for church we profess in the Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We aren’t just referring to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. We’re talking about the resurrection of our own bodies. We are given a body and a soul from God. Both are gifts given to us to be used with care and respect. As we prepare for the great victory over sin and death that is the cross, let us remember that we hope to raised body and soul in Spirit.
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. In a past assignment, I was asked to go and officiate at a graveside service for someone whose funeral mass has been in Denver, Colorado. It was one of those situations where the person died in Colorado but wanted to be buried back here in Iowa but the priest (for obvious reasons) didn’t want to tag along for the burial. I arrived at the rural cemetery on a typical Iowa summer day. It was somewhere between 95 and a hundred million degrees outside. And the farmer that had the field adjoining the cemetery decided it would be the perfect day to fertilize his crops so the fresh smell of hog manure greeted us as we stepped out of our vehicles. I decided then and there to be brief. There was only a few family members present along with the urn that contained the cremains of their father. I did all the burial prayers, “Ashes to Ashes, dust to dust…” but felt relief when it was all over and I could finally leave. As I opened the door to my truck, one of the daughters of the man who had passed away came up to me with two small boxes approximately the size of ring boxes. She asked if I would bless them. I asked what they were and they said the crematorium provided small “take home” portions of the cremains for each child but put the majority in the urn. I couldn’t believe it. The church is very clear about cremains. We don’t have a problem with them as long as they are kept intact and buried in one spot. Yet, the hot smell of hog manure was so overwhelming that all I wanted to do was get away as quickly as possible. So, instead of doing what I should have done and told them to put them in the grave, I said a blessing, got into my truck, and inhaled for the first time in fifteen minutes.
As I look back on that experience, I have to admit to my own confusion surrounding the church’s teaching on burial. Why should we believe we need to buried in one spot? I think of the number of people who have died in airplane and helicopter accidents in which no bodies were recoverable. Or the people who have lost a limb throughout their life that aren’t buried with the limb. Or, what about all the saints whose bodies are put into altars throughout the world. Why would the body of a saint, who we’re sure will one day be resurrected, be allowed to be scattered around several churches, perhaps even in several different continents if being buried in one spot was so important?
The Greek Philosopher Plato who believed that we are made up of body and soul, the body being evil and the soul being good. Christians take our understanding of the body from the Jews. The Jews believed that the human being is made up of a body and a soul and that one without the other is not a real existence. A souless body is dead. A bodiless soul is an evil spirit seeking to take possession of a body. When body and soul are matched up by God then he puts his spirit which holds them together.
Our readings today talk a lot about this dynamic. Focusing on the gospel, we hear about the death of this man Lazarus. Jesus is confronted by his friends Martha and Mary that had he been there, their brother would still be alive. They are, understandably, struggling with the reality of the loss of a loved one so you can’t be too hard on them. The trouble is that, despite the fact that they should know him better than most people, they only seem to have faith in Jesus the healer. He needs them to have faith in himself as the resurrection. So, in order to show that he was the resurrection, he brought their brother back to life.
Part of the reason the church asks that we not scatter our ashes all over the place is to show respect for the body. Some people believe that, after death, we become pure spirit and live in heaven as such. But, each time that we gather together for church we profess in the Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We aren’t just referring to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. We’re talking about the resurrection of our own bodies. We are given a body and a soul from God. Both are gifts given to us to be used with care and respect. As we prepare for the great victory over sin and death that is the cross, let us remember that we hope to raised body and soul in Spirit.
Monday, April 04, 2011
The weekend and why my homily will take a while...
This weekend started off good enough. The weather was going to be warm with chances of rain in the evenings, which was really good considering how horribly my last week had gone. It was just a very busy week with way too many 13 and 14 hour days. I got to Friday and realized that, if I didn’t do something stupid, I may actually have an entire evening free. I got caught up on some emails and telephone calls and I tried to focus on the readings for Sunday Mass. Nothing was coming to me. I couldn’t find a message my people needed to hear. I went to bed confident that it would come.
On Saturday, I slept in a little. I’d had some short nights the previous week and thought it would be good to try and catch up. I prayed, had confession, and did some laundry. After confessions were over, I returned to my homily and prayed over the readings some more. Still, nothing was coming to me. For four hours I prayed and for four hours nothing would come to me. I went to the my files and pulled out a homily from six years ago that I wasn’t satisfied with but that had to do. In the middle of preaching at my first mass, the homily came to me. It was like I was hearing them for the first time with clarity. I went to my other rectory and wrote down what I wanted to say and even managed to get to bed early.
On Sunday, I woke up and preached the new homily at the two morning masses, went to an Eagle Scout ceremony, had two communal reconciliations and then collapsed back in my other rectory. I read a little of the Pope’s new book (Jesus of Nazareth 2) and went to sleep. All in all, a good, full day.
I remember being in Ames in my last assignment and thanking God that these incredibly busy days were few and far between. I tend to remember the days when I would be able to spend time with students or days I would take some time to go work in my garden around the little church in Gilbert. It takes days like this to remind me of those other days; days when I would sleep poorly thinking about all the appointments I had for the next day or days when I had to go home to let off some steam after a particular trying staff meeting. I’m glad I don’t think about those days all the time.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The woman at the well
I preached this weekend about how the woman at the well was hurting because of her married life and how Jesus came to her and forgave her. I talked about how Jesus, as the stream of living water, was articulating a theology of baptism, which is a sacrament of entrance into the church and forgiveness of sins. I also talked about how being baptized demands that we tell others about the forgiveness of sins offered to us in baptism. We all know people who are hurting, people who need to feel the loving forgiveness of Jesus and, as baptized people, we must be like the woman at the well and lead them to the source of living water.
Unfortunately, because of two funerals, an extra mass for a retreat, and preparation for 13 hours, my homily remained as an outline and not the full text.
Unfortunately, because of two funerals, an extra mass for a retreat, and preparation for 13 hours, my homily remained as an outline and not the full text.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Could we start again, please?
My Dear friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we delve deeper into this Lenten season. One of my favorite plot schemes in modern television and movies happens when a character is faced with a future version of himself coming back to give him guidance. This plot scheme is a staple of the Science Fiction industry, of which, I hate to admit, I am an addict. I like the plot scheme because it makes me wonder when I would return to my former self to intervene. Think about it from your own life. Is there something you’ve done that you would like to go back and witness or something you did you wish you could go back and change. I could go back and stop myself from being hit by that car when I was a kid or go back and watch my priesthood ordination. I think the hardest thing to do would be to pick the point that I would want to go back to.
In today’s gospel, Jesus chooses right now to reveal something to his disciples. We’re at seventeen out of twenty eight chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, a long time away from the crucifixion, and Jesus reveals to his disciples a glimpse of himself as Messiah. The glimpse is eerily similar to an incident involving Moses in the Old Testament. In chapter thirty four of Exodus, Moses and two of his associates go up a mountain and leave the rest of the Israelites at the foot of the mountain. While there, Moses’ face shines white while reflecting the glory of God and the law is revealed to him. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus face was, likewise, changed along with his clothes. The biggest difference is that, whereas Moses was reflecting the glory of God, Jesus was the glory of God. His face shines and his clothes shine as well. He is the light, not the reflection of that light. And, to underscore this difference, Moses and Elijah stand beside him to represent the Law and the Prophets. Jesus is showing that he has been the light guiding the Jewish people to salvation all along.
Each year that we read this reading, I think to myself; wouldn’t this be more suitable during Easter? Lent is supposed to be a sad time, a time of mortification. Shouldn’t our readings focus us on sad things? The closest thing to something sad you can experience in the Transfiguration is how impetuous Peter behaves. Rather than simply take in what is happening, Peter feels like he has to interject something. “Let us make tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” In some ways, Peter acts like the guy who tries to steal the spotlight from an otherwise incredible evening. And yet, Peter is actually getting the point of the exercise. One of the Jewish Holidays that Jesus and the Apostles participated in was called Succoth. It was a holiday reminding the Jewish people that God met Moses in a tent and that he called them to live in tents for forty days and forty nights while on their way to the Promised Land. Peter’s suggestion, then, fits in perfectly. He recognizes that Jesus, as Messiah, should be in a tent similar to the tent of meeting. Peter didn’t realize that this vision he, James, and John were sharing simply wasn’t going to last long enough for any such construction. Instead, as at Jesus baptism, we have the image of the trinity as the voice of God overshadows the son through the Sprit-filled cloud which declares Jesus as the Son.
We are now two and a half weeks into Lent. For me, this is the time when my spiritual practices begin to waver. I may have slipped up and had a burger on a Friday by accident or forgot to allow enough time to get my entire holy hour in or I look over at unmade rice bowl still sitting where I threw it after Ash Wednesday mass. I tend to feel tempted to give up. I think that’s why we have this image of the Transfiguration in the middle of Lent. Sure it’s happy. But there’s nothing that says Lent has to be a miserable time of suffering. Lent should be a time of renewal, a time to shed the things that weigh us down in our journey toward God. Perhaps the best thing that we can do is do what Jesus and his inner circle did: Go away to a deserted place and open ourselves to the presence of God to allow our hearts to be transfigured so that we can renew our Lenten commitment.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we delve deeper into this Lenten season. One of my favorite plot schemes in modern television and movies happens when a character is faced with a future version of himself coming back to give him guidance. This plot scheme is a staple of the Science Fiction industry, of which, I hate to admit, I am an addict. I like the plot scheme because it makes me wonder when I would return to my former self to intervene. Think about it from your own life. Is there something you’ve done that you would like to go back and witness or something you did you wish you could go back and change. I could go back and stop myself from being hit by that car when I was a kid or go back and watch my priesthood ordination. I think the hardest thing to do would be to pick the point that I would want to go back to.
In today’s gospel, Jesus chooses right now to reveal something to his disciples. We’re at seventeen out of twenty eight chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, a long time away from the crucifixion, and Jesus reveals to his disciples a glimpse of himself as Messiah. The glimpse is eerily similar to an incident involving Moses in the Old Testament. In chapter thirty four of Exodus, Moses and two of his associates go up a mountain and leave the rest of the Israelites at the foot of the mountain. While there, Moses’ face shines white while reflecting the glory of God and the law is revealed to him. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus face was, likewise, changed along with his clothes. The biggest difference is that, whereas Moses was reflecting the glory of God, Jesus was the glory of God. His face shines and his clothes shine as well. He is the light, not the reflection of that light. And, to underscore this difference, Moses and Elijah stand beside him to represent the Law and the Prophets. Jesus is showing that he has been the light guiding the Jewish people to salvation all along.
Each year that we read this reading, I think to myself; wouldn’t this be more suitable during Easter? Lent is supposed to be a sad time, a time of mortification. Shouldn’t our readings focus us on sad things? The closest thing to something sad you can experience in the Transfiguration is how impetuous Peter behaves. Rather than simply take in what is happening, Peter feels like he has to interject something. “Let us make tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” In some ways, Peter acts like the guy who tries to steal the spotlight from an otherwise incredible evening. And yet, Peter is actually getting the point of the exercise. One of the Jewish Holidays that Jesus and the Apostles participated in was called Succoth. It was a holiday reminding the Jewish people that God met Moses in a tent and that he called them to live in tents for forty days and forty nights while on their way to the Promised Land. Peter’s suggestion, then, fits in perfectly. He recognizes that Jesus, as Messiah, should be in a tent similar to the tent of meeting. Peter didn’t realize that this vision he, James, and John were sharing simply wasn’t going to last long enough for any such construction. Instead, as at Jesus baptism, we have the image of the trinity as the voice of God overshadows the son through the Sprit-filled cloud which declares Jesus as the Son.
