5 February 2012
5th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Job 7: 1-7; I
Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39
When
I was a kid, mom spoiled me when I was sick.
I’d lay in bed, and a steamer would be purring along humidifying the
air, I’d be wrapped in a blankets, and even get some Vic’s vapor rub worked
into my chest. Maybe because mom had
been a nurse, she also gave me a little bell to ring when I needed
something. We never drank pop otherwise,
but I had 7-Up when I was sick. And I
knew I was feeling better when I requested cheese curls and was presented with
a bowl. One thing I learned from those
days is that there are worse things than
being sick. –IF, that is, you are
surrounded by love and care.
This
idea that there are worse things than being sick is central to today’s
Gospel. Clearly Jesus believes that
also. The whole town shows up where he
is and he heals them, but he must not have gotten to them all because the next
day they’re all lined up again for healing.
He is nowhere to be found, however.
He’s off praying, and when people come to get him with the message that
lots of sick people are waiting for him and his healing touch, he basically
tells them that they all have more important things to do. What’s
so important that it’s worth leaving the line of sick people behind him
disappointed? He says that he came
to preach. He would heal from time to
time as a sign of God’s care, but more
important to him was getting the word out about God’s drawing close to the
human race and calling them to live as God’s family.
Really,
if Jesus had only healed, exorcised
demons, or changed people’s material circumstances, he would have been very
popular in his time but his impact on
humanity would not have outlived his generation. But though his teaching us how to re-imagine
God (unconditionally loving, drawing close, suffering with those who are
hurting) and how to re-imagine our life together (mutually serving each other
as a community of equals), he made a deep impact on human history, so much that
we, 2000 years later, are surely affected.
If someone is healed, they will get sick again. Like he said to the woman at the well: “After you drink your water you get thirsty
again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again.”
Part
of what Jesus taught, St. Paul truly understood. I found it fascinating to contrast Job and
Paul in today’s readings. Job is feeling
the burden of existence due to his real suffering. I appreciate Job’s lament being in Scripture,
but it’s not what I want to sing as my anthem.
Paul on the other hand, while also no stranger to suffering himself, is
on fire with excitement for his purpose in life. Job,
in his despair says that he is “like a hireling, waiting for his wages.” Paul also says he is like a hireling—he says
he’s made himself a “slave to all”—but he says it happily. What’s the difference? I’m sure I’m oversimplifying, but I think the
main difference is that Paul has integrated the wisdom of Jesus into his life.
The preaching of
Jesus is that if you want to be the greatest you must be the slave of all. We relate to each other by putting others
above us and serving them. All the while
experiencing our strength from God who loves us without condition or
limit. This sort of preaching is what
made Paul experience joy in being servant to all, and was what Jesus considered
more important than healing the sick people who were waiting for him. They were disappointed, I’m sure when Jesus
left their city with their bodies still sick.
We get disappointed often as well.
Maybe all of us would be less
disappointed if looked less at what we want and more at what Jesus came to
give.
29 January 2012
4th Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Deut 18:15-20; I
Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28
For
Christmas when I was fourteen years old, my brother who had just begun college
bought me a navy blue t-shirt with two words written boldly on the front: “Question Authority.” Whether he gave to me more for my benefit or
as a dig at our parents, I’m not sure, but I liked it. I think it made me feel grown up somehow,
even as it raised the eyebrows of a teacher or two, though no one, including my
parents, ever told me not to wear the shirt.
I imagine it would raise my eyebrows if one of our sixth graders came to
gym class wearing a “Question Authority” t-shirt.
As Catholics,
the question of authority is an important one.
I tell people that what marks Catholics out from other Christian
denominations is the centrality of the Eucharistic in our spirituality and the
ongoing relationship with have with Church authority. While we teach that, ultimately, each person
has to follow his or her conscience in making decisions, we also expect that
every Catholic gives the benefit of the doubt and deeply considers what the
Church teaches about a given topic, from immigration reform to Sunday mass
attendance, to abortion. And yet,
studies have shown that for Catholics, church teaching has less authority in
their lives than it used to, because what is highlighted seems out of synch
with people’s experience, and even more so, because the role that our church
teachers had in not doing more to prevent child abuse from occurring in our
churches. Having authority in our lives
is deeply important for guidance and for unity, and yet studies show that the days are gone when the majority of Catholics will
change what they do and believe just because a person in authority (like me or
Bishop Callahan, or even the pope) tells them to.
So,
how do we cultivate good trustworthy
authority? After reading today’s
Gospel, I asked myself “Why did the people say of Jesus that he was presenting
“a new teaching with authority”? Why was
his authority contrasted to those with the actual title of authority, the
scribes, who were the interpreters of the religious laws? It's not because he said "Hey everybody,
I’m the Son of God so do as I say!"
(In fact, that claim got him crucified.)
