Learning how to be comfortable as sheep

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, through our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. When I was at Loras my first year, one of my friends basically forced me to go on the Antioch retreat. I say she forced me to go on it because, in all honesty, I had made up my mind that Antioch was not going to be my thing when I first heard about it. I didn’t do retreats. I viewed them with the same kind of suspicion that one has for a cult, that simple-minded people needed them so that they could stand around and sing Jesus songs. But this friend was both particularly persistent and one of those people you just didn’t want to upset so I headed out to my first Antioch during October of my Freshman year. I can remember being surrounded by a bunch of people that I didn’t know, which was intimidating. I can remember seeing a priest not walking around in a polo shirt and jeans and thinking that that was a really weird thing. But, the thing that would have sent me driving back home had I had a car, the thing that I’ve resolved never to do at our Antioch retreats, was when they came around with a brown grocery bag and had us throw our watches into it because we were on “God’s time.” I actually tried to put my watch in my pocked quick before they came by but I got caught. I hated the idea of being deprived of my God-given right to know approximately where the sun was in the sky and what relation we were to Grenwich, England. It was just wrong and unnerving that this cult thought they could take my watch away. How dare they?

This Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday. Both the responsorial psalm and the gospel called God the Shepherd and called us the sheep. When I was in seminary, we had a rather heated debate about the usefulness of this image. In some ways, it is rather patronizing. Sheep are not exactly the most intelligent animals in the world. Being a sheep is often equated with unquestioning loyalty to the point of being willing to jump off a cliff if your friends asked you to do it. It’s what you call the person whose viewpoint you don’t agree with. Democrats believe Republicans were sheep to President Bush with the war in Iraq and Republicans believe Democrats are sheep when it comes to health care. Let’s face it, if we were writing the gospel today we’d probably say something like, “We are the dolphins, the intelligent, helpful, charming herd of the Lord”. Or “We are the Koala bears, the non-threatening, eucalyptus eating, hugging marsupials of the Lord.”

And yet, I’d like to contend that, despite its shortfalls, being a sheep isn’t really that bad. The second reading from the Book of Revelation reminded us of a deep theological reality tied to this image of sheep. The vision that John, the writer of Revelation, is having appears to be of heaven. There is this large gathering of all the saved, a group that is so large that it is beyond counting. The group are all wearing pure white robes, robes similar to the ones you may have see our newly baptized put on during the Easter Vigil and which they continue wearing in church during the Easter Season. This gathering is surrounding God who is referred to as one seated on the throne. Yet, Jesus, being depicted as a lamb, is also seated on the throne because, as we know, Jesus is fully God, “of the same substance with the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God…” And the Lamb will shepherd us by leading us to the life-giving streams of baptism and Eucharist just as blood and water flowed from Jesus’ side on the cross.

It seems to me that the writer of Revelation is saying that we are sheep because Jesus was the lamb. In case you didn’t grow up on a farm, a lamb is a sheep that has not bred more sheep. One could say that Jesus is the innocent sheep while we are the sheep who bring the baggage of original sin. Yet, we are sheep because we are the sinning but redeemed body of Christ on earth.

Part of what I find helpful in the image of being a sheep comes from the last line of this reading. Not only will God give us what we need, it also says that the Good Shepherd will, “wipe away ever tear from (our) eyes.” We, the Iowa State community, have suffered a lot over the course of the last few weeks. We’ve seen three students die: one on spring break and two last week. I’ve been visiting with a lot of you who have friends and family who are either seriously ill or have died and I have a hunch that a lot more of you are hurting about that or Jon, T.J. or Tyler than we here at St. Thomas will ever know. Just know that if you do need to talk to someone, my door and the doors of all the staff members are always open here at STA. We can’t quite wipe away all the tears but our shoulders may be able to take some of them.

Part of what is so difficult about the image the sheep is the loss of control, the same loss of control I felt by giving up my watch on Antioch. And yet, that weekend turned out to be the best thing I would do during four years at Loras College. I connected with God on a deeper level than ever before and I made friends there that would become my roommates for the next three years. I had to give up some of that control and trust God for that to take place. I had to let God be the shepherd in order to be led to life-giving streams and have my tears wiped away.

To go boldly where men have gone before...

The Archbishop of Dubuque has appointed me to a new assignment. In July, I will become pastor for St. Patrick Parish, Britt; St. Patrick Parish, Buffalo Center; St. Wenceslaus Parish, Duncan; St. James Parish, Forest City; St. Boniface Parish, Garner; and St. Patrick Parish, Lake Mills. If you're not sure where any of those towns are, look at most northern and central two counties of the state of Iowa and you'll find all of them. I'm very excited by the prospect of becoming pastor and a little overwhelmed by the Archbishop's confidence in me. I'll have the responsibility of pastoring six parishes and helping a brother priest (my associate pastor) continue his formation to become a pastor. There's a part of me that wonders if the Archbishop has made a mistake. I mean, I still make mistakes and say stupid things. Lieutenant Riker was still second-in-command to Jean-Luc Picard after like 20 years on the Enterprise. And, trust me, I'm no William T. Riker.

