'The Ronald' Speaks

12th Sunday Ordinary

2008-06-16T08:11:00.000-04:00

12th Sunday Ordinary A –9 AM Mt 10: 26-33 2008

A little boy woke up during a thunder clapping storm. He cried out for his daddy. He dad came into his room. “Daddy, I’m afraid,” the little boy cried. “Honey, God will always watch over you and protect you. “I know, Daddy, but right now I need someone with skin on him.
Jesus who reads the human heart like an open book, knows full well how fearful we human beings can be.
He felt the sinking fear of his disciples when they were caught in a boat as fragile as a cobweb during a bulldozing storm.
He felt their fear when, with a vision blinded by the cataracts of apprehension, they tried to dissuade him from going up to Jerusalem where the nails of certain death awaited him.
He felt their fear when they abandoned him in his crucifixion like flickering flames extinguished by brutal gusts of wind.
He felt their fear when they hid behind a locked door after the crucifixion, where they tried to exclude persecution but only succeeded in confining themselves to anguished insecurity.
Jesus himself experienced fear that ran through him like an electrical current when, in the garden of olives, he asked his Father to allow the chalice of suffering to pass.
Yet in our gospel story, Jesus stands in the skin of his incarnation and urges you not to fear.
Because of the myriad of stresses of life – from the vagaries of the economy to the nightmares of violence, you may tend to seek a safe, comfortable place to avoid the unpleasant and protect ourselves from the horrible.
Yet Jesus continues to tell you not to fear.
Joyce Rupp in her book, Fresh Bread and Other Gifts of Spiritual Nourishment, reminds us that “Fear keeps us from knowing the beautiful, tender and good within us and others.”
“Fear,” she says, “boxes us in and keeps others out.”
Steve Martini in his novel, Prime Witness, has one of his characters say, “The first sign of fear is hostility.” This hostility, seething like a cauldron of burning oil, is directed not only at others but at ourselves, tearing away shred by shred our human potential, our self-respect.
Because of hostile fear, we don’t trust ourselves, we don’t trust others, we don’t trust God. It’s a desperate, maddening way to live. It most certainly not living as followers of Jesus who tells us not to fear.
On the other hand, fear is not always directed at others; rather fear is boxing yourself in so that you cannot reach out to others.
Fear is the illigimate child of trust; when you truly trust you give birth to courage.
Those whose holiness makes God in their own image and likeness commit the most unholy act; those whose holiness consists in worshipping a vengeful God blasphemes the infinitely merciful and forgiving God revealed by Jesus.
Brother David Standel Rost in his book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, states, “Faith is fearless trust.”
How often during his long pontificate did PJP urge all of us in the human familty to fear not?
HUMOR While sports fishing off the Florida coast, a tourist capsized his boat.
He could swim, but his fear of alligators kept him clinging to the overturned craft. Spotting an old beachcomber standing on the shore, the tourist shouted,
“Are there any gators around here?”
“Naw,” the man hollered back, “they ain’t been around for years!”
Feeling safe, the tourist started swimming leisurely toward the shore.
About halfway there he asked the guy, “How’d you get rid of the gators?”
“We didn’t do nothing,’” the beachcomber said.
“Wow,” said the tourist.
The beachcomber added, “The sharks got ‘em.”
THOUGHT Always live your faith with fearless trust.

