What are you holding onto?

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ
Grace and peace in God, our Father, through our humble Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit be with you all. As I read over this Sunday’s readings this past week, I couldn’t help but think, jeesh! These are pretty hard readings to live out. Pretty hard to preach about too. If only I had looked far enough ahead of time to notice just how hard they were. I could have made the pastor preach on these readings! But, considering the fact that he didn’t make me preach on divorce and remarriage last week, I should probably suck it up and preach this week.
Each time that this set of readings comes around, it reminds me of a story that I heard in a homily preparation service that I used to receive. It said, “African hunters have a clever way of trapping monkeys. They slice a coconut in two, hollow it out, and in one half of the shell cut a hole just big enough for a monkey's hand to pass through. Then they place an orange in the other coconut half before fastening together the two halves of the coconut shell. Finally, they secure the coconut to a tree with a rope, retreat into the bushes, and wait. Sooner or later, an unsuspecting monkey swings by, smells the delicious orange, and discovers its location inside the coconut. The monkey then slips its hand through the small hole, grasps the orange, and tries to pull it through the hole. Of course, the orange won't come out; it's too big for the hole. To no avail the persistent monkey continues to pull and pull, never realizing the danger it is in. While the monkey struggles with the orange, the hunters approach and capture the monkey by throwing a net over it. As long as the monkey keeps its fist wrapped around the orange, the monkey is trapped. The only way the monkey could save its life is to let go of the orange and flee.” How many of us, myself included, would be just as trapped in that tree if there was a roll of hundred dollar bills in the coconut? Or perhaps the key to a luxury automobile? Or maybe a huge diamond wedding ring from that certain man or woman we’ve been dating for a long time?
In today’s gospel, we hear the story of a man who is trapped by the need for success. He asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. He asks the very man who will win eternal life for him by suffering and dying on the cross what he can do to be saved. For some reason, whenever I hear this story, I can’t help but imagine Jesus as a very kind-hearted but somewhat gruff old rabbi instructing a precocious student a hard life lesson. Jesus’ response is to obey the law. But the boy isn’t satisfied. He thinks to himself that that can’t be all there is to do. There has to be more. He seems to say in a very frustrated tone, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." as though he finds fulfillment of the law so easy that it has lost its challenge.
I can just imagine Jesus smiling with love at this young man. And I love the fact that St. Mark includes a detail about how Jesus felt about this faithful-to-a-fault young man. It says that he loved him so he challenged him. He challenged him to give up the coconut so that he could inherit eternal life. “Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
The boy’s response is one of obstinace. How could he give up all that he had and follow Jesus? It’s too much to ask. And, yet, it’s not as though Jesus doesn’t turn to each of us and ask something similar. It’s a terrible economy. I might not have my job next week. How can I donate money to the poor? I work forty hours a week or more and that’s not even counting all the preparation I have to do at home. How can I make it to my child’s school event to show them support? I’m too busy! I have always imagined that I would get married and have three or four children with a beautiful wife. I can’t be called to give up all that great stuff for something else that’s great, something like priesthood. We all have excuses that seem perfectly legitimate. What good is it for the boy to sell all he has and give it to the poor without first investigating if the poor will actually use it wisely and not waste it on booze, drugs, and prostitutes? Jesus doesn’t care. The point that he’s trying to drive home is that wealth forces us to pay attention to it, attention that could be paid to God and the family of God. What is stuck between those coconut halves for you? And how can you let it go and be free?

All are welcome but there are expectations to be part

This past week, I had a rather thought provoking question from one of the parishioners here at St. Thomas. The person asked what it means to sing the Song “All are Welcome” while simultaneously saying that non-Catholics are not allowed to receive Holy Eucharist. How are we building a house where love is found and all are safely led. A place where saints and children dwell and hearts learn to forgive…” if we say to newcomers that they aren’t allowed to share in the seminal experience of catholic liturgy, the Eucharist.

Our readings guide us along the path toward an answer to this ecumenically sensitive question. Both the first reading and gospel deal with situations in which people are doing Godly things in seemingly ungodly circumstances. The first reading tells of a time when Moses’ flock has grown to a point that it was difficult for him to minister to them. So, God takes some of the Spirit that he put on Moses and distributes it to 72 other men. The problem is that, for some reason, only 70 came to the meeting tent where the Spirit was distributed. The other two, Eldad and Medad, were on the list of people invited but they never showed up. It’s not clear whose fault it is that they are absent, whether they weren’t invited or if they were and declined the invitation. Regardless they soon find themselves doing the work of prophesy.

What happens next is very interesting. Joshua, Moses assistant, demands that Moses stop them. Why, you may ask, would he demand this of his superior? It’s important to keep two things in mind about this. The first is that Joshua was a priest, the leader of the group of priests, in fact, who would have been in charge of the meeting tent that held the Ark of the Covenant. So, in Joshua’s mind, it simply doesn’t make sense that something holy could happen anywhere else, let alone in the most secular of all places, in camp. Secondly, since Joshua is sort of a High Priest before the temple High Priests were set-up, Joshua probably thought it was his responsibility to be present for holy things to take place. How could Eldad and Medad have had something holy happen to them if he wasn’t there to witness it. It boggles the mind! Moses’ response to the Joshua’s complaints is profoundly empowering: “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow his Spirit on them all!”