Thankfully, as I have done since June 22nd 2002 in the beginning of the American sexual abuse crisis, I trust in the Archbishop's statement that my own feelings of inadequacy are reminders that being a priest really isn't about me. I didn't choose to become a priest, God chose me. To put it in the words of the ordination liturgy, "Remember that you are chosen from among God's people and appointed to act for them in relation to God. Do your part in the word of Christ the Priest with genuine joy and love, and attend to the concerns of Christ before your own."

Last Sunday

I really didn't like my homily from last Sunday so I didn't put it here. It was one of those homilies that started out rough on Saturday and never really got polished in four times.

What was cool, however, was being part of a very unusual confirmation. In this diocese, we have three priests who have the title of Episcopal Vicar. They stand in the place of the Bishop for certain events like this. Monsignor Russ Bleich is one and he was supposed to confirm the kids. But, then he got sick. Laryngitis, to be specific. He couldn't talk, one of he few traits still absolutely necessary in order to celebrate mass. So, he gave the authority to the pastors here. The kids got to be confirmed by their pastor. That was very unusual and I'm sure they'll remember it for a long time.

I'm not saying that it should happen every year...maybe once every 20 years or so. It was nice to see the pastors working together in the same way that we ask the confirmation students to do so for the prayer.

What prompted the change in Peter?

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ

He is Risen! He is truly Risen! May the grace of the risen savior, Jesus Christ, come upon you this Easter day and remain with you throughout the 50 day Easter celebration. I’d like to especially welcome those of you who haven’t been here in quite a while.

For one of my summer jobs during college, I decided to become a short-order cook in a small country restaurant in Marshalltown. It was one of the hardest summers I ever had because I had to be awake at 5:30 to be to work at 6:00. I’m not a morning person so this was quite a challenge. The other challenge was the job itself. I would be handed a ticket with a list of food to prepare and I had to know the timing that it took for one piece of food compared to another. For instance, I had to know how long it took to make eggs over easy so that I could have hot hash browns and toast to be served at the exact same time. That was the hardest part of the job for me and, to be honest, I quite often had to call the owner in the kitchen to help me catch up because I’d fallen so far behind. But, I can still remember the day that I finally succeeded. Several tickets all came up at once and I started all the things that took a lot of time right away. I remembered to flip the eggs quickly for the one woman who liked her eggs runny and even remembered to push the toast down. As I completed the last ticket that day, I had this tremendous sense of accomplishment. The owner, who was not known for his warm loquacious demeanor, came back to the kitchen, patted me on the back, and said, “Good job, kid.” I had made it. It felt good.

The focus of the gospel is always Jesus. But, in the background, there are a bunch of people who interact with the savior and we see quite a transformation in one of these people today. Peter, the rock on whom our church is built, has his good times and bad times during Jesus’ ministry. Sometimes he seems to comprehend things perfectly, like when he recognized Jesus for the Messiah he is. Other times, he seems to get things very wrong, like when he thrice denied knowing Jesus during Jesus’ trial. And the amazing thing from today is that the background character is called up to the front in the course of today’s readings. In the gospel, we hear about Peter’s reaction to hearing about the empty tomb. Whereas Mary Magdalene seems to react with doubt and fear by running to tell the disciples that they have stolen his body, Peter runs to the tomb, enters it and sees the burial clothes neatly wrapped up. For him, this is the beginning, a call to faith that will continue to grow for the next several years through the careful fertilization of the Holy Spirit.

Peter makes five speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, all of which are creedal catechetical statements of belief. In other words, the student becomes the teacher by the Acts of Apostles. His bumbling errors are a thing of the past and he now speaks with the clarity of our first Pope, telling the world all about the forgiveness given to us by the cross and resurrection of Jesus. He was a witness and now he’s got to witness.

And, he calls each of us to witness to the faith. We are called to live our lives affected by the resurrection of Jesus by loving one another, especially the persecuted. We are to reach out to the lost individuals in our life and invite them to come to church with us. Maybe for some of us, the best witness you can give is to make church on Sunday a priority in your life on more than just a monthly basis. Maybe for some of you, you need to get the demons such as addiction to drugs, alcohol, or sex out of your life in order to be a witness and you need to join a group like AA or SA in order to kick the habit.

The challenge always is that we don’t feel like we can do it. Maybe we feel energized and excited now but there will be a time when reality will set in and we’ll have to commit to actually doing it. We may even remember past failures and use them as an excuse as to why we can’t witness today. Let us use the inspiration of Peter, the one who first failed before he succeeded, to commit to being witnesses to the resurrection.

Good Friday...heck it was a GREAT FRIDAY!

I've been a priest for 8 years now. I've done mass almost daily for 8 years of priesthood. The one day that I'm not allowed to do mass is today, Good Friday. For the last three years in a row, I've been out at my little rural parish, Sts. Peter and Paul in Gilbert, Iowa. I know my people out there and they know me. They trust me and I trust them.