11th Sun ord 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.006-04:00

11th Sunday Ordinary A –7:30 AM Mt 9:36-10:8 2008

The predominant symbol in our gospel today is that of calling. Jesus calling his Apostles.
In the context of our faith, our calls come from the Trinity dwelling within us.
The Father, dwelling within you, calls you to become all he wants you to be. The Son, dwelling within you, calls you to follow him. The Spirit, dwelling within you, calls you to a deeper, more dynamic faith.
Watch how these calls coincide.
You begin with Jesus, God incarnate. In following him you will become all the Father wants you to be which means that your life of faith will be more dynamic and will predominate your relationships with God, others, your world and yourself.
But becoming all God wants you to be through prayer and the action of following Jesus is not just for yourself any more than fire burns without giving off heat.
Jesus not only calls your as he did his first disciples but he sends you forth as he did his first disciples. He sends you into the fuzzy perplexities of your own emotional life. He sends you into the turmoil and the serenity of your intimate relationships, into the festering problems of society’s injustices, into the hazards of a culture that is godless despite its hypocritical claim, In God We Trust.
The death of C. S. Lewis on November 22, 1963, has long been over-shadowed by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the same day. While the anniversary of Lewis’ death rarely makes the headlines, the worldwide impact of this British scholar, teacher, and author continues to grow 40 years after his passing.
His books sell more than 3 million copies a year and the most famous, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles Of Narnia, have been reprinted scores of times.
Converted to Christ as an adult, Lewis put his keen mind and imagination to work in the service of God. As a well-known writer and speaker, he continued a simple lifestyle. Michael Nelson has written in the International Herald Tribune: “Two-thirds of his book royalties were earmarked for charities. He never traveled abroad, even when fame brought invitations to lecture from around the world.”
Lewis gave us the incomparable gift of a fresh, creative look at our fallen human condition and the timeless power of the gospel of Christ. He lived out the command to serve the body of believers through whatever gift God has given us by His grace (Romans 12:4-6). His example can spur us on to use our God-given gifts for His glory.

Using your God-given gifts is what Jesus expects of you when he sends you into the lives of others: a sensitive and compassionate service as opposed to a service given out of stern duty and unfeeling obligation.
John Shea in his book, The Spirit Master, says, “Compassion is the experience of feeling the other’s life as your own.” Notice the emphasis on feeling.
Adolfo Quezada in his book, Walking With God, reminds us that ”We need courage to express our emotions including affection, compassion and intimacy.”
As you respond to Jesus’ call and his sending you forth into the lives of others with their ravishing pain, their buoyant joys, especially those in your own families, ask him to help you to do so with genuine feelings of sensitivity and compassion that will leap into the hearts of those you have taken time to love.
HUMOR Usually when we think of calling, we are thinking of phone calls.
There was a series about phone calls to travel agencies.
One went like this: A nice lady just called. She needed to know how it was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:20am and got into Chicago at 8:33am.I tried to explain that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she could not understand the concept of time zones. Finally I told her the plane went very fast, and she bought that!
THOUGHT Always love with sensitivity.