Similarly, in the gospel, the apostle John hears about someone driving out demons in Jesus’ name who does not follow them. Jesus tells John and the other apostles that, “There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can, at the same time, speak ill of me… Whoever is not against us is for us.” It seems that Jesus is basically informing John and the other apostles that there is an openness to faith present in this person that should be encouraged and not snuffed out.
If we were to stop there, we may conclude from both of these passages that we, Catholics, have no right to restrict someone from receiving Holy Eucharist. All are Welcome to come to the table of the Lord and receive. Yet, there’s more to the message than just those two quotes. Jesus continues by saying that there are expectations of life for being part of the kingdom of God. One cannot sin and be considered part of the kingdom of God. In rather graphic terms, Jesus tells his listeners that they need to get rid of whatever causes them to sin, whether it be a hand, a foot, an eye, or something else, it’s better to enter the kingdom of God without these things than to be eternally punished with them.

So, All are Welcome in this place but we must be aware of what we are being welcomed to. We are being invited to live a life of conversion. A life that seeks to get rid of anything that gets in the way of our relationship to God. And, while this is not the only place where holy things happen, we know that something uniquely holy happens here. This is where we are reminded of our need to live life simply, both financially and morally. We need to be open to getting rid of what causes us to sin and know that our willingness to do so is what determines if we are in communion or out-of-communion with this community. All are Welcome in this place, true. But, all of us, catholic and non-catholic alike, must know that there are demands put upon us if we intend to become or remain a part of this body of Christ.

The difficulty we feel in living out a faithful life

My Dear Friends in Christ

Grace and Peace to you in God our Father through our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Recently I was visiting with a professor who was frustrated by a group of students she took on a service trip during her college’s January term. Being a sociologist, she was trying to expose them to the frustration of being impoverished through the eyes of the people living in New Orleans. So, she first spent two weeks teaching them a bit about the history of the city and all that took place surrounding hurricane Katrina and all the utter incompetence that surrounded that event for the people living in that area. Then she took the students down to actually see the devastation and help in a few service projects. On the way back to Iowa, the group encountered some rough weather-related travel meaning that forced them to spend an extra night in a hotel two hours from home. The students immediately started complaining about not getting home when they expected and having to sleep in a hotel and having to spend more money on food than their $5 food voucher would cover. The professor was frustrated because she felt like the students had missed the entire point of the exercise. They had just visited a place where an entire town was uprooted from homes and livelihoods for months if not years. And, unlike the people of New Orleans, the students knew that their residence hall would still be sitting there fully in tact when they got back the next day.

Our readings are filled with this kind of frustration this week. The first reading talked about a group of people who know that what they believe is evil. They know that they are proposing to defy God’s law and they even know that there is someone trying to get them to do what is right, the so-called “just man.” And yet, rather than listen to the just man, they seem to go out of their way to discount him, even trying to use his own words to discredit him. They say, “Let us put him to a shameful death; for according to his own words ‘God will take care of him.’” Ultimately, they are claiming to seek proof all the while knowing that they are really trying to make the just seem unjust.

Similarly in the second reading, the Apostle James is focusing us on wisdom. Just like St. Paul has lists of virtues and vices to describe if Christians live by the spirit or by the law, so St. James has a beautiful list of virtues for those who live in wisdom. And yet, St. James knows that there are some who don’t live in wisdom. He says, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” It seems to me that James is rooting all conflict in an unwillingness to have sympathy for another person. We create conflict because we are unwilling to ask someone for something. We are unwilling because we fear that the other person might not give us what we want. Or, if we do ask, we are only concerned with what will benefit us and not concerned with what will benefit the other person.

Lastly there is the gospel where Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die a humbling death and that, because of his humility, he will be exalted through resurrection. The apostles almost immediately start to fight about who is going to be the greatest. And Jesus’ response is that the apostles must learn to be servants to the least powerful among us, children.

All three readings deal with the difficulty we feel when our lives don’t match up with our professed belief. Weather it be a politician who claims to hate high taxes while attaching all kinds of spending amendments to bills, the priest that pounds the pulpit calling married people to greater fidelity while himself having a girlfriend on the side, or the teacher who gets angry at students for not studying while they themselves haven’t updated tests or quizzes in years, we all struggle to live our lives in conformity to our values. We all make mistakes on occasion. Our readings warn us that, when it happens, when someone points out to us our own hypocrisy, there are ways we shouldn’t react. We shouldn’t simply discount the other person by ignoring our hypocrisy and focusing on the mistakes of that person, as the author of the book of wisdom warned us. And, we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help and, instead, create a war as James warned us. Instead, we should seek out the, “wisdom from above…(that) is….pure…peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity” and we should work to be of humble service to one another.

Who are the poor and what does it matter?

My Dear Brothers and Sister in Christ

Grace and peace in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you in the power of the Holy Spirit. I think if there’s one thing we need to pray for in this country right now, it’s that we find both grace and peace in the health care debate. I keep watching this debate with a mix of fascination and disgust each time that a news story comes on TV about it. The level of vitriol from liberals and conservatives alike at the Town Hall meetings is really kind of disgusting. From the people who brought guns to a town hall meeting to the senator who asked one of his constituents on what planet she spent most of her time to the man who bit off another person’ finger, there has been a complete lack of respect and a flourishing level of misinformation flowing from all sides of this argument. What I truly found disturbing, however, was what happened in Red Bank, New Jersey when a wheelchair bound woman was shouted down at one of these town hall meetings. When one man was asked why he heckled and jeered at her, his response was, “I don’t know how a handicapped woman in chair has more rights than I do.” While it’s not entirely surprising considering the fact that, whenever I see one of these town hall meetings, rude and obnoxious behavior seems to be the standard modus operandi it is still disappointing considering the American notion of equality we prize.

