Three weddings in one weekend...yikes

I've never before done more than one wedding on a weekend. I've been in a church when I had one and another priest (the pastor) had one either the day before or the day after. This weekend, I have one wedding today, one tomorrow and one on Sunday. I have no idea if I need to prepare for this or not. Jumping Jacks? Sprints? Intense concentration on people's names?

I have a feeling it won't be the first time that I'll have a wedding during Sunday mass, however. I'm afraid that, in the future, with a declining number of priests, this will be a solution to the problem of having too many liturgies on one weekend. I haven't yet had a wedding where the normal Sunday mass crowd couldn't have been there. And it's not as though there has been a wedding liturgy that has added so much time to the normal Sunday Mass that people would be angry. The exclusivity would suffer. It would turn it from a private family mass into a celebration of the whole church. I'm sure some will bristle, especially those that are really shy! But those catholics that think a Saturday wedding covers for Sunday mass would finally feel vidicated.

Have you read the new liturgy translation?

You can find it here. There are more changes that we've been led to believe. The good news is that we have until 2010 until the changes take effect. We may be able to use the next two years to help our people get used to them slowly.

The Lord be with you
And with your spirit

and

Behold the Lamb of God,
behold him who takes away the sins of the world.
Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

Lord, I am not worthy
that you should enter under my roof,
but only say the word
and my soul shall be healed.

I have a feeling, however, that we won't do anything until we are forced to do something.

Grace builds on nature

This weekends gospel (found here) was the feeding of the 5000 men, not counting women and children. One commentary I read suggested that Jesus needed the apostles to bring forth their five loaves and two fish in order to perform the miracle. I couldn't help but think of how God fed his people in the desert without the people putting forth anything. I thought that the lesson was a limitation on the power of God (he could only do it if he had the five loaves and two fish effectively treating him more like a god than God) and more that the ordinary way God works in this world is by building on the work that we have already done. If there wasn't the desire on our part and the willingness to do whatever it takes to make sure God's work done, then we have effectively turned God into a god again by making him an interference in this world.

What I'm trying to articulate is the long-held catholic belief that grace builds on nature, that God waits to see the choices we make and then adds to the work that we are doing. That's the lesson that I took from the gospel. Jesus first challenged the disciples to ask the right question. They wanted to ask Jesus to dismiss the crowd so that they could get food but, instead, he wanted them to get them food for themselves. Then, he took their meager effort (five loaves and two fish) and made it abundant.

Saying goodbye again...

As a priest/campus minister, my job is to walk with men and women during four years of college to help them find God when they are lost and help them avoid getting lost in the first place if at all possible. All priests have to say goodbye and hello a million times to a bunch of new people but the tough part of this job is that it happens so damn often. I get to know awesome young people and then realize that the same awesome young people that have become such an important part of my life are off to a job or graduate school. It's as inevitable as it is tragic in many ways.

Immediately after the school year is over, I am so tired that I'm glad that the students are gone. But, by this part of the summer, I realize that some of those students who have become such an important part of my life are not going to come back. It's like the realization doesn't hit me until this part of the year. And, even though I'm sure that others will step up and fill their shoes, they can never replace the great people that have been here.

I'm going to miss them.

17th Sunday in Ordinary time: The search

Oftentimes, when I think about prayer, I have that text from Jesus that we read at the Ash Wednesday liturgy in mind, “But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” As an introvert, this appeals to me. In fact, I have even converted what should be my spare bedroom into a private chapel, an “inner room” of sorts, for my daily prayer. And, even though I think we should all have to have our favorite prayer places we visit daily, whether they be an empty room at home, a favorite outdoor chair or a daily visit to the blessed sacrament in the tabernacle, I don’t think that Jesus was saying that this is the ONLY way that Jesus wanted us to pray. The context of that message, which also comes from the Gospel of Matthew, is that we shouldn’t pray just so that others will see us and admire us for how holy we are. Prayer is our communication with God.