10th Sun ord 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.005-04:00

10th Sunday Ord A 12:15 Mt 9: 9-13 6/8/08
Mathew, the tax collector, like many other tax collectors, had the sticky fingers of a thief. He would charge more taxes than stern justice demanded and then sweep the extra coins into the folds of his garment.
Besides this, Matthew was branded by the hot irons of Jewish patriotism as a self-serving traitor. He collaborated and worked for the hated Roman occupation forces. And while the peasants were forced to pay taxes from the backbreaking sweat of eking out a living, Mathew sat comfortably in his luxurious home, throwing sumptuous banquets for fellow scheming tax collectors and public sinners, for example, prostitutes who were also condemned by patriotic Jews as traitors because they serviced Roman soldiers
But on this occasion, a man sat at Mathew’s table who was neither a tax collector or traitor. A man who was condemned by Jewish religious leaders as a heretic: Jesus of Nazareth.
And so the religious leaders pushed the whining question with the force of unbridled self-righteousness, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
The religious leaders had deflected Jesus’ merciful proclamation, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
Jesus’ words are translated as gloriously as a decorative, medieval bible in the story of Thomas Becket.
The poet, TS Eliot, dramatized Becket’s life and death in his play, Murder in the Cathedral. You may have seen the movie, Becket. If you haven’t seen this movie, it would be worth your while to rent and watch it.
Young Becket and young Kind Henry II were almost as close as Siamese twins, interlocked in their debauchery, twined in their disdain of the Church’s moral teachings.
Then, through Henry’s influence, Becket was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury. He experienced a radical conversion. After that he began to confront Henry about Henry’s unjust treatment of the Church.
The strain between the two men broke into a split as impassible as trying to bridge the chasm between two huge mountains hundreds of miles apart.
Henry was buried in cascading desperation. His self-righteous words as violent as a terrorist plot rang out like the bell in the Canterbury cathedral: “Will not someone rid me of this troublesome priest?”
Four of Henry’s knights took his words literally. The descended on the cathedral one December evening, murderous intent flaming from their eyes, their swords raised in barbaric butchery, their loyalty to their king now a wild banner of assassination, fluttering in the winds of hatred.
Three priests pulled Becket back into the cathedral and barred the doors.
TS Eliot put these words on Becket’s lips: “Unbar the doors. Throw open the doors! I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ, the sanctuary turned into a fortress.”
The four knights murdered Becket in his cathedral in a bloodthirsty, self-righteous act of sacrilege.
Sometimes, like the religious leaders in Jesus’ time who thrust the bitter question about Jesus eating with sinners, you may be tempted to shut yourself up in your own cathedral, be it your home, your community, your school, your church, to keep out those you want nothing to do with.
But like Thomas Becket, Jesus demands that you, if you are to be his disciple, unbar the doors – the doors of your forgiveness to the sinners around you. In finding the strength and love to forgive those who have marred your life, you will find forgiveness for your sins.
Eugene Kennedy in his book Believing says that “an immature faith causes unexplained hostility and defensive cynicism causing withdrawal.” I would add a withdrawal like that of slamming the doors of your cathedral against others.
In other words, you need to be sensitive enough to allow people to get through to you and secure enough not to let them disturb your peace of mind.
Humorous story about sensitivity: Six-year-old Joey’s precious cat, Fluffy, died and was buried in a beautiful spot in the backyard.
That night Joey asked, “Dad, where is Fluffy?”
Dad, a man of compassion and sensitive to his son’s loss, replied, “Son, Fluffy is with God in heaven.”
Joey pondered this for a while and then, puzzled, asked, “Dad, what does God want with a dead cat?”

The thought I leave with you today is this: Always be sensitive to others’ needs.

9th Sunday Ordinary 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.004-04:00

9th Sunday Ordinary Mt 7: 21-27 12:15 6/1/08
It has been said that even the devil can quote scripture. In a Peanuts comic strip, Linus is watching his favorite TV show. Lucy comes into the room and switches the TV to another station.
“Hey,” Linus shouts, “I was here first so I get to watch my show.” Lucy screams back at him,
“Matthew chapter nineteen says, ‘the first shall be last.’” Linus whines, “I’ll bet Matthew didn’t have an older sister.”