We are now two and a half weeks into Lent. For me, this is the time when my spiritual practices begin to waver. I may have slipped up and had a burger on a Friday by accident or forgot to allow enough time to get my entire holy hour in or I look over at unmade rice bowl still sitting where I threw it after Ash Wednesday mass. I tend to feel tempted to give up. I think that’s why we have this image of the Transfiguration in the middle of Lent. Sure it’s happy. But there’s nothing that says Lent has to be a miserable time of suffering. Lent should be a time of renewal, a time to shed the things that weigh us down in our journey toward God. Perhaps the best thing that we can do is do what Jesus and his inner circle did: Go away to a deserted place and open ourselves to the presence of God to allow our hearts to be transfigured so that we can renew our Lenten commitment.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit be with you as we begin the Lenten Fast. We begin today by focusing on fasting. Our readings tell us what value fasting has for us. The first reading talked about it in the context of the reconciling nature of fasting. The Prophet Joel says, “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.” Jesus speaks of fasting as something that we should do in secret. We are to wash our face and anoint our head. Fasting is one of the central penitential practices of the Catholic Church, certainly something that is closely associated with our tradition.
Once I was visiting with a deacon candidate who said that he was pondering how much sense the church year makes. He said that, in winter, we tend to add a few pounds and we need a time in the church year to diet to lose those pounds, and that is what Lent is all about. I told him that he might want to rethink that analysis. The reason we fast during Lent is not to lose weight so we’ll look good in a swimsuit. That’s the reason we diet. Dieting is not the same thing as fasting. One goes on a diet in order to have a healthier, better looking body. One fasts in order to have a healthier, better looking spirit. We fast to remind ourselves that the one thing that we cannot do without, the one thing that would stop our existence is the absence of God. We can fast from facebook, from the computer in general, from swearing, from alcohol, and even from something that we know we need like food. But we cannot make it a single day without God.
One of the things Fr. Hertges and I have learned at our leadership training course, however, is you can’t just fast from something without replacing it. Otherwise, you just sit around and think about what you’re trying to fast from. The church offers two ideas that can fill our time in the wake of fasting; prayer and almsgiving. We can use the time we gain from fasting to spend more time in prayer or, if we do enough prayer, to spend time doing some charitable act for someone else.
Ultimately, Lent is meant to offer a change of heart. That’s why Jesus encourages us to keep these acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to ourselves. They aren’t meant to be used to impress people. They’re meant to live out the message of St. Paul from the second reading, “Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
Grace and Peace in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit be with you as we begin the Lenten Fast. We begin today by focusing on fasting. Our readings tell us what value fasting has for us. The first reading talked about it in the context of the reconciling nature of fasting. The Prophet Joel says, “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.” Jesus speaks of fasting as something that we should do in secret. We are to wash our face and anoint our head. Fasting is one of the central penitential practices of the Catholic Church, certainly something that is closely associated with our tradition.
Once I was visiting with a deacon candidate who said that he was pondering how much sense the church year makes. He said that, in winter, we tend to add a few pounds and we need a time in the church year to diet to lose those pounds, and that is what Lent is all about. I told him that he might want to rethink that analysis. The reason we fast during Lent is not to lose weight so we’ll look good in a swimsuit. That’s the reason we diet. Dieting is not the same thing as fasting. One goes on a diet in order to have a healthier, better looking body. One fasts in order to have a healthier, better looking spirit. We fast to remind ourselves that the one thing that we cannot do without, the one thing that would stop our existence is the absence of God. We can fast from facebook, from the computer in general, from swearing, from alcohol, and even from something that we know we need like food. But we cannot make it a single day without God.
One of the things Fr. Hertges and I have learned at our leadership training course, however, is you can’t just fast from something without replacing it. Otherwise, you just sit around and think about what you’re trying to fast from. The church offers two ideas that can fill our time in the wake of fasting; prayer and almsgiving. We can use the time we gain from fasting to spend more time in prayer or, if we do enough prayer, to spend time doing some charitable act for someone else.
Ultimately, Lent is meant to offer a change of heart. That’s why Jesus encourages us to keep these acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to ourselves. They aren’t meant to be used to impress people. They’re meant to live out the message of St. Paul from the second reading, “Working together, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you. Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
Monday, February 28, 2011
What are your priorities?
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet with the ministerial association of Britt. During part of that time, we talked about how we handled Last Sunday’s ice storm. We all hate to cancel church on Sunday and, believe it or not, none of us cancelled them in Britt. Unfortunately, Fr. Hertges and I felt we had to cancel the late masses in Garner and Forest City because the weather had just got to the point where no one should have been out. One of the pastors commented that he had a much smaller congregation than normal and was surprised to see that some of the people who felt it was far too treacherous to go to church on Sunday were willing to travel all the way over to Mason City the next day to the West Hancock girl’s basketball game. He said that the weather was worse on Monday, having snowed all day on top of the ice that we got on Sunday.
In today’s gospel, Jesus exhorts us to not worry about our life. He asks us why we worry so much about the clothes we wear or the food we eat. In some ways, it’s hard for us to truly appreciate what Jesus is saying considering how available food and clothes are for us nowadays. We have refrigerators and freezers to store food and grocery stores to readily supply us with food. It would have been a bit different in a completely agrarian society where you would be expected to grow your own food and store enough to last through the winter. And we have department stores where we can go to buy clothes. Imagine if you would have had to shear the sheep to make wool which eventually would become clothing for you. I imagine that a lot of time each day would have gone towards figuring out how much food you can eat today and have for tomorrow and whether pieces of clothing needed to be patched or thrown away and replaced. Paying attention to clothes and food would have been the mark of adulthood, in some way. And Jesus is trying to get across to his listeners that one shouldn’t be so preoccupied by taking care of the basic necessities of life that we forget the one who supplies those necessities in the first place. He says, “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow with take care of itself.”
What are the activities that you wake up and think about first in the day? If you’re in debt, it might be how you’re going to get out. If you’re sick, it might be how you’re going to be healthy. It could be that game on Facebook that you play. It might be making sure that you set your DVR correctly to record your favorite television show. Whatever it is that keeps you awake at night with worry or makes you wake up in the middle of the night, let us once again listen to the words of Jesus, “Can any of you by worrying add a single minute to your life-span?”
We are just a short week and a half away from Lent; the time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As Catholics, we are trained to ask each other what we are giving up. This year, our readings challenge us to take to hear the real reason for the season. As we look at those things that add worries and stress to our lives, is there some way that we can fast from the worry and stress and replace it with prayer and charitable acts? How can we stop worrying so much about food, clothes, and money and use that energy to draw closer to God?
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet with the ministerial association of Britt. During part of that time, we talked about how we handled Last Sunday’s ice storm. We all hate to cancel church on Sunday and, believe it or not, none of us cancelled them in Britt. Unfortunately, Fr. Hertges and I felt we had to cancel the late masses in Garner and Forest City because the weather had just got to the point where no one should have been out. One of the pastors commented that he had a much smaller congregation than normal and was surprised to see that some of the people who felt it was far too treacherous to go to church on Sunday were willing to travel all the way over to Mason City the next day to the West Hancock girl’s basketball game. He said that the weather was worse on Monday, having snowed all day on top of the ice that we got on Sunday.
In today’s gospel, Jesus exhorts us to not worry about our life. He asks us why we worry so much about the clothes we wear or the food we eat. In some ways, it’s hard for us to truly appreciate what Jesus is saying considering how available food and clothes are for us nowadays. We have refrigerators and freezers to store food and grocery stores to readily supply us with food. It would have been a bit different in a completely agrarian society where you would be expected to grow your own food and store enough to last through the winter. And we have department stores where we can go to buy clothes. Imagine if you would have had to shear the sheep to make wool which eventually would become clothing for you. I imagine that a lot of time each day would have gone towards figuring out how much food you can eat today and have for tomorrow and whether pieces of clothing needed to be patched or thrown away and replaced. Paying attention to clothes and food would have been the mark of adulthood, in some way. And Jesus is trying to get across to his listeners that one shouldn’t be so preoccupied by taking care of the basic necessities of life that we forget the one who supplies those necessities in the first place. He says, “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow, tomorrow with take care of itself.”
What are the activities that you wake up and think about first in the day? If you’re in debt, it might be how you’re going to get out. If you’re sick, it might be how you’re going to be healthy. It could be that game on Facebook that you play. It might be making sure that you set your DVR correctly to record your favorite television show. Whatever it is that keeps you awake at night with worry or makes you wake up in the middle of the night, let us once again listen to the words of Jesus, “Can any of you by worrying add a single minute to your life-span?”
We are just a short week and a half away from Lent; the time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As Catholics, we are trained to ask each other what we are giving up. This year, our readings challenge us to take to hear the real reason for the season. As we look at those things that add worries and stress to our lives, is there some way that we can fast from the worry and stress and replace it with prayer and charitable acts? How can we stop worrying so much about food, clothes, and money and use that energy to draw closer to God?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Loving enemies
My Dear brothers and sisters in Christ
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you forever. In last week’s gospel, Jesus continued his Sermon on the Mount with a series of statements that take the law and ratchet it up a step. He says repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you.” In last week’s gospel, Jesus gave four examples of how his disciples weren’t going to live by the bare minimum of the law but, instead, live moral lives that surpassed it. He continues today with the last two examples that he offers both on how we are to love. To summarize, he says first: don’t take revenge on those who harm you, instead remain unaffected by them and go the extra mile for someone in need. And, second, don’t just love those who will love you back. Instead, make a special effort to love those who won’t love you back. I find both of these injunctions incredibly difficult. When someone harms me either with words or actions, my first reaction is to fight back. I really have to calm myself down and ignore that first impulse. I imagine we all do. It’s not natural, for instance, when someone slaps your right cheek to not recoil or put up your hand and, instead, cock your head in the other direction and get ready to be slapped on the other cheek. It’s not easy to be sure to show the same kindness to someone who hates you that you would to someone who loves you.
Yet, there’s a side to these two passages that bug the heck out of me. For instance, I wouldn’t in a million years say to a wife whose husband abuses her or her children that she just needs to turn and offer him her other cheek. Nor would I say to a High School-aged guy whose classmates were bullying him that he should love them and let them do horrible things to him. In both those cases, my blood starts to boil at just the thought of the person feeling trapped and abused and I feel like I must intervene. Would Jesus condemn me for telling a wife whose husband is abusing her that she deserves better and should go somewhere safe? Would he take away my priesthood for telling bullied teenager that it’s okay to report those who are bullying him, that, in fact he’s being stronger by doing that than by keeping quiet?
Part of what Jesus is trying to get across in the gospel today is that, even though we are entitled to do so, we shouldn’t get wrapped up in seeking retribution. If someone slapped you in his day, you had the right to demand a certain amount of money as recompense for the grievance. And if someone was considered an enemy, it was expected that you would exclude them from celebrations and wouldn’t do anything nice to them. In both cases, Jesus is trying to get us to see how destructive it is to get wrapped up in that tit-for-tat litigiousness. Holding a grudge just gets in the way of being perfect like God is perfect. Ultimately, God could remember everything that we have ever done that deserves punishment but, through Christ, he has set us free from those punishments so that we can walk in the freedom of his Children. Don’t get wrapped up in punishing those who hurt you unless you yourself want to be punished by those you have hurt.
