Category Archives: faith

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: Politicians, Jesus and Zen Foxes

12 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in faith, homily, trust

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Jesus - way, truth, lifeSo … we are into the presidential primary election season. Already the news is happily swamped with politicians posturing themselves. We, for our part, keep watching and asking ourselves, “Who is the one that seems to have that presidential timber and swagger?” In light of the political climate we find ourselves in as well as this Sunday’s gospel reading, a question to be entertained is, “If Jesus were running for my party’s nomination, would I vote for him?”

Truth be told, I do not think Jesus would receive many votes in either political party but I also do not think Jesus would really care! Throughout the gospel our Lord does the one thing that a politician would never do because the politician knows it to be political suicide: Jesus never confuses the illusion of control with true leadership and true personhood. Therefore, he never needs to pretend control. Our Lord is free of this temptation.

In today’s gospel (Mk. 8:27-35) we are told that Jesus is walking with his disciples and he asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” This question, itself, sets Jesus apart from the career politician. The politician says, “Let me tell you who I am. These are my skills… This is what I have achieved…” Jesus doesn’t do that, rather he asks, “Who do people say I am … who do you say I am?” Jesus knows full well who he is and what his purpose is but he does not impose himself. Rather, he waits. He allows the Father to work in the hearts of his followers and he allows his disciples to come to him. He allows them to come to the realization of who he is. Jesus does not force his disciples’ recognition. He needs neither to control nor manipulate the situation.

Then and only then, he begins to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed and then rise. Imagine this as a political platform! We cannot and this is why Peter’s reaction is so perfect because it is our honest, human, knee-jerk reaction! “No, Lord, this cannot be! You do not need to suffer! You do not need to be rejected! You can control the situation! You are the Christ!”

But leadership and control are not necessarily synonymous. Our Lord wants to show us a different way of both authentic leadership and personhood. “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do … whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

Our Lord is showing us a way of living which can forego the illusion of control. Isn’t it interesting to note how so many times after our Lord performs a miracle he is quick to say to the person healed, “Your faith has made you well.”? He does not need to grasp that credit. In the fourth chapter of John’s gospel, our Lord says, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.” (Jn. 4:34) Not my program, not my agenda, not my control but rather my Father’s will. Every moment of our Lord’s life was focused upon and directed in trust toward the Father’s will.

This letting go of the illusion of control is not a passive resignation akin to despair. It is far from that. Rather, it is the most active of stances in our world. It is learning to seek and make the choice for God’s will in all things and all situations. There is nothing passive about that. This is the one choice which can truly transform lives and the world itself!

One of my favorite social media sites is entitled ”Bored Panda Animals”. It is a site that hosts often stunning photography. Just this last week the site highlighted a photographer who captures images of foxes in the wild. These pictures are beautiful and they depict these animals completely relaxed, eyes closed, enjoying the breeze, Zen-like in their posture. The site also interviewed the photographer who shared how she is able to capture the photos of these wild animals so relaxed. “There’s a contradiction going on when it comes to capturing Zen foxes: the harder you try, the more you’ll move away from your goal. If you are too eager, an animal will sense that eagerness and will remain alert. I learned to do as foxes do, just being there and see what might happen.”

Let go of the illusion of control. It is not real. Learn to trust in the will of the Father.

Allow God to be God and trust.

“…whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: the concreteness of the Ascension

17 Sunday May 2015

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Ascension3Today’s gospel (Mk. 16:15-20) has the risen Lord sending his disciples into the whole world in order to proclaim the gospel to every creature.  This very same mission continues today.  Christianity cannot stay within, locked behind closed doors!  But, before we run out to the world, we need to know for whom we are running and whose message it is exactly that we are proclaiming.  I once heard a seasoned Catholic blogger give some sound advice to some young seminarians eager to evangelize the internet for Christ.  She cautioned that before you start saying things about faith and Christ make sure you actually have something to say.  The only way to speak authentically about Christ is to encounter Christ.  Another way of getting at this is by asking the question actually whose disciples are we?