Last Sunday night, I was camping with my family down in Adventureland Campground. I was in my fold-down camper and my parents were in their larger, hard side camper. At midnight, I saw a flash of lightening that seemed to be immediately followed by a loud canon-shot of fire. This was followed by about a half hour of these frighteningly close lightening strikes, though they eventually stopped and I rolled over and went back to sleep. About an hour later, a heavy rain shower with some light hail moved through though they eventually stopped and I rolled over and went back to sleep. At three fifteen, I woke up annoyed because the tornado sirens wouldn’t turn off. I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. Thankfully, my dad knocked on my camper door and knocked some sense into me. There was a tornado coming and I needed to get to safety. I stumbled out of my camper at about the same time that the wind and rain hit. I ran toward what I thought was a shelter house only to discover that it was really a completely locked up front office. I had no idea what to do. If I ran to a different building there was no guarantee that it would be unlocked and the only building I knew would be open, the bathroom, was far, far away through rain and winds. I was afraid that, if I started to run, it would hail or a tornado would come and pick me up. I felt cold, scared, and lost. So, I did the only thing I thought I could do. I prayed. I wasn’t locked away in my chapel, though I wished I could have been. I was asking God, through the intercession of the saints, to end this so that I could get back in my camper, change my clothes, get into bed, roll over, and go back to sleep.

Let’s face it, if religion is confined to the purely private recesses of our houses, we are the ones that are going to suffer. We need God just as much in the social parts of our lives as we do in the private. That old truism that there are no atheists in foxholes reminds us of a truism that I think our evangelical brothers and sisters understand better than we do. It’s oftentimes harder to believe in God when life is good than when life is challenging. We may think that the goal of the ideal spiritual life should be to bring us to peace but that’s not authentic Christian spirituality. You may think that was what Paul was saying in the second reading today but when he said, “We know that all things work for good for those who love God,” but this isn’t Paul’s way of saying that it will get better or all good things come to those who wait. Paul expects persecutions and sufferings in the life of Christians. What Paul is expressing is that in the midst of this suffering and persecution, God still brings good things to us as long as we love God. And that’s the journey each of us is called to be on.

The life of the Christian is not meant to be easy. Jesus uses two images of searching for treasure and a willingness to give up everything to have that treasure in order to convey this message to us. The real challenge of the Christian is similar to the challenge Solomon felt in the first reading, how can we know what God wants us to do? It’s the intricate matters of discernment that are hardest: knowing whether we should put aside money for difficult days ahead or give that money to the poor who are having difficult days right now. Knowing whether God is calling me to marry THIS person. Knowing whether God wants me to stay in THIS job or if another job that pays more but is uncertain would be better. These and a million other times when the journey becomes difficult are when we need to have the same prayer that Solomon has in the first reading: God Give your servant an understanding heart to distinguish right from wrong.

Are we weeds or are we wheat?

In 1982, Pope John Paul the Great canonized St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe. St. Maximilian was born in 1894 in a Russian town named Zduńska Wola. He eventually crossed the Russian border into modern day Poland in order to be ordained a priest for the Franciscan order. He seems to be a very good student and preacher, eventually becoming a superior for the order and founding several monasteries, including one in Nagasaki, Japan that, not only survived the Atomic bomb attack in 1945, but exists to this day. St. Maximilian got into some trouble, however, during World War II when it was discovered that he was sheltering Polish Jews and using his radio station to preach against Nazi atrocities. In the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, when ten men were ordered to be starved to death, St. Maximilian stepped forward and offered his life in place of another man who had a wife and children. Before his death, St. Maximilian led his fellow starving prisoners in songs and prayers and, after three weeks without water or food, his Nazi captors murdered him with an injection of carbolic acid. The man he replaced, Franciszek Gajowniczek, not only lived to see his wife and hear of the death of his sons, but also lived tell the tale of the heroism of St. Maximilian Kolbe to the world.

One would think that the canonization of such a great man would be unquestioned. Yet, there were reporters in this country that unearthed statements by St. Maximilian in a 1939 article in which Fr. Kolbe referred to "international Zionism" as the guiding hand behind the "criminal mafia" of Masonry, which in turn was stoking the fires of "atheistic Communism." According to the reporters who unearthed this, it proof that John Paul was acting incorrectly by calling this man a saint. The Vatican’s response was to release 1500 pages of Fr. Kolbe’s writings to show that only 31 of them even refer to Jews and most of those references were what you might call “missionary zeal” for the conversion of people to the faith. This, along with Fr. Kolbe’s zealous protection of up to 2000 Jews during the war seemed to indicate that he was a truly holy man, not a rabid anti-semite.