We didn't do anything unusual at Sts. Peter and Paul. But there's something awesome about knowing what to expect because I've done it all before. The Passion Gospel was so powerful. I love to speak with the people, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify Him!" It emphasizes just how privileged we are that Jesus really died for our sins.

Probably the most touching thing that happened was during the veneration of the cross. There were several parents holding children allowing the children to touch the cross. There was even a number of High School students that came forward and kissed the feet of Jesus.

I closed my homily with a quote from an early Holy Saturday Homily. "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 has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear."

The Year of the Priest/Holy Thursday

My dear brothers and sister in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who sent his Holy Spirit to fill us with his grace. This year, Pope Benedict asked all the faithful to pray for priests. As a priest, I really haven’t done much about this. I’ve felt encouraged by people who tell me that they are praying for me and thinking about me. And, as a priest, I can be honest enough to admit that it is always a joy to come here and celebrate with you because so many of you are complimentary of me and my ministry. Nonetheless, I have struggled to preach about the year of the priest because it seems like it would, in some ways, only affect me. Yet, in the past week, I’ve been paying close attention to the unfolding events in Europe regarding clergy sexual abuse. It’s been very interesting to find that our older brother in the faith is just now dealing with the same problems that we started dealing with eight years ago. In this light, I think it’s important to preach about priests on this Holy Thursday, this day that is considered the Institution of the Priesthood.

When the Pope asked us to reflect on priests, he told us to do so through the lens of St. John Vianney so I looked up what he taught on the matter. I found a really great passage from his writing entitled Catechetical Instruction. The Saint says, “(Holy Orders) raises man up to God. What is a priest! A man who holds the place of God - a man who is invested with all the powers of God. "Go, " said Our Lord to the priest; "as My Father sent Me, I send you. All power has been given Me in Heaven and on earth. Go then, teach all nations. . . . He who listens to you, listens to Me; he who despises you despises Me. " When the priest remits sins, he does not say, "God pardons you"; he says, "I absolve you. " At the Consecration, he does not say, "This is the Body of Our Lord;" he says, "This is My Body.”

This is an interesting point about being a priest: We don’t speak on behalf of ourselves. We speak on behalf of God. For me, this has two ramifications: it means that priests need to be cautious about what we say because people will take it as authoritative. And, I ask for your prayers for the priests who have decided to misstate church teaching because it better suits their disposition or beliefs. We should not do that. St. John Vianney says that we must be willing to speak the truth of the gospel even if it means receiving the contempt of the people and, as he says, being shot upon leaving the pulpit.

The other reality is that the priest must be the leader and model in holiness. St. John Vianney says it in the negative, “Leave a parish twenty years without priests; they will worship beasts. If the missionary Father and I were to go away, you would say, "What can we do in this church? there is no Mass; Our Lord is no longer there: we may as well pray at home." When people wish to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest, because where there is no longer any priest there is no sacrifice, and where there is no longer any sacrifice there is no religion.” In other words, the priest reminds people of God’s presence and makes God present. One of my favorite things to do as a priest is to wear my clerical clothes to things like sporting events, plays, and even a bar or two. The priest should be a reminder that God doesn’t just want us for an hour each week but wants to be in relationship with us in all aspects of our life. Since the Second Vatican Council, I’ve think this aspect of priesthood has been on the decline. Many of my brother priests say that the document on the church said that not only the priests should be holy but that all the people should be holy. And, while I agree with them on this point, it did say that we are all to be HOLY, not that we are allowed to be as unholy as we think our people are being. We are to model holiness for our people so that they will likewise want to be holy.

As a priest, I have to admit that I’m not perfect about this. I give in far too often to secular concerns and find it way too easy to allow my tongue to slip towards unkind speech. In this year of the priest, perhaps what we priests need most is for our lay people to remind us of your need for us to model God’s love and mercy. Remind us that you don’t need an entertainer or a best friend, you need someone to bring the grace of Christ into your life in the sacraments. Continue to support and love us but also call us to be the image of the Father that you want us to be.

Archbishop Levada

I read this lengthy article while watching TV tonight. With a great deal of clarity, it describes the muckraking that has been happening to the Holy Father by the press.

No real homily this weekend

So, this weekend is Palm Sunday. Go to church to get your palm so that you can make your cross. It's a big Sunday. We read the entire passion narrative from one of the gospels, which takes a lot longer than normal. That comes after we read the gospel about the procession with palms from the gospel of Luke.

My homily generally goes like this: This is the week where we remember the central mystery of our church. From Holy Thursday's Institution of the Eucharist to Good Friday's focus on the Cross and death of the Lord to Easter Sunday and the Resurrection, we remember all of what is at the heart of the church. I strongly encourage you all to make a point to come to church to celebrate all three days. This is our Holy Week.