It’s easy to quote the gospel chapter and verse. It’s just as easy to cry out, “Lord, Lord.”
But what about your commitment to your faith?
I don’t know about you but every time I hear or read Jesus’ statement about faith the size of a mustard seed, I stand back stunned into perplexing puzzlement about faith. Almost my whole life has been dedicated not only to living my faith but helping others to deepen and expand their faith.
Yet how much faith do I really have?
A mustard seed is smaller than a fingernail, as tiny as a baby’s eyelash.
But, for example, can I say to myself, Uproot yourself from your lethargy, from your indifference and plant yourself in the sea of God’s infinite love and goodness and my faith will make it happen?
But then, is it the amount of faith or the quality of faith that matters?
Listen to this story about the famous violinist, Paganini.
Paganini was about to give a concert. He came out on the stage and realized he didn’t have his very expensive violin, but an old one. He went back behind the curtain but he couldn’t find his violin. He came back out on stage and apologized for the rickety violin he had to use.
The he proceeded to play with such gusto that the audience was mesmerized. The blew the roof off with their applause. Paganini said, “The music is not in the instrument but in the heart of the violinist.”
This story challenges you to ask yourself, Is my faith firmly planted in my heart. Is my faith
planted like a mustard seed constantly growing and flowering in my soul as opposed to a faith that is brutally chained to externals like clobbering rules and suffocating regulations? Is my faith a love affair or a legalistic bean counting reminiscent of the Pharisees of old?
Somewhere between Jesus’ almost habitual exasperation, O, you of little faith and the spark of hope in Peter’s profession of faith, “You are the Messiah,” somewhere, somehow, Jesus’ disciples come to an enlightening realization.
Gathered off by themselves with Jesus as they often did, the disciples who had been accused of picking grains of wheat on the Sabbath, now feel another kind of hunger.
Out of the crater of their emptiness, they ask Jesus not what’s in it for us? as Peter had but, Please, increase our faith.
Jesus smiles. Finally, at last. It had been a long, hard road like those he had traveled up and down Palestine, but finally his disciples had arrived at the point of no return. There would be no more looking back to what they had left behind to follow him. They had put their hand to the plow; there would only be a moving forward from here on.
His disciples had finally come to the realization that the only way was the way of faith, even if that way led to the crucifixion. If their faith was sustained, the way would lead through the crucifixion to the resurrection.
For example, you may be caught in the crucifixion of a painful separation from a spouse or child or friend. But if your faith is strong you will eventually enter the resurrection of peace of mind and joy of heart.
The way of faith, Jesus tells his disciples, can be difficult. Sometimes your harvest will be a hundred fold, other times sixty or thirty fold. Not everyone you meet who calls out, Lord, Lord, will respond to your call to come to me.
Now I will tell you this, Jesus says, if your faith is only the size of a tiny mustard seed, you will be able to convert hearts to me as readily as saying to this mulberry tree, Uproot yourself and plant yourself in the sea.
It’s amazing how much good we can do, especially, for example, in preserving human life from the womb to the tomb, even if the amount of our faith is small, as long as the quality of our faith is pro active and outreaching.
Keep in mind what John Shea says in his book, The Challenge of Jesus: The mustard seed is not so much about the process of growth as it is the contrast between insignificant beginnings and glorious endings. His statement pinpoints the quality of your faith.
Still with the apostles ask Jesus, your indwelling friend, many times each day to increase your faith.
HUMOR
There was a barber that thought that he should share his faith with his
customers more than he had been doing lately.
So the next morning when the sun came up and the barber got up out of
bed he said, “Today I am going to witness to the first man that walks through my door.”
Soon after he opened his shop the first man came in and said, “I want a
shave!”
The barber said, “Sure, just sit in the seat and I’ll be with you in a
moment.”
The barber went in the back and prayed a quick desperate prayer saying,
“God, the first customer came in and I’m going to witness to him. So please give me the wisdom to know just the right thing to say to him. Amen.”
Then quickly the barber came out with his straight razor in one hand and a
Bible in the other while saying, “Good morning sir. I have a question for you..........Are you ready to die?”

THOUGHT Always pray for an increase of faith.