Stories like St. Maximilian’s and Blessed Pope Pius XII remind me of one thing: we are truly blessed that, in eternity, we are judged by God not by people. We hear this sentiment also in our readings today. From the first reading’s insistence that, despite the fact that God has no reason to be patient with us, he nonetheless is to the gospel’s understanding of the God who patiently waits to clear and burn the weeds while the wheat work to differentiate ourselves so as to be reaped with joy, we hear this message of the leniency of God over and over again. God gives us time to confess our sins, to repent, and to prove to him, what we are really made of. Life is less like a sprint than it is a long-distance endeavor. We don’t just find a moment in time when we can declare ourselves saved, regardless of what our fundamentalist brothers and sisters say. God’s judgment of the status of our soul comes after we have lived our life and shown whether we intend to live as weed or wheat.

If we intend on living as wheat, it doesn’t mean we won’t experience the fire, however. While the weeds will be uselessly burned up, let us remember that it took wheat to make the bread that the Israelites took into the desert. It takes wheat to make the bread, the body of Christ, that we will soon eat. We are the members of the body of Christ. Just as Maximilian Kolbe suffered but somehow found a way to still be joyful when he did so, so we must reflect the light of Christ even in the midst of difficult situations. This is one way that we show the hope that is part of being a member of the body of Christ: when we maintain hope in the most frustrating situations. We may be surrounded by weeds in this world, the friends, family, and coworkers that sow weeds of intolerance, lewdness, pornography, impure language, and other such immorality, we must not give in but, instead, live the wheat life and inspire others to do so as well.

Apartment shopping

I live in what some would call a less than ideal situation. It's an apartment building where a good number of college students live right next to a fraternity. The alley right outside my bedroom is a major thoroughfare during the school year for college students to use while going to and from the bars. I have had five bats and seven mice in my apartment in the three years I've lived there and I always get these weird bugs too.

So, I got approval to look somewhere else for housing. After what I believe was a pretty thorough search, I found a nice apartment about two miles from work. The ironic thing is that this is the first time that I've had to do this. I've never before had to search for an apartment. The only time prior to priesthood that I could have had to do this was when I lived in a traditional rectory with three other priests. I feel like I never know what questions to ask. The one that I chose has a lot of nice amenities so I hope the structure is good. Like, I don't want it to have a lot of frills but be basically falling apart. I hope that's not true. In the end, it's far enough away from campus that, in comparison, it's got to be quiet.

A couple of really interesting stories about mass

It appears that the new sacramentary will never be released. One story said that the bishops rejected the latest translation of the some of the prayers of the mass. It goes down the the division within the US church between so-called liberal and conservative bishops. Do we want more sophisticated language or more simplistic language?

Then, if we do get the translation passed, it appears from another story that the Pope is considering moving the sign of peace and having us say the consecration in Latin. That would be quite a radical change and, given what the Holy Father has said about how we don't need to change the liturgy any more than it has already been changed, I have my doubts.

If we can take any consolation from these stories, it's that I have more time before I have to convince people to say, "And with your spirit" in response to the phrase "The Lord be with you." Just 46 more years to retirement. I think I'll make it!

Wow...that was uncomfortable...

So, yesterday I had a wedding for some really active students. They were really great people and I can't wait to see how they'll be as parents. I didn't have a huge amount of time to prepare a homily but I had what I thought was going to be a very strong homily about on the parable of the sower who scattered seed on four different soils.

Unfortunately, our sacristan didn't show up yesterday so I had to help with that which meant that I was kind of running around until the very beginning of mass. As I walked over to the pulpit to read the gospel, I had the homily in my mind. I opened the book and realized it was in the entirely wrong spot. Since last week was a feast day (Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul) it was still there. So, I frantically looked through the book for fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary time year A. I got to it but it wasn't the parable of the man who scattered seed. It was this one instead.