To be a compass

For some reason, the following dialog from the movie Mr. Holland's Opus keeps coming up in my conversation. In case you forget, Mr. Holland is played by Richard Dreyfuss and is the new music teacher and Mrs. Jacobs is played by Olympia Dukakis and is the seasoned principal...

Mrs. Jacobs: “Mr. Holland! Just the man I was looking for. We’re forming a textbook committee for next year’s curriculum and I would like to have your ideas and suggestions. We meet next Tuesday in the library.

Mr. Holland: Oh, I’m sorry Mrs. Jacobs. I’m I’m I’m very busy.

Mrs. Jacobs: You know for a good four or five months now I’ve been watching you Mr. Holland. I’ve never seen a teacher sprint for the parking lot after last period with more speed and enthusiasm than his students. Perhaps you should be our track coach.

Mr. Holland: Mrs. Jacobs, I get here on time every morning. I’m doing my job the best I can.

Mrs. Jacobs: A teacher has two jobs: Fill young minds with knowledge, yes. But more important, give those minds a compass so that knowledge doesn’t go to waste. Now I don’t know what you’re doing with the knowledge, Mr. Holland, but as a compass, you’re stuck.

I keep thinking about it because that is what I feel to be the difference between a normal parish and a good parish. A normal Catholic parish either seems to just want to do the basics of the faith or has such deep divisions within what is happening that you have to be part of a "camp" in order to feel a part. It seems that the pastor's constant challenge is to be the compass that keeps the parish together walking in the right direction.

Jesus calls us to conversion not tolerance

My Dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God, our Father and Jesus, our savior through the reconciling power of the Holy Spirit. A generation ago, it was quite common for certain derogatory terms to be used when describing people of certain races and ethnic backgrounds. In the course of the last 20 or 30 years there’s been a constant changing of terms in an effort to clarify what you can call a given racial or ethnic group. Oftentimes, this is called political correctness, a term which itself is decidedly not politically correct. Of course, the goal of all of this is to get people away from seeing others as the terrifyingly, different “other” in order to see how all of humanity is connected. The difficulty has been when it becomes obvious that there are legitimate differences in the way two different groups of people look and do things. In other words, regardless of how hard I concentrate on the similarities, the life-experiences I have and the morals and values I have imprinted on me are different than what someone growing up in the inner city of a major metropolitan area has. For instance, I often laugh at people who turn on car alarms in this town. Do we have a rash of car theft taking place in our tiny little town? When I look at the cars whose alarms are going off, I quite often see an Illinois license plate. I have to admit that my first thought is that the person must be from Chicago and hasn’t quite figured out that there’s no need for a car alarm in Ames.

There are other several areas of life where our experience and culture make it difficult to live next door to someone different. Quite often, we are then called to live out the moral precept of tolerance. I’m supposed to be tolerant of the guy who leaves his car alarm on because he was raised believing that’s essential and he’s supposed to be tolerant of me when I wear my priest clothes across campus on my way to an IRB meeting. Tolerance is, in some ways, a very useful attribute toward morally neutral things. A girl from small town Iowa who believes there are two types of music: country and western, comes to college in part to learn how to be tolerant of other people’s music and cultural traditions.

The problem I have with tolerance is when it comes to morals. We are told that we need to be tolerant of other people’s attitudes and behaviors when it comes to sex, money, and politics. And, ironically enough, this gospel is often used to substantiate this attitude of tolerance. I, however, don’t believe we are using it correctly when we do. Jesus is teaching in the Temple area. Let’s not forget that this is taking place in the Temple because I think it’s crucial. He is teaching his followers and probably reaching out to others to convert them. In the midst of this, the scribes and Pharisees bring him a guilty woman. They ask him to be the judge in her case. According to the law, she deserves to be killed because she was caught committing adultery. But, the Roman guards, who are watching from a high watch-tower close by, believe they are the only ones who are allowed to carry out the death sentence. In some way, Jesus can’t answer correctly. If he gives the scribes and Pharisees the order to kill her, he will likely be killed by the Romans for disobedience. If he says to turn her over to them, he would have basically been acknowledging to them that he is not the Messiah as they expect him to be who has come to overthrow human power and they would have killed him for blasphemy then and there.

In a move reminiscent of Solomon, Jesus says that they can kill her but the one of them who has no sin should be the one to cast the first stone. Of course, they all judge themselves as having sinned and walk away leaving her alone. But, this is not a lesson in tolerance. If it were, the story would have ended there with the lesson learned. What happened next is crucial. Jesus turns and asks where they have all gone and she says they all left. He then gives her something that the others didn’t even get: forgiveness. “Go and from now on do not sin anymore.” It’s a lesson in repentance and forgiveness not in merely allowing an adulteress to continue sinning and learning how to put up with her. It’s about getting her to reform her life and seek a life of holiness.

Let’s be honest, each of us could be in the same place as the woman for something that we’ve done. We all have events and actions in our lives that we keep hidden away because we are ashamed of them. We’ve learned to tolerate them because it’s easier to do that then to go and sin no more. It could be something as major as adultery or an addiction to pornography and masturbation or something as small as gossip and telling lies. Whatever it is, we should feel jolted today by Jesus to reconcile ourselves to the church and go and sin no more.