May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you forever. In last week’s gospel, Jesus continued his Sermon on the Mount with a series of statements that take the law and ratchet it up a step. He says repeatedly, “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you.” In last week’s gospel, Jesus gave four examples of how his disciples weren’t going to live by the bare minimum of the law but, instead, live moral lives that surpassed it. He continues today with the last two examples that he offers both on how we are to love. To summarize, he says first: don’t take revenge on those who harm you, instead remain unaffected by them and go the extra mile for someone in need. And, second, don’t just love those who will love you back. Instead, make a special effort to love those who won’t love you back. I find both of these injunctions incredibly difficult. When someone harms me either with words or actions, my first reaction is to fight back. I really have to calm myself down and ignore that first impulse. I imagine we all do. It’s not natural, for instance, when someone slaps your right cheek to not recoil or put up your hand and, instead, cock your head in the other direction and get ready to be slapped on the other cheek. It’s not easy to be sure to show the same kindness to someone who hates you that you would to someone who loves you.
Yet, there’s a side to these two passages that bug the heck out of me. For instance, I wouldn’t in a million years say to a wife whose husband abuses her or her children that she just needs to turn and offer him her other cheek. Nor would I say to a High School-aged guy whose classmates were bullying him that he should love them and let them do horrible things to him. In both those cases, my blood starts to boil at just the thought of the person feeling trapped and abused and I feel like I must intervene. Would Jesus condemn me for telling a wife whose husband is abusing her that she deserves better and should go somewhere safe? Would he take away my priesthood for telling bullied teenager that it’s okay to report those who are bullying him, that, in fact he’s being stronger by doing that than by keeping quiet?
Part of what Jesus is trying to get across in the gospel today is that, even though we are entitled to do so, we shouldn’t get wrapped up in seeking retribution. If someone slapped you in his day, you had the right to demand a certain amount of money as recompense for the grievance. And if someone was considered an enemy, it was expected that you would exclude them from celebrations and wouldn’t do anything nice to them. In both cases, Jesus is trying to get us to see how destructive it is to get wrapped up in that tit-for-tat litigiousness. Holding a grudge just gets in the way of being perfect like God is perfect. Ultimately, God could remember everything that we have ever done that deserves punishment but, through Christ, he has set us free from those punishments so that we can walk in the freedom of his Children. Don’t get wrapped up in punishing those who hurt you unless you yourself want to be punished by those you have hurt.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Laws are meant to define the minimum. Loving God demands total sublimation of the will
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath day. When I still in grade school, my older brothers had a Lenten tradition that I would occasionally get to participate in. Some of you may have had a similar tradition. During Lent, my mom was a little more stringent than the church and would make us fast, not only from meat, but also from eating between meals. The church only mandates that we do that on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Nonetheless, my brothers would wait until 11:37 pm then and call Dominoes Pizza to order a pizza that would be delivered to our house a little after midnight. They were definitely fulfilling the law, just barely. Like the kid who’s asked to take his laundry to his room who puts in on the floor right inside his bedroom door or the kid that’s asked to pick up her toys who simply pushes them all to the corner of the room, we just did enough to make sure that we didn’t get into trouble.
When Christianity was being formed, there was a debate within the church as to the role the Old Testament law would play. If you simply read St. Paul, you could get the impression that we should view the Old Testament as a museum, something that used to be important that is no longer. Yet, to balance this out, we have today’s rather lengthy gospel. Jesus begins by saying that the law hasn’t passed away. In fact, Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the law but to bring a perfection to it by fulfilling it. He then shows what that fulfillment looks like by using a total of six examples, of which we hear four. First, don’t just avoid killing people. Avoid becoming angry with your neighbor and do what you can to reconcile with him. Secondly, don’t just avoid committing adultery. Don’t look with lust at someone, especially someone who isn’t your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse. Thirdly, don’t divorce despite the fact that Moses allowed for it. Lastly, don’t just avoid swearing false oaths. Don’t swear oaths at all. Instead, just live your life in such a way that you fulfill the agreements that you make so that you don’t need to make oaths. Each of these examples takes a law that was already on the books and ratchets up the expectations. It definitely challenges the people who think that Jesus wasn’t about rules or laws but only cared that we be nice to one another. Jesus wasn’t a hippie pacifist. He expected that his followers obey the law and that they do so to a degree that others in the world didn’t.
Nonetheless, as I said before, there is a tension in scripture that is very much still present in the church today. Paul says that the law is unimportant, Jesus says that he is the fulfillment of the law and that his followers will follow every letter and then some. The way we feel the tension is, often, in certain hot-button moral issues. For example with the issue of homosexuality; Church leadership says that scripture and tradition are clear that homosexual actions are not allowed even if the person is to be treated with dignity. Some theologians and many gay rights activists say to us, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” The church advocates maintaining the law as it is and gets criticized for being mired in the law, which was abolished by Jesus Christ. Really? Did they read today’s Gospel? Or, as another example, a few years ago, the church put out a statement clarifying that artificial nutrition and hydration, the use of feeding tubes and IV’s, should not be considered extraordinary measures when it comes to end of life issues. In other words, if someone would be able to live given the presence of food and water, even if the quality of their life might not be what we consider worthwhile, the person should continue to be fed and receive water. There were some who said we were invading people’s private choices and imposing an unfair moral mandate for something that should be left to a person’s conscience.
The law was meant to define minimums for us; the least that we have to do to be okay in the eyes of God. Both Paul and Jesus agree that the problem with the law is that we shouldn’t define our lives by asking: What’s the least I have to do to get into heaven. We should be constantly seeking to grow deeper in holiness. God asks that we lead our lives in radical conformity to his will.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the Power of the Holy Spirit on this beautiful Sabbath day. When I still in grade school, my older brothers had a Lenten tradition that I would occasionally get to participate in. Some of you may have had a similar tradition. During Lent, my mom was a little more stringent than the church and would make us fast, not only from meat, but also from eating between meals. The church only mandates that we do that on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Nonetheless, my brothers would wait until 11:37 pm then and call Dominoes Pizza to order a pizza that would be delivered to our house a little after midnight. They were definitely fulfilling the law, just barely. Like the kid who’s asked to take his laundry to his room who puts in on the floor right inside his bedroom door or the kid that’s asked to pick up her toys who simply pushes them all to the corner of the room, we just did enough to make sure that we didn’t get into trouble.
When Christianity was being formed, there was a debate within the church as to the role the Old Testament law would play. If you simply read St. Paul, you could get the impression that we should view the Old Testament as a museum, something that used to be important that is no longer. Yet, to balance this out, we have today’s rather lengthy gospel. Jesus begins by saying that the law hasn’t passed away. In fact, Jesus hasn’t come to abolish the law but to bring a perfection to it by fulfilling it. He then shows what that fulfillment looks like by using a total of six examples, of which we hear four. First, don’t just avoid killing people. Avoid becoming angry with your neighbor and do what you can to reconcile with him. Secondly, don’t just avoid committing adultery. Don’t look with lust at someone, especially someone who isn’t your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse. Thirdly, don’t divorce despite the fact that Moses allowed for it. Lastly, don’t just avoid swearing false oaths. Don’t swear oaths at all. Instead, just live your life in such a way that you fulfill the agreements that you make so that you don’t need to make oaths. Each of these examples takes a law that was already on the books and ratchets up the expectations. It definitely challenges the people who think that Jesus wasn’t about rules or laws but only cared that we be nice to one another. Jesus wasn’t a hippie pacifist. He expected that his followers obey the law and that they do so to a degree that others in the world didn’t.
Nonetheless, as I said before, there is a tension in scripture that is very much still present in the church today. Paul says that the law is unimportant, Jesus says that he is the fulfillment of the law and that his followers will follow every letter and then some. The way we feel the tension is, often, in certain hot-button moral issues. For example with the issue of homosexuality; Church leadership says that scripture and tradition are clear that homosexual actions are not allowed even if the person is to be treated with dignity. Some theologians and many gay rights activists say to us, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” The church advocates maintaining the law as it is and gets criticized for being mired in the law, which was abolished by Jesus Christ. Really? Did they read today’s Gospel? Or, as another example, a few years ago, the church put out a statement clarifying that artificial nutrition and hydration, the use of feeding tubes and IV’s, should not be considered extraordinary measures when it comes to end of life issues. In other words, if someone would be able to live given the presence of food and water, even if the quality of their life might not be what we consider worthwhile, the person should continue to be fed and receive water. There were some who said we were invading people’s private choices and imposing an unfair moral mandate for something that should be left to a person’s conscience.
The law was meant to define minimums for us; the least that we have to do to be okay in the eyes of God. Both Paul and Jesus agree that the problem with the law is that we shouldn’t define our lives by asking: What’s the least I have to do to get into heaven. We should be constantly seeking to grow deeper in holiness. God asks that we lead our lives in radical conformity to his will.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Let your Light shine!!
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit into the world to be its light. As most of you know, I’ve spent almost all of my priesthood, in one way or another, working full or part time with either college or high school aged people. One of the things that always amazed me about this age group is how excited they are for service projects. At St. Thomas, we would get between thirty and fifty students to give up their spring breaks in order to travel to different places in this country and abroad to dedicate time for constructing roofs for the poor, playing with hundreds of homeless children, or bringing clothing to the poorest of poor people. And I’m pretty sure activities like this take place at every college campus. What was truly amazing is how it changed the students. They would go away thinking that they were going on a vacation and come back with a sense of purpose. It taught them that homeless and impoverished people aren’t that way because they are lazy or drug addled. It was amazing to watch a young person realize just how good their life is compared to most people.
The readings this week talk about how important it is for us to let our light shine for all the world. This is a kind of code that the first reading and gospel use to talk about how we, as Christians, all bear the responsibility of evangelization. Oftentimes, when we think of evangelization, we think of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses going door to door asking us if we want to talk about Jesus. In the past few years, there have been some Catholic Commentators who believe that this is a direction we should go. There’s a fellow named Scott Hahn who talks about going into the house of a person he was attempting to evangelize when a Jehovah’s Witness came to the door at the same time. The person seemed very understanding and told them both to make their best sales pitch. To me, this sounds like the worst case scenario. And I’m a trained theologian. But, even I will admit that I’m sure there’s a passage of scripture that the person could bring up that I’d be hard pressed to explain. I have a feeling that if we Catholics mandated that every person has to go somewhere and evangelize as a year of service to the church like the Mormons do, we’d lose probably lose a good number of you. And, to be honest, if we really listen to the scriptures for this weekend, we may feel justified in this attitude.
In the Gospel, Jesus is continuing his sermon on the mount. Last week we heard the beginning of the sermon with the beatitudes, those commands that turn the world’s values on their head. You are truly blessed when you are poor in spirit, when you mourn or are meek, when you hunger and thirst for righteousness, when you are merciful and clean of heart, when you are peacemakers, or when you are persecuted. It’s those times when we are most thankful for the gifts that God has given us not when we are comfortable, well fed, and taken care-of. Jesus follows up that teaching this week with this command to let our light shine. It seems to me that part of what Jesus is doing is alluding to the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah. In that reading, Isaiah says that if we share our bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed, and homeless, clothe the naked when we see them, and don’t turn our back on our own that our light shall shine and God will hear our prayer. The prophet isn’t mandating that we go from door-to-door and give a high pressure sales pitch to get people to come to church. He’s just saying that, when we see someone who needs our help, we should offer it. And, when we do that, people will know that we are a believer and will know that this good act comes from God.