If only we had Jesus around to cure everybody for free. Then we wouldn’t even need a health care industry. And yet, would you believe that’s not entirely true. At the time of Jesus, there was a kind of system involving a bunch of people called healers. They would do a lot of things that Jesus did in this gospel. They would mix up strange concoctions and put it on whatever ailed the person. They would make noises and shout commandments at the person. And, most importantly, they would build up a reputation for themselves as a healer so that others would come to them and pay them to be healed. What is surprising about Jesus in this story is not that he does the healing or even the way he heals the man. It’s that he does everything that a professional faith healer does but then asks that the person healed not make his reputation known. And, even though it had the exact opposite effect, I don’t think that was his intent. In other words, I don’t think he was telling those he healed not to tell others they had been healed knowing full well that they would tell other infirmed individuals and he would get the credit. Jesus isn’t displaying a kind of false modesty that typifies the politician among us. I think Jesus was doing it for a different purpose entirely that he knew they wouldn’t get. I think Jesus dared to look beyond the sickness and see the suffering person underneath and, in that person, he saw the image and likeness of himself.

Fr. Jon, last week, talked about the letter of James and how we get to hear about that letter for the next several weeks. This week, we heard James offering a challenge to us to live out the teaching Jesus is giving to us. “Show no partiality…” says James. We here at St. Thomas often take up a collection for the poor that we put in baskets around this very pulpit. And yet, how do we act when the poor come into our church? Do we intentionally sit at the edge of the pew so they cannot possibly sit next to us? Do we pretend to be occupied at the greeting at the beginning of mass and at the sign of peace so that we don’t have to shake their hand? Or, have we become a church that bureaucratically bullies the poor out of our doors by setting up unfriendly policies that allow them into the building while simultaneously telling them that’s as far as they’re going to get? Do we want poor people and persons with disabilities on our commissions and committees to lend advice and suggestions? Have we, as Catholics, become so whitewashed, so modern, so professional, so middle class that the disabled and the poor are just an inconvenience that we put up with, if we have to, on Sunday?

The name Catholic means “universal”, not in the sense of anything goes/believe what you want to believe/I don’t have the right to insist that there is absolute right or wrong. In the sense that, as James asked in the second reading today, “…have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs?” We might not be screaming ad hominem ignorant clichés at each other like they are at town hall meetings, thank goodness. But, when people come to St. Thomas, do you think they see a church that is going to be open to them and make them feel part of the body of Christ regardless who they look like or do you think they leave feeling like they have go to the mall buy a pair of khaki pants and a polo?

IRB

I have been asked by Iowa State University to be on a board that reviews research involving human subjects. To me, it's a honor to be able to serve a University for which I have great respect and to be able to bring God into a conversation on this campus without every mentioning his name.

For the last two days, I've been staring at my computer trying to National Institutes of Health training related to being on this board. It was strangely exhilarating to finish looking over 20-30 pages of material and then take a four, five, or six question quiz and pass. I was so worried that I wouldn't pass at each of them and the instant affirmation was good. I'm glad it's over but it's nice to be invited onto campus to be part of this committee.

Why liturgical dance is evil...

At some point in the last year, I was at a catholic convention and saw a bumper sticker that said, "Don't blame me. I voted for the black guy!" with a picture of the Pope on it. The implication was the person was displeased with the current pope. I wonder how they would feel knowing these are the views of the "black guy."

http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=97109

Sisters...Sisters...there were never such devoted sisters...

I was reading our local paper, an act I tend to avoid, and found this article. My first reaction was to ask why the Associated Press always makes the hierarchy of the catholic church seem so tyrannical. I generally don't buy the conservative argument that there is a liberal bias in the media that slants all stories in that direction. And yet, when a woman religious criticizes a review for "misogyny in the church and especially distrust of women who are not directly and submissively under male, ecclesiastical control" while the "inquiry is being directed by Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus" makes me angry.

So, the implication is that the church should encourage and foster congregations of women religious who make every effort to dissent from church teaching. We should tell the screaming child in the restaurant that free expression is a good thing and encourage them to keep screaming. Why? And, isn't the fact that these congregations can't attract young people to join them at least some indication that there is a privation of fecundity? I can't pay my college students to consider joining these congregations. They're all graying and, to be honest, will probably all be gone by the time I'm ready to retire. The ones that are attracting new members are the ones that have maintained fidelity to the church. Why would anyone want to be around a group of people that hate the organization they profess to be a part of? To me, it's like the wife that constantly expects the husband to change. Either you love him as he is or you'll eventually get a divorce. The church is just trying to avoid a divorce. The Ap, on the other hand, seems like the annoying best friend spreading rumors and sowing the seeds of doubt.