I think it’s because Jesus actually taught
about essential everyday things like God’s love for us, the need to show
compassion for others, the need to forgive as we are forgiven, the need to
reach out to sinners on the outside. All
the while the scribes would quibble about how many steps a person could take on
the Sabbath without violating the rule for Sabbath rest. And also, and more important, was that Jesus
acted on what he preached. After
teaching, presumably, about God’s love for all, he sees a man with an unclean
spirit whom assuredly most of the people there saw as a pest and someone who at
best could be tolerated. Jesus saw a
beloved child of God and helped him find wholeness again. It is THEN that the people exclaimed “What
is this? A new teaching with
authority!” He practiced what he preached.
Does
Jesus have authority for you? How does
that show itself. I thought of a few
instances in the Gospels where people clearly asserted his authority. Peter, Thomas and the Woman at the Well. Jesus asks Peter if he would leave him like
the crowds were after he scandalized them by saying they must eat his flesh and
drink his blood. Peter said “Master, to
whom shall we go? You have the words of
everlasting life.” Here, Jesus is authority for Peter because his
teachings ring true and connect him to eternal life. Thomas, after doubting the Resurrection, sees
the Risen Lord and hears the offer of Peace and the invitation to touch his
wounds.” He says “My Lord and my God.” Here, Jesus
is authority to Thomas because he sees that he is risen, and because he feels
Jesus’ forgiving love and offer of peace.
The woman at the well at first rebuffs Jesus when he comes to her and
asks for a drink. After their
conversation, she ran off to her village begging the people “Come and see
someone who told me everything I’ve ever done!”
Here, Jesus has authority for the
woman because he knows her so well.
So, do you believe that Jesus teachings lead to life? Do you believe that he is risen and brings
you the gift of peace? Do you believe
that he knows you through and through; there is nothing he does not know about
you, and loves you?
And
how about for us? Parents, mentors,
friends, priests, bishops, politicians?
All of us, really, should strive to be an authority for other. I don’t mean a bossy kind of authority—that
just doesn’t fly anymore—but to be people others look to for inspiration and
guidance. To be that bread for others we
need to follow the master and develop wisdom that leads to life, spread peace
wherever we go, and sincerely strive to know the lives of others, and above all
to practice what we teach. Then, people might still question authority
in general, but they will trust us.
22 January 2012
3rd Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Jonah
3:1-5, 10; I Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
Robert
Fulghum, the guy who wrote Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, told of
being in Greece at some seminar as a student, and when the teacher closed the
class by asking if there were any questions, Fulghum
said, jokingly, “Yes, what’s the meaning of life?” The class laughed, but the instructor said,
“Actually, I have an answer for you. I
was a boy during World War II when the Germans came to our country.” He took
his wallet out of his pocket and removed a small round mirror about the size of
a quarter. Then he explained "When I was a small child during World War
II, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day on the road, I
found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in
that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was
not possible, so I kept the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a
stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated
by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun could
never shine. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible
places that I could find. I kept the little mirror, and as I grew up, I would
take it out at idle moments and continue the challenge of the game.
As
I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game, but
a metaphor of what I could do with my life. I came to understand that I am not
the light or the source of the light. But light - be it truth or understanding
or knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I
reflect it. I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not
know. Nevertheless, with what I have, I
can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the dark places
of human hearts - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others seeing
it happen will do likewise. This is what
I am about. This is the meaning of my life."
I
bet that if we all just took a few minutes to ask God if there is a dark place
somewhere in the world, in your family, in your community where you should
somehow shine your light of care, concern, and love, that God would communicate
something to us. Do you ever do that—sit
quietly and listen to anything God might want to say? I suppose a lot of you are thinking, “Is he
crazy? God doesn’t just talk to us? I pray to him and hope he answers my prayers,
but I don’t expect him to talk back! And
if he did I think I’d say it’s just my imagination.
But
on this day when we hear of the call of the first four Apostles and the prophet
Jonah’s call, I want to be clear that God calls all of us, and that call always
has two parts. 1. “I love you.” 2. “I want you to do something
for me.”
How do we hear
that call? How do we know it’s God? It would be interesting to hear input from
all of you, as I am sure there are many paths.
For me, there are two main ways I hear the call. 1.
When others say things that stick with me and make me look at a
situation differently, I think God is often present—if God is all Wise, isn’t
Wisdom from my neighbor rooted in God?
Most intimately, though, I hear God’s call through my imagination. I might stare at an image of Christ or simply
close my eyes. I might imagine a scene from
the Bible like coming into shore from fishing and seeing Jesus approach
me. What would he say? “Come Follow Me,” for sure, but if I ask in
prayer “Follow you where? What should I
do?” can I imagine him saying something back.
Sometimes I can! Does that mean
it is for sure God speaking to me.
Certainly not! But it might be,
and often has proven to be based on the good things that have come from
following that imagined voice. If God
can speak to us through our relationships, through Scripture and the
Sacraments, and through our daily experiences, why not through our
imaginations? God made our imaginations,
after all.
