Back from retreat

I just got back from a superb retreat and found that it's hard to come back to the "real world". The monks in the mastery in which I stayed would be quiet during supper. They are quiet when they walk around the monastery. They chant beautifully during their prayer times. I will miss the 6 am Office of Readings. I came back to a raucous wedding rehearsal and I couldn't help but miss the monastery. I had to come back home because of the noise. I will miss the silence of the monastery. I need to work on cultivating that.

Along the time on my retreat, I came up a with a few ideas to blog about including the professionalizing of parish live, finding the right question, and another search for help. At some point, I'm going to ask you to recommend a reading that I could do every day to complete what I'm calling the D7.

Even bigger news!

Faithful readers of my blog know of my concern for China's tight control of the catholic church. In the communist state, they insist on appointing their own bishops and jailing legitimately ordained catholic bishops. But, I just heard about this story that says the pope may have been invited to come to China at the end of this year. If true, it would be incredible! The Chinese government had better look out, however. Other communist regimes have thought they could have the Vicar of Christ visit with little or no consequence. And other communist regimes have fallen because of their message of freedom.

God bless our German Shepherd.

SO EXCITED!

I arrived at work today with the usual clamor. Someone had come and needed me to fill out a "parishioner in good standing" sheet but I'd never seen him before and he admitted that he'd never been here for mass. I told him that I couldn't do that because, not only was he not in good standing, but he wasn't a parishioner. He left with a smile on his face...a smile that seemed to say, "I'll be the one that puts the flaming bag of dog poop on your door."

I walked around to my mailbox to see if there was anything in it and, sure enough, it had arrived. My copy of Pope Benedict's new book "Jesus of Nazareth"...in perfect time for my retreat! I'll be away on retreat starting this Sunday and going to Friday. I plan on reading the substance of it while sitting outside of the monastery in the sun, two chapters per day.

Heaven,

I'm in heaven

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When were out together reading Benedict

proof that I'm really a liturgical geek

I read Zenit.org as often as I can and I found the story about priests' vesture while blessing both very informative and a great question to answer. I get questions like this from good hearted little old ladies all the time. Some slightly mistaken priest may have given them information that seems more like superstition than anything else and they are confused. I'm glad when Fr. McNamara clears it up for us.

A weekend of relaxation with family and friends

I'm basically just getting back from one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. I took my camper out on Thursday and pulled it back in on Sunday. Mom and Dad and my brother Dave went camping with me along with our family friends, the Hoffmans. It really was a nice weekend, despite hight winds on Sunday and just a good weekend to be with Mom, since it was mother's day.
I decided to preach about the idea of change and how we cannot fear it but we also can't get lost in it. Change has been a part of the Catholic Church more so in the last forty years than in the previous four hundred. I'm always afraid that Catholics will either embrace the fact that the church will always change and lose the transcendent nature of certain truths (trinity, divinity, begotten, Christ, etc.) or that we will get tired of all the change and become putrefied. Ultimately, love forces us to go wherever it wills us to go. It isn't always where we thought we'd be but it's where the God who is love wants us to be.

I finished my bit of relaxation by having an outing with a group of young priests. The gossip was thick. The conversation somewhat rarefied but these are the men that understand my situation better than anyone else. I did have to laugh, however, when I realized that the guy who is a year younger than me is a pastor already while I am praying to remain an associate for a few more years...

Looks like more controversy

It will be interesting to see how the secular media covers this story. Pius the XII has become little better than Hitler since the sixties and the church will be villified for canonizing him.

We make all things new through love

Some of you may remember a story that got national media attention four or five years ago involving two farmers from Indianola. One of them was leasing the land that had been newly purchased by the other man. For some reason, the two started fighting and ended when the purchaser shot the leaser in the head with a shotgun and buried his body in a cistern. It is a gruesome scene ripped right from the storyline of a Law and Order television show. It’s unthinkable that someone would murder someone, especially those salt-of-the-earth, early-to-bed-early-to-rise, head-on-their-shoulders farmers. It makes you wonder what could make someone so angry at someone else who lived on the land that they just purchased. It makes me wonder if the whole situation happened simply because the landownder didn’t like the idea of someone else working his property.