St. Joseph Day

For all of you who aren't particularly Irish and who kind of feel both like you don't particularly care about St. Patrick's day and/or the Irish in general, today is the feast of St. Joseph. In the Catholic Church, you might consider the anti-Irish celebration. It's claimed by the Germans, Itialians, Poles, and others who basically got tired of the Irish polluting rivers and making a fool out of themselves two days before.

I heard a great presentation on St. Joseph when I was visiting my good friend Fr. Henry Huber in North Central Iowa where he is pastor of six parishes. He does something called 13 hours involving prayer, reconciliation, and catechesis. The person doing the catechesis talked about St. Joseph, mostly in the context of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph. she really did a great job. There was only one thing with which I kind of disagreed.

She assumed that St. Joseph died surrounded by Jesus and Mary who mourned his loss. Of course, scripture is silent on the matter. Yet, I have often thought that it's possible Joseph died without understanding Jesus' ministry at all. In the gospel of Luke, there's a story of Jesus bar mitzvah where he is found in the Temple by his mother and father. Mary and Joseph ask where he was and he responds, "Didn't you know I'd be in my Father's House?" It then goes on to say, "and Mary kept these things in her heart." Why not Mary and Joseph? What if Joseph's job wasn't to understand Jesus? What if his job was to protect him when he needed to be protected and then get out of the way? I find hope in this St. Joseph because he says that even people who had a close relationship to Jesus may not completely understand how it all works. It doesn't mean we can slack off and not even try. In fact, it should impel us to work even harder knowing that St. Joseph is helping us to know as much as we can about the mystery of Jesus' salvation.

Did the Father learn a lesson?

It's spring break here at Iowa State so I knew that the crowd would be almost entirely "the converted". That heavily shaped this homily.

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 Sprit. So, great! I get to preach on a gospel that is a part of almost every talk on conversion and/or reconciliation for Christians. This passage of scripture is so often preached that, if you’re like me, all you have to hear is “A man had two sons…” and you kind of glaze over. Maybe you start making your grocery list or asking yourself if you remembered to write in that ATM withdrawal and whether it was for sixty or eighty dollars. Let’s face it, this story is THAT familiar, especially in our modern church. Part of the reason for this is because it kind of typifies the way that most of us envision the God. God is a kind older fatherly-figure who smiles a lot and wants to forgive us even before we ask. And, to be honest, I think a lot of reason for that image comes from this gospel. In every homily I’ve ever heard or preached, God is the forgiving father who welcomes back those of us when we sin both by our actions and by our unwillingness to forgive someone else.

If I may be so bold, I would like to suggest we take a slightly different tack today as we mine the depths of meaning for this story. Rather than ascribe divine attributes to the Father and human attributes to boys, let’s just assume that each of these figures are, in fact, human. Let’s assume for a second that Jesus really was telling us a parable and not a story using different names for definite people. Last Sunday night and Monday, I gathered with our Archbishop in a quarterly priest council meeting. I rather enjoy these get-togethers because it allows me to play some Bridge with his Excellency and be amazed at his technique. On Monday, Monsignor James Barta, another superb Bridge player, presented to us some demographics and population trends for the state of Iowa. Monsignor had us read summaries of several books that have been written about this phenomenon and looked at the census data from 2010 in preparation for the upcoming census this year. One of the trends is that, with the exception of a corridor between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, the population of the rest of the State of Iowa is declining. He then had us look at parish data to see if we had similar phenomena. In other words, if a particular county has lost 50% of it’s population, you would expect the Local Catholic Church to do the same.

The trouble is we’re actually doing much worse than the local population. In most instances, we were 15-20% higher in loss than the county population. In other words, there are a lot of Catholics that aren’t coming to church on Sundays. Big surprise, right? When most priests hear that, we tend to look around at the guy next to us and ask what he’s doing wrong. In other words, we don’t think it’s our parish that has the drop. Or, if we do, it’s not because of us. And, it’s my experience that most parishes have the same attitude toward nearby parishes.

To me, that’s one of the dangers about believing that the Father in this parable is God and we are one of the kids. The truth is, it may be better to think of ourselves as the forgiving parents who have watched several of God’s children leave the house. Sometimes, we let them go because it was clear they had no intention of living a Christian life anyway. They wanted to squander the inheritance of holiness given them in baptism. We pray that someday they will come to their senses and return. In other cases, we saw our people leave the church and didn’t do anything about it because we were intimidated at the prospect of seeming to be judgmental. In either case, I’d like to suggest that we may learn a lesson from the forgiving father about how we are to react when our children leave, because I do think the Father learns something in the gospel today. By all appearances, the Father lets his younger son leave and simply washes his hands of him. He may have been so angry at being asked to cough up his share of the inheritance that he was more than willing to let this ingrate go. Who knows? The only thing I do know is that the Father was so anxious for his son to return that he spotted him while he was still a long way away from home. He was keeping an eye out for his prodigal son and he even joyously ran to welcome him back home. I think the Father might have learned a lesson from his experience with the younger son that influenced the way he treated the rebellion of the older son. He doesn’t just let the older son walk off angry. He goes to meet him too!