We
are all loved, and we are all called.
And so, back to the question, if you paused for a bit and asked God if
there is a place of darkness out there where you can bring light, what might
God say?
Quote:
There comes a time in the life of every child of God when God
invites us to follow Him more closely and to participate in His mission. This might
require a change of career or at least a transformation of our present careers
into a means of service. No matter the career path we have chosen to follow, be
it in the teaching, medical, legal profession or retailing business, we have a
basic decision to make: to pursue it solely as a means of livelihood and
personal enhancement or to use it as a means of service to God and humanity.
8 January 2012
Epiphany
Matthew 21:12
My
plan this coming week is to visit friends in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas,
leaving Wednesday late afternoon and back by Monday night. I have a tight schedule. I want to stay with Bob in Chicago for two
nights, then the other Bob in Chicago, then up to Madison to stay with my
brother a bit, then spend Martin Luther King Day with a school teacher friend,
in Milwaukee, then to mom’s and back home.
Well, it turns out that my teacher friend does not have the day off on
MLK day as we thought, so that plan is blown.
I asked about a late Wednesday arrival as a new plan. His reply was “Ah…plans.” He was basically
trying to tell me that he has been unable to make plans lately because his dad
is really sick and so on any given day he might have to drive out of town to be
with him. Yes, we can plan for that, but
it might not happen. I really admire him
for this. For one, selfishly, it makes
me know that if I were ever in some kind of crisis he would drop whatever he
had planned and come to my aid. But
overall, I admire him for letting compassion and duty guide his life more than
any plans he might have made that would be more fun. It’s a sign to me of living out Jesus’ call
to be bread blessed, broken and given.
And it also confirms the wisdom of Mother
Teresa of Calcutta who once said, “You wanna make
God laugh? Tell him YOUR plans.”
The
magi whom we celebrate at Epiphany exemplify this virtue. They see a star, note its significance, drop
what they had planned and go to follow it.
And then at story’s end we have that beautiful and multi-layered line
that “Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for
their country by another way.” They
seek, they listen, they want to do the right thing. There is a total absence of what we see in
Herod, who instead of going out in search wants to pull more to himself, who
listens, but not to be led in the way of goodness but only to get information
that he can manipulate to maintain his power.
He does not want to do what is good for the world but what is good for
him.
The magi and
Herod truly to show us two faces of ourselves, one that is aware that the
meaning of our life is celebrating God’s blessing on us and cooperating with
his Spirit to bring more goodness into the world, and that other that forgets
about this bigger picture and is focused solely on “me.” It’s so easy for us to lose our God
focus. In the blink of an eye it returns
to being all about me. And really this
makes us much unhappier in the long run.
That’s why we need prayer, Eucharist, and a community to remind us about
the life God offers us when we receive his blessing and strive to pass it on as
generously to others.
On
Christmas Eve, in the morning, I was taking several Hefty bags of walnuts from
my yard to a friend’s house where I could dump them into a wooded valley. No one was home, so alone I dragged the bags
to the edge of the woods, and there I noticed a star. It looked like a Christmas ornament from
years past. Weather-beaten, it had
perhaps hung there for many years, looking like a shiny fishing lure snagged on the branch of a willow tree and
abandoned at the riverside.
Probably
because it was Christmas Eve, feeling sentimental and with the Christmas story
running a loop in the back of my head, I thought, “Here’s the star, and
nobody’s following it.” I wondered if
the magi’s life changed after visiting the Christ child or if the thrill wore
off after a while. And I realized once
again the effort that is required of us
to keep letting God lead us, and not just settle into a comfortable
self-serving way of life.
1 January 2012
Mary Mother of
God
Luke 2:16-21
Recently
I saw the movie Trust, about a
relationship between a father and daughter.
One of two children, Annie, 14, falls victim to an internet predator who
violates her horribly and yet convinces her that he loves her. When the father finds out about it he becomes
obsessed with tracking down and taking revenge on the internet predator. Once at a high school basketball game, he
seems someone in the crowd who resembles someone he suspects and attacks him
and starts beating on him to the horror of everyone there, including
Annie. Finally, Annie breaks out of
denial, but she has trouble taking it all in and one afternoon tries to take
her own life, unsuccessfully, in large part because her dad broke down the
bathroom door and found her. Amid the
darkness of the violation of Annie, the dad’s blind search for vengeance, and
the growing separation between dad and daughter, and the suicide attempt, comes
a scene of hope.
The
next morning at dawn, Annie gets up early to make some tea and notices her dad
sitting on the patio by the pool wrapped in a blanket on this cold November
morning. She goes out and asks him if
he is ok, her first caring words to him in months, and he responds, “Do you
remember the first time you went into this pool? You older brother was afraid of the pool, but
not you. You were fearless. You were amazing. I was in there and you jumped right in and
began splashing around and playing. It
wasn’t just swimming. You just had this
trust in people, in things, in the world.