We are not disciples for ourselves even if we might claim the name Christian.  Taking only the teachings of our Lord that we like and find agreeable and then trying to manage and live our lives on our own – agreeing with Jesus but not really feeling a need for him, too closely, in our lives.

We are disciples because God has first loved us – he has called us and saved us in love.  He sends us into the world in order to proclaim the good news in love and peace.  In many ways the gospel is a weak strength – the gospel needs us to proclaim it, if not love begins to disappear and peace begins to lose to violence and hatred.  But for any of this to happen we must live continually in relationship with Christ, remembering that we are his disciples and not disciples for ourselves.

Despite the seemingly, other-worldly nature of today’s feast (What does it mean that Jesus ascends to the Father?), the Feast of the Ascension is a very concrete reality.   It is so because of the simple fact that the hope we celebrate today is not founded in some abstract or utopian principle or ideal of a better tomorrow but in the very resurrected body of Christ.  Christ is indeed risen which means he is risen body and soul, flesh and blood.  Anything less would not be fully and authentically human.  Christ ascends to the Father not just in spirit or thought but in the very concrete reality of his full humanity.  Throughout this Easter season we have heard Christ, time and time again, assuring his disciples that he is indeed present in “flesh and bone”.  This means fully present not just up to the moment of the ascension but in the ascension itself and now at the Father’s right hand.  From the day of the ascension heaven “began to populate itself with the earth, or, in the language of Revelation, a new heaven and earth began.”

In the ascension we truly realize that we are not orphans.  We are not left to the cold and cruel winds of chance, fate and odds or a history without direction.  Direction has been set.  The resurrected Christ now sits at the Father’s right hand!  This, and nothing less, is our goal.  It is what we are meant for and what we are called to by God’s grace.

It is truly concrete and it is achieved and experienced concretely.

In the gospel Jesus tells us that he is “the way” and the way, it turns out, is walked concretely.  The ascension is experienced again not in some abstract manner but in how we concretely treat and love the smallest and poorest brothers and sisters in our midst. When we love concretely we experience the ascension and we are brought toward the fullness of the future that God has prepared for us in Christ.

Let me share an example.  When I was chaplain at the Catholic Center at ETSU our Sant’Egidio group decided to take sandwich bags once a week to the John Sevier Center.  (The John Sevier Center is a low-income housing unit in downtown Johnson City.)  We did not go there as experts in anything.  We knew we could not solve the residents’ problems and struggles.  We just went and we were faithful in going and in this simple act of being present a human space was created both for the residents and for us.  We became friends.  By this we were brought a little bit further toward the fullness that awaits us all.  In this human space miracles happen and signs are given – demons of isolation, fear, hatred and resignation are cast out and life is gained.  I have seen it for myself time and time again.  Now, our Sant’Egidio group here at St. Dominic’s has begun visiting Holston Manor nursing home and it is beginning to happen again – a human space is being created.

Christ bestows his love upon us.  We are disciples for him and we are meant to communicate his love.  Love that is not communicated soon withers and dies.

Love is lived not abstractly but concretely and it is in the concrete act that we are brought toward the fullness that awaits us all.

The Recent Pew Survey, Individualism and Gratitude

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in discipleship, faith, individualism, life in Christ, social factors, society

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individualismIn our society’s almost dictatorial focus on the individual have we forgotten how to receive and how to be grateful?

A realization that I have arrived at through my prayer with the Community of Sant’Egidio is that our Lord was neither as influenced by nor as burdened by individualism as we are.  It can easily be demonstrated that individualism is a cherished notion in the modern American cultural landscape if not, in fact, the highest virtue we subscribe to.  We exalt the positives of individualism (and they are there certainly) but do we also recognize as readily the negatives?  I would contend that one negative derived from an uncritical adoption of the tenets of individualism is being obliged throughout life to carry the weight of the presumption that if something does not originate from me exclusively then it is not really all that worthwhile.