As I said before, I imagine we have all experienced prodigal children leave the church and I wish I could be like that loving Father and chase each one of them down to convince them to stay but I can’t. There are too many and I don’t know them all. I believe God calls each of us in the church to be his forgiving parents to reach out to the prodigals among us to help welcome them home.

The story of the prodigal son ends with the father and older son out in the field. The father has made his case that the son should return but we never find out if the elder son actually did. I’d like to believe he did come back because his Father went to him and invited him. Who can you reach out to this week to invite back?

The importance of retreat

This past weekend, I helped lead the Confirmation retreat for our high school students. We started at noon on Saturday and finished up after our 7:00 mass on Sunday. There were a lot of good things that happened there including students opening up to prayer and quiet and getting to know their fellow confirmandi. As I prayed over the readings for the Sunday mass, I realized that it was really appropriate that we were having our retreat. I mean, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John off by themselves to do everything that we hope happens on a retreat. They have an encounter with God through great wisdom figures. And Peter even wants to extend the experience but that's not why Moses and Elijah are there. So, one of the things that I encouraged the people at our rural parish to do was to make some kind of retreat every year.

It occurred to me that we tend to frame things in two types of world view: play and work. And we want to maximize the amount of play in comparison to the amount of work. But, a retreat really is a third category of life: contemplate. If we don't take time to reflect on how our lives are meaningful then life can quickly become meaningless. We need to know how much God, the author of meaning, loves us in order to have God be meaningful.

Welcome Bishop Pates

When I was in seminary, two men were ordained as auxiliary bishops for the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. One of those men was named Richard Pates. I didn't know much about him. From my priest-supervisor, I learned that Bishop Pates had had several assignments in his time as a priest and had proved himself very pastoral throughout them all.

Little did I know that Bishop Pates would be assigned to a neighboring diocese (Des Moines) and would be coming to celebrate mass here for the college students. I'm very excited. There's something exciting about having a successor to the Apostles celebrate mass for you. I hope he helps the Des Moines students feel more connected to the church by visiting them here and hope they take up his offer to pilgrimage to World Youth Day!

From a magazine for liturgy

I'm in the process of preparing a response to an article in a Catholic Liturgy magazine exhorting the need to move toward a new model of church. I usually just laugh at these magazines but I really feel like this type of attitude needs to be addressed. Here's what got my blood boiling...

"...The ongoing process of ecclesial renewal is impoverished when all issues are reduced to one: namely, abortion. I detest this evil because it contradicts the biblical tradition that creation of life is God's business, and humanity is not empowered to interfere in God's business. But the behavior of some in the Christian community on this issue echoes the self-righteousness of the fundamentalist: 'I am right and you are wrong.' This has become such a banner cry for some church leaders that abortion as a pro-life issue is morphing into a pro-fetus movement and the violent rhetoric fuels lynch mob hysteria. This does little to restore respect and confidence in the hierarchy who practiced a different form of pro-choice when they chose to harbor pedophile priests rather than provide pastoral care to sexual abuse victims. voices loud in defense of the unborn but silent in defense of the living whose lives were emotionally aborted in childhood as victims of sex abuse are not grounded in a Christology that teaches a Jesus who never ridicules the violence or injustice he seeks to change. An ecclesiology with a biblically rooted Christology is the tradition that will push a model of church as dysfunctional family to become a model of church as healthy family."

Here are a few of the obvious errors:

1. Saying that the bishops shouldn't make a stand on abortion because of the sexual abuse scandal shows extreme desperation on the part of the author to avoid an issue he doesn't want to deal with. If anything, the bishops need to be encouraged to stand up for those whose lives are being destroyed (the powerless) over those who are choosing an occupation or a "normal life" over life (the powerful).

2. To my knowledge, pro life bishops haven't ever convened a lynch mob and characterizing things like the National Right to Life March as a lynch mob shows that this author has no idea about a largely lay movement in the church.

3. We believe that the fetus is alive. You don't have to choose between advocating for the unborn and the living. This is what philosophers call a false dichotomy.

4. The danger of saying that Jesus never said something is that there's always someone who will point out that he did. Luke 13:34-35 for instance, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling! Behold, your house will be abandoned. (But) I tell you, you will not see me until (the time comes when) you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

I hope to have a complete critique worked up for this particular magazine article by the end of the week and sent off. But I ask for your prayers. It's often hard for me to be charitable in these types of endeavors and I tend to give up easily fearing that I'll come off looking like the jerk. But I think it's important for me to try to articulate a few criticisms so that the publishers may be more hesitant to offer anticlerical rants in the future.

