Here are a few lines from the song “Awake My Soul” by Mumford and Sons.
How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes I struggle to find any truth in your lies. And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know. This weakness I feel I must finally show. Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall. Lend me your eyes I can change what you see. But your soul you must keep, totally free…
In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life …
Awake my soul, awake my soul Awake my soul! For you were made to meet your maker. You were made to meet your maker!
In this Sunday’s gospel (Lk. 12:32-48) our Lord cautions his disciples to not have fear and to not set one’s life by the tempests of the world but rather by the expectation of God’s coming Kingdom. “Set your heart in God’s Kingdom,” our Lord is saying. “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Our “treasure” – the hope we have as Christians – is not ultimately in this world and its struggles (although we are certainly called to live our faith and work to build up what is good and right) but in the Kingdom of God.
I think that Mumford and Sons, in their own way, are getting at this truth in their song. “Where you invest your love, you invest your life … Awake my soul. For you were made to meet your maker.” Christian existence always stands within an expectation. We are made for a purpose. We are made to meet our maker and this expectation ought to guide our lives right here and right now.
When we have fear, we look past them to Christ. When we experience discouragement, we find hope in God. When trials come our way, we persevere in the promise of the Kingdom. Our treasure has been set in heaven and so our hearts yearn for that. But we live this concretely. This, I think, is another truth brought out by the song. “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life.” Christian existence stands within an expectation yet it also is lived in the now concretely.
As Christians, we are meant to invest our lives. Some have said that in the incarnation, God, in essence, put skin in the game. The Son of the Father took flesh and suffered and died that we might have life and salvation. God invested his life for us because that is where his love is. We, too, must invest our lives. The wounds of the world are our wounds, therefore we do not seek to flee these wounds, rather we try to bandage and heal them.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is powerful because the Samaritan chose to invest his life – he took the time that was necessary, he paid for the man’s lodging, he gave of himself – for the good of the stranger. He was able to invest his life because his love was already there. He saw the neighbor as brother and friend and not as stranger.
It is a bit of a paradox. The Christian seeks to do the right thing because we are challenged to do the right thing but on a deeper level we strive to do what is right because our love is already there. Soon to be canonized St. Teresa of Calcutta knew she was caring for Christ himself whenever she cared for the poor, sick, despised and ill. Christ (our love) is in our brothers and our sisters.
Where you invest your love, you invest your life.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
You may be aware that World Youth Day is occurring in Krakow, Poland. World Youth Day is a gathering of the Church’s youth and young adults for days of catechesis, worship and prayer. The event culminates on Sunday with a Papal Mass. Pope Francis is in Krakow with the world’s young people. I have been viewing different images via social media from the gathering but what has struck me most is a six minute video of Pope Francis visiting the concentration camp at Auschwitz and taking some private moments of prayer in the cell which housed St. Maximillian Kolbe before his death. St. Maximillian Kolbe was a Catholic priest who volunteered his own life in order to let another prisoner live who was a husband and father. The video, which is all in silence, is almost surreal. (I have posted the video on our parish Facebook page.)
Pope Francis arrives simply at the cell as is his wont. He first peers into the darkened cell then steps in. A chair is brought in and the Holy Father sits and we are given this amazing image of the successor to St. Peter clad in white sitting in a darkened cell with his head bowed in prayer in this place of unimaginable horror.
Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday and as Church we reflect for a moment on the greatest of mysteries – God is a communion of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here it is most helpful to remember the Christian understanding of mystery: mystery is not a puzzle to be figured out and then set aside but rather a reality to be lived and as we live the reality we, ourselves, are brought to deeper understanding. On our own accord we cannot reason our way to the Trinity. The Trinity is the ultimate truth both revealed and given and it is in living in this truth that we come to be grasped by it. Our faith affirms that the best way to live within the truth of the Trinity (to be grasped and moved by the mystery) is the way of love.
So much of the Christian life seems to be about “going out”. We are called to go out to proclaim the good news. We go out to share Christ’s love. We go out to serve others. This is good and authentic to our faith and it is the mandate that Christ has given us as Church to proclaim the good news to the ends of the earth.
On January 31st, the Church will celebrate the Feast of St. John Bosco – a man who devoted his life to helping young people. One of the greatest blessings of our Christian faith is the witness of men and women throughout history who let go of their own needs and worked tirelessly for the good of youth and those generations who were to come after them. The witness of these men and women should call us, as the Church, into a reflection on how best to minister to youth and young adults, especially in a time and culture that is “youth obsessed”. We can readily see how this obsession plays itself out in all areas of society – the entertainment and news media industry, politics, sports, education, relationships – just to name a few. A fair question is how might this “obsession with youth” bleed into and perhaps even negatively influence the Church’s own ministry to youth and young adults just as they are seeking to claim their own Christian faith and discipleship and how might we best avoid the danger of this obsession?