Corpus Christi 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.003-04:00

CORPUS CHRISTI 5/ 28/08 10:30 Mt 7:21-27
During the Vietnam War, some stray artillery rounds hit an orphanage. A number of children were wounded. One little girl was especially severely wounded. An American Naval doctor and nurse
were dispatched to the orphanage. They immediately went to the little girl. She desperately needed a blood transfusion. So they called together the children who had not been wounded and explained to them in halting Vietnamese what a blood transfusion was. Then they asked for a volunteer. The children just sat there in silence staring at the doctor and nurse. The one little boy raised his hand and quickly pulled it down, He did it again. Then finally he raised his hand and kept it raised. The nurse ran over to him. “What’s your name?” she asked. “Tang,” he responded. “How old are you?” she asked. “Ten,” he said. So they took some of his blood to see if it was compatible with the little girl’s.
It was. So they put each child on separate tables and began the transfusion. Suddenly Tang started to cry. The nurse leaned down and if they were hurting him. He shook his head no. Then he began to wail. The doctor and nurse were baffled. Then a Vietnamese nurse came into the room. She went over and in rapid fire Vietnamese asked him what was wrong. He whispered his answer. She bent down and whispered into his ear. Then Tang became still and silent. And the procedure continued.
“What did he say?” the doctor asked. “He said he thought you were going to drain out all his blood and he was going to die.” “Good Lord,” the doctor exclaimed, “how did he have the courage to do this?” She leaned down and asked him. Then she stood up. “He says, ‘Because she is my friend.’”
In our Eucharist you celebrate Jesus who says, I call you my friends. You are Jesus’ friends and Jesus is your friend.
And Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friend just as the little boy in our story was willing to give his life for his friend.
Joyce Rupp in her book, Fresh Bread, tells us that “Fear of facing our own inadequacies keeps us communicating on a surface level.” In other words, superficial small talk or chit chat about nothing really important.
I has been said that small minds talk about people; average minds talk about
events; great minds talk about ideas.
.An example of Joyce Rupp’s surface communication is this: a person’s low self esteem impedes genuine self revelation.
Let’s look at Joyce Rupp’s statement in terms of Jesus in the Eucharist.
Can you ever appear before Jesus Eucharistic or come forward to receive him without being aware of your inadequacies? Never! And not only your inadequacies but your sinfulness.
Yet doesn’t Jesus constantly say to you from the tabernacle and the altar, Come to me all you who are burdened? Despite the litter of your sinfulness, your slipshod inadequacies, your lonely failures to improve, your hit-and-miss prayers, should you fear to approach Jesus Eucharistic? Of course not. Jesus says, you are my friends.
Sadly, when you approach Jesus Eucharistic, the word, Judge, looms as huge as a black headline in a muckraking tabloid while the word, Friend, is the size of a microscopic footnote in an encyclopedia.
There is an old bromide that goes, A friend is one who knows your faults and loves you all the same. Isn’t this infinitely true of Jesus Eucharistic?
For example, Jesus knows how you rash judge others, how you have an exceptionally alert and keen eye for clay feet, how you sharpen the edge of your hatchet against the tall tree of another’s reputation.
But Jesus still loves you. And he urges you to hate the sin but love the sinner – in this case yourself. Otherwise you will be involved in a nice-Nellie avoidance of reality.
When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, don’t you want far more than the surface level of communication that Joyce Rupp talks about? Wouldn’t you rather have what Cardinal Newman describes as heart speaking to heart?
If you receive Jesus with a me-and-my-Jesus attitude, you will be like a self-enclosed fountain in a shoping mall, recylcing itself in a n ever ending gush, never breaking out to water the parched ground around it, but feeding only its own stone statuary.
When you approach Jesus to receive him, you need to bring the full force of your conscious gratitude to the act of receiving Jesus in communion just as a surgeon pays strict attention to the incision she makes.
St. Paul pulls the curtain back on the display case in which rests one of the most precious stones from the crown of glory –the sparkling gem of gratitude.
There is always a lot to be thankful for if you take the time to look for it. For example, when you get up in the morning, you can thank God that your wrinkles don’t hurt. Yet there a many people who are inflicted with inertia like a black hole in a galaxy.
Winston Churchill wrote a note to his wife which read: Thank you for being rash enough to marry me, foolish enough to stay with me and loving me in a way I never thought I could be loved.
Thanksgiving gets rid of the depression of the present and makes hope possible for the future.

HUMOR A little boy wanted $100 badly and prayed for two weeks but nothing
happened. Then he decided to write God a letter requesting the $100. When the postal authorities received the letter addressed to God, USA, they decided to send it to President Bush. The President was so impressed, touched, and amused that he instructed his secretary to send the little boy a $5.00 bill. President Bush thought this would appear to be a lot of money to a little boy. The little boy was delighted with the $5.00 and sat down to write a thank you note to God, which read: Dear God, Thank you very much for sending the money, however, I noticed that for some reason you had to send it through Washington D.C. and, as usual, those crooks deducted $95.00.
When you gather to celebrate Eucharist, come with an attitude of gratitude
so that your Eucharist will be truly a feast of thanksgiving for Jesus’ friendship and the friends with whom you celebrate Eucharist.