It was who you were. God I loved
that. I was so proud of it. I envied
it. I was so afraid that you’d lose it
when you grew up, but you didn’t! And
then I failed you. It was my job to make
sure you didn’t lose it, to keep you safe.
What am I if I can’t protect you? To see you lose that confidence, to
see you question yourself... That the idea would even occur to you to want to
hurt yourself or for you to think for one minute that you weren’t as
beautiful…[tears]. I don’t know if you
can ever forgive me, Annie. I really
don’t know if you should, but I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.” Annie’s tears
joined his, she said “Daddy,” and they hugged their first hug in a very long
time and probably the most important hug of their lives.
On
this feast of Mary, Mother of God, we ponder the relationship between a mother
and son—a son surely whom she would want to protect and keep safe. She is a mother who will learn the lesson
that almost all of us learn at some point:
the world will hurt you and will hurt those you love, despite our best
efforts. We cannot control all things
and perfectly insulate others or ourselves from pain and cruelty. What we can do is to stand and sit and cry
with each other. A world without
suffering and cruelty seems beyond our ability, but we can prevent it from
being a world without compassion and love.
Mary will hold her baby not knowing what life has in store for him, but
knowing it will be important and she needs to love him as best as she can. She will hold him again, after standing
beside him on he hung on the cross.
She
was able to love so well, I think, because she had trust in God. The first three scenes of her life that we hear
of in Luke’s Gospel are Annunciation, Visitation, and, today, with the child in
Bethlehem talking to shepherds. She
first hears that she will bear a son by the Holy Spirit and should name his
Jesus. In case this seemed too wild of a
story to believe, her cousin Elizabeth greets her as one full of grace and the
mother of her Lord. And lest that
reality again faded from her awareness while looking at her baby who looked
beautiful, just like other babies, the shepherds come in. They are excited. They tell her that the sky was full of angels
telling them that this child, Mary’s child, will grow up to be the savior of
the world.
Honestly,
if it were me, I think I would have been just plain afraid to be this child’s
mother or father. What kept me from
being a better basketball player, for example, is that when I shot I was more
afraid to miss than eager to make it.
Thankfully, Mary and I are different that way. She did not understand everything that was
going on and what it all meant. We are
told two things in today’s Gospel about her reaction: she pondered it all in her heart. She had a sense of wonder about life and her
vocation in it. And more important, she
treasured all that she heard about Jesus.
That’s a very positive word. She
was not afraid. She was not timid. She treasured what she heard about her son,
and was confident because she knew God would stand with her.
On
the brink of a new year, can we imitate Mary?
Can we move ahead with confidence even when things don’t make sense or seem
bleak? Can we treasure what we hear in
church and know from our Bible. That God
loves us and is always with us. While
God clearly does not prevent all bad things from happening in the world, he is
with us to make us brave and compassionate, and gives us the strength to move
forward into a new year, whatever it will bring.
25 December 2011
CHRISTMAS
Prelude
On Christmas Eve I like to visit the nursing homes in town. I wander the halls, stopping into rooms with parishioners'
names on the door. This year, I found Hazel sleeping, so I nudged her and spoke
her name. She woke up and smiled when I
gently shook her arm, then fell promptly asleep again. We repeated this three
times and she was as smiley as ever each time, and as tired. I left her in
peace. Then I found Edith's room. Edith's husband Bob had died several years
ago and she took it hard but soulfully and directly. Two days after his death
she grabbed my arm and said "Holy *^*$% this is awful!" Now in the nursing
home the tv was on, an episode of 'Friends,' with
Ross worried about getting divorced too many times in his life, and using that
as an excuse not to marry. Edith and I could not communicate with spoken words.
When she first saw me she smiled, then soon after cried. Was she touched that someone from the church
had come to see her on Christmas Eve?
Was she remembering Bob? I held
her hand and spoke some words of consolation.
She didn't seem to hear and kept raising her left arm, pointing at
something. It looked to me like she was grabbing for the water glass, so I
grabbed that for her and she waved it off. Then I thought she was pointing to
the kleenex which I grabbed and she waved that off
also. Finally, I picked up that she was pointing to the wall and a writing
tablet for her visitors. Edith couldn't speak very well but her hearing was
much worse.
I wrote on the tablet. "It is Christmas Eve. I know you miss
Bob. On this holy day I know that Jesus is very close to Bob, and to all of us.
God Bless you, Edith." She read it, nodded, and cried some more. My urge
was to leave (like a lot people, I find it very hard to be present to pain),
and I had a great excuse: mass with the children in one hour! But I found the
strength to stay and hold her hand for a few minutes. Then she said
"chair" and pointed, so I got my knees off the floor, grabbed the
chair and sat. She took the remote control and started flipping channels, I
thought because the commercial on the 'Friends' network was a little racy and
she didn't want to scandalize her priest! She went through twenty or so
channels until she found a live broadcast of the pope's mass at St. Peter's,
just as the deacon was incensing the Gospel.