So, our real challenge is to figure out what our light is. What is it that God is calling you to utilize in order to offer him praise? For some of you, it may be reaching out to a charity to share your money with them. For others, it may be organizing a group of people to reach out to someone in need. Still others may purchase some food for someone they know doesn’t have the money to buy their own. Others of you may be part of an organization like the Knights of Columbus or the Catholic Daughters that frequently make donations to charitable organizations. In whatever capacity you are called by God, let your light shine so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit into the world to be its light. As most of you know, I’ve spent almost all of my priesthood, in one way or another, working full or part time with either college or high school aged people. One of the things that always amazed me about this age group is how excited they are for service projects. At St. Thomas, we would get between thirty and fifty students to give up their spring breaks in order to travel to different places in this country and abroad to dedicate time for constructing roofs for the poor, playing with hundreds of homeless children, or bringing clothing to the poorest of poor people. And I’m pretty sure activities like this take place at every college campus. What was truly amazing is how it changed the students. They would go away thinking that they were going on a vacation and come back with a sense of purpose. It taught them that homeless and impoverished people aren’t that way because they are lazy or drug addled. It was amazing to watch a young person realize just how good their life is compared to most people.
The readings this week talk about how important it is for us to let our light shine for all the world. This is a kind of code that the first reading and gospel use to talk about how we, as Christians, all bear the responsibility of evangelization. Oftentimes, when we think of evangelization, we think of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses going door to door asking us if we want to talk about Jesus. In the past few years, there have been some Catholic Commentators who believe that this is a direction we should go. There’s a fellow named Scott Hahn who talks about going into the house of a person he was attempting to evangelize when a Jehovah’s Witness came to the door at the same time. The person seemed very understanding and told them both to make their best sales pitch. To me, this sounds like the worst case scenario. And I’m a trained theologian. But, even I will admit that I’m sure there’s a passage of scripture that the person could bring up that I’d be hard pressed to explain. I have a feeling that if we Catholics mandated that every person has to go somewhere and evangelize as a year of service to the church like the Mormons do, we’d lose probably lose a good number of you. And, to be honest, if we really listen to the scriptures for this weekend, we may feel justified in this attitude.
In the Gospel, Jesus is continuing his sermon on the mount. Last week we heard the beginning of the sermon with the beatitudes, those commands that turn the world’s values on their head. You are truly blessed when you are poor in spirit, when you mourn or are meek, when you hunger and thirst for righteousness, when you are merciful and clean of heart, when you are peacemakers, or when you are persecuted. It’s those times when we are most thankful for the gifts that God has given us not when we are comfortable, well fed, and taken care-of. Jesus follows up that teaching this week with this command to let our light shine. It seems to me that part of what Jesus is doing is alluding to the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah. In that reading, Isaiah says that if we share our bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed, and homeless, clothe the naked when we see them, and don’t turn our back on our own that our light shall shine and God will hear our prayer. The prophet isn’t mandating that we go from door-to-door and give a high pressure sales pitch to get people to come to church. He’s just saying that, when we see someone who needs our help, we should offer it. And, when we do that, people will know that we are a believer and will know that this good act comes from God.
So, our real challenge is to figure out what our light is. What is it that God is calling you to utilize in order to offer him praise? For some of you, it may be reaching out to a charity to share your money with them. For others, it may be organizing a group of people to reach out to someone in need. Still others may purchase some food for someone they know doesn’t have the money to buy their own. Others of you may be part of an organization like the Knights of Columbus or the Catholic Daughters that frequently make donations to charitable organizations. In whatever capacity you are called by God, let your light shine so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Marriage is a way to participate in the Kingdom of God
My dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who humbled himself to come among us to set us free from sin in the power of the the Holy Spirit. On June 22 of 2002, I was ordained a priest but my assignment didn’t begin until July 9. That probably doesn’t seem like a huge amount of time and, to be honest, there’s a part of me who would love to have three weeks to myself nowadays but I was incredibly excited just to get started. I can remember being filled with nervous energy during those weeks before I got started. I did a lot of things around my parent’s house that week and packed and repacked all my stuff in an effort to get rid of all the stuff that I didn’t want or need. When I arrived, my pastor told me that I would be having a wedding very shortly after I got there, I believe it was the following Friday. I remember meeting with the couple and asking them why they chose the readings they did and receiving the message that they weren’t really sure why they chose them. They just kind of liked them. One of the readings they chose was the gospel for today, what we call the Beatitudes. I have to admit that I was really hoping that they would have a great reason for choosing this reading, like they were involved in Habitat for humanity or that they were going on the Peace Corps after their wedding. But, nope, they just liked the reading.
This reading is one of those readings that I feel like we hear quite often but we don’t always live by it. It’s definitely another reading that most fundamentalists don’t take literally. These Beatitudes, these series of statements about what life is like in heaven, challenge each of us here. Each of these eight statements turns what the world holds as important completely on its head. Being poor in spirit, being meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being clean of heart, being peacemakers, being persecuted…all of these things aren’t on most people’s bucket lists. Let’s face it. They challenge us. We may be tempted to say that Jesus is speaking spiritually, especially for the more challenging ones. Jesus doesn’t really expect us to be peacemakers in our community or expect us to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. He expects us to do this in our prayer. But, I would contend that Jesus is really meaning that, as the church, we should be thankful when we are poor of heart, when we are meek, when we are peacemakers, when people are persecuting us, etc. One of the things that I love most about the church is that, despite all the anger and hatred that is flung at us, most people continue to do the good work of God and don’t get wrapped up in an angry exchange. I think of Mother Teresa wiping the wounds of the leper in the political turmoil of India and Pope John Paul II visiting the man who shot him in order to offer forgiveness. It’s exactly what Paul was talking about in the second reading today when he said, “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The world may think that we are worthless, spineless, gutless and weak but God sees in us one who has done great things for him.
On the Saturday after I got to my first assignment, I looked out at that married couple and told them that I think this is a good message for a wedding. Marriage, likewise, turns the values of this world on its head and demands a kind of humble service. The world tells you to be most concerned about what makes you happy, what is good for you. Marriage challenges you to look out for the good of others; spouse and children, before you look out for your own comfort. It challenges you to be poor in spirit, humble, meek, and persecuted. Yet, if you live your marriage covenant well, you will find that it is truly a blessing and a reward unto itself. Truly the reign of God is yours.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who humbled himself to come among us to set us free from sin in the power of the the Holy Spirit. On June 22 of 2002, I was ordained a priest but my assignment didn’t begin until July 9. That probably doesn’t seem like a huge amount of time and, to be honest, there’s a part of me who would love to have three weeks to myself nowadays but I was incredibly excited just to get started. I can remember being filled with nervous energy during those weeks before I got started. I did a lot of things around my parent’s house that week and packed and repacked all my stuff in an effort to get rid of all the stuff that I didn’t want or need. When I arrived, my pastor told me that I would be having a wedding very shortly after I got there, I believe it was the following Friday. I remember meeting with the couple and asking them why they chose the readings they did and receiving the message that they weren’t really sure why they chose them. They just kind of liked them. One of the readings they chose was the gospel for today, what we call the Beatitudes. I have to admit that I was really hoping that they would have a great reason for choosing this reading, like they were involved in Habitat for humanity or that they were going on the Peace Corps after their wedding. But, nope, they just liked the reading.
This reading is one of those readings that I feel like we hear quite often but we don’t always live by it. It’s definitely another reading that most fundamentalists don’t take literally. These Beatitudes, these series of statements about what life is like in heaven, challenge each of us here. Each of these eight statements turns what the world holds as important completely on its head. Being poor in spirit, being meek, mourning, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being clean of heart, being peacemakers, being persecuted…all of these things aren’t on most people’s bucket lists. Let’s face it. They challenge us. We may be tempted to say that Jesus is speaking spiritually, especially for the more challenging ones. Jesus doesn’t really expect us to be peacemakers in our community or expect us to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. He expects us to do this in our prayer. But, I would contend that Jesus is really meaning that, as the church, we should be thankful when we are poor of heart, when we are meek, when we are peacemakers, when people are persecuting us, etc. One of the things that I love most about the church is that, despite all the anger and hatred that is flung at us, most people continue to do the good work of God and don’t get wrapped up in an angry exchange. I think of Mother Teresa wiping the wounds of the leper in the political turmoil of India and Pope John Paul II visiting the man who shot him in order to offer forgiveness. It’s exactly what Paul was talking about in the second reading today when he said, “God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The world may think that we are worthless, spineless, gutless and weak but God sees in us one who has done great things for him.
On the Saturday after I got to my first assignment, I looked out at that married couple and told them that I think this is a good message for a wedding. Marriage, likewise, turns the values of this world on its head and demands a kind of humble service. The world tells you to be most concerned about what makes you happy, what is good for you. Marriage challenges you to look out for the good of others; spouse and children, before you look out for your own comfort. It challenges you to be poor in spirit, humble, meek, and persecuted. Yet, if you live your marriage covenant well, you will find that it is truly a blessing and a reward unto itself. Truly the reign of God is yours.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
What I put in the bulletin this past weekend.
From Fr. Dennis Miller, your pastor
Once in my previous assignment in Ames, I was standing in the gathering space of church greeting people. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young man walking into church. He was wearing a shirt that seemed about four times too large, though at least it matched the size of his jeans. He had inch to inch and a half large disks in his ears and had one tattoo showing just over the top of his shirt on his neck. I won’t lie to you. My first thought was that this slime bag is probably here to cause trouble. But, thankfully, my cooler head prevailed and I decided to give him a chance. As I started walking towards him, I noticed that his head was pointed toward the floor while he looked out of the top of his eyes to navigate around people. I could tell he was trying to not make eye contact with me so that he wouldn’t have to talk to me but I wasn’t going to let him by without doing so. I reached out my hand and looked him in the eye and introduced myself and asked his name. He curtly told me it while continuing to look at the ground. I asked him if he was an Iowa State student, which seemed really dumb at the time but it kept the conversation going. He told me he was a Gen Ed major but that he was hoping to get into engineering. I told him that there were a lot of engineers that came to the church and maybe some of them could help him. At this point, for the first time, he raised his head and looked me in the eye, although he still looked scared. I told him that I glad he was here and that he could sit anywhere. He smiled as he walked past me and sat down. After a few weeks of seeing him and greeting him as warmly as I could, he confided in me just how scared he was to come to church that first time. He didn’t like the direction of his life and knew that he needed the church but feared walking into mass because of people’s judgment.
I’m reading a book with the Britt Ministerial Association called No Perfect People which, despite having a flawed view of grace, does challenge Christians to create a “come as you are” climate in church. The author says that we shouldn’t have expectations of people who come to our church but accept them as they are with the knowledge that, as they attend church and become a part of the body of Christ, they will be transformed as God wants them to be. Often, we set up expectations of our fellow mass goers that have nothing to do with spreading the gospel. We expect that people know exactly how to treat their crying child. We expect that people wear their Sunday best and have perfect hair and nothing unusual in their appearance. We expect that people not cough or make other noises. Basically, all too often, we expect not to be bothered when we come to church. But the whole point of church is to transform us from the inside out.
I know that I would never have seen that young man in Ames again if I would have approached him and told him to go and change his clothes. As it turned out, he ended up bringing other people who were deeply in need of knowing Christ with him to church in the next few weeks. In my time since coming to these six parishes, I’ve heard stories of people leaving church upset because of an unkind word from someone about the person’s appearance. I’m asking that this immediately cease. You never know what’s happening interiorly for that person and it’s important that we not give into the vain belief that what a person wears defines who the person is. If the person’s appearance bothers you so much that you cannot pray or participate, perhaps that speaks more about what you need to do interiorly than about anything they need to do.