THOUGHT: Always strive for an friendly attitude of gratitude

PENTECOST 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.002-04:00

PENTECOST 5/11/08 7:30
A few years ago, I read a novel entitled Mosaic by John Maxim. The plot centered on trying to use people with so-called multiple personalities to train one of those personalities to become sociopathic assassins, feeling no remorse, no regret, no prick of conscience at all.
(I do read spiritual books too).
What made me think of this novel is St. Peter. I thought of Peter because he seems to hve been a man with, a split personality, a split which, I’m willing to bet, you can identify with. I know I can.
For example, there is Peter who, like a gypsy, left everything to follow Jesus but who whined like a spoiled child, “Now that we’ve left everything, what’s in it for us?”
There is Peter whose faith was as dynamic as lightning so that he dared to walk on water but whose doubt had the magnetic pull of quicksand so that he sank.
There was Peter whose confidence was as sturdy as a oak tree so that he bragged toJesus that even though everyone would abandon him, he (Peter) would be there supporting Jesus. Yet his confidence crumbled like a sandcastle in a high tide so that he ended up denying Jesus three times in a row.
Yet with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the split was healed and Peter was made whole so much so that, a few verses down from where our first reading ends today, as he stands up and addresses the huge crowd, 3,000 were converted and baptized that very day! It must have been as noisy as a livestock auction. Or as someone remarked, St. Peter must have had a water hose to baptize that many in one afternoon.
But the point of the story is the power of the Holy Spirit in Peter’s words.
(Makes me wonder about the impact of my own homilies).
That’s what the Holy Spirit did for Peter and does for you: the Spirit makes you whole.
Remember, for example, when Jesus was in the Garden of Olives, he said to his three chosen disciples, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”? And St. Paul echoed these words when he said, “That which I want to do, I don’t do and that which I don’t want to do, I do.”
There is a split in all of us, like two scorpions in a bottle turning against each other, and that split needs to be made whole. I suspect that there is a bit of Jekyll and Hyde in all of us.
And the Holy Spirit who comes into you as a fire, cauterizes this psychic wound in you and merges your flesh and spirit until you become whole.
For example, Bob Hulteen in his essay, “Nouwen’s Symphony of Movements.” quotes the wonderfully insightful spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, “The often painful paths to wholeness come in movements from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, from illusion to prayer.
And John Navone in his book, The Jesus Story, reminds us that “through the Holy Spirit we can internalize the values of the Jesus story.”
Isn’t this what you want to do? Make the values of Jesus your values?
For example, Jesus’ value of sacrifice even to the cross substituted for your annoyance at the slightest inconvenience. Or, for example, Jesus’ value of compassion replacing your icy indifference. Or, for example,Jesus’ value of forgiveness supplanting your steel-hearted grudge-bearing.
On this Mother’s Day, aren’t these the values you want to inculcate in your children as you try to bestow on them the gift of wholeness; a gift that is a challenge for your children to strive after even greater wholeness?
Jesus’ values are not a goal you strive after; rather Jesus’ values are paths to Christ-ientification. As St. Paul proclaimed: “I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me.” Jesus and we are one.
On this feast of Pentecost and every day, ask the Holy Spirit, dwelling within you, to help you to put into effect his inspirations, his power, his stamina, his energy so that you will live the values of Jesus as perseveringly as someone running a 26 mile marathon, that you will live his values as a whole person, keeping in mind the holiness is wholeness.

HUMOR ; An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest
in his paintings on display at that time.
“I have good news and bad news,” the owner replied. “The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.”
“That’s wonderful,” the artist exclaimed. “What’s the bad news?”
“The guy was your doctor.”
THOUGHT: Always strive for wholeness.

Ascension 08

2008-06-10T13:00:00.001-04:00

Ascension 2008 8:45

The story is told of how once Frederick the Great, one of the most
eccentric sovereigns who ever graced a European throne, was selecting a
court chaplain. He advertised for a number of candidates, who ascended the pulpit and preached before the court on successive Sundays. But the requirement was that
each preacher should not know in advance what text he was to preach
upon. As he was ready to ascend the pulpit, an officer of the court
would step up and hand him an envelope; within that envelope was a slip
of paper bearing a gospel text; and from that text the candidate must preach.