I remember in a previous assignment as a college chaplain how I would visit the art museum on campus once a week where the work of art majors would be on exhibit.  For many of the students this showing was their senior thesis.  Much of the work of these students was engaging, creative and very thought-provoking.  But a good amount of it was not and one would leave the exhibit with the perception and hunch that the student was almost straining under the compulsion to have to present his or her own unique perception of reality, particular viewpoint or feelings to the world.  Frankly, in this forced condition, their viewpoint was not all that interesting and often it was clichéd and just plain boring.  At these moments I would exit the exhibit with the words of a wise, old Benedictine monk friend ringing in my ears, “Get over yourself!”

This weight can work in a subtle way but it is there – the weight to always have to be unique, always original and to have to prove it!  This is quite crushing and just not humanly possible.  Christ did not seem to be burdened by this though.  Our Lord demonstrates his freedom (as well as his oneness with the Father) when he responds to Philip’s request of showing the disciples the Father in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel,

He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. (Jn. 14:9-11)

Our Lord is quite comfortable in sharing that what he has to give comes both from the Father and out of his relationship with the Father.  He does not seem constrained by the presumption that everything has to be a totally original and unique thought originating from within himself alone in order for it to be authentic and worthwhile.  This freedom that our Lord demonstrates is in fact shared with the Spirit also.

I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  

These gospel passages lead the reader into the mystery of the Trinity but they also witness to the depth of freedom that our Lord enjoyed in his person with one such ingredient of this freedom being the ability to freely acknowledge what he has received from the Father.  Our Lord is the “free-est” person who ever walked the face of the earth – even being free of the negative weight of individualism.  Because of this our Lord could fully receive from the Father and he could fully live in gratitude.  We, on the other hand, not so much.

Recently, I have noticed a string of articles in response to a just released Pew survey on why younger people are no longer practicing their faith and leaving the Church.  I am not proposing this as the definitive answer but I do think a contributing factor in this trend is this negative weight of individualism and specifically how it limits our ability to recognize what we have received and to be grateful for that.  Many people will say that the Church needs to get better at reaching out to young people, preaching needs to be better and more engaging, we need to return to a sense of traditional Catholic identity or be more involved in pressing social issues that are of concern to younger generations … the list can go on and on.  I agree with these points and believe there is validity to them.  Yes, there is more that the Church needs to do and should do but I think there is another aspect to this equation and I offer this with the greatest pastoral sensitivity having worked many years with younger generations.  I think a number of younger people (as the wise monk would say) need to get over themselves and, frankly, just need to grow some backbone when it comes to their faith.

A number of times now in my ministry I have had the experience of a young couple approaching me for marriage preparation with one of the two being Catholic and the other one from a different Christian faith tradition only to hear them say that they plan to attend a different church once married, almost as if it is no big deal.  This then leads generally into a full discussion where I ask them if they are able to recognize how their faith tradition (Catholic or not) has helped to shape who they are.  What I have come to realize is that more often than not they do not recognize this.  This is quite damning but, I hold, not so much for the couple themselves (as I have come to see them more as victims in this equation, although some as willing victims) but rather the milieu in which they have grown up and live in.  We focus so much on the individual in our society that we fail to help people learn how to recognize what we have received and how we have been formed through outside influences including our faith.  We fail in helping one another realize that we are more than just ourselves.  I encourage the couple to realize that part of what they love and are attracted to in their fiancée is how his or her faith tradition has helped to shape who he or she is.  To summarily toss aside one’s faith tradition or ask the other person to do so or to plan to do so later as a married couple as if it does not really matter is a profound disservice and demonstrates a sad lack of awareness.

Many people suffer from this lack this awareness.  We focus so much on the individual and the illusion of how we are self-made that we forget how much we have, in fact, received, we forget how to receive and we lose the ability to be grateful.  It is a sad state of affairs really.

Yes, the Church needs to do its part but the young people also have a role to play.  They have choices to make.  I do not believe that the younger people choosing to leave the Church are necessarily innocents lacking responsibility in this whole regard.  Maybe their choice reflects how much they themselves have bought into the illusion of individualism where they cannot recognize nor be grateful for what they have received just as much as it might demonstrate certain lacks on the Church’s part.