Once in my previous assignment in Ames, I was standing in the gathering space of church greeting people. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young man walking into church. He was wearing a shirt that seemed about four times too large, though at least it matched the size of his jeans. He had inch to inch and a half large disks in his ears and had one tattoo showing just over the top of his shirt on his neck. I won’t lie to you. My first thought was that this slime bag is probably here to cause trouble. But, thankfully, my cooler head prevailed and I decided to give him a chance. As I started walking towards him, I noticed that his head was pointed toward the floor while he looked out of the top of his eyes to navigate around people. I could tell he was trying to not make eye contact with me so that he wouldn’t have to talk to me but I wasn’t going to let him by without doing so. I reached out my hand and looked him in the eye and introduced myself and asked his name. He curtly told me it while continuing to look at the ground. I asked him if he was an Iowa State student, which seemed really dumb at the time but it kept the conversation going. He told me he was a Gen Ed major but that he was hoping to get into engineering. I told him that there were a lot of engineers that came to the church and maybe some of them could help him. At this point, for the first time, he raised his head and looked me in the eye, although he still looked scared. I told him that I glad he was here and that he could sit anywhere. He smiled as he walked past me and sat down. After a few weeks of seeing him and greeting him as warmly as I could, he confided in me just how scared he was to come to church that first time. He didn’t like the direction of his life and knew that he needed the church but feared walking into mass because of people’s judgment.
I’m reading a book with the Britt Ministerial Association called No Perfect People which, despite having a flawed view of grace, does challenge Christians to create a “come as you are” climate in church. The author says that we shouldn’t have expectations of people who come to our church but accept them as they are with the knowledge that, as they attend church and become a part of the body of Christ, they will be transformed as God wants them to be. Often, we set up expectations of our fellow mass goers that have nothing to do with spreading the gospel. We expect that people know exactly how to treat their crying child. We expect that people wear their Sunday best and have perfect hair and nothing unusual in their appearance. We expect that people not cough or make other noises. Basically, all too often, we expect not to be bothered when we come to church. But the whole point of church is to transform us from the inside out.
I know that I would never have seen that young man in Ames again if I would have approached him and told him to go and change his clothes. As it turned out, he ended up bringing other people who were deeply in need of knowing Christ with him to church in the next few weeks. In my time since coming to these six parishes, I’ve heard stories of people leaving church upset because of an unkind word from someone about the person’s appearance. I’m asking that this immediately cease. You never know what’s happening interiorly for that person and it’s important that we not give into the vain belief that what a person wears defines who the person is. If the person’s appearance bothers you so much that you cannot pray or participate, perhaps that speaks more about what you need to do interiorly than about anything they need to do.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Prepare for transitions
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit to guide and direct the Church. One of the things that priests have to learn how to both do and teach well is transitions. As you have experienced in the past few years, priests are asked to move to a new assignment quite often and, as one who has lived in five different residences in the last eight years, I can tell you that it’s a challenge. I’m hoping that I’m not going to have to make any transitions anytime soon but, as you all know, it’s not really up to me. That’s the Archbishop’s call. Part of the challenge of transitions is spatial and part of the challenge is relational. The spatial part is, in some ways, the easier to deal with. You take all your stuff and move it to a new place and try to find the best arrangement for it. In my mind, the harder transition is relational, having to say goodbye. Both Fr. Hertges and I have remarked how much we miss people in our previous assignments. We aren’t in any way discounting the new relationships we will make. In fact, we are counting on them. We are just mourning the loss of old relationships.
The readings today are all trying to deal with transitions, each in their own way. Starting from the middle and working out, in the second reading, Paul is communicating with a church he founded that has several problems transitioning away from Judaism and Roman pagan religion to Christianity. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that they have splintered into different groups. Some associate themselves just with St. Wenceslaus, others just with St. Patrick, still others just with St. Boniface…wait, I’m sorry. That’s not right. Let me try that again. Some with St. Paul, others with a fellow named Saint Appollos, and still others with St. Peter or, as St. Paul calls him, Cephas. These groups are independently developing their own traditions and may even have been formed because of the minister that came to town to baptize the people in the groups. But, ultimately, Paul worries that the divisions will not allow for the unity that needs to be a component of the church. He asks, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” The answer to all of these questions is, of course, “No”. Paul emphasizes for them that the Jesus should be the one that draws them together not “the wisdom of human eloquence.”
In the gospel, Jesus is likewise dealing with a transition. His cousin, John the Baptist, has been arrested and this indicates that it’s time for him to stand up and begin to lead. He moves out of his parents’ house and moves to the big city of Capernaum. It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ first public message is basically the same message as John the Baptist gave, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He, then, goes on to begin recruiting help. He had to be concerned about John, but he knew that his time had come and that he needed to begin his public ministry.
I imagine each of you has had to deal with transitions in your life. It could be sickness or death of a parent and realizing you are now the one who has to be the “adult” for your family. Maybe it’s dealing with your own financial problems or health concerns. Maybe you’ve been part of a group that used to do things to help people and the group has had to face tough realities like declining membership or funding decreases because of the economy. These are difficult transitions and ones that are best met, as I imagine Jesus did in the gospel, with a great deal of prayer and discernment as to what God wants you to do next. Yet, we find hope in the first reading that Jesus, likewise, found hope in the gospel. Despite bad times in the past, eventually “The People who walked in darkness (will see) a great light…” Transitions can be difficult and frustrating and there’s always a part of us asking why we have to undergo them. Yet, if they are done well and with hope, we hope to echo the words of Isaiah the prophet, “Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness…upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shined.”
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Spirit to guide and direct the Church. One of the things that priests have to learn how to both do and teach well is transitions. As you have experienced in the past few years, priests are asked to move to a new assignment quite often and, as one who has lived in five different residences in the last eight years, I can tell you that it’s a challenge. I’m hoping that I’m not going to have to make any transitions anytime soon but, as you all know, it’s not really up to me. That’s the Archbishop’s call. Part of the challenge of transitions is spatial and part of the challenge is relational. The spatial part is, in some ways, the easier to deal with. You take all your stuff and move it to a new place and try to find the best arrangement for it. In my mind, the harder transition is relational, having to say goodbye. Both Fr. Hertges and I have remarked how much we miss people in our previous assignments. We aren’t in any way discounting the new relationships we will make. In fact, we are counting on them. We are just mourning the loss of old relationships.
The readings today are all trying to deal with transitions, each in their own way. Starting from the middle and working out, in the second reading, Paul is communicating with a church he founded that has several problems transitioning away from Judaism and Roman pagan religion to Christianity. Part of the reason for this difficulty is that they have splintered into different groups. Some associate themselves just with St. Wenceslaus, others just with St. Patrick, still others just with St. Boniface…wait, I’m sorry. That’s not right. Let me try that again. Some with St. Paul, others with a fellow named Saint Appollos, and still others with St. Peter or, as St. Paul calls him, Cephas. These groups are independently developing their own traditions and may even have been formed because of the minister that came to town to baptize the people in the groups. But, ultimately, Paul worries that the divisions will not allow for the unity that needs to be a component of the church. He asks, “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” The answer to all of these questions is, of course, “No”. Paul emphasizes for them that the Jesus should be the one that draws them together not “the wisdom of human eloquence.”
In the gospel, Jesus is likewise dealing with a transition. His cousin, John the Baptist, has been arrested and this indicates that it’s time for him to stand up and begin to lead. He moves out of his parents’ house and moves to the big city of Capernaum. It’s interesting to note that Jesus’ first public message is basically the same message as John the Baptist gave, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” He, then, goes on to begin recruiting help. He had to be concerned about John, but he knew that his time had come and that he needed to begin his public ministry.
I imagine each of you has had to deal with transitions in your life. It could be sickness or death of a parent and realizing you are now the one who has to be the “adult” for your family. Maybe it’s dealing with your own financial problems or health concerns. Maybe you’ve been part of a group that used to do things to help people and the group has had to face tough realities like declining membership or funding decreases because of the economy. These are difficult transitions and ones that are best met, as I imagine Jesus did in the gospel, with a great deal of prayer and discernment as to what God wants you to do next. Yet, we find hope in the first reading that Jesus, likewise, found hope in the gospel. Despite bad times in the past, eventually “The People who walked in darkness (will see) a great light…” Transitions can be difficult and frustrating and there’s always a part of us asking why we have to undergo them. Yet, if they are done well and with hope, we hope to echo the words of Isaiah the prophet, “Anguish has taken wing, dispelled is darkness…upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shined.”
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
A little background into the bottom homily
At the end of December, the chaplain at Waldorf College invited me to preach at their weekly chapel service. It took me a while to get back to them but we eventually decided that it should be this week. The text on which I preached was 1 Samuel 3:1-10 but, as you can tell below, I really preached on the first five chapters on 1 Samuel.
I was incredibly nervous, partly because this wasn't the format with which I was most familiar and partly because this wasn't the congregation with which I was most familiar. But, I think things went well as I got a lot of compliments and made a few contacts at the college that I probably wouldn't have had otherwise. And I think it was a good chance for me to learn about the expectations of a pastor.
I was incredibly nervous, partly because this wasn't the format with which I was most familiar and partly because this wasn't the congregation with which I was most familiar. But, I think things went well as I got a lot of compliments and made a few contacts at the college that I probably wouldn't have had otherwise. And I think it was a good chance for me to learn about the expectations of a pastor.
Vocation
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I’d like to begin this reflection by thanking Kelly for inviting me to preach during this week dedicated to Christian Unity. I’ve heard there was a time when there was not a lot of love between St. James Catholic Church and Waldorf College and I, for one, am glad that some of those old feelings of suspicion and fear have disappeared from both sides and we can work together to build up the Kingdom of God. There is much work that still needs to be done to undo the suspicion that our Christian Communities have for each other but it is situations of prayer like this that continue the grace-filled process of healing that is crucial to that ongoing dialogue. Now onto the reflection.
I chose to preach about the story of God’s call of Samuel to continue the reflection on vocation that Kelly began last week. What always strikes me about this story is that Samuel doesn’t know who God is when he calls. Why not? It says in the text that, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; prophecy was not widespread.” We know that Eli, the high priest who is training Samuel, had very corrupt sons who used to steal from the meat of offering and threaten the people who would point out that immorality. Yet, one wonders if they got this way because God didn’t speak to their childhood selves as he did to young Samuel. There’s no record of their mother singing the song of dedication that Hannah sang for Samuel. Was it the love of the mother that opened the silent Word of the Father for her son? We do not know why God chose to speak to Samuel, just that he did.
Samuel hears the call from God clearly enough to believe that Eli was the one who called. Three times he hears the call and three times he innocently asks Eli what he wants until finally Eli recognizes it for what it is: the call of God. Does this mean Eli heard this same voice at one point in his life? Is that why he can help young Samuel respond, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”? One wonders if part of the reason that it took Eli so long to recognize God’s call was because God never called his own sons who would probably have slept in the same area as young Samuel. And, yet, when Samuel tells Eli all about the revelation God made to him, that God was going to punish Eli’s house for the excesses of those sons and no apologetic act could undo it, Eli accepts the sentence saying merely, “He is the Lord; He will do what he deems right.”