Possession can make people do terrible things. All you have to do is look to a child to realize this. One of the first words a child learns is "mine." I'm sure many of the parents in this church know well what it's like to have to teach a child the value of sharing. How many kids get a new toy that they seem to enjoy most when another kid is playing with it? The problem is that we teach our children to share but, often, we forget about it as adults. Oh, I don't mean financially. Most of us can be very generous when it comes to giving money away. I’ve been thoroughly impressed at how many times people turn to this parish for assistance and walk away with more money than they expect. From New Orleans, to John Donaghy’s Honduras project, to our Love Your Neighbor fund and a thousand other places, we are willing to reach out financially to help.

The deeper selfish problem in our society deals with is what I call our "baby." Personally, my baby is the television show “heroes”. I watch it every week and nothing can get in the way of watching it. I tend to watch it twice and take great pride in the fact that I have almost all the shows on VHS. And I know that, when it comes out on DVD, I’ll be the first in line to purchase it. That’s my baby, that one thing that I don't want other people to have because it’s "mine"; that one thing that I always have to remind myself to share with others.

The Jewish people have, as their "baby" the state of Israel. Now, in truth, part of me wants to say that they can have it. It's a miniscule country with few resources and all kinds of violence. Yet, to be a follower of the Old Testament is to believe that Jerusalem is the capital of the country given to them by God. If they aren't in Israel, they pray that they can go back some day. This mentality goes back thousands of years. Jesus' message to his followers, then, is monumental. Instead of having the land as the most important part of their lives, Jesus' followers were to have love as the most important thing in their lives. It’s a radical re-orientation! How can you point to love? How can you store up love? How can you possess love?

That's the point. We aren't supposed to store it up or possess it, we are to give it away freely. It is to be the mark of being a Christian, loving. This is what drove Paul out from Antioch for three years through all those small towns surrounding the Mediterranean Sea before returning back to Antioch; love. His love of God sent him to those places where he was persecuted and even stoned almost to the point of death. This love is what the new heavens and the new earth are at the core.

When we start to see the world through the lens of love, we remove a lens of selfishness and find that we can see everything with a kind of newness. It's the kind of newness that a husband experiences when he sees his wife and realizes how much he loves her. Sure, they've been married for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and yet, there is still a part of him that loves her, a part that sees this anew every day. It's the kind of love that we feel when we see the dog or cat run into the living room after a long day of work.

It's a challenge, however, to see the world through the renewing eyes of love. It forces us to be self-sacrificing. This love that sees all things new is challenging to experience in the tough times of life, when life becomes weary, dull, and tiresome. It's at those points that we find out if we are capable of loving the way Jesus wants us to love in the gospel, sacrificial love. Sometimes, we need to sacrifice our own happiness in order to love the way Christ has taught us.

One way we do this is by making sure the things in our life aren't more important that our relationships, that work isn't more important than our family, friends, and faith. Hopefully, that’s what our church is constantly reminding us of. That’s part of what gathers us together each Sunday as the Body of Christ. As we approach the summer, it seems to me that there may be other opportunities to exercise this attitude that love and relationships are more important than stuff. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to get rid of some of the stuff of your life, especially the stuff that can be useful to others. You may be a graduating senior that can donate some of your clothes to the poor. Or you may just have a slower schedule at work and be able to go through those closets with boxes of stuff that have been sitting for years. And then make it a point to spend time with your friends and family, your loved ones. In the end, we are not judged by the treasures we have amassed. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

the love of God

I realized something right now. After having preached my homily in three different masses, I have really done nothing that Tolkien called it "my precious" from the character of Gollum in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was encouraging people to not let possessions take over their hearts but to focus on God and the people of God. It was only tonight that I realized that that was what Tolkein was focusing on with Gollum's referance to "my precious." I'll publish it in entirety later on in the week and you can agree or disagree with me.