In all times and seasons the Church must look to the Lord for wisdom, grace and insight.  The Lord’s willingness to acknowledge his reliance on the Father and the joy he found in that is a salvific corrective to the illusions of individualism with its crushing burdens.  Christ knew what he received from the Father, he knew how to receive and he knew how to be grateful.  Christ was neither as influenced by nor burdened by individualism as we are.

The words of my Benedictine monk friend are not meant to be hurtful and are actually quite pastoral if understood in a slightly different nuance, “For the sake of yourself, get over yourself and, yes, grow some backbone in regards to your faith!”

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: “We would like to see Jesus.” (5th Sunday of Lent – B)

21 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by in Christ, faith, law of love, law of reciprocity, life in Christ, sad logic of sin and death, sad logic of violence

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face_of_jesus_610x300“We would like to see Jesus.”  This is the request of some Greeks from today’s gospel.  (Jn. 12:20-33)  “We would like to see” the one who teaches with authority.  “We would like to see” the one who is compassionate, who welcomes the sinner, who goes out to meet others, who weeps for his friend who has died.  “We would like to see” the one who has come not to judge but to save.  “We would like to see” this teacher who says that there is a different way to live.  “We would like to see” the one who says “no” to the logic of violence and isolation.  “We would like to see” the one who does not live according to the law of reciprocity but rather according to a different law – the law of love.

We all know the law of reciprocity.  It is so present, so seemingly uncontested, that we easily take it for granted that it is just the way things are.  The law of reciprocity says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!  If you do this to me then I can do that to you!  It is a law that perpetuates the cycle of violence.  It is a law of strict justice/retribution alone.  It is a law that leads one into viewing other people solely in terms of being competitors, even adversaries, rather than brothers and sisters.  Due to this, it is a law that isolates and breaks people, communities and nations into opposing camps.  It is also a law that ultimately binds and enslaves.  Jesus never lived according to the law of reciprocity, rather he lived according to the law of love and because of this Jesus is the freest person that has ever walked the face of the earth.

Behind this simple request of these Greeks is a profoundly fundamental yearning and recognition of the human heart – the desire to live differently, to escape the logic of violence and the tyranny of reciprocity.  We yearn for this.  On our own, we cannot achieve it.  “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”  We need Jesus because he alone can forgive what needs to be forgiven within ourselves, because he alone can make new of what has been made old through sin.  Without Jesus we are left under the law of reciprocity – it is the best we can hope for.  With Jesus, we can learn and we can live the law of love and we can gain that freedom that Jesus himself knew.  We can be made free!

On the surface it seems that Jesus does not answer the request of the Greeks brought to him via Andrew and Philip.  Rather than saying, “Bring them here,” he goes off into a reflection on the Son of Man being glorified. But this reflection is his response!  “You want to see me?  You want to see the one who lives a different way, the one who does not live according to the logic of violence and the law of reciprocity?  You will see this and so much more!  Watch what happens on Golgotha, watch what happens within the tomb itself!  Watch what happens within “this hour”!

Then he give us God’s answer to that deepest disconnect of the human heart.  “You wish to see me because you also want to be free of the law of reciprocity, you also want to overcome the sad logic of violence and isolation.  You want to live differently.”  “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, in produces much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.”

Freedom, a different way to live other than the dictates of reciprocity, is found when a person lets go of self and lives for others … in Christ.  This last part is often overlooked.  Sadly, even by teachers of Christianity sometimes.  Jesus is not proposing a vague philosophy open to any person apart from him.  The request of the Greeks was, “We would like to see Jesus.”  Jesus – not his teachings, not his ideas but the person.  When we die to self and live for others within the reality of Christ’s own sacrifice then the logic of violence and isolation can be overcome.  Christ goes on to say, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.  The Father will honor whoever serves me.”  

Life can be lived in a different way.  The sad logic of violence and isolation is not inevitable.  The new law of love is possible!

“We would like to see Jesus.”

The Possibility of Holiness

18 Sunday Jan 2015

Posted by in Catholic Church, Christian living, Church, discipleship, faith, following Jesus, God, gospel, holiness, Jesus, joy

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I am not holy.  My sins, failures and weaknesses are before me every day, but I believe in the possibility of holiness and it is this belief that keeps me in the Church. 