There is much worthy of reflecting upon in today’s gospel (Jn. 2:1-11) which gives the account of our Lord’s first public miracle – the turning of water into wine and the wedding in Cana. We can see in the image of the couple running out of wine on their wedding day a symbol of the ending of the Old Covenant and the freshness of the New Covenant beginning with our Lord turning water into wine. We can see in Mary’s noticing of the wine running short a concern for the young (and probably poor) couple who will soon be greatly embarrassed by not being able to provide for their guests. The first step of true mercy is noticing needs and not being indifferent toward others in their plight. This is a good witness Mary gives us during this Year of Mercy.
My father was brought up in a Presbyterian household although how staunch it was is open for debate. A story I once heard was of an exchange which occurred sometime after my father’s conversion when my two great aunts from Mississippi made a visit to my grandfather and grandmother. Noticing a little dust on the family Bible one aunt is said to have remarked, “Maybe if that Bible was not dusty, Jack would never have converted.” A number of years later my own aunt (my father’s sister) would tell these same two great-aunts, “Michael has decided to enter Catholic seminary and we are very proud.” The southern equivalent of drawing a line in the sand!
My mother did not grow up in affluence as my father did. Her childhood was spent in a small town in North Carolina. Nominally, I believe that she was raised Baptist but it seems that church was not a major factor in her younger years. She did once tell me that for a while she worked at a local Methodist retreat center frequented by the young (and then single) Billy Graham. “All the young ladies would swoon over him,” my mom once confided. She never said if she was one of the ones swooning. Right out of high school my mother left Brevard to work in book-keeping for a man who owned a number of hotels scattered around the southeast. Mr. Faw was a good man. He looked like Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and for the fun of it would sometimes dress like the fast food icon just to see people’s reaction. Mrs. Faw was of Eastern European descent and she once gave my mother an eighteenth century lithograph of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. My mother treasured this gift and today it hangs on my wall.
At one point (prior to marrying my father) my mother was sent to a hotel owned by Mr. Faw in Oak Ridge, TN. At that time it was the only hotel in the city and therefore the temporary residence of visiting scientists from all over the world who came to do work and research in the government-run laboratories. My mother met a wide variety of people those years and at one point was approached by the FBI to help keep tabs on a visiting couple that the government thought had Russian connections. For this effort my mother received a signed letter from J. Edgar Hoover thanking her for her service to her country. One scientist my mother met and became a good friend of was a Franciscan nun from the Northeast. She taught at a university and had come to Oak Ridge to do some research. She and my mother remained friends for many years and I do believe that her friendship and that of Mr. and Mrs. Faw were what helped my mother in recognizing the beauty of the Catholic faith which, in turn, enabled her to make the choice to become Catholic.
My father and mother each walked their own journey of life and of faith (like we all do) but through their journeys and their own reflecting on experiences (i.e. use of the illative sense) they both came to belief in God and in the Church. I do not know all the experiences that added up to their each making their choice for faith. I never will and that is probably for the best. There are some things rightly left between the soul and God alone. These are and will remain the missing jigsaw pieces of their own journeys but I must admit that I do take great delight when I hear a story or memory shared that sheds a little more light on the journey each one had. These insights bring me joy and, I believe, are gifts given to help us who remain to continue our own journeys of life and faith.
Some of the best advice I ever came across regarding homily preparation was in an essay written by Annie Dillard. In the essay Dillard made use of the imagery of following bees as a way of exploring the adventure of writing. If you want to find a bee hive (and honey) then follow a bee. If you lose sight of the first bee then wait and when you catch sight of another bee follow it. By so doing you will eventually be led to the bee hive. The same is true for writing. When an idea or thought, no matter how strange or non-sensical it seems at the outset, pops in your head then follow it. Let the thought lead you even if you do not know exactly where it is going. It may take you to where you want to go. If it takes you only so far then stay there and wait for the next thought.
Two things struck me as I prayed over the gospel this past week. The first is when Luke tells us that Mary entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. I found myself returning again and again to that scene in my imagination. How joy-filled it must have been! Mary stepping into this house which for too long had been barren of the sound of new life, the sound of children. Elizabeth said that the child in her womb leapt for joy at the sound of Mary’s greeting – a confirmation of what the angel had promised Zechariah. What was thought barren will now bring forth life and it will be a life that, in turn, will proclaim the coming of the Messiah! For nothing is impossible to God.