Weddings

I've grown to appreciate weddings in the past year. It started when I had a series of people that I really respect and love get married. The easiest example of this is my good friend and coworker Misty and her husband and my new friend Jacob. They were just so much in love that they made it easy for me to do the wedding. Recently, I had two awesome weddings in one weekend, my good friends James and Jennifer and the next day my friends Jeff and Amy. I used to HATE doing weddings. I got cynical.

So, I started to get cocky. I'm going to be the guy that does like 40 weddings a year and have people want to get married by him.

Now a new issue has reared it's head. It's not the wedding planner. I was worried about that phenomenon before and have only had one person have a wedding planner in eight years of priesthood. I tend to be a jerk to these people because they are totally unnecessary and will only serve to have another leader barking orders and creating chaos.

But, I just know that, after this dancing procession thing that appeared in the youtube machine...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-94JhLEiN0

...it's just a question of time until I have students that want to do this and I'm going to have to say, "no." I know it was cute. It would have been PERFECT for the reception. But it doesn't belong in the wedding liturgy. I'm hoping it will be five years before I get my first request. I'll let you know if I'm right or not.

The supernatural faith inculcated by a miracle

If you are a student of History and, in particular, a student of American History, you may already know that Thomas Jefferson wrote his own Bible. Well, he didn’t exactly write it inasmuch as take the Bible as we know it, take out a few things, and make it a Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. He described the principles that guided him in this endeavor in a letter to friend and fellow American founder John Adams, as a need to “strip off the artificial vestments in which (the true words) have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves.” He only trusted the gospels and, even then, only the teachings of Jesus and none of the miracles, believing if you just find the words of Jesus, “There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
I imagine most of us can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson in some ways. He was really saying that the supernatural elements of the gospels are kind of embarrassing. I mean who would take mud nowadays, splatter it on someone’s eyes, and expect that the person would be able to see afterward? And aren’t we all a little skeptical of the healings Jesus performed? Couldn’t you just as easily explain them as the power of positive thought instead of the miraculous intervention by God?
Most of the time I hear someone preach about this particular gospel, that fear of the supernatural seems to come through clearly. I heard a priest suggest that what really happened at this meal was not miraculous. It wasn’t that Jesus took five loaves and two fish, blessed them, broke them, and gave them to 5000 men. It was a lesson in sharing. When the people saw the young man willing to offer his five loaves, they were likewise willing to offer what they had and then there was more than enough. It transforms the point of the gospel into one about sharing what we have with those around us. The problem with that interpretation is that it tells the EXACT OPPOSITE point of the one found in this gospel.
This gospel has two apostles that are a part of it and who act as two different types of disciples. The first is Philip. Philip is the believer whose response seems to indicate a purely natural faith. He believes what he can see, touch, taste, and smell. When Jesus tells him to get enough food to feed the crowd, Philip’s natural reaction is skepticism. “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?…Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Philip didn’t have the right to be skeptical. I imagine we’ve all looked at budgets and check books and known that bills were coming down the pike and wondered where the money was going to come from. Philip doesn’t know that a miracle is about to take place here. Yet, if had been paying attention, I think he should have.
Andrew, on the other hand, is the one with supernatural faith. Jesus told him to find food and so he does. The boy’s five barley loaves and two fish become the basis for a miracle. Andrew had the ability to put his skepticism in check and believe that God can work miracles where most people cannot see solutions.
The idea of supernatural faith is frightening, nonetheless. Heck, even the word supernatural has been corrupted by Science Fiction shows to indicate the presence of ghosts, demons, aliens, and other weird phenomena. Having a supernatural faith means simply believing that more is out there than what our senses can perceive. It means trusting that there is a God who loves you and who wants you to love him back, a prospect that is as frightening now as it was at the time of Thomas Jefferson. I say it’s frightening because if we believe in a supernatural component to God, we have to have a relationship to a God who, as Paul said in the second reading, “is over all and through all and in all.” God is complete transcendent, completely immanent, and wanting to communicate with us. It would be much easier to dismiss these contradictions in favor of a teacher of morality who passes on whit and wisdom to us. But, if we limit the Bible to something that we can grasp and accept and take out anything that we find challenging, we have to ask are we creator or creature?

Why your priest may find it hard to move.

I'm not moving this year. I'm going to be in Ames for at least one more year, maybe longer. But, I was thinking about something this morning.

Most priests are introverts. This doesn't mean that they are loners, although some are. It just means we tend to need time by ourselves. Most priests are very social in large groups but it's not something they look forward to doing. Being an introvert means that I want to form strong friendships with a small number of people and tend to get drained by multiple "professional" relationships that aren't very deep. I think this is why most priests (myself included) hate staff meetings. The relationships formed in staff meetings are necessarily shallow. The main concern is to make sure one person isn't getting into the space of another person.

The real challenge of ministry, however, is realizing that you will form deep relationships in parishes and then have to leave those relationships behind as you enter a new parish. There are some priests who make sure they don't form friendships with parishioners in order to make sure that they never have to say goodbye. To be honest, there's something to be said for that attitude. I know that, in my short time as a priest, I've been accused of "taking sides" in a disagreement between two people because I was closer to one of the parties than another. I came into priesthood thinking that I would keep a distance between me and my parishioners and have consistently failed miserably in this endeavor. It's too hard for me to minister to a group of people and not get to know them. The relationships I see in the gospels and in the letters of Paul point to me to the need to be "in relationship" with people.