Christ is the man who knew human suffering

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. On Friday night, I had an opportunity to hear Boston College Philosophy professor Peter Kreeft talk in CY Stephens Auditorium on the problem of evil and suffering. To be honest, I wish I would have advertised for it in our bulletin because he did a superb job of articulating what I believe to be the Catholic understanding of evil and pain, an understanding that is also consistent with our readings today.

Part of what Dr. Kreeft was addressing was the relationship of faith with the existence of suffering or how can an all good God exist in a world where there is the evil of pain. Dr. Kreeft talked about four statements from C.S. Lewis that, in the mind of most atheists, cannot all be true. 1 God exists. 2 God is all powerful. 3 God is compassionate. 4 and Suffering exists. If God exists and he is all powerful and compassionate, then we shouldn’t have suffering. If God exists and is compassionate but we have suffering, than he cannot be all powerful. If God exists and he is all powerful and there is evil, than he must not really care about us. And, the atheists favorite, if God must be all powerful and all loving as we Christians believe he is and yet there is still suffering in the world, the suffering for instance of the Jewish people from the first reading who suffered under the Egyptians as slaves, then God must not really exist.

How do we Christians believe in God, believe he is all powerful and all loving and yet explain suffering in the world, whether it be the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti or the suffering of the parents of missing Iowa State student Jon Lacina? The remarkable thing that Dr. Kreeft said was that we cannot know why these things happen. And, in fact, if we did know than it would contradict the very notion of an all powerful God. Suffering is a mystery. We have to trust that, in the end, there is meaning to it even if we don’t know what it is.

As I read over the gospel for today, I couldn’t help but think how true this is. Jesus didn’t run away from suffering. He starved himself for forty days, just like Moses and Elijah had done before him, and he suffered hunger. He walked out into the desert, a place where thieves, the sick, and demons hung out. Even before he began his ministry, he wanted to be with and know the pain and suffering of being in the desert. And, while in the desert, he felt temptation to alleviate his suffering. But, he refused, even when the devil used scripture as a temptation. This man, whose life is nothing but mystery, taught us all about the mystery of suffering, both in life and in death. He taught us about the all powerful God who exists and loves us so deeply that he is willingly enters into the suffering with us, to know it firsthand.

Ash Wednesday

Well, we've arrived at the beginning of the Lenten journey and I find myself reflecting on the ashes. Why do we rub a cross of ashes on our forehead. I think we can sort of decide the meaning since we, Americans, don't really have a tradition of intentionally rubbing dirt on ourselves.

The easiest association is with sacrifice and fasting. That's what we're doing on this Ash Wednesday, after all. But I'd suggest that the very scriptures we read tell us that, if we use it in this manner, we are being hypocritical: seeking to wear the outward sign of humility while proclaiming to everyone that we are the most humble of all.

I think that the point of that ashen cross isn't to proclaim that we are so humble/sacrificial. It's to remind us and everyone that sees it that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. All shall die and all must rely on the mercy of God. That's the real point of the Lenten journey after all. It's not an escapade into self discovery. It's an escapade into discovering God's mercy.

Can you be Catholic and Pro Choice?

For our bulletin, I get to answer questions that my parishioners pose. The above one was posed and here's my answer. In advance, I realize that my part of the answer is short and that I basically answered it by using other people's quotes. But they're great quotes, much better than I could ever do.

No.

Historically, abortion has never been considered morally permissible. In the early church, authors like Athenagoras, Tertullian, Hippolytus, John Crysostom, and others listed it among other serious, grave sins. In fact, up until the last 40 years, no serious Christian group would have ever considered abortion moral. Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical on how it, euthanasia, death penalty, and other threat to life, are having effects in this world. I’d encourage anyone who doesn’t understand the Catholic Church’s consistent ethic of life to read this document called The Gospel of Life.

I found two quotes from other sources that have helped as I approached this question. The first comes from Pope Benedict XVI, “In the radical version of the Enlightenment’s individualistic tendency, abortion appears to be one of the rights of freedom; a woman must be able to have control over herself. She must have the freedom to bring a child into the world or rid herself of it. She must be able to make decisions concerning herself, and nobody else, so we are told, can impose upon her, from without, any ultimately binding norm. It is a matter of the right of self-determination. But, in an abortion, is the woman actually making decisions that concern herself? Is she not in fact making a decision about someone else – deciding that this person should be allowed no freedom, that she sphere of freedom – his life – should be taken away because it is in competition with her own freedom? And thus we should ask: What kind of a freedom is this that numbers among its rights that of abolishing right from the start?”

(Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions pps. 245-246 c. 2004 Ignatius Press)

Also, from Mother Teresa, "America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters" And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

(Mother Theresa, “Notable and Quotable”, in Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14)

Holiness not the same as happiness

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and peace to you in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the SpiritI hope that you all receive some token of the Love during this Valentine’s Day/weekend. It’s good to feel loved, isn’t it? I know that one of the most exciting and hopefully parts of my ministry here at St. Thomas is being able to celebrate a wedding with a couple and watch them celebrate their love for each other. It just sort of warms your heart to hear them profess their love for each other and know that the love you are witnessing is God himself uniting them together.