God’s call is often murky and difficult to recognize. We may need the assistance of a mentor, pastor, priest, or professor, even one who is as fallible as Eli. Oftentimes, there are people who we believe would be much more capable of doing what God wants us to do and, yet, if there’s one thing that we can learn from Samuel, it’s that, when God’s will is made clear to us, we must do it regardless of how difficult it is. After all, “He is the Lord.” We must do what he deems right.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. I’d like to begin this reflection by thanking Kelly for inviting me to preach during this week dedicated to Christian Unity. I’ve heard there was a time when there was not a lot of love between St. James Catholic Church and Waldorf College and I, for one, am glad that some of those old feelings of suspicion and fear have disappeared from both sides and we can work together to build up the Kingdom of God. There is much work that still needs to be done to undo the suspicion that our Christian Communities have for each other but it is situations of prayer like this that continue the grace-filled process of healing that is crucial to that ongoing dialogue. Now onto the reflection.
I chose to preach about the story of God’s call of Samuel to continue the reflection on vocation that Kelly began last week. What always strikes me about this story is that Samuel doesn’t know who God is when he calls. Why not? It says in the text that, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; prophecy was not widespread.” We know that Eli, the high priest who is training Samuel, had very corrupt sons who used to steal from the meat of offering and threaten the people who would point out that immorality. Yet, one wonders if they got this way because God didn’t speak to their childhood selves as he did to young Samuel. There’s no record of their mother singing the song of dedication that Hannah sang for Samuel. Was it the love of the mother that opened the silent Word of the Father for her son? We do not know why God chose to speak to Samuel, just that he did.
Samuel hears the call from God clearly enough to believe that Eli was the one who called. Three times he hears the call and three times he innocently asks Eli what he wants until finally Eli recognizes it for what it is: the call of God. Does this mean Eli heard this same voice at one point in his life? Is that why he can help young Samuel respond, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”? One wonders if part of the reason that it took Eli so long to recognize God’s call was because God never called his own sons who would probably have slept in the same area as young Samuel. And, yet, when Samuel tells Eli all about the revelation God made to him, that God was going to punish Eli’s house for the excesses of those sons and no apologetic act could undo it, Eli accepts the sentence saying merely, “He is the Lord; He will do what he deems right.”
God’s call is often murky and difficult to recognize. We may need the assistance of a mentor, pastor, priest, or professor, even one who is as fallible as Eli. Oftentimes, there are people who we believe would be much more capable of doing what God wants us to do and, yet, if there’s one thing that we can learn from Samuel, it’s that, when God’s will is made clear to us, we must do it regardless of how difficult it is. After all, “He is the Lord.” We must do what he deems right.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
It is too little
My dear friends in Christ
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that we first received from Christ in baptism. As some of you probably know, Fr. Hertges and I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week at our leadership training class. This time we talked about leadership of the entire parish. It incorporated a lot of what we’ve already learned but it also forced us to recognize three different kinds of leadership situations. There are new initiatives, problems, and ongoing improvement. I imagine, if you think about it, you all have these three categories of activities in your life. You have the things that you want to start new, like a project around the house or something that you’ve always wanted to do but just haven’t had the time. You probably also have things that aren’t working in your life, areas that you know need work but you just haven’t got to them yet. And then there’s the stuff that is working right now but that you have ideas of how it can improve. According to the leaders, we should have between three and five new activities going, one to two problems we’re trying to solve, and one to two programs we’re trying to improve. I felt this great sense of relief when I heard those parameters defined. The leader said that, if we get any more than that, we are overloaded and need to admit that we simply cannot take on more. Yet, it also lets me know if I’m just being lazy by saying no or if I’m legitimately too busy to take on another project.
I was really struck this week by one phrase from the first reading in connection to this. The Prophet Isaiah is addressing an Israel that has been taken to exile in Babylon. He is talking to a people who feel demoralized, a people he warned to reform their ways before God got fed up with them and sent them into exile. And, yet, his message isn’t that they are just getting what they deserve. He tells them about a hopeful future. He preaches the Word of God to them that God still cares for them and still wants what’s best for them. In fact, God so cares for them that, not only will their release from exile be a source of salvation for themselves or just their fellow Jews. God says to them, “It is too little…for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel. I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation reach to the ends of the earth.”
What a big job! I’m sure that there had to be at least one person who said that being a light to the nations is just too big, just too difficult. And yet, God called them to not dream too little, to not act too diminutively. And, what’s really amazing is that God is calling them to do this despite the fact that the nations to which they are called to be lights are the very same ones that just invaded their lands, beat them militarily, did bad things to their women and children, and took the best and brightest back with them to be their servants in Babylon. It would be tempting to think that their goal should be just to go back home and reconstitute Israel. But God has bigger plans for them.
The same is true in the gospel today. John the Baptist, who seems to forget that he leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when he first met Jesus, claims points out to his followers what it means for Jesus to fulfill and complete his ministry. It won’t be a simple baptism to remove sins any longer. Now it will involve receiving the Holy Spirit. There’s something different with Christian Baptism that other people’s baptism and it involves receiving the Holy Spirit. The people that originated because of John’s ministry but later became Jesus’ follower are given something new, something bigger than a removal of their own personal sins. The Holy Spirit connects us to the life of the trinity and makes us all connected to the life of Christ.
Part of what I love about the formula that our class gave us is that we tend to image the church as an institution that has everything pretty well settled. Go to mass every week. Go to confession once a year. When you’re sick, call a priest. And you’re doing pretty good if that’s what you do. God says to the church, “It is too little…” We must advocate respect for human life from natural conception to natural death. We must be a voice that seeks understanding and tolerance between the members of various religions. We must testify with John the Baptist that the Christ is the Son of God to those who feel lost and alone without God. In some ways, each of these things aren’t new but the way we do them must be continuously renewed to speak to new challenges and new people. It is too little if we just fix problems and try to keep refining what we’ve done in the past. We must keep our ears open to what God is calling us to do that is new.
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that we first received from Christ in baptism. As some of you probably know, Fr. Hertges and I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week at our leadership training class. This time we talked about leadership of the entire parish. It incorporated a lot of what we’ve already learned but it also forced us to recognize three different kinds of leadership situations. There are new initiatives, problems, and ongoing improvement. I imagine, if you think about it, you all have these three categories of activities in your life. You have the things that you want to start new, like a project around the house or something that you’ve always wanted to do but just haven’t had the time. You probably also have things that aren’t working in your life, areas that you know need work but you just haven’t got to them yet. And then there’s the stuff that is working right now but that you have ideas of how it can improve. According to the leaders, we should have between three and five new activities going, one to two problems we’re trying to solve, and one to two programs we’re trying to improve. I felt this great sense of relief when I heard those parameters defined. The leader said that, if we get any more than that, we are overloaded and need to admit that we simply cannot take on more. Yet, it also lets me know if I’m just being lazy by saying no or if I’m legitimately too busy to take on another project.
I was really struck this week by one phrase from the first reading in connection to this. The Prophet Isaiah is addressing an Israel that has been taken to exile in Babylon. He is talking to a people who feel demoralized, a people he warned to reform their ways before God got fed up with them and sent them into exile. And, yet, his message isn’t that they are just getting what they deserve. He tells them about a hopeful future. He preaches the Word of God to them that God still cares for them and still wants what’s best for them. In fact, God so cares for them that, not only will their release from exile be a source of salvation for themselves or just their fellow Jews. God says to them, “It is too little…for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel. I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation reach to the ends of the earth.”
What a big job! I’m sure that there had to be at least one person who said that being a light to the nations is just too big, just too difficult. And yet, God called them to not dream too little, to not act too diminutively. And, what’s really amazing is that God is calling them to do this despite the fact that the nations to which they are called to be lights are the very same ones that just invaded their lands, beat them militarily, did bad things to their women and children, and took the best and brightest back with them to be their servants in Babylon. It would be tempting to think that their goal should be just to go back home and reconstitute Israel. But God has bigger plans for them.
The same is true in the gospel today. John the Baptist, who seems to forget that he leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when he first met Jesus, claims points out to his followers what it means for Jesus to fulfill and complete his ministry. It won’t be a simple baptism to remove sins any longer. Now it will involve receiving the Holy Spirit. There’s something different with Christian Baptism that other people’s baptism and it involves receiving the Holy Spirit. The people that originated because of John’s ministry but later became Jesus’ follower are given something new, something bigger than a removal of their own personal sins. The Holy Spirit connects us to the life of the trinity and makes us all connected to the life of Christ.
Part of what I love about the formula that our class gave us is that we tend to image the church as an institution that has everything pretty well settled. Go to mass every week. Go to confession once a year. When you’re sick, call a priest. And you’re doing pretty good if that’s what you do. God says to the church, “It is too little…” We must advocate respect for human life from natural conception to natural death. We must be a voice that seeks understanding and tolerance between the members of various religions. We must testify with John the Baptist that the Christ is the Son of God to those who feel lost and alone without God. In some ways, each of these things aren’t new but the way we do them must be continuously renewed to speak to new challenges and new people. It is too little if we just fix problems and try to keep refining what we’ve done in the past. We must keep our ears open to what God is calling us to do that is new.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Responding to rudeness
In my time as a priest, the most surprising and most frustrating parts of the vocation quite often have come from email and the US postal service. It's amazing how personal people will make criticism of homilies and columns I've written. It's not that I don't welcome a little dialogue on a subject or people seeking clarification. Quite the contrary, most of the time when people challenge me on a subject I end up learning and teaching a few things.
The difficulty for me comes when you put some theological statement out there about a controversial issue and then receive criticism that is personal in nature. You say that America is plagued by the scourge of abortion and then are accused of not being held enough as a child. Or you ask people to keep things more social before and after mass instead of conducting business and they tell you that you are a bad priest who can't handle the job and that you should ask for a transfer.
The thing that I never know is whether I should respond or not. On the one hand, I feel like you give people credence to make other personal attacks if you do respond. I also feel like it makes it seem like there's merit to a personal attack. But, if you don't respond, you could be making the same argument. A bully thrives when the person they're pushing around doesn't fight back and gains power by being bullying.
If you look to scripture, things aren't much clearer. On the one hand, we are told to turn the other cheek, be passive when attacked. But, we are also told that if you're brother sins against you, you should correct him. If he persists, you should take one member of the church and if he continues then two or three members and so on. What do we do?
Unfortunately, we will never have perfect agreement on all fronts among the members of the body of Christ. But, I'd hope that one thing that we could count on is that a member of the body of Christ would first and foremost keep love in the midst of a dialogue. Love the sinner, hate the sin. But, what does that love look like? Is it a gentle but firm parent making a phone call and asking an errant child to back down the rhetoric. Or is it a firm but gentle parent ignoring the middle child who seems like no amount of attention is ever enough?
The difficulty for me comes when you put some theological statement out there about a controversial issue and then receive criticism that is personal in nature. You say that America is plagued by the scourge of abortion and then are accused of not being held enough as a child. Or you ask people to keep things more social before and after mass instead of conducting business and they tell you that you are a bad priest who can't handle the job and that you should ask for a transfer.
The thing that I never know is whether I should respond or not. On the one hand, I feel like you give people credence to make other personal attacks if you do respond. I also feel like it makes it seem like there's merit to a personal attack. But, if you don't respond, you could be making the same argument. A bully thrives when the person they're pushing around doesn't fight back and gains power by being bullying.
If you look to scripture, things aren't much clearer. On the one hand, we are told to turn the other cheek, be passive when attacked. But, we are also told that if you're brother sins against you, you should correct him. If he persists, you should take one member of the church and if he continues then two or three members and so on. What do we do?