I don't think I'm the only priest who has ever made friends with parishioners. I think most priests do. And, if they're like me, they need them to be effective preachers and teachers. We learn what people are struggling with from the people we interact with the most. This next Tuesday, my current pastor will move to a new assignment. He's been here for 16 years and has many good friendships here. His replacement was here and left. When he was here, he had my job of working mostly with college students. Please pray for these men as they have to say goodbye to old friends and start the process of making new ones.

No Homily this weekend

As a priest, I have few weekends that I have totally "off". The Code of Canon Law, the official "law book" of the catholic church seems to envision that a priest would only be away from his parish three weekends per year. AND there's a way of looking at it in which the code wants us to be gone during the week and back for the weekend. Most priests don't view it that way, however.

I was gone to Wichita, Kansas for a wedding on Saturday. I concelebrated on Sunday at mass but didn't have to preach, thank goodness. That's why there's no homily. However, I do have the beginnings of a homily that I will preach in the future...

The wedding was for a former student who has become a very close friend in the past few years, both while he was a student and after. I've been priveliged to have the situation happen a few times in this campus ministry assignment where a young man or woman and I have such great experiences together and work so closely that we want to keep in touch after they leave and it develops into a pretty deep friendship. That's what happened with Jeff, the groom. In fact, I was a groomsman in the wedding because of our friendship. He said that there would be sufficient numbers of priests so he wanted me to be closer, to be a groomsman. I was flattered so I accepted, something that I'll likely never do again despite the fact that it went really well this time. It wasn't weird to wear a tux because it wasn't really all that different than wearing my dress clerical clothes. It wasn't even all that weird to participate in mass as a part of the congregation instead of as a concelebrant. The weird part was having a woman on my arm as I entered and exited a room. I haven't done that for a very long time and it just wasn't symbolically right. I'm not supposed to be in a "couple" situation. I have forsaken that for the sake of the Kingdom. On the one hand, it's good to know just how deep my celibacy is felt in me and it's good to be able to explain that to people in the future why I don't feel comfortable doing this.

I've learned that I am a person that often has to learn things "the hard way." I should be able to see how things will play out before I do but I often don't and end up wishing I would have done something different. It's just who I am. I hope it makes me a better confessor. I know people make mistakes. It's not like we plan them. There are times when the lesson that was learned from the mistake was "worth" making the mistake in the first place.

To feel like Paul and give people peace

Yesterday evening, I had the opportunity to celebrate mass for the people of Holy Family parish in Parkersburg. The pastor there, Fr. Dennis Quint, was celebrating a wedding in Ames for me so I offered a few months ago to switch with him, not knowing the tragic events that would take place this week for this community. In case you haven’t heard, a former student of Applington-Parkersburg High School walked into the weight room of that school early Wednesday morning and shot the beloved football coach, Mr. Ed Thomas. As you probably know, it adds to the tragedy this community has felt when a tornado cut a mile-wide path through the city a little over thirteen months ago. Despite a massive clean up and rebuild effort, there is still so much to do. As I drove into town, I noticed the phenomenon everyone had warned me about. There are no trees on the entire south side of town. You can see where the tornado went both by the neighborhoods filled entirely with new homes and the complete lack of trees in the skyline there verses the more northern area which still has older homes and taller, though some badly gnarled, trees. I tried to drive slowly to see what was left to do in terms of clean up. What no one could have prepared me for was a in the heart of the road that the tornado went down that had a listing of state championships won by Coach Thomas. I couldn’t help but think that this sign, most likely intended to be a defiant statement about the town’s strength and resiliency now stands as a reminder of the fragility of life and the in frustration, fear, and confusion that surrounds this inexplicably evil event.

I had been praying since Wednesday about what I should say to this community. The readings seemed to be a perfect fit for it. “God did not make death nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.” So says the first reading from Wisdom. Jesus sees two hurting people in the gospel and gives them healing and peace. His statement to the woman, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction" is a profoundly comforting source of grace for those undergoing affliction. I had in my mind what I thought would be a beautiful, consoling, ten minute homily utilizing those two statements to talk about the fact that death is not God’s will but is a by product of the evil one and finish up by talking about how we need to be healed by Christ and be able to go in peace. Then, I got a call from Fr. Quint telling me that he had invited a person from Catholic Charities to talk at the end of mass so I wouldn’t even need to preach. Which, in some ways, was a good thing. It allowed me more time to think about things and put together this homily.

This Sunday, for all intents and purposes, marks the end of the Year of St. Paul. During this past year, we were encouraged by the Pope Benedict XVI to increase our ecumenical efforts through the intercession of St. Paul, utilize St. Paul in special Biblical studies and programs, and spend personal time studying him. I have tried in several homily to give special focus to St. Paul. Nonetheless, most of you probably have had no idea of this was the year of St. Paul but hopefully some of you did. If there’s one thing in the life of Paul that is true it’s that he had his fair share of experiences similar to mine in Parkersburg. At one point, Paul had to defend himself to the Corinthians against charges that since he broke his promise to visit, he was a liar. He had been jailed for proclaiming Christ and had nearly been killed by a mob of rock throwing town’s people a few months prior to the jailing. I mean he wasn’t just sitting around. He was busy. I can imagine St. Paul being prepared to walk into a city to preach and evangelize only to find out that some circumstance seemed to prevent him from doing so. There may have been an earlier Christian evangelizer that had a few of the details wrong and so he would have to straighten things out. Or, they may have already heard about Paul, thinking that he was a pest. Paul doesn’t really talk about these situations for some reason. I’d like to believe it is because his heart was so filled with the love of Jesus that he couldn’t help but evangelize. He fully believed that he was spreading the Good News to all people and probably even got energy from doing so.