I am not naïve to the sins and failures of the institution of the Church nor its representatives – past and present, universal and local – but neither am I naïve to the sins and failures of those outside the Church and those who deride “church”.  I have also witnessed their sins and their hidden despair and I want none of it.  The louder and more forced the laugh; the deeper the despair, I believe.  
I do not want nor need a “Church” made in my image.  I know my sins.  Holiness is challenge – lived daily and without fanfare.  I am a creature and I need my Creator to heal what is broken within me.  To pretend that there is no brokenness is, in fact, to deny my Creator. 
Holiness is simple.  I am tired of a presentation of faith that needs to be hyper-stimulated.  I feel sorry for our young people who are growing up in such a world.  I am sorry for the times the Church buys into this.  Holiness cannot be manufactured.  Holiness grows simply and quietly.  What is manufactured quickly fades and leaves a void.  Maybe holiness can begin to grow in this void maybe it cannot.  I know that God can work as God so chooses and I have to trust in this.  
Holiness is not argument and it is not philosophy.  Debate does not lead to conversion, the witness of holiness does.  Philosophy and its structure is a good tool but it is not salvific faith.  The wise steward, we are told, is the one who can go to the storeroom and pull out both the old and the new as needed.  Maybe there are other tools available?
Holiness does not isolate.  Christ, the All Holy One, came into our very midst.  He called us brothers and sisters and taught us to love one another.  Holiness is found in my encounter with the other although it may not be immediately apparent.  The holiness uniquely found in community forces me out of myself and I need this.  If anything, the direction of holiness is from the mountain back down into the valley of the everyday. 
Holiness is not on a mountaintop somewhere but in the Gospel, the sacraments and community.  I need these every day.
Many people like to point to the sins of the Church.  It is nice to have an excuse isn’t it?  Pointing out the perceived sins of others does not grow holiness in my own life; it just gives me a way out.  I need to stand before my Creator on my own and not in contrast to what I perceive as the sins of others. 
Holiness is beautiful and I need beauty – a child playing peek-a-boo, friends laughing, feet being washed.  
I feel sorrow for those who have left the Church.  Christ loves the Church … how can you love Christ and not love what he loves?  Maybe Christ’s love should be bigger than my own resentments and excuses?
Holiness is living in friendship with God.            

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: the Boldness of Beauty (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in beauty, boldness, faith, Giving

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In the beginning of her book An American Childhood Annie Dillard tells the story of watching a neighbor girl skate on the city street on a cold, Pittsburg winter night:

The night Jo Ann Sheehy skated on the street it was dark inside our house.  We were having dinner in the dining room – my mother, my father, my sister Amy, who was two and I.  There were lighted ivory candles on the table … Now we sat in the dark dining room, hushed…  Behind me, tall chilled windows gave out onto our narrow front yard and street.  A motion must have caught my mother’s eye; she rose and moved to the windows, and Father and I followed.  There we saw the young girl, the transfigured Jo Ann Sheehy skating alone under the streetlight. 

She was turning on ice skates inside the streetlight’s yellow cone of light – illumined and silent.  She tilted and spun.  She wore a short skirt, as if Edgerton Avenue’s asphalt had been the ice of an Olympic arena.  She wore mittens and a red knitted cap below which her black hair lifted when she turned.  Under her skates the street’s packed snow shone; it illumined her from below, the cold light striking her under her chin.  

I stood at the tall window, barely reaching the sill; the glass fogged before my face, so I had to keep moving or hold my breath.  What was she doing out there?  Was everything beautiful so bold? 

Nelson Mandela once said: It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented?”  Actually, who are you not to be.  Playing small does not serve the will of God.  We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us.  It is not just within some of us, it is within everyone.  The more we light our own light shine; the more we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same.

In today’s Gospel (Mt. 25:14:30) we are given the parable of the talents.  The term “talent” in our Lord’s day was used to denote a certain measurement of wealth.  It is due to this very parable that the word “talent” has the meaning which we know today.  In the parable, the master who is departing on a journey leaves a different sum of talents with three different servants.  The first two servants double what was given them and are rewarded accordingly.  The third servant (out of fear) buries the talent he is given and makes nothing.  He is punished for his laziness. 