When I was prepping the homily, I accidentally turned one too many pages. I guess I learned a good lesson about double checking and not just assuming that I actually have things right in the missal.

Did you hear about this

This past Sunday, the Orthodox community living in Ames celebrated their first divine liturgy in our little rural parish of Sts. Peter and Paul. Peter, one of the original 12 called by our Lord near the Sea of Galilee and Paul, a reluctant convert to the faith who eventually became one of (if not THE) best evangelizers in the earliest church both serve as the basis for the church in Rome and many other church's along the way. We pray that our association with this venerated tradition will strengthen unity among the followers of Christ.

If Paul and Peter can come together after a few differences in their ministry, let's pray that this story about our Holy Father pope Benedict will also prove to unite the lungs of Christianity into the one true church.

And I'm back...again

My class is over. I just spent a few days on rest and now I'm back. I think the best way for me to celebrate being back is to take my ordinary day off tomorrow. I'm hoping to go for a nice bike ride tomorrow morning out to my little country parish just to see if I can do it. I don't know what I'll do if I can't. But, hopefully you'll be reading more posts including better homilies.

Crappy homilies for a reason

In taking this class, I've been absorbed in reading theories for my class on families. My homilies have really suffered and I hope my people will forgive that I'm basically borrowing them from past years or stealing ideas from the internet.

So today, for instance, I borrowed the content from this site and talked a lot about water. The problem is that we don't want to hear about water that can't drain. There's water in Iowa City that needs to drain and Cedar Rapids and Cedar Falls...and other places. I just couldn't think of a better analogy for "giving what we ourselves received." So, if you have ideas of what you would do, let me know. What would you have done?

Rain, Rain, Go away....but please come back at the end of July or early August

The pattern for the last several years in Iowa has been that we have wet springs and dry falls. We are past the point of a wet spring at this point...closer to a flood of biblical proportions. Streams and rivers that are already out of their banks are filling farm fields that should be filled with the first signs of corn stalks are filled with water. Farmers will suffer. Ethanol will suffer. Food will suffer.

But, I'm fearing that we'll dry up and not get any more rain until late November or early December when it turns to ice like it did last winter. The few plants that barely survive the flood will die because of dehydration. I guess I'll just keep praying that we get the amount of rain that we need and see what happens.

I wish I knew why God did these things. Maybe God does these things because we have forgotten how important he is in our lives. Maybe he figures that a little suffering is good for the soul...it reminds us of the suffering of Christ. In any case, I think we understanding suffering for now. But then again, I'm not God. Maybe there is something more that we need to learn.

I should be studying...

I know that I told you that I wasn't going to post but I couldn't resist. I'm slacking off. I have a test on Tuesday and should be studying for it but I'm going to do this for a couple of minutes before getting back at it.

It felt good to be able to use some of the stuff that I'm learning in class in my homily today. In my family theory class, we're learning about symbolic interaction theory which is a rather weak theory that says that family is a societally constructed reality to help us create meaning out of events and relationships. I talked in today's first reading about how Paul is saying to Timothy that he should follow the example Paul has given him because we all need examples in our lives. But, Christ has to redefine the example that he has. He is not equal to David. He is equal to God, the Son of God.

It was one of those homilies that I realized at the last moment that I had completely forgot the most crucial aspect of contemporary homiletics...the answer to the question "So what?" When they leave, what should make their life different? I tried to find it but feel like I failed. That's the way it goes sometimes.

On the plus side, I decided to post a bible study I did on the book of Tobit on blogger. Just go to tobitbiblestudy.blogspot.com and you'll find it. I'm hoping to follow it up with one over the course of next school year on the two canonical books of the Maccabees. I'll keep you up to date about that one.

Why the silence

I'm taking a summer class at Iowa State University and can't find the time to blog anything. Sorry. I'll be back in July.

Coming off a wonderful week of vacation

I decided that the best way to start taking classes toward a degree in Human Development and Family Studies was to get rid of all parish responsibilities so that I could focus on being a student again. It's a little intimidating just to find the right building and walk in let alone, sit there among life-long sociologists and try to "fit in". So far, things have gone incredibly well. I have an excellent prof who's really patient with me and a group of fellow students that have been so patient with me. I would never have thought that the real joy of doing this on vacation was that it MADE me think. I had to read. I didn't just sit around all week cleaning my apartment or getting sun while camping. Instead, I learned a lot and was able to relax and just be someone different for a while.