We looked at each other and nodded, acknowledging that it would be good
to watch this together. We heard the
Christmas story chanted in Latin, which made no difference to her deaf
ears. In her mind, she knew the story:
The census, no room at the inn, the birth, the manger and swaddling clothes,
the angel's proclamation to the shepherds.
After the Gospel was proclaimed, the deacon carried the Gospel book to
the seated pope who held it high and blessed everyone with it. I made the sign
of the cross, turned to Edith and we both nodded. Then I pointed to the door
and said I had to leave. "Thank you, Father," she said, and turned
back to the tv to watch the mass go on.
Christmas is a feast of presence and I cherish those minutes of
presence, united in our Christian faith and brought together by the love in our hearts and the
very mass that we will now celebrate together.
Homily
I
have a friend, Becky, who is a Catholic school teacher and a mother. I was very good friends with the man she
would marry while they were dating, and got to know her as a result. A year and a half ago, her husband died
suddenly, and she found herself in her forties with that tag reserved for older
persons and characters in the Bible:
"widow." She has
continued her career as a teacher and relies on this and social security checks
to provide for her family.
This
Advent a couple in her area contacted her school principal to ask if she knew
of any needy family that they could "adopt" for Christmas,
anonymously buying a lot of gifts for each person in this family. The principal gave this couple Becky's
name. When the principal first told her
about it, she was embarrassed and awkwardly agreed. She spoke all the right words about being
grateful, but was far from comfortable with the idea--uncomfortable enough that
she let the whole thing pass from her mind for weeks. Then, about a week before Christmas, the
gifts arrived. In the principal's
office, she scooped them into her arms and made her way to the parking lot,
passing her colleagues on the way. Some
saw her walking with all the gifts and asked her what they were for. She didn't want to tell the truth and was not
good at lying, so she muttered something that was thankfully inaudible because
it would not have made sense if people heard it. She caught in the eye of one of the teachers
something between compassion and pity that made her pick up her pace and get to
her car as soon as possible. And on the
drive home, she cried.
I
asked her what the tears were about, and she said that she didn't know for
sure. Those kind of tears come from a deep
place that words can approach but not surround. She tried, though, offering three possible
reasons: 1. because she knows
there are so many other families that could benefit more from the gifts than
they; 2. because she is in fact in a
smaller income bracket and these gifts made it more real, and frankly, scary;
and 3. because she didn't know what to tell the kids about where the gifts came
from, especially since one of them is already scared that they don't make
enough money. Then the next day, after
pondering the question more, she said that another major factor contributing to
her tears was the lack of control. These
were not gifts that she picked out or probably would pick out--they were given
to her with loving intention but impersonally.
To have intimacy taken out of the process of gift giving leaves us
feeling less than a person, more an object of pity.
So
much of the Spirit of Christmas has to do with reaching out to people in
need. Maybe it's because Mary and Joseph
had such a hard time finding a place to stay and wandered Bethlehem homeless
for several hours. We know in our guts
that Christmas is more than a family
celebration; it also calls us to welcome the stranger. Maybe we reach out to others in need because
the Word became flesh to gather us all into his family. Again, our faith confirms what our guts
know: that it is not right for some of
God's family to have all the good stuff while others go without.
And
yet, an act of generosity brought deep sadness to Becky. The giver is surely not at fault for
following a generous impulse to share.
In our broken world, we who have resources indeed have a Gospel call to
share with people who have so much less and whom we will never meet. But Becky's sadness teaches us something about
the glory of Christmas. In contrast to
the anonymous gift giver who gives things we might or might not want or need,
God comes to us as one who knows us better than we know ourselves, truly. What he gives is what we need more than
anything. He gives himself to us and
loves us and vows to always walk with us because now he knows what it's like to
be a human being like us. Far from just
dumping this gift in our laps and being never heard from again, God's gift begins
a process, a flow where first receive the blessing and then we bless
others. Sometimes blessing others will
mean sending a check to help feed people in Africa whom we will never
meet. Other times, it will mean
listening to the pain and confusion of a friend. And all the time, if we have the open heart
required to receive him, the Lord Jesus will be with us, giving us the love we
need to share, and blessing us with his presence so we can bless others with
ours. And that way, Christmas marks not
only the day when God became like us, but also the beginning of the possibility
of us being more like God.
We
can't pay God back for Christmas, but we can be more like Christmas
ourselves. And then if we cry, we will
know the reason. It is gratitude for being
so blessed and loved by God and invited to share in his life.
18 December 2011
Fourth Sunday of
Advent
Luke
1:26-38, The Annunciation
I have an icon of the Annunciation that the teachers gave me several
years ago. It shows Gabriel standing in
a very strong posture seemingly in motion toward Mary with his right arm
extended and his finger pointed right at her.
It would seem to be only ten inches in front of her face. Mary is seated, and she does not cower. She must have
been knitting because a needles and yarn is in her left hand on her lap and her
right hand is held up, palm out and chest high.