So, we see this parable as an instruction about using the gifts, the talents that we have been given in life and not being fearful.  It is also helpful to note where this parable falls within Matthew’s gospel.  It is in the section where Jesus is discussing the end times and it comes right before the section where Jesus sets the criteria for judgment of our lives.  (The Gospel passage we will hear next Sunday.)

With the awareness of this context we see that the use of talents is not toward the goal of comfort in this life but toward the goal of the reign of God.  This parable warns us that the servant preferred to hide his life in a hole, in an avaricious and egoistic tranquility … Jesus unveils the ambiguity of one who contents himself with how things are, has no desire to change, no aspiration to transform life and, no ambition for a happier life for all. (Bishop Vincenzo Paglia)

The Kingdom of God begins with each one of us when we make the choice to not close ourselves off in our own self interest but make the bold choice for life and to help alleviate the sufferings of the other person.  It is a choice that must begin within – the choice to begin changing our own hearts and the choice to bring the Gospel to our world and live the Gospel for our world.

“Does beauty have to be so bold?” wondered the young Annie Dillard.  Yes, it does.  We are each born to make manifest the glory of God within us.   

The Feast of All Souls: the Word of God, Faith and Mercy.

02 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in faith, Feast of All Souls, mercy, Word of God

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You know, as a priest, you see many things and sometimes you see things that do not necessarily go as planned.  A number of years ago I was in a cemetery for a graveside service on a bright sunny day.  A woman had died and her children and friends had gathered for the funeral.  I concluded the Church’s prayers at the graveside and stepped to the side.  The funeral director then stepped in front of the people to share a few words.  A service that this particular funeral home provided for a fee was to release a flock of doves.  The doves were trained to circle around in the air.  As the birds did this the director would offer a few words about how the doves represented the already departed members of the deceased’s family.  The director would then release a single dove – representing the recently deceased.  This bird was trained to join the flock and then all the birds would fly off (back to the funeral home).  Well, the flock was released and was circling in the air and the director said his few words.  Then the director released the one dove.  That bird flew up, saw the flock and bee-lined it in the opposite direction!  And behind me I heard someone say, “Well, she never really cared much for her family!” 
On this Feast of All Souls I do not have a flock of birds nor do I have any other gimmicks.  What the Church simply has at the moment of death, loss and suffering is the Word of God, our faith and our belief in the mercy of God.  
It has been noted that one of the primary works of the Holy Spirit is to continually remind us of what God has done through Jesus Christ, to continually lead us back to Scripture and learn anew and with new depth of understanding what God has done.  In moments of pain and loss we can forget.  In these moments God remembers for us and God invites us into this sacred remembering!  “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them … Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love …” (Wis 3:1,9)  “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our heart through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rom 5:5)  Hope springs from this remembering.  We remember not what we have done but what God has done and continues to do for us!  Jesus said, “And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.”(Jn 6:38) 
It is a good and beautiful thing to pray for the departed.  Our prayers assist our loved ones and they quicken our own hearts!  Hope as gift of the Holy Spirit does not come through some magic formula or esoteric demands but rather through daily and often ordinary choices.  When we pray we are making a choice for hope.  When we pray for our dearly departed we remind ourselves of the greater reality that life is not ended but changed at the moment of death!  Death is not the final word. When we were lost in sin and death and could no longer remember, God remembered for us and sent his Son, who died that we might have life and that we might not be forgotten and lost through death.  
It is a holy thing to pray for the departed. 
I believe that one of the most beautiful things the Church does is the Rite of Christian Burial.  It is simple, honest, straight-forward and beautiful.  It does not need gimmicks.  Throughout the Rite we find the proclamation of faith and the proclamation of God’s mercy.  Sometimes the wisdom of the Church is displayed in what she does not say and this is evidenced in the funeral rite.  Throughout all the prayers and rituals of the rite we proclaim our hope in the resurrection and we commend the dearly departed to the mercy of God and we go no further.  God alone sees into the human heart.  God alone makes the final judgment.  We, on our part, commend to God’s mercy. 
It is a beautiful and holy and hope-filled thing to pray for our dearly departed.   