Pope meets with Iranian leader

I hope this meeting helps promote greater underswtanding between Christians and Muslims. I'm glad that, after the major raucus made by the media with the Regensberg University professors that the pope is leading the way toward peace in this world.

A really cool song

Have you ever heard of the song "Precious Lord, take my hand?" It's an African-American spiritual and this group of people did a great job with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leXIq_qWy1g

More on limbo

You read a previous post about the clarification on limbo. Here's the way the secular media covered the same story...incorrectly.

This was not a reversal of traditional catholic teaching. This was a change in a theological opinion. Nothing more. The term "traditional catholic teaching" makes it seem like this was/is a dogma of the catholic church. It not only wasn't a dogma, it didn't even reach the trustworthy but alterable state of catholic doctrine. This was (at one time) a trusted theological opinion held by experts. The Pope is saying that it's not to be thought of as a doctrine (let alone a dogma) and is more a creation by experts to explain a problem than God's solution to the problem.

I love the quote by the theologian Richard McBrien "If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace."

Here's another option...mystery. This is the point of the pope. The death of a child is a mystery best left to the jurisdiction of God. Even as thousands of children are killed in this country every day because of the scourge of abortion, we fall back on the love of a God who would not turn his back on a child, even if father and mother should do so. God could save people without baptism. But the ordinary means of salvation remains baptism. God is not restricted by the evil actions of a human being. He can forgive in other ways.

But, for a theologian to proclaim that this reverses the church's stance on original sin is unconscionable! Original sin is a dogma of the church. (For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven....) I guess I can hope that they misquoted him in this story or that he was having a bad day or something. I just hope he isn't teaching this in his classes at Notre Dame!

We are witnesses

Towards the end of first semester, I was going out with group of students at a local restaurant. One of them is even more of an exclusive Iowa State fan than I am so, in an attempt to annoy him, I put on my Fightin’ Texas Aggies Sweatshirt. This particular kid once held me hostage in my apartment until I changed this sweatshirt so, from then on, I decided to wear it as much as I could around him. We went out to one of the local restaurants for a quick meal and great conversation. As we were checking out, I noticed this incredibly tall guy standing next to me wearing what might be referred to as basketball warm ups. I looked up and realized I was standing next to the new Iowa State basketball coach, Coach McDermott, with this stupid Aggies sweatshirt on. I mean, I’m a life-long Iowa State fan. I only like the Aggies because they’re like the Texas version of Iowa State. I tried to cover up my shirt as he introduced himself to me. Thankfully the students around me were incredibly gracious, telling him that they were looking forward to seeing him coach and going to games. I was too embarrassed at being caught out of uniform, a fact that I’m almost certain he didn’t even notice.

I feel like today’s readings are also out of uniform. Here we are in the middle of the Easter season and we hear in the first reading of a particular group of disciples who “left the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.” What a strange thing in which to rejoice! But, it makes sense when you consider that the earliest church would often refer to itself as the witnesses. No, not those door bell ringing during nap time witnesses. They used a Greek to describe themselves, martyrion, which can be translated into English as either witness or martyr. The early church considered itself to be Jesus’ witnesses and, as their descendants, we are called to be witnesses too; to be…martyrs. I hesitate to say that because of the misunderstanding surrounding this word. Half the time we use it, it’s to mock someone who is complaining too much, like a kid who thinks the worst thing he could ever do is miss five minutes of the Simpsons because he has to take out the trash. We’ll sarcastically say, “You’re such a martyr.” Another bad definition that gets thrown around is the notion that a martyr is someone who kills some else for the sake of a cause. I am especially fearful of mentioning this in the light of this past week’s events at Virginia Tech. I’d hope that we’d all agree that there is no comparison between a man who was clearly in need of psychological help who carries out an attack against innocent college students and the actions of, say, Sts. Perpetua and Felicity who were willing to die rather than worship false gods. At very least, I’d hope we could see that Christians do not esteem killing and do not put those who kill others on a pedestal by giving them the title of martyr. Martyrs are simply those who remain faithful to the end, even when the going gets toughest.