The more I prayed over these readings, the more I realized that Paul speaks to us today, in my opinion, a more authentic model of Christian hope. Saying to grieving people that God did not make death could seem like you’re trying to make excuses for the most high. If God didn’t make death, why didn’t he at least stop it from happening? He does it for others, after all. He did it for some woman in the gospel. Why couldn’t he have done it for Ed Thomas? And, if death is from the evil one, then it could appear that I’m saying that the psychologically disturbed kid was from the devil. But, of course, we believe all life is a gift from God so I don’t believe this kid is the devil or that he should be killed or anything terrible like that. He and his family will suffer in different ways than the Thomas’ family.

I think St. Paul is much more encouraging because he uses an analogy of faith to talk about money. He basically said that God shared so much with us in his Son. We are, consequently, called to share that with others. Paul says that the same should be true of money. It’s not that the lazy should be rewarded but that those who cannot provide for themselves should receive the attention of those who have an abundance. I’d like to suggest that the same is true of good fortune. We all know people who are a lot worse off than we are. It may be financially but it just as easily could be spiritually, morally, or in terms of hope. How can we share the hope given to us in Christ with those who have no hope?

Corpus Christi

Last Sunday for the homily, I had a B homily, I'd say. I talked about how the Eucharist sacramentally ties us into the redemptive suffering of Christ and challenged people to not call it bread and wine because we weren't saved by bread and wine but by the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. The worst part was that I was struggling to come up with an example of someone leaving a legacy and, at the last moment the idea came to me. I said it was Andrew Carnegie who, after he read his own (falsely run) obituary in the paper, decided to change his life for the better. But, instead, it was Alfred Nobel.

I'm thinking about that today with the particular set of readings in which Paul is worried about how his people are being affected by "super apostles". He's worried that, since they can speak better and have more flash and glamor, they will lead his new Christians away from the truth to some form of Gnosticism or Arianism or some other heresy. It's amazing that, as I look at the big fundamentalist church down the road and think about the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons moving into town my first thought isn't, "Maybe they'll get some non churched folks to go to a church" but "How many catholics will be led astray by this cult?" Two thousand years later but, in so many ways, the same issues.

The Church must continue listening to the Spirit in order to be guided

A few months ago, I went to a meeting with Archbishop Hanus called the Priests’ council. This body brings together priests from different parts of the diocese in order for the Archbishop to articulate his vision and listen to the concerns of his people from various parts of the diocese. It was my responsibility to bring him the concerns of all the parishes close to Highway 30 from Tama to Ames, an area we call the Marshalltown deanery. Several of the priests had heard that the insurance rates for our parishes were going to increase dramatically so I was given the responsibility of asking about the particulars increase. The Archbishop and his advisors did a very comprehensive presentation that lasted for a few hours on Sunday night and again on Monday morning. Since I was the youngest person in the room, I thought it best to listen and not ask my question too early. Finally, toward the end of things, the Archbishop asked for questions. I raised my hand and asked about the insurance rates and saw this pained look come across his face. He acknowledged that the rates were likely going to triple because of the floods in Cedar Rapids, the tornado in Parkersburg, and the immigration raid in Postville. I was kind of taken aback because, while I could understand why natural disasters like floods and tornadoes would affect insurance, it had never occurred to me that federal agents raiding a processing plant would likewise affect insurance. So, being young and insatiably curious, I asked what the connection was. The same pained look deepened in the Archbishop’s face and he said that the government’s actions were a disaster. They separated families. People were afraid to go back to their homes out of fear that the government would leave their children and deport the illegal member to Mexico. There were rumors that a sizable immigrant population was living under a bridge in town because of the situation of fear. Up until this point, I have to admit that I was at least not entirely pro immigrant. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a xenophobe like Lou Dobbs. But, I believed that the government’s right to protect its borders meant that it should prosecute those people here illegally and send them back to their native countries. But, hearing the Archbishop tell us stories of families being separated, homes being abandoned, and individuals being punished while the producer finds a way to avoid persecution, just made me angry. And, what especially made me angry was when the Archbishop told us that he receives far more letters criticizing him over his stance on immigration than he ever did criticizing the church’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis.

We heard in the first reading today that the first gift of the Spirit was the gift of tongues. In the sixties, a group of very feeling-oriented spiritual people used this phrase almost exclusively about their particular spirituality. This charismatic spirituality involved a person being so overwhelmed by the Spirit that they start making what seems to most people as nonsense sounds. But, to the person involved in charismatic prayer, these nonsense sounds are a gift from the Spirit to show God’s presence to them. But, that’s not what is happening in the first reading. The first gift of tongues was, in a sense, a miraculous learning of other languages and dialects. It was a Rosetta Stone experience of learning a foreign language quickly and well. This happened in a way that seemed to reverse the Genesis experience of the tower of Babel in which the entire believing world was separated by words. Now, God the one who brought the Word into the world will bring the world together through words.

