22 January 2012

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 100^th 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.