The Humble God: Feast of Christ the King

24 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in faith, gratitude, homily, humility, pride

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At one point in his commentary on this Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps. 93), St. Augustine shares this observation: Humble people are like rock.  Rock is something you look down on, but it is solid.  What about the proud?  They are like smoke; they may be rising high, but they vanish as they rise.  

In the gospel for today’s Feast of Christ the King (Jn. 18:33b-37) we are given the humble God.  Pilate (representative of all the power of the world) questions Christ – a seemingly defeated and isolated man, abandoned by his friends and followers and mocked by his own people.

Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I?  Your own nation and chief priests handed you over to me.  What have you done?”  Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.  If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.  But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”  So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?”  Jesus answered, “You say I am a king.  For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  

Today, we as Church, proclaim Christ is King yet, like Pilate, our understanding and idea is limited.  It is interesting to note on this Feast of Christ the King that our Lord, himself, never took on the title of “king”.  Even on this most final and bitter of stages; when the fallen pride of our human condition would eagerly grasp onto a title of assertion to throw back into the face of the powers of this world (how often we see this exalted on our movie screens in the myth of redemptive violence) our Lord chooses a different path.  “You say I am king.  For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Our Lord rejects the title “king” and by so doing he forswears the fallen world and all it has to offer – self-indulgent pride, sad divisions and triumphalism and all forms of violence.  Our Lord chooses a different path – the path of humility.  “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  

Humility has more in common with truth than does pride and power.  In fact, humility is essential if there is to be any real understanding of truth.  If we would know the truth then any temptation to put ourselves at the center of creation (and these temptations come in all shapes and sizes: blue and red, enlightened secularist and righteous religious, male and female, rich and poor, all colors of skin and shades of culture) must be put aside.  Everyone (I repeat “Everyone”), needs to accept the purifying light of humility because the only constant, the only necessary is God – all else is contingent upon God’s will.  We are not necessary.  The more we realize this then the more we open ourselves to those moments when we catch a glimmer that God is indeed the “rock”, the only solid basis of all creation and then gratitude will grow in our hearts.

All is grace.

Do you want joy and gratitude?  Then look to the one we proclaim “king” yet who never sought that title for himself.  “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  Cultivate humility.  It will lead you to truth and truth will bring gratitude.              

Of the End Times: Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in end times, faith, homily, hope, love

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One of my professors in seminary once remarked that the events of the last days as portrayed in the Scriptures should be read like the labor pangs of birth rather than cataclysmic destruction.  In fact, the birth analogy is more in keeping with the fuller sense of Scripture than the “cataclysmic, world destroyed in a ravaging ball of fire, Hollywood 2012 movie” interpretation.

The texts of Scripture do not confirm, … a sort of “theory of catastrophes,” according to which there must first be a complete destruction of the world after which God can finally turn everything to good.  No, God does not arrive at the end, when all is lost.  He does not disown his own creation.  In the book of Revelation we read, “You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (4:11).
The “upheaval” expressed throughout the New Testament is that when the Son of Man comes, he comes not in the weariness of our habits nor does he insert himself passively into the natural course of things.  When Christ comes, he brings a radical change to the lives of men and women and it is always a change that brings the fullness of life.
Notice that in this Sunday’s gospel passage (Mk. 13:24-32) after our Lord speaks of the coming of the Son of Man with “great power” he goes on to state: Learn a lesson from the fig tree.  When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near.  In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates.  Our Lord does enter into our lives and the life of our world with “great power” but the upheaval he brings is an invitation to turn away from sin and the works of sin and to turn toward the fullness of life.
As Christians we are to live in this world not bound by the deadening works of sin and pride but rather in the upheaval and pangs of birth of the establishment of the Kingdom of God.  Because every day and in every situation Christ is near, at the gates.  The Book of Revelation gives us an image of this hope toward which we yearn and work.  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:1-2).  The great “Day of the Lord” is not yet to happen it has already happened!  God has entered into creation and history in the person of Christ, eternity has entered into time, and now this upheaval comes to every generation and even each day.  We are caught up in the great work of God where all peoples and nations will be gathered together into the new Jerusalem! 
The “end of the world” must come every day.  Every day, we must put an end to both the small or big pieces of the world’s evil and malevolence, but not by God but by people.  Moreover, the days that pass, end inexorably. Nothing remains of them, but the good fruit or, unfortunately, the hardships that we create for others.  Scripture invites us to keep the future, toward which we are led, in front of our eyes: the end of the world is not a catastrophe, but will in fact establish the holy city that comes down from heaven.  It is a city that is a concrete reality, not an abstract one, gathering all the people around their Lord.  This is the goal (and, in a sense also, the end) of history.  But his holy city must begin in our daily life now so that it may grow and transform the lives of men and women into God’s likeness.  It does not have to do with an easy and automatic grafting, but the common toil that every believer must fulfill, remembering what the Lord says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
(Quotes taken from The Word of God Every Day by Vincenzo Paglia.)