The challenge of priesthood is that we need to be life-long learners. Sometimes we need someone to push us a little to do it.

The trinity

My homily this weekend focused on how the trinity is envisioned as an overflowing of love (Holy Spirit) between the Father and Son. This is prefigured in the love of husband and wife in married life. This is how most of us learn about God, from family and why, As Christians, we cannot accept gay marriage and need to work against it. Love is perfected with similarity and dissimilarity.

My Abbot's (I mean Archbishop's) response

As you know, I try to show people in this blog the wisdom of the bishops. You can read my reaction to a raid that happened in Postville, Iowa below. Here is my Archbishop's response whose incredible pastoral sense shows through. Since he was an abbot before he was ordained bishop, he knows what the rule of Benedict means when it says, "Let him not love one more than another, unless it be one whom he finds more exemplary in good works and obedience. Let not a free-born be preferred to a freedman, unless there be some other reasonable cause."

The actions taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Postville on May 12 highlight once again the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Families have been disrupted; parents and children are filled with fear. Many are uncertain whether their loved ones will be arrested, imprisoned indefinitely, or deported.

This state of terror for families is evidence that our political system has not adequately addressed the demand for labor, the inadequacies of our present immigration policies and practices, and the broader economic challenges. Some of the weakest members among us are bearing the brunt of the suffering, while legislators and other leaders, as well as many of us in the general public, have failed to give this issue the priority that it deserves.

Leaders in the Roman Catholic community, as well as many other religious leaders, have called for comprehensive immigration reform which strives:

• To create legal avenues for workers and their families who wish to enter our country and work in a safe, legal, and orderly manner with their rights fully protected.

• To develop border protection policies that are consistent with humanitarian values and with the need to treat all individuals with respect.

• To allow authorities to carry out the critical task of identifying and preventing entry of terrorists and dangerous criminals, as well as pursuing the legitimate task of implementing American immigration policy.

• To reduce significantly waiting times for separated families to be reunited.

I urge all persons of goodwill to work at changing a system

• That ignores the plight of individuals and families.

• That relies primarily on punitive measures, rather than a long-term fix which would welcome hardworking people from impoverished nations to assist us in our labor needs, as well as offer the richness of their faith and culture to our society.

• That separates parents and children, places people in detention centers without good legal assistance, and makes very difficult the possibility of communicating with their loved ones.

Our religious and social response is based on the Judeo-Christian scriptures, which call believers to welcome the stranger among us, to treat the alien with respect and charity, and to provide pastoral and humanitarian assistance. While we do not condone illegal activity, we do give spiritual and moral support to suffering families.

All of us should urgently reiterate the call to our legislators to work for comprehensive reform.

I express my gratitude to all who are helping in these painful circumstances and assure our prayers and support to those who are suffering.

What are your thoughts on the raid?

A student asked me this question the other day. The raid in question took place in the small farming community of Postville, Iowa. When a similar raid took place in Marshalltown, Iowa, some US citizens were taken to Texas because they were suspected of being illegal immigrants. Then, when it was proven that they were legal, the citizens were told that it was their responsibility to get back to Iowa somehow. So, these people work in jobs that no US citizens want to do for wages that go to support their families and they are transported by the US Government half-way across the country and told that it was their responsibility to get back to Iowa somehow, as though it was their fault they were taken in there in the first place? This is justice?

I guess we can take solace that the Government has set up shop in Waterloo, Iowa and only transported them there. But, imagine if you were stopped by some government official that accused you of being an illegal immigrant. What would you do to "prove" your status? Driver's license? Any college kid can tell you those can be faked. That doesn't prove anything. Tell them your social security number? Nope. You made it up. It's a forgery. What else can we do? Speak to them in my Midwestern accent? Say I'm going to "woirsh" the car?

The easy thing to do in these situations is turn people into "those people." Make them into the other. The hard thing to do is to see them as one with us, one like us. That could be me. And what would I do? What would you do?