Unfortunately, we will never have perfect agreement on all fronts among the members of the body of Christ. But, I'd hope that one thing that we could count on is that a member of the body of Christ would first and foremost keep love in the midst of a dialogue. Love the sinner, hate the sin. But, what does that love look like? Is it a gentle but firm parent making a phone call and asking an errant child to back down the rhetoric. Or is it a firm but gentle parent ignoring the middle child who seems like no amount of attention is ever enough?
Sunday, January 02, 2011
The inspiration of the Kings
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we join the Magi in their silent homage on this feast of the Epiphany. While studying in Israel during the fall of 2000, I had many eye opening experiences. It was the first time I lived in a place in which I was a minority; a white guy who couldn’t speak Hebrew or Arabic. I learned what it was like to be calm around 17 and 18 year old soldiers carrying guns. And, I learned a lot from a man named Baruch Schwartz. Professor Schwartz was a conservative Jew who was asked to teach my class all about the prophets. We walked into his classroom the first day with a great deal of skepticism. We all wondered how a Jew would teach Christians anything of value about the prophets. I mean, would we even interpret the Bible in the same way. My class was talking on the way there about how we had all had arguments with Christian fundamentalists in which we quickly discovered that we would never agree because we were interpreting the Bible differently. They would take a passage, say that it doesn’t say something, and then say that means the Catholic Church is wrong. Oftentimes we, on the other hand, had trouble debunking them because we didn’t know the chapter and verse number, let alone the complete quote we were searching for. So, as we sat in the room waiting for our professor to arrive, I remember there being a certain unusual tension hanging in the room.
In the gospel today, we hear about the visit of Magi to the newborn Christ-child. We often associate these figures with kings because of the Old Testament verses, present both in the first reading and responsorial psalm today; kings from Tarshish and the sea coasts. These are actually the representatives of kings, the equivalent to presidential advisors. They were intellectuals who followed the star to where Jesus lay with his mother. What’s striking, of course, is that these are not Jews. They wouldn’t have known anything about the Old Testament predictions of their coming. They simply see something unusual in the sky, a star that guides them to the house where Jesus lay. And, yet, these are the ones who are among the first to fall down prostrate in awe and respect of the newborn king. It’s as though God is signaling through these priestly representatives of foreign kings that his works are always mysterious, always grander than our meager minds can accept, and never confined to one group or person. God works in and through whomever God wants to work.
Oftentimes, we have a great deal of skepticism toward people of other faiths. We hear about terrorism and violence between Christians and Muslims, we see how strangely that a Hindu dresses, or we hear the knock of the Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon at the door and we start to feel fearful because their traditions are so different than our own. And, yet, if we start from the differences, we may never find what connects us. That’s what my classmates and I discovered in that Prophets class in Israel. As he started talking about the Prophets, we found out that we agree on most things. We agree with our Jewish brothers and sisters that Prophets are, first and foremost, warning the people to repent and return to their lives of faith. Prophets are not setting forth a secretive agenda about the future that only a few “in the know” can understand. They are telling people that, if they follow the way of the Lord and do what he commands that, “Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance” to quote the first reading.
This is why the Second Vatican Council said, “From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.” As individuals, we need to forge closer ties with all people of faith. Part of the way we do this, believe it or not, is to be comfortable enough as Christians that we don’t fear people who have different beliefs than our own. And, we must focus on points of agreement instead of rushing to areas of disagreement, even if the only agreement we can find is a basic belief in God or a Higher Power. Sometimes this is particularly frustrating because the person with whom we are conversing may make ignorant statements about Christianity or Catholicism that make us want to fight back. But, remember, in those situations, that the earliest defining characteristic of Christians is that we loved even those who hated us. To, again, quote the second Vatican Council, “We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any(one), created…in the image of God. (Humanity’s) relation to God the Father and his relationship to humanity are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).
Grace and peace to you in God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit as we join the Magi in their silent homage on this feast of the Epiphany. While studying in Israel during the fall of 2000, I had many eye opening experiences. It was the first time I lived in a place in which I was a minority; a white guy who couldn’t speak Hebrew or Arabic. I learned what it was like to be calm around 17 and 18 year old soldiers carrying guns. And, I learned a lot from a man named Baruch Schwartz. Professor Schwartz was a conservative Jew who was asked to teach my class all about the prophets. We walked into his classroom the first day with a great deal of skepticism. We all wondered how a Jew would teach Christians anything of value about the prophets. I mean, would we even interpret the Bible in the same way. My class was talking on the way there about how we had all had arguments with Christian fundamentalists in which we quickly discovered that we would never agree because we were interpreting the Bible differently. They would take a passage, say that it doesn’t say something, and then say that means the Catholic Church is wrong. Oftentimes we, on the other hand, had trouble debunking them because we didn’t know the chapter and verse number, let alone the complete quote we were searching for. So, as we sat in the room waiting for our professor to arrive, I remember there being a certain unusual tension hanging in the room.
In the gospel today, we hear about the visit of Magi to the newborn Christ-child. We often associate these figures with kings because of the Old Testament verses, present both in the first reading and responsorial psalm today; kings from Tarshish and the sea coasts. These are actually the representatives of kings, the equivalent to presidential advisors. They were intellectuals who followed the star to where Jesus lay with his mother. What’s striking, of course, is that these are not Jews. They wouldn’t have known anything about the Old Testament predictions of their coming. They simply see something unusual in the sky, a star that guides them to the house where Jesus lay. And, yet, these are the ones who are among the first to fall down prostrate in awe and respect of the newborn king. It’s as though God is signaling through these priestly representatives of foreign kings that his works are always mysterious, always grander than our meager minds can accept, and never confined to one group or person. God works in and through whomever God wants to work.
Oftentimes, we have a great deal of skepticism toward people of other faiths. We hear about terrorism and violence between Christians and Muslims, we see how strangely that a Hindu dresses, or we hear the knock of the Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon at the door and we start to feel fearful because their traditions are so different than our own. And, yet, if we start from the differences, we may never find what connects us. That’s what my classmates and I discovered in that Prophets class in Israel. As he started talking about the Prophets, we found out that we agree on most things. We agree with our Jewish brothers and sisters that Prophets are, first and foremost, warning the people to repent and return to their lives of faith. Prophets are not setting forth a secretive agenda about the future that only a few “in the know” can understand. They are telling people that, if they follow the way of the Lord and do what he commands that, “Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance” to quote the first reading.
This is why the Second Vatican Council said, “From ancient times down to the present, there is found among various peoples a certain perception of that hidden power which hovers over the course of things and over the events of human history; at times some indeed have come to the recognition of a Supreme Being, or even of a Father. This perception and recognition penetrates their lives with a profound religious sense.” As individuals, we need to forge closer ties with all people of faith. Part of the way we do this, believe it or not, is to be comfortable enough as Christians that we don’t fear people who have different beliefs than our own. And, we must focus on points of agreement instead of rushing to areas of disagreement, even if the only agreement we can find is a basic belief in God or a Higher Power. Sometimes this is particularly frustrating because the person with whom we are conversing may make ignorant statements about Christianity or Catholicism that make us want to fight back. But, remember, in those situations, that the earliest defining characteristic of Christians is that we loved even those who hated us. To, again, quote the second Vatican Council, “We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any(one), created…in the image of God. (Humanity’s) relation to God the Father and his relationship to humanity are so linked together that Scripture says: "He who does not love does not know God" (1 John 4:8).
Saturday, December 25, 2010
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God our Father and his Son, or Lord Jesus Christ whose birthday we remember in the midst of this liturgy. We come together to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Great King of Kings and Lord of Lords celebrated in the first reading. The Prophet Isaiah said of him that he would be called, “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Each of these terms is chosen to represent a specific element of leadership. The Messiah must be Wonder-Counselor to be able to make the best decisions for his people. He must be God-Hero to ensure that he is the strongest and most able to reign. He must be Father-Forever as one who cares for his people and looks out for what is in their best interest. And, lastly, he must be Prince of Peace to make sure that the peace is kept among his people from without and within. Each of these traits describes the ideal leader. And, yet, so few of them apply to most of our leaders.
One of my favorite historical figures is Abraham Lincoln. His mere election as President was enough to split this country in two. If you were to look into his life, you would discover that he lost more elections than he won. When he put together a cabinet of advisers, he was so naïve that he actually hired all his competitors, all the people who lost to him in the primary, and expected that they would put aside any differences they had to serve the country. Sometimes he was justified in this belief but often he was not. He was incredibly patient with his generals, arguably too patient with men who believed they could retake lost territory by playing a defensive game. And, yet, despite being far from a “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace”, Lincoln is remembered as one of the best presidents in American history by almost everyone.
Today we celebrate the birth of the long-awaited Messiah who, in some ways, shares more with Lincoln than you might expect. Jesus was not born in a castle and raised on the finest foods. He was born among animals, seemingly in shame. It’s interesting to note that, despite being back in his home town, there’s no mention of visits from other family members to Jesus’ nativity. They may have come and paid their respects but they may also have been avoiding this man whose wife was having a child who was clearly not conceived in wedlock. Instead, the people who come and pay their respects are the shepherds, men often were considered necessary but religiously unclean because they dealt with the blood of animals at the animal’s birth and death. They are the ones informed by the Angels of the birth of Jesus and who are privileged to hear the angelic chorus sing “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace to his people.
It’s amazing how we tend to only expect great things from those who are born into great wealth and great power and how that always seems to disappoint us when those people have affairs, financial malfeasance, and other sordid activities. And, yet, over and over again, to paraphrase the song of Mary, God casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. Part of what I find so encouraging about living here in the United States is how we seem to exalt when this happens. On the one hand, we have incredibly greedy people who seem intent on not sharing their gifts with those around them, the scrooges if you will. But, on the other hand, there are people who will take a homeless African-American kid into their family and help raise him. There are those of you who won’t even hesitate to help a a sick neighbor in getting the crops out of the field. And, in the last month, I’ve felt privileged to see some of you reach out to those who are truly struggling with bills and food to try to lift them up. In some ways, when we do this, we are standing beside the Angels heeding the call they received to give respect and honor to a simple infant wrapped in swaddling clothes who is truly “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” May the peace of the Christ-child guide you in all your decisions.
Grace and Peace to you in God our Father and his Son, or Lord Jesus Christ whose birthday we remember in the midst of this liturgy. We come together to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, the Great King of Kings and Lord of Lords celebrated in the first reading. The Prophet Isaiah said of him that he would be called, “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Each of these terms is chosen to represent a specific element of leadership. The Messiah must be Wonder-Counselor to be able to make the best decisions for his people. He must be God-Hero to ensure that he is the strongest and most able to reign. He must be Father-Forever as one who cares for his people and looks out for what is in their best interest. And, lastly, he must be Prince of Peace to make sure that the peace is kept among his people from without and within. Each of these traits describes the ideal leader. And, yet, so few of them apply to most of our leaders.
One of my favorite historical figures is Abraham Lincoln. His mere election as President was enough to split this country in two. If you were to look into his life, you would discover that he lost more elections than he won. When he put together a cabinet of advisers, he was so naïve that he actually hired all his competitors, all the people who lost to him in the primary, and expected that they would put aside any differences they had to serve the country. Sometimes he was justified in this belief but often he was not. He was incredibly patient with his generals, arguably too patient with men who believed they could retake lost territory by playing a defensive game. And, yet, despite being far from a “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace”, Lincoln is remembered as one of the best presidents in American history by almost everyone.