It is a strong but not aggressive or fearful posture, as if she is
saying “Whoa, let’s talk about this a bit,” and finally, “Ok, I am the Lord’s
servant, let it be done as you say.”
The seeming aggressively of Gabriel confirms my observation on the Feast
of the Immaculate Conception this year that the angel was not asking for Mary’s
acceptance. It was not a question; it
was an announcement, an “annunciation.”
What was really being asked of Mary was not permission but submission.
That’s a hard thing for me to say, because I don’t like the idea of
submission. It sounds like arm-twisting
and power plays are involved and the strong overcoming the weak, who have to,
finally, submit.
And yet, isn’t submission the essence of spirituality. As Jesus said in the garden, and as we repeat
each time we say his prayer, “not my will but your will be done.”
The problem is that it’s so difficult!
Our bodies train us to dominate and control whatever to we can, not to
trust the unknown. Plus, we often come
into hard times and challenges. It can
be very hard to trust in God’s loving plan for your life when you’ve lost a
job, contracted cancer, suffered the death of a child. Fear and sin can get the best of us and make
us ignore the gentle probing and nudging of the Spirit to continue to be
faithful and to trust.
The example of Mary can help us.
Her hand posture in my icon, it seems, can mean two different things at
two different moments in the story.
First, “Whoa Gabriel.” Second,
with just a turn of the hand slightly inward, “OK, I will let this news into my
life and trust it.” What helps me is to
be reminded that my life is about responding to the God who gave me life in the
first place. I know it’s bad news to our
egos, but our lives are not about getting what we want. Rather, they’re about discovering what God
wants and coming to trust over time that what God wants will bring us the
greatest joy and fullest days. Is there
a part of your life now that is being “announced” to you that you find hard to
accept? Do you think you pretty well
know what God wants you to do but don’t want to acknowledge it because it will
be difficult and beyond your control?
There’s a song that always gets my heart centered in God and ready to
accept what is announced. Maybe it will
help you also. Click here to see the youtube video. The
first verse and refrain: “Take Lord,
Receive, all my liberty, my memory, understanding, my entire will. Give me only your love and your grace,
that’s enough for you. Your love and
your grace are enough for me.”
11 December 2011
Third Sunday of
Advent
Isaiah 61:1-2; John 16-8, 19-28
1. Sometimes it really pays
to know the Hebrew Scriptures to get the fullness of what Jesus is saying. You might have recognized the beginning of
the first reading from Isaiah as the very words Jesus quoted from Scripture at
the beginning of his ministry when we rose in the synagogue, unrolled the
scroll and proclaimed, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…" Jesus stopped reading with the words that he
came to "announce a year of favor from our God." Though if you look at what is actually in
Isaiah, and what we just heard, that's only half of the sentence. Jesus stopped mid-sentence because he did not
want, apparently, to say that there
would come a "yom naqam,"
as it says in Hebrew. It was gently
translated for us today as a "day of vindication." I looked it up in my Hebrew dictionary. There is said that "naqam"
means "vengeance, punishment, as avenging yourself for crimes against
you." Do you see why Jesus wouldn't
want to read that? Sometimes we paint a
picture of God as one who wants to punish sins.
From what he read from the scroll, we know that Jesus does not see God
in this way and that he himself is not this way. He comes to be with sinners and heal us, not
to threaten and punish us.
2. Here’s a story found in
greater detail in John Shea’s Starlight. In the beginning the Great Spirit gave a gift
to all the animals. When they opened
their boxes all of creation tumbled out: plants tumbled out, trees tumbled out,
and rocks and streams. It did not happen
overnight, but soon everything took its place after all the animals opened
their gifts. All that is except the
seagull. He said to the others, “The
Great Spirit gave this gift to me. It’s
mine. I’m not going to open it.”
It didn’t take long for the animals
to figure out what was in the seagull’s box, because even though all of
creation was in front of them they could see none of it. In the seagull’s box was the gift of light.
Fox approached seagull asking
him to let the light out so he could take a burr out of his tail. Bear asked the seagull to let out the light
so he could get his hibernation schedule right.
Deer, with chipped antler, asked the seagull to let out the light so
he’d stop running into trees. Seagull’s
answer was the same: “The Great Spirit gave this gift to me. It’s mine. I’m not going to open it.”
They animals approached
seagull’s cousin Raven who was known for his street smarts, and Raven agreed to
help. He flew to seagull’s side and when
seagull knew Raven was at his right side he shifted his box from under his
right wing to under his left. And as he
shifted he picked up his right foot, and Raven seeing an opportunity placed a
thorn under the under the foot of seagull.