What does it mean to be Spiritual?

How many people here either have been trained or know how to speak more than one language. And, don’t worry. Keep your hands up if you’ve had to use that language in a situation involving a native speaker. I’m amazed and impressed by people who come to this country and learn how to speak English well because it is not an easy language to learn. My second language is German, although it’s been years since I’ve had to use it. In seminary, I took some Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish; and yet whenever I couldn’t think of a word in any of those languages I would insert the German word that I could think of, which, you can imagine, led to some very confused looks on my Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Spanish teachers. Yet, I’ve never personally been to a country that has German as it’s first language. The closest I’ve ever been was in Israel. I got frustrated with the English speaking masses because they weren’t English speaking. Often times, they would have elements of Vietnamese, Spanish, and Latin involved. I just wanted to go to a normal mass so I found those harbingers of laws and rules, the Germans.

In Jerusalem there is a church called the Dormition where Mary is supposed to have slept before being taken up body and soul into heaven. It’s run by a group of Benedictine Monks from Germany so my curiosity was piqued when I heard about it. I went there one weekend for mass and discovered that, like any good Benedictine Abbey, they also did Morning and Evening prayer together. So, I attended those whenever I could and kind of became accustomed to praying in German. One day, as I was leaving, I was approached by one of my fellow mass-goers who began speaking in rapid fire German to me. I can only imagine what the confused look on my face must have looked like to this poor gentleman as I tried to think of how to say, “bitte, langsam.” Or Please speak slower. He smiled and said he was the mayor of Munich in English and we walked and talked in a mix of English and German until we had to part our ways and, all along, I kept thinking about how intimidating it must be for people to come to this country and speak our language even if they have had plenty of training in it.

I think there’s a parallel between my experience in Jerusalem and the Apostle’s experience in the upper room and it’s not just location. I mean, as I walked with the mayor we did walk past the traditional spot of the upper room but that’s not what I mean. The Apostles, in this upper room, were locked away from the rest of the world. They have been told by Christ to evangelize but to wait until they receive a sign. When the sign comes, it’s a powerful wind that, basically, forces them out into the world. In what most commentators believe to be the reversal of the experience of Babel; the Apostles speak in the native tongues of the people around them to unite them in God. In the process, the Spirit unites these believers into the church and lights the fire of evangelization under their complacent hearts. The core of the church, the supreme driving force that doesn’t allow us to turn inward, therefore, is the Spirit. It’s a force for reconciliation in the world. Jesus said it best in the gospel when he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

That’s what I found ironic about our use of the term “spiritual” in today’s society. I’ve been asking around this week about what people mean when they say they are “spiritual” but not “religious”. Some people say that religion is a series of rules and laws while being spiritual is more freeing, more personal. Some seem to confuse the term “spiritual” with the term “loner” or “pensive”. To be truly spiritual, you need to be both. There’s a necessity for the Henry David Thorough moments of being alone with God but, as in the first reading, those moments will ultimately drive us into an encounter with the world through the Spirit. Most of the time this happens, it happens because of gifts the Spirit gives to us to equip us for ministry. We here at St. Thomas have begun a process of helping people discern those gifts in their own lives since, most of the time, we don’t have a Pentecost type experience that makes clear what our gifts are. Most of the time, we learn what our gifts are by someone we know and respect telling us that we do something well. We pray that this program will help all of us, you and I, to learn what our gifts are and how we might better utilize them.

Yet, in the end, we shouldn’t confuse the gift with the giver, a fact that any of us who have ever given a terrible gift on Mother’s day treasure. The Spirit drives us outside of ourselves to speak to those that intimidate us to tell them about Christ. It forces us to reach out in a spirit of forgiveness to those who have wronged us. And it will be the agent that gives the sick among us strength through the laying on of hands and the anointing. But, ultimately, it is the Spirit of God of which we speak, the Spirit that makes us the church and through whom alone we can Jesus is Lord because he unites us to the Father through the Son. On this Pentecost Day, we not only give thanks to God for the gifts of the Spirit but especially the gift that is the Spirit that makes God accessible to us.