There is, built into each of us, a desire to be more than what our simple lives afford. Look at Peter, for instance. He tried to witness to Jesus and he failed. We all might remember the scene where Peter was standing around the fire warming himself on that fateful night when Jesus was betrayed. Peter had told him that he would even be willing to die rather than forsake being an apostle. But, when the time came for Peter to stand up for Christ, he was unwilling to do so. He denied him three times just like Jesus said he would. There’s a part of me that says that it wasn’t his time to die. It was Jesus’ time. Plus, at very least Peter made an attempt. Where are the other disciples when Peter is following Jesus at a distance? Nonetheless, because of this experience, Peter is often seen as turning his back on the Lord during his time of need.

This week, Peter is once again gathered around a fire, this time not denying Jesus three times but thrice affirming his love for him. One of the big differences between the Peter who denied Jesus around the fire of the temple and the Peter who witnesses to his love of Jesus around this fish preparing charcoal fire, is that Peter is finally willing to stop comparing himself to others and be the shepherd that Jesus needs him to be.

This is why one of the great dangers in life can be competition. It can bring out the best in us as we strive to be more and do better. Yet, it can also bring out the ugliest side of us; never being satisfied with the gifts and talents God has given us and always comparing ourselves to other people. In the end, Peter just had to show how he could love. He had to set aside both his sense of pride and sense of failure in order to be truly amazing. It was only by the will of God and the cruelty of the Roman soldiers that he would stretch out his arms between heaven and earth to mirror the death of the Lord. So, we are indeed special in the eyes of the Lord, not because of some special power that we possess nor because of some fantastic act that we might do. We are special in the eyes of the Lord because we are witnesses to the love that God has shown us. We are called to share that love with one another, even if it means having to set aside our pride and hurt feelings. That might mean reaching out to a roommate who has hurt us in order to make amends before the end of the year. Or helping a belligerent drunk back from the bars who seems like he or she doesn’t have anyone else helping him or her. Or reaching out to a family member who always seems to play the martyr. It is Christ who looks to us today and asks, “Do you love me?” Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you. “Feed my sheep” Who are the lost sheep in your life that are in need of help? How can we be the witnesses who bring them back?

Limbo...how low can you go?

Before you read the below article, you should open this link either in a separate window or tab, but only do that if you have more than dial up speed.

Okay, new link: I've been waiting for this story about limbo. It clears up a lot of confusion, especially among certain old faishioned catholics that believed we still taught limbo was a truth. It was a theological opinion that was never verified by the universal church. I was especially appreciative of the statements...

"Grace has priority over sin, and the exclusion of innocent babies from heaven does not seem to reflect Christ's special love for "the little ones," it said."Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered ... give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision," the document said."We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge"

One more thing

It's VEISHEA here at Iowa State so I again ask for your prayers. VEISHEA is the end of the year celebration that began as a way of honoring the accomplishments of the different colleges of Iowa State University and ended up being a time when ISU students get way too drunk before the rigor of finals. Last year, it really was a wonderful celebration, largely because of the planning efforts of President Geoffrey and his committee. It was a great idea to move the four stages with bands playing until late in the evening far far away from the bars! But, this is now the second year and I hope we can avoid the riots that happened a number of years ago. Again, please keep us in your prayers.

One of the things that I love about the Catholic Church

I love the universality of the Catholic church. The name, catholic, means universal. So, when a Korean student does something at Viginia Tech, the Korean bishops offer apologies. Here's the story.

Cardinal Cheong said, "As a South Korean, I can't help feeling apologetic about how a Korean man caused such a shocking incident." I think this shows the positive influence the Catholic Church can have throughout the world in building bridges.

Reason for absence

Sorry to my loyal readers for missing a few days this past week. I ended up with a doozy of a cold after Easter that just won't go away. It's starting to let up right now so I hope to start writing again more often about the church and stuff.