On one Sunday the candidate for the day was handed his envelope; he
ascended the pulpit; he opened the envelope, and took out the slip of
paper. But it was blank. He examined it carefully to see if any markings
had eluded him. But the scrap of paper bore not a single line.

Looking calmly at his audience, the preacher said, "The slip in my hand
says nothing. Now, my brethren, God made the world out of nothing!" And
he went right on to preach a stirring sermon on the creation.
Today on Ascension Thursday, we emphasize the word, ascend.
The feast of the Ascension teaches us a very important lesson.
The lesson is that we must spend our lives ascending from what is inferior to what is superior.
For example, we must ascend from seeking external pleasure to living with interior joy. We must ascend from accumulating things and wealth which never really can satisfy us to a stripping of ourselves of greedy egotism. We must ascend form routine even thoughtless prayer to the ecstasy of mystical prayer.
What is necessary is that we realize our need for these and other ascensions in our life.
Even more important is our faith awareness that Jesus’ ascension power is always available to us and always at our disposal.
For example, when we have inferior feelings about ourselves, Jesus’ ascension power is there to raise us above these feelings to the recognition of our priceless ness in God’s eyes. But through prayer we must open ourselves to Jesus’ ascension power.
Or another example: it is Jesus’ ascension power that helps us to ascend form a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence to a happy self-acceptance because Jesus accepts you, warts and all.
We need to use Jesus’ Ascension power, for example, to ascend from warmaking to peacemaking;
From prejudice to all-embracing acceptance; from selfishness to gracious generosity. This is your challenge of Jesus’ Ascension.
Ask Jesus your ascended Lord to help you to always rise above the inferiority of your sinfulness and enter into the superiority of holiness.
HUMOR
``` An Indian chief ascended a high mountain. All day long he drank gallons of tea. The next morning they found the chief dead in his teepee.

THOUGHT: Always ascend to a higher level.

SEVENTH SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T19:12:00.002-04:00

Seventh Sunday of Easter 5:30 PM 2008 John 17:1-11
Keeping A Promise
By Kirby V. Nielsen
Columbus, Ohio USA
My mother-in-law has been in the nursing home for two years. Every day either my father-in-law, my wife, or I go visit her to make sure she is properly fed, dressed, and comfortable. It was there that I met a remarkable woman I’ll call “Alice”. I noticed Alice after my father-in-law mentioned that she was an interesting person. She’s a very well-dressed woman in her 70s with an aura of intelligence and charm, which complements her direct approach to life.
As I talked with her an amazing story began to unfold. Many years ago she made a simple promise to a man who was afraid of getting Alzheimer’s disease: “If you ever get Alzheimer’s, I’ll take care of you until the day you die.”
When Alice made her promise, she didn’t know what keeping it would entail. She now comes to the nursing home each day to visit “Lenny”. She does so even though he doesn’t know Tuesday from October. He is poor, old, and in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. He has no family to visit him and no money. He has nothing left but the clothes on his back, an old record album, and Alice.
Lenny doesn’t say more than a few phrases. He can’t walk, feed or dress himself. He doesn’t seem to remember anything. All he does is sit in his wheelchair and repeat one or two phrases over and over, hundreds of times a day.
Alice has come to see Lenny daily for the last four and one-half years, driving 17 miles each way. She stays until she has fed him his evening meal, and made sure he is clean and comfortable. She also buys his clothes. Only the occasional day finds her absent from the nursing home. Perhaps in those few days she takes care of her own life.
Alice is as faithful to Lenny as any person could be to another. When you talk to Alice, with pride in her eyes she tells you about Lenny, who in his prime was a well-known local musician. She will play for you his record album— which Lenny and his band recorded many years ago. Although it was the only record he made, it is in fact a good one.
One might be tempted to think Alice is Lenny’s wife. But she isn’t. She is his friend. When the rest of Lenny’s world disappeared, Alice stayed with him just as she had promised she would.

In our gospel story Jesus entrusts his work to his disciples and prays that his disciples will be faithful to continuing his work. He prays, I have entrusted to them the message you have entrusted to me.”
Jesus the Vine depends on you, the branches, to produce the