This unity of faith is what we have been given both as a gift and a responsibility. The Spirit is what guides us to help continue bringing about greater unity in the church. And, it is our responsibility to strive to bring that unity ever more fully to the church. One of my greatest frustrations about this country is that there are those who seem to believe that English is the only real language that exists. This attitude has become especially troublesome since the church made the concession of translating the mass into the vernacular. Whereas before 1960, it was obvious that the church was larger than the United States, was universal, because the entire mass was in Latin. Nowadays we only pray in English. We may occasionally pray Kyrie Eleison during Lent which is a Greek phrase. And we sing “Alleluia”, which is Aramaic…sort of. I fear that we are in danger of losing the mission given to us both in the first reading and the gospel, to bring ALL PEOPLE, not just Americans, together in Christ.

So, how do we get out of this? Let us listen to the Apostle Paul from the second reading. In that reading, Paul said, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” In other words, there is room for diversity amongst the unified body of Christ. There’s a part of me that wonders how we would react in most Catholic Church's in this country if the stranger was Latino, African, or Asian, especially if the person had a strange language or spirituality to go along with the strangeness of the color of their skin. This is as much if not more of a challenge to me as it is to anyone here: what are we doing to make the stranger to feel welcome, to be open to the diversity of gifts in order to bring together the one body of Christ?

Some observations

I haven't been posting much recently. I'm honestly not sure why that is. I think I just don't remember to do it. There's definitely a lot that deserves mention. For instance, the supreme court of California didn't expand the definition of marriage to include relationships that aren't marriages. There's the new supreme court nominee...who I admit knowing nothing of. There's the stuff surrounding water boarding in which Mancow, the Chicago based radio talk show host, came to terms with the fact that it is torture after he had it done to him.

Personally, I went to the ordination last Sunday. I even preached about going there for Sunday mass. It was so awe inspiring. I didn't get to go last year for various reasons but I got to go this year and it really renewed my commitment to priesthood. I think I was especially receptive since I was coming off a week of vacation which consisted of camping and relaxing around Dubuque. But, it is just amazing that men still open themselves up to the possibility that God is calling them to be a priest. It is so edifying to realize that there will be others after me. And to feel the show of support for these young men as their family and friends come together reminds me of my own ordination seven years ago.

What made it even more special was that one of the ordinands and two of the servers have Iowa State connections. One of them, in fact, was here just last year. Even though this place can drive me crazy sometimes, men still find the path to God in the midst of this chaos. Praise God for working in the messiness of a hectic university setting!

Sixth Sunday of Easter...God first loves us

My dear friends in Christ

Grace and love and peace to you in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I love spring. I love the fact that we aren’t going to get anymore snow on the ground. I love feeling the warmth of the sun on my head and arms as I sit next to my camper on a relaxing day off. There’s just something about this time of year that makes our readings explode of the page for me. LOVE! Our readings today are filled with love. It made me thing: it’s one thing to say that I love the sun. It’ s another thing to say, “I love you.” It’s a lot harder, a lot more intimate, isn’t. How do we show that we love one another?

There are safe ways to show love to one another. There’s the hand shake. There’s the high five. And, as we might remember from the election, there’s also the “fist bump” that the President and First Lady like to exchange. All of these are signs that are pretty safe to do with anyone you meet, right?

Then, there are more intimate ways of showing love. There’s the hug. Now I know some of you think that a hug should be bestowed on almost everyone and probably don’t agree that it’s more intimate. I can remember being seminary with just such a guy. At the end of a class where he had disagreed with a professor quite vehemently on a point, the seminarian wanted to hug the professor. The stuffy professor immediately fired back, “That’s why these tables are here, to prevent you from doing that! I think we’d all agree that a kiss is very intimate, right. It’ s not something you do for just anyone. During the next few months, I get to celebrate several wedding and, to be honest, my favorite part is when they exchange the kiss at the end of the liturgy. To me, this is something so beautiful about a man and woman exchanging that first kiss as husband and wife and doing so in front of the congregation of friends and family.

As I was praying about this, I asked myself, how do we show love to God? So far, none of the ways I talked about demonstrating love work for showing love to God. We can’t shake hands with God. We can’t hug God. We can’t fist bump God. So what can we do? We can sit in prayer and think in our hearts over and over again “I love you.” It’s really a powerful exercise and one that I encourage you to do sometime. But, that’s not very active. Love usually involves action. I show love by doing those simple actions to people. What are the actions I can do to show God love. What did our readings tell us to do?

“In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an expiation for our sins.” This quote from the second reading today sums it all up. The point of love is not that we loved God but that he loves us and gave us his son so that we might life through him. Oftentimes with the sacrament of reconciliation, I hear people express statements that seem to infer that they have to earn God’s love. People seem to think that, since they haven’t done a good enough job as a Christian, God won’t love them anymore. But, that’s not possible. God is love. And God, who is love, cannot but love us. This amazing realization is what Peter was teaching in the Conelius’ house. This was so astounding to Cornelius that he felt like Peter himself must have been some kind of god, instead of just working for him. Peter’s reaction of lifting him and telling him that he is not a god would have seemed rather harsh to the people around. It reminds me of Pope John XXII who decided to abolish the tradition of kissing the pope’s feet. He didn’t want people bending over seeming to worship his feet just to show him honor and respect. A hug was better for John XXIII.