I'm disappointed that I didn't get last week's homily up because I thought it was good. I told about a friend that had to close a church and then a year and a half later, someone called him because he was angry that "his church" had been closed down. I used that to talk about Thomas. He wasn't present for the first time Jesus was there and, so, it makes him angry. The full church's of Easter quickly peter down to the normal crowds of the second Sunday of Easter. I talked about how the apostles used Thomas anger to get him to show up the next week when Jesus was there. We are the apostles who are present both weeks. We are sent by Jesus to reach out to those who are hurting to take them to Jesus. Who are the Thomas' in our life that need to be invited into our upper room.

Of course, it was a little longer than that but I got a lot of compliments and I hope it challenges my wonderful little rural church of Sts. Peter and Paul to reach out and find some folks who haven't been baptized in order to have Easter vigil out there again next year. It was just so awesome last year and I heard from people that they missed it this year. I hope we can get it organized for next year.

A sad story...and a little confustion

I heard in this story about the Vatican's decision not to attend the Yad Vashem invitation. As a person who lived in Israel for a while and someone who visited this particular Holocaust museum, I know that whatever we can do to help improve relations with the Jewish people is a good thing. But, I understand that we have to protect the memory of Pope Pius XII, especially since he has has been defamed largely in the last 35 to 40 years, not only after his death but after years of adulation by the Jewish community over what he did do.

It's sad that the Vatican has to prepare a 3000 page document defending Pius XII before his beatification ceremony. But I need some help. What the heck does the first story mean by "sparked a row". I'm assuming, contextually, it means that it has upset people but does it mean something else?

NEW PAPAL BOOK

The Pope is releasing a book about the life of Christ. My order from Amazon was in about two months ago. I've been patient and, soon, according to this article, it shall be rewarded!

A difference between Catholics and Protestans, though not shared by all protestants

The other day, I blogged about lecturing to a class at Iowa State. It was a great experience for me in overcoming fears and such. I did have a slight annoyance at a fundamentalist that asked the predetermined "Catholics are not a Bible church" question. I say it was predetermined because it really didn't follow from what I had just said to him at all. He asked why the Catholic Church revers Mary and I said because Mary was 1. Jesus' mother who 2. kept things about him in her heart, and was 3 the faithful disciple who stayed with him even to the point of watching him die on the cross. I even 4. cited the magnificat in which the disciple says to Mary, "all generations will call you blessed." I'd say an answer that involved four direct referances to the Bible could be considered fairly well based on the Bible. But, not according to this lad. He had his point and, by god, he was going to make it! He asked if I could see that we weren't a Bible church so I tried to point out to the lad that several aspects of Christianity were developed outside of the Bible but I could tell that this kid hadn't heard a word I said the entire 80 minute presentation. So why should he start now?

As I read over the Pope's Wednesday audience on Ignatius of Antioch (a spiritual hero of mine!), it occurred to me that this is a huge difference between the catholic church and fundamentalist evangelicals. The difference is that Jesus didn't give us a book on which we are individually "thrown to the wolves" in order to interpret and understand it. Christ, a human, handed on the faith to other humans who, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, handed it on to others. The Bible becomes the only way to understand God in the life of an evangelical. And, even though I believe that this is, of itself, contradictory to their central criticism that Catholicism is a man-made religion, I will save that for another day. The more central criticism is that this attitude denies the historical presence of a God who "did not deem equality with God something at which to be grasped" but denied himself and became fully human. This very human Jesus remained present in the church so it is important not to just understand the portrait of Jesus in the Bible but the portrait of Jesus still working through the apostles and their successors to "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

This is at the heart of the message of the Catholic Church. History doesn't end with the death of Jesus and pick up again, rather arrogantly, at my interest. In order to be fully a Christian, we must listen to the sage wisdom of the breadth of Christian history, not just one book, even one as important as the Bible.

The dog I almost bought today!

Here's a link to the dog I almost bought today. He is the sweetest, gentlest, most beautiful dog ever. I hope, someday, I'll be able to get him or one like him.