“Ouch” seagull said when he put his foot back down. “Oh, what happened?” asked raven. “I have a thorn in my foot.” “Gee,” said Raven, “I’d love to take it out
but I can’t see well enough to do so. If
you let out just a little light then I’d be able to do it.” And seagull opened the box just a crack and a
string of lights curled into the black sky and Creation was lit in
starlight. “Oooooh,”
said Raven. “The thorn. Take out the thorn,” demanded seagull. “Oh, right,” and Raven bent down but instead
of pulling the thorn out he pushed it in farther.
“Ouch.” said seagull. “I’m
sorry,” said raven, “I had enough light to see the thorn but not enough to know
whether I was pushing it in or pulling it out.”
With more light, I could do a better job. Seeing no other option, seagull opened the
box a crack more and a white globe shone in the sky. Creation was lit in moonlight. “Oooooh,” said
Raven. “The thorn. Take out the thorn,” demanded seagull. “Oh, right,” and Raven bent down but instead
of pulling the thorn out he pushed it in farther. “Ouch!!” cried seagull, and the box tumbled
onto the ground, the lid flew open, and a golden ball of fire climbed to the
top of the sky and all Creation was lit in sunlight. “Oooooh,” said
Raven. “The thorn. Take out the thorn,” demanded seagull. “Sure thing,” said Raven who bent down and
pulled out the thorn. “AAAAAhhh” said seagull.”
“There,” said Raven, “isn’t that better?”
That is why down to this day,
to remind us how difficult it is to let the light that is within us shine into
the world the seagull stands on one foot.
It’s a good story. It’s a good Advent story, in these dark days
waiting for the light. Waiting for
Christ to come is not just waiting for something to come to us from outside of
us. It is also very much letting out the
light that is within us to illuminate others and the world around us. When we are in sync with the Spirit of Jesus,
the light comes from us. When we do not
seek domination over others but harmony with others; when we do not hoard for
ourselves but share freely; when we have the grace to open the box of our
hearts in compassion toward others--this may be very difficult at first, but
eventually we will breathe a deep AAAAhhh of relief,
and agree when someone says "Isn't that better?"
4 December 2011
Second Sunday of
Advent
Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8
In his message to us this
week, Bishop Callahan referred to the “three comings of Christ.” I thought it was important to hear, since we
most often think of the “Second Coming” as the last coming. The first coming already happened, at
Christmas, was he was born. The second
coming is they ways that he comes to us now in our lives internally, in the
face of the poor, in the sacrament we receive, and in the many other ways we can
encounter the risen Lord in our lives.
The final coming is a future event that we say at every mass we await
with joyful hope.
I’m not sure many of us or
any of us really wait in joyful hope for the final coming of Jesus,
though. For one thing, most of us
associate it with a day of judgment, as per the Catechism, and maybe also a
time of destruction. This doesn’t have
to be the case. The second reading is
instructive on this point. People in the
first generations after Pentecost were clearly expecting Jesus to return in
glory. When he did not come, people
fretted and wondered why he was delayed.
The answer from the second letter of Peter is that he is delaying
because he is patient with us and wants us to be in good shape when he comes
again. This scripture has inspired some
theologians to speculate that the final coming of Jesus is when the whole world
comes to God’s ways together. One person
wrote that “when everyone at the same time does what Jesus would do and loves
like Jesus would love, then the world will just erupt into eternity and into
the eternal Kingdom of God.” On the
negative side, such an interpretation might make some feel less urgency about
getting one’s life in order, if Jesus wouldn’t come until everybody’s life is
in order—we shouldn’t presume upon the patience of God that the second reading
speaks us. On the positive side,
however, it lets us know that we have a part in salvation history and in our
good actions we are preparing the way of the Lord.
We read the very first
words of Mark’s Gospel today. “The
beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ…”
My bible teacher asked the class a question about these words: Are they the first words of the story, like
an introduction? Or, might they form the
very title of the whole Gospel. If they’re the title, then the whole
story of the Gospel of Mark, and the whole event of Jesus being with us on
earth for those few years, is just “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ,” the beginning of the Good News that Jesus came to bring to us. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News of Jesus Christ, continues
through us, through the Church and through all people of good will who act
as Jesus would act.
When I hear about
preparing the way of the Lord, and having every valley filled in and every
mountain made low, my first instinct is to think of my life. My valleys are the
places of emptiness where I could use the loving presence of God to fill
me. My rough mountains are sins or
patterns of behavior that prevent me from loving more fully. And that’s fair enough. But this year when hearing about filling in
the valleys, flattening the mountains, and making a straight path for the Lord,
I thought of Oskar.
Oskar is the man who
arranged the pilgrimage to the Holy Land this year. I have never met him, though I have emailed him
almost a thousand times between the last pilgrimage and this one. He lives in Vermont and from there books our
flights, and our ground tours. He has
tips such as avoid the Nile River Cruise or you’ll get sick, bring your own
toilet paper to Mount Sinai, and don’t forget to tip the sacristans at least
$40 each time you celebrate mass at a holy site. On the trip, he emailed me every day and
called the tour company to make sure everything was going all right. He even called Dave Howe over at Menomonie transportation
about ten times on the morning of our return to make sure someone would be at
the airport to pick us up. In a very
real way, Oskar made straight the highway for us to travel.