Nonetheless, even though God is love and loves us dearly, we are told that we need to live in God’s love. In other words, this doesn’t mean that our lives can be terrible and God sits by like a neglectful parent still loving even when the children are wreaking havoc on the neighborhood. We are told to keep the commandments. Of course, Jesus simplified them down for us to love God and love neighbor. All our life needs to be filled with this. We are told to lay down our lives for our friends. We shouldn’t put our own needs and comfort first, in other words. We need to be looking around to see who is in need in order to be of service to them. Lastly, we are told to go and bear fruit. To me, this is why I feel honored to be present when a man and woman express God’s love for them in marriage: because they can go forth and bear the fruit of children. It’s what makes the marriage of husband and wife unique and worth celebrating and why it is such an honor to watch them exchange their first kiss as husband and wife. For one second, we get to witness two people experiencing God’s love for them and it inspires us to live in that love too.

Post 600...The good shepherd wants the best for all his sheep

My dear brothers and sister in Christ
Grace and Peace in God, our Father through the good shepherd, Christ, in the power of the Spirit. I give thanks to God always for calling me to this ministry of presence with you. A few weeks ago, I was invited into one of our Religious Ed classrooms to answer questions from the students. I started off talking to them all about Holy Orders and then just answered general questions. After I had completed the closing prayer and thought we would all leave, one little girl said she had one more question. She said that, while driving with her mom, sometimes she sees a sign that says, “No salvation outside of Christ” and she and her mom both think that’s bad because it makes it seem like people in other religions are going to hell. I sat there for a second and tried to think of a one sentence, very short answer to her comment/question and just had to give up. I told her that I’d have to come back and talk about that some other time because it’s such a tough question to understand.
On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, we are confronted with this very question. The first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles tells of Peter’s speech to the Jewish leadership called the Sanhedrin. This same group had condemned Jesus and now they’re getting an ear full from Peter. At one point, Peter said of Jesus, “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” This seems to clearly state to what the sign says that the mother and daughter find so offensive. But, then we hear the gospel today and Jesus seems to leave the door open to dialogue on the subject. He says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead…” These seem like contradictory statements. Either only Christians will be in heaven or there are others that Jesus is leading to be with him in eternity. So, who is right?
Nine years ago, the Vatican released a controversial document entitled Dominus Jesus that, I believe can help us resolve this tension. It says, “It must therefore be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith that the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.
Bearing in mind this article of faith, theology today, in its reflection on the existence of other religious experiences and on their meaning in God's salvific plan, is invited to explore if and in what way the historical figures and positive elements of these religions may fall within the divine plan of salvation...The Second Vatican Council, in fact, has stated that: ‘the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude, but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation which is but a participation in this one source’. The content of this participated mediation should be explored more deeply, but must remain always consistent with the principle of Christ's unique mediation: ‘Although participated forms of mediation of different kinds and degrees are not excluded, they acquire meaning and value only from Christ's own mediation, and they cannot be understood as parallel or complementary to his’. Hence, those solutions that propose a salvific action of God beyond the unique mediation of Christ would be contrary to Christian and Catholic faith.”
In other words, we do not believe that all other religions aside from Christianity are evil. But, we do believe that, if those religions have hope for salvation, it is because of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. How do we work this out? Some theologians have put forward the notion of anonymous christianity. This means that, even though other people in other religions believe they aren’t Christian, they really are. It’s just that Christ is working anonymously in them to the extent that Christ, who is love, is working in them. I prefer to listen to Christ’s words. I sort of cropped off the end of the quote from earlier. He actually said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.” In other words, Christ is working to bring us together but it will only be when we are gathered together in the one fold, in heaven. As we continue to celebrate the joy-filled hope of resurrection during this Easter season, let us also continue to pray that Christ’s death and resurrection may lead to greater unity among all people who believe in God.

Surrounded by first communion celebrations

Last weekend, at my little rural parish, I celebrate first communion. I had to get up very early (for me) and get there by 7:45 but the kids were just awesome. I love that little parish. I'm really learning who the families are out there since I've been in this assignment for four years. I can see the value of stability in this position. It would be really neat for me if I could be here long enough to watch the kids that I gave first communion to when I first got here be confirmed. I don't anticipate that will happen but one can dream.

This weekend I get to relive the experience, in a sense, by doing it for my University parish. The format is different but I love the excitement of the kids. Some of them have been watching their parents go up and receive for years and will now finally be able to do it themselves. I think it was at St. Thomas that there was a little kid who would go away crying each time he couldn't receive Jesus in the Holy Sacrament. I got to give that kid communion a year ago. I can't wait to see the surprises of who can receive this year.

So, here's what happened last Sunday

It occurred to me that, even though Thomas' faith seemed to be at issue, the real thing that was lacking was Thomas love was lacking. If he really loved Jesus, he would have been excited to think that his friend was alive. But, his love didn't transcend death. I talked about how we need to be more loving in this world and allow that to define who we are so that, when people see us love, they will see Christ and be able to express with Thomas, "My Lord, and my God."

So I focused, in the end, on being loving instead of on personal prayer.

A little bit of inspiration for the tough times.

Ever felt like you just can't get through?

Try this...