In a past assignment, I used to do something else that warmed my heart, celebrating mass for Catholic grade school children. It was always an exciting and loud experience for me. However, around this time of year, Fr. Dennis would kind of become Father Downer. I would start talking to them about sin and how the children should look out for their neighbor. I remember being approached by a mother after a mass who asked a question that I think many parents can sympathize with. She said that she knew kids have a really tough time with self-esteem issues and so she was always trying to affirm her daughter and let her know how special she was but that she also knew that there were times when the gospel seemed to indicate that that was not exactly the right attitude to have, gospels like today for instance.

Because, let’s face it, this is a really hard gospel. You can overcontextualize the message by saying that the Gospel of Matthew adds “in spirit” to the first beatitude, thus making it a statement all about the spiritual realm. We should be spiritually poor. In other words, we shouldn’t become so dependent on our wealth that it becomes our god. But, Luke is different. He only has four blesseds; the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and those who are hated and persecuted but has contrary “woes” for each of these.

In some ways, the real challenge from this gospel to us today is that we have become a little too…accepted. We think that the whole point of religion should be to make us feel good about ourselves, to make us feel happy. But, happiness is not synonymous with holiness. And, the gospel challenges those of us who are the most comfortable. It’s easy to see how the poor, hungry, weeping, and despised of the world are suffering like Christ suffered. How are we who are sitting in our comfortable apartments, dorm rooms, and houses suffering? How are we preparing for the Kingdom of heaven if we have heaven on earth?

This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, a time in which we Catholics tend to reflect on the areas of our life that are broken, whether that be instances of sin in our life or times when we have taken for granted the gifts God has given us. I invite each of you to take some time this week before Ash Wednesday to really think about what specific act you are going to do as a Lenten observance. Don’t just make it some arbitrary exercise of giving something up in order to feel better about yourself. Instead, do something that will help you understand the suffering of Christ better by becoming poor, hungry, sorrowful, or persecuted. And don’t do it for some great earthly reward or recognition. Your reward will be great in heaven.

Love means being willing to speak the hard truths

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ

Grace and Peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the prophetic power of the Spirit be with you. This Sunday’s gospel is a continuation on last Sunday’s gospel. Last Week, Jesus walked into his hometown and went immediately to the synagogue. He reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” As Jesus sat down to preach, he gave one of the shortest homilies in the history of organized religion, “Today, this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” This Sunday’s Gospel starts right up from that point and focuses on what happens next in the Synagogue.

It reminded me of a somewhat popular show on television now, especially popular among social scientists. The show is called “Intervention” and the premise of the show is that someone has become so addicted to some substance that they need their friends and family members to intervene for them in order to get them so they aren’t addicted. I’ve actually only seen one episode of this show involving someone hooked on huffing aerosol from computer dusting cans. One of the things they did on the show was show you just how addiction changes a person. The addict in the show I watched was a good student who seemed to have her whole life together until she got addicted to this drug. Then, it changed her. She let her whole life revolve around looking for the cans of aerosol and it affected her appearance, attention, speech and every other part of her life. It was hard for me to believe that it took the friends and family of this beautiful woman created in the image and likeness of God so long to do this, that they watched her spiral downward so that she was begging for food until they actually had the intervention.

Jesus in the Temple sort of has to do an intervention for the people there. His fame has spread everywhere as a miracle worker and, as he gets home, he probably thinks that he can start to tell them the central core of why he’s really there. He even goes to the heart of local religion, the synagogue, to do this. But, instead of being surrounded by serious religious folk who wanted to know what was really going on, instead of hearing the same faith statement that Simon Peter would eventually make, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Most High”, they turn to him to keep doing the healings and mighty acts that he has already done. And, when he tells them that he won’t, they get angry and threaten to kill him. Yet, Jesus was trying to tell them about how he had fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy by doing those healings, not just keep doing them.

There are times in our lives when we have to speak hard truths to people who would rather just have a good time, times of intervention. And, it’s much easier to just ignore these times and pretend that nothing is wrong. But, when we were baptized, we became part of the body of Christ and were called to be a prophet for the world. The prophetic role is first and foremost one of love, the love that Paul was talking about in the second reading today. It’s a love that is willing to tell a friend that he can’t hit his girlfriend. It’s a love that is willing to tell someone who has had too much to drink that she shouldn’t drive. And it’s a love that asks for the help of counselors, family, and friends when someone is addicted to drugs and alcohol. It’s not easy and, as we saw in the gospel, we can probably expect anger on the part of the person who needs the intervention. But, to paraphrase what St. Paul said in that second reading; When we were children, we used to talk like children, think like children, reason like children; when we became adults, we put aside childish things. Part of being an adult, part of being a prophet is being willing to lovingly help someone whose life is out of control.