Because of Oskar, I think of these bible lines
differently. They are about what people have done for me
to help me live my life well and to prepare my soul for eternity. Before he died, my dad made sure I had some
good retirement accounts in order, planning for my financial future. Both my dad and my mom taught me to pray and showed me a hunger for
the Eucharist. I think of my teachers at
St. Anne School because when I graduated I knew two things for sure: God loves
me unconditionally, and I have talents that I am supposed to use for the good
of others. They prepared the way of the
Lord before me, so I could walk it.
And then, of course, after recollecting how people
have prepared a highway for us, part of being a woman of faith and a man of
faith is to prepare the way for others. Fr. Blecha, whose
100th birthday part is today (Sunday) from
2-4 in Charles Hall, remarked to me this week that he had received a good many
birthday cards and that so many of them recounted what a great help he had been
to a family or individual in the past.
He said that he really could not remember most of what people were
thanking him for. He said, “It really is powerful what we are able to do with our lives
to help others. What we might think is
simply routine or doing what we should do can make a world of difference in a
person’s life.” Fr. Blecha
prepared the way of the Lord for countless others is his long life. We will probably have fewer years, but our
opportunity is the same. How are we
encouraging others to be good, and encouraging them to see God as their loving
Creator and merciful friend? For them,
this would be preparing the way of Lord.
27 November 2011
First Sunday of
Advent
Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Mark 13:33-37
Two lines from that great
voice of Advent, Isaiah, stand out from the first reading: "Oh that you would rend the heavens and
come down, with the mountains quaking before you while you wrought awesome
deeds such as no one could hope for."
The other, "We have become like unclean people, yet, O Lord, you
are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands."
These two lines are in the
same reading, yet strike a very different tone.
The first comes from a position of desperation. I was going to say "impatience,"
but that might suggest to us something minor like waiting in line at the post
office. The prophet speaks of impatience
but it's an impatience borne of years of hope that God would act, that God
would return and his people would feel his closeness and power again. It's the prayer of a mother with a child who
has gone astray for years, despite all her prayers. It is the prayer of an addict who cries for
freedom regularly but the freedom still eludes him. It is the prayer for peace in so many areas
of our world where peace never comes and people live in fear. "Would that you would rend the heavens
and come down!" Would that you
would DO something!
This prayer might seem to
lack humility before the Lord, but if it comes from the heart and is borne of a
long time of waiting and frustration, it is a very good Advent prayer. More than anything, Advent is an honest
season. We await a fuller experience of
God in our world. Jesus was born
already, and Advent is not just a quaint recollection of how the Jewish people
waited for a Messiah and then he came--hooray!
Even with Jesus at our side, we can relate to the hopes for a Messiah
because they are hopes for what we still wait for: greater peace, greater freedom, greater love
and greater cause for joy. We can still
say quite genuinely, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
And then there's that
other line, "We have become like unclean people, yet, O Lord, you are our
father; we are the clay and you the potter:
we are all the work of your hands."
It shifts the focus from what we want God to do, to ourselves and how we
can dispose ourselves to receive and live out the plans of God.
I didn't think I would
ride a camel this month, but after watching many of our pilgrims ascend ten
feet in the air on their camels, the tour guide informed me that since I was
the group leaders he would give me a camel ride "on the house." Because I didn't plan on it initially, I was
not listening to the instructions about how to get on the camel or how to ride
it. The camel starts on its belly, then,
after, you get on, it climbs to its feet .
After climbing on the saddle I couldn't remember if I should lean
forward or backward as the camel got up.
I screamed to my fellow pilgrims--"Should I lean back or
forward?" Just in time I heard the
advice to lean back, and honestly if I had leaned forward I think I would have
flipped over the beast's head. During
the ride itself I was tense and stiff as a board, hanging on for dear
life. Fortunately, a parishioner was
behind me, noticing my lack of ease. How
she became an expert in camel riding, I'll never know, but she said, "Fr.
Tom, just loosen your back and shoulders and go with the flow--just let your
back move with the camel." I tried
that, and instantly, it was a whole new ride.
I took a deep breath, with my new relaxed body turned to the right and
so the Great Pyramid of Giza.
We are the clay and God is
the potter. So much of the spiritual
life is about yielding. Like relaxing on
the camel, our ride through life with God goes much more smoothly when we let
God lead and shape us in our present circumstances. We can rail against God for things being the
way they are--in the spirit of the first part of the reading today--or we can
accept that things are as they are and ask God to help us be as courageous and
loving as possible in coping with what is before us.
So, it's two prayers for
Advent that Isaiah offers us:
"Lord, I need you to come down and change things!" and "Lord, I need you to change me; help me
to let you form me." Through God's
help and our own increasingly willingness to let God lead us, may our Advent be
marked by God drawing closer to us and us drawing closer to God.