The work of true faith: Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

04 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by in 18th Sunday in ordinary time (B), faith

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On this second Sunday of the five consecutive Sundays when the Church draws from John’s Gospel to reflect on Jesus Christ as the Bread of Life we are given an invitation.  After the feeding of the multitude and our Lord withdrawing for some solitude we are told that the crowds in today’s gospel (Jn. 6:24-35) come in search of him but their intent is not the most sincere and our Lord is aware of this.  Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.

We can live a form of “faith” that holds as its main goal and purpose the desire to be filled.  This approach to faith can take many forms.  The most blatant is the prosperity gospel that reduces Christianity to a commercial exchange between the human and the divine and God to a beneficent loan agent.  “If you have faith, if you live a good life, then God will reward you materially,” is the mantra of the prosperity gospel.  Another mantra is that you can have your best life now.  This take on faith is very popular for many people and one can see why – it promises a comfortable materialistic approach to the rewards of faith while ignoring the inconvenience of the cross.  The problem is that it is not christian. 

This is one expression on seeking faith in order to be filled but there are others.  Many of which are found and promoted even within many churches today.  Another expression is seen in equating real faith with an emotional high gained from a certain type of worship or retreat experience.  It is only faith if I feel it and it fills me up.  A further expression (closely linked to the previous two) is the Jesus who satisfies my every need and who shelters me from any real problem, hurt, crisis or need in life. 

There is a common thread that runs through all these forms of faith based in the desire to be filled.  Despite often loud attestations to the contrary which proclaim Jesus as Lord these approaches actually have the person him or herself as the center of existence and Jesus as just the means to the end of my material well-being, my emotional well-being, my personal sanctity and my eternal glory.  The focus is not so much on Jesus as it is on me.

The gospel invitation which we are given today is to move beyond this narrow faith seeking to be filled in order to find true faith and true relationship with Christ.  After chiding the crowds for the real reason why they sought him out Jesus goes on to say, Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  When the crowds ask for this real food, this true bread, our Lord says, I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

True faith is not found in using Jesus as a means to personal satisfaction but in seeking a living relationship with Christ and in committing ones life to do the very real work of acknowledging him as Lord.  Yes, there is an aspect of “work” to faith.  Faith requires decision, commitment, toil, choices, and abandonment and sometimes even going against the stream, risking to be unpopular and even be persecuted for what one holds to be true.  This is the work of faith – we see it in the lives of those first disciples and the same invitation is given to us today.

In contradiction to faith which seeks to be filled it is worthwhile to conclude with a prayer which expresses the work of true and mature faith.  This is the Suscipe of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  Notice that where the faith of the crowd can only ask what it can get from Christ; this faith asks for the grace to give more for Christ.  I would contend that only someone who had truly accepted and lived the gospel invitation of seeking a living relationship with Christ could write this prayer.

St. Ignatius and all holy men and women who accepted our Lord’s invitation to faith and encounter with Him, please pray for us.

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
all I love and call my own.

You have given it all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and grace,
that is enough for me.