Today we celebrate the birth of the long-awaited Messiah who, in some ways, shares more with Lincoln than you might expect. Jesus was not born in a castle and raised on the finest foods. He was born among animals, seemingly in shame. It’s interesting to note that, despite being back in his home town, there’s no mention of visits from other family members to Jesus’ nativity. They may have come and paid their respects but they may also have been avoiding this man whose wife was having a child who was clearly not conceived in wedlock. Instead, the people who come and pay their respects are the shepherds, men often were considered necessary but religiously unclean because they dealt with the blood of animals at the animal’s birth and death. They are the ones informed by the Angels of the birth of Jesus and who are privileged to hear the angelic chorus sing “Glory to God in the Highest and on earth, peace to his people.
It’s amazing how we tend to only expect great things from those who are born into great wealth and great power and how that always seems to disappoint us when those people have affairs, financial malfeasance, and other sordid activities. And, yet, over and over again, to paraphrase the song of Mary, God casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. Part of what I find so encouraging about living here in the United States is how we seem to exalt when this happens. On the one hand, we have incredibly greedy people who seem intent on not sharing their gifts with those around them, the scrooges if you will. But, on the other hand, there are people who will take a homeless African-American kid into their family and help raise him. There are those of you who won’t even hesitate to help a a sick neighbor in getting the crops out of the field. And, in the last month, I’ve felt privileged to see some of you reach out to those who are truly struggling with bills and food to try to lift them up. In some ways, when we do this, we are standing beside the Angels heeding the call they received to give respect and honor to a simple infant wrapped in swaddling clothes who is truly “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” May the peace of the Christ-child guide you in all your decisions.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Ask for a sign from the Lord
My Dear Friends in Christ
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been disappointed by God? Ever asked for something from God and not gotten what you want? A few years ago, I was riding with a good priest friend of mine named Fr. Bob Davies. Fr. Davies has, since then, passed away but he used to accompany me four times a year to the Twin Cities to watch plays with some other priests. One time, we were talking about budgeting frustrations that he was having with his two rural parishes. Now, to understand why this next comment is so shocking, you have to understand something about Fr. Davies history. Prior to becoming a priest, he was involved in local and national politics. If you travel to Hampton and mention his name, they will probably remember him best as the county recorder. He was a whiz with numbers and budgets. He was one of the guys that Senator Harkin relied on to work behind the scenes on his finances and make sure he wasn’t overspending. So, as we were driving along Interstate 35 close to where it intersects with interstate 90, you can imagine how surprised I was to hear him say that he thought parishes take budgets too seriously. This is man who, prior to priesthood, dedicated his life to being the guy who said to politicians that they can’t spend something because it would go over budget. But, according to Bob, by being so strict about staying in budget, they missed out on the possibility that God may be calling us to do something more. At the time, I was just a new Associate Pastor but it still struck me and continues to strike me the more I think about it.
Today’s first reading and gospel are a definite exercise in point, counter point. In other words, two people are presented with similar situations and end up with complete different solutions. Both Ahaz and Joseph have to make a life or death decision. Ahaz is in charge of Judah which is situated between two countries that wanted to wage war with two countries on his southern border. Ahaz thinks that he can remain neutral but one of the southern countries is Israel, a sister Judaic country. He has to know that he’s going to get drug into this war somehow, even if he isn’t sure whose side he should be on. Joseph, on the other hand, isn’t dealing with war but with a personal life or death situation. To be engaged at the time of Jesus was a serious commitment. If someone were to have relations with another person, it would result in their death. Yet, since the marriage hasn’t happened, the couple is not allowed to have relations. In both cases, God approaches the men even before they ask. God seems willing to allow Ahaz to keep Judah neutral and will even protect him if he asks. God tells Joseph to marry Mary quickly and protect her from shame. This is where the two stories both diverge and interlock. Joseph does as the Angel tells him and sets up for us what we will celebrate at the end of this week. Ahaz, on the other hand, basically says he’ll deal with things his own way and won’t ask God for help, despite the fact that God told him to do so. You can’t tempt a God who is telling him to ask for help. Since Ahaz refuses to ask God for help, God tells him that he will be replaced by someone who will. As Christians, we believe that this child is the Christ, the one whose earthly father did what the Angel wanted.
We live in a very cynical, pragmatic world. So often, when we need help there is a temptation to believe that we either do it ourselves or it won’t get done. Yet, as believers, we are challenged especially by today’s readings. Miracles do in fact happen. Not everything is so predictable that we can write the story even before it happens. Sure, we need budgets and auditors to make sure that we don’t go off the handle. And, as your pastor, I do my best to make sure that we live within our budget. But, that will never stop me from dreaming for a miracle. Please don’t stop dreaming for that miracle cure or that problem resolved. For, soon we will remember the greatest miracle of all time: the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit. Have you ever been disappointed by God? Ever asked for something from God and not gotten what you want? A few years ago, I was riding with a good priest friend of mine named Fr. Bob Davies. Fr. Davies has, since then, passed away but he used to accompany me four times a year to the Twin Cities to watch plays with some other priests. One time, we were talking about budgeting frustrations that he was having with his two rural parishes. Now, to understand why this next comment is so shocking, you have to understand something about Fr. Davies history. Prior to becoming a priest, he was involved in local and national politics. If you travel to Hampton and mention his name, they will probably remember him best as the county recorder. He was a whiz with numbers and budgets. He was one of the guys that Senator Harkin relied on to work behind the scenes on his finances and make sure he wasn’t overspending. So, as we were driving along Interstate 35 close to where it intersects with interstate 90, you can imagine how surprised I was to hear him say that he thought parishes take budgets too seriously. This is man who, prior to priesthood, dedicated his life to being the guy who said to politicians that they can’t spend something because it would go over budget. But, according to Bob, by being so strict about staying in budget, they missed out on the possibility that God may be calling us to do something more. At the time, I was just a new Associate Pastor but it still struck me and continues to strike me the more I think about it.
Today’s first reading and gospel are a definite exercise in point, counter point. In other words, two people are presented with similar situations and end up with complete different solutions. Both Ahaz and Joseph have to make a life or death decision. Ahaz is in charge of Judah which is situated between two countries that wanted to wage war with two countries on his southern border. Ahaz thinks that he can remain neutral but one of the southern countries is Israel, a sister Judaic country. He has to know that he’s going to get drug into this war somehow, even if he isn’t sure whose side he should be on. Joseph, on the other hand, isn’t dealing with war but with a personal life or death situation. To be engaged at the time of Jesus was a serious commitment. If someone were to have relations with another person, it would result in their death. Yet, since the marriage hasn’t happened, the couple is not allowed to have relations. In both cases, God approaches the men even before they ask. God seems willing to allow Ahaz to keep Judah neutral and will even protect him if he asks. God tells Joseph to marry Mary quickly and protect her from shame. This is where the two stories both diverge and interlock. Joseph does as the Angel tells him and sets up for us what we will celebrate at the end of this week. Ahaz, on the other hand, basically says he’ll deal with things his own way and won’t ask God for help, despite the fact that God told him to do so. You can’t tempt a God who is telling him to ask for help. Since Ahaz refuses to ask God for help, God tells him that he will be replaced by someone who will. As Christians, we believe that this child is the Christ, the one whose earthly father did what the Angel wanted.
We live in a very cynical, pragmatic world. So often, when we need help there is a temptation to believe that we either do it ourselves or it won’t get done. Yet, as believers, we are challenged especially by today’s readings. Miracles do in fact happen. Not everything is so predictable that we can write the story even before it happens. Sure, we need budgets and auditors to make sure that we don’t go off the handle. And, as your pastor, I do my best to make sure that we live within our budget. But, that will never stop me from dreaming for a miracle. Please don’t stop dreaming for that miracle cure or that problem resolved. For, soon we will remember the greatest miracle of all time: the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Great Quote from the movie "Going my Way"
Bing Crosby "Bishops are like umpires. You have to have them to call the close decisions."
Monday, December 13, 2010
Last Bulletin's Article
Because of all the bad weather we had last weekend, most of my parishioners didn't get to have a bulletin. Here it is with a few amendments...
You might remember a few weeks ago, I asked you to submit questions you’d like addressed in bulletin columns. These are the first two:
You might remember a few weeks ago, I asked you to submit questions you’d like addressed in bulletin columns. These are the first two:
Are we having mass on Christmas evening to fulfill your Sunday Obligation?
Since Christmas is the second-most important holiday in the Catholic Calendar, we are unable to celebrate a Sunday vigil mass on Christmas Day. So, both Duncan and Buffalo Center masses will be cancelled that weekend and I ask those people to go to a neighboring parish on Sunday for Mass. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Does SCAP fulfill your Sunday Obligation?
For those of you who do not know what the acronym SCAP means; Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest. This celebration takes place on a Sunday when a priest cannot get to a given church to celebrate mass. It’s among a list of liturgical celebrations that are what I call “oops!” celebrations (ex. general absolution, confirmation by the parish priest, and lay baptism in an emergency situation). In these situations, the church provides for times in which the norm is impossible.
To fulfill your Sunday Obligation, a catholic is obliged to participate in mass on either Saturday evening or Sunday. Mass is the only liturgy that can fulfill your Sunday Obligation. It says in paragraph 12 of the Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest
The following are the principal requisites for the Sunday assembly of the faithful.
1. the gathering of the faithful to manifest the Church, not simply on their own initiative but as called together by God, that is, as the people of God in their organic structure, presided over by a priest, who acts in the person of Christ;
2. their instruction in the paschal mystery through the Scriptures that are proclaimed and that are explained by a priest or deacon;
3. the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice, by which the paschal mystery is expressed, and which is carried out by the priest in the person of Christ and offered in the name of the entire Christian people.
We have the very interesting situation here in this pastorate of a scheduled SCAP on the first Saturday Night of each month in Buffalo Center. This is done with the permission of Archbishop Hanus because it is impossible to have mass there that weekend. Some of the people, having read this question, may well wonder if they should attend SCAP or drive to another parish. I want to emphasize that you should all continue attending SCAP when it is offered. If the Archbishop or I expected you to drive elsewhere that weekend, we would simply ask Deacon Popowski or Jody Smith not to offer SCAP. The fact that it is offered indicates that we expect you will it.
One way to look at is is that, by attending SCAP, you have done all you can do to fulfill your Sunday Obligation. The fault does not lie with you. You have done two of the three components listed above. You have gathered as a community in Christ and have heard the Word of God. The parts that are missing are that the priest can't preside over the assembly or offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice. But you cannot control that.
One of the things that has impressed several of the priests in the past few years as well as our Episcopal Vicar, Msgr. Wilgenbusch, is that the SCAP is as well attended as the Sunday Mass in Bufffalo Center. This speaks to the need for it as well as the vibrant sustainability of your parish. As we go foarward, it is possible that we will need to offer SCAP in more parishes on a more consistent basis. I will look toward you, the people of St. Patrick's, to assuage any fears associated with SCAP and to speak to the positive effect is has had in your life and the life of your parish.
On a related note, in the 80’s and 90’s, there arose a practice on weekdays when a priest could not celebrate a daily mass for a lay person or a sister to celebrate a Word and Communion service. Both the Vatican and Archbishop Hanus have recently asked that we discontinue these. There is no obligation to attend mass on weekdays and, quite often, these services promoted scandal within the church as the preacher may be untrained in theology or may have a theological “axe” to grind. The one possible exception to this rule is distributing communion to the sick in a nursing home or hospital, if the pastor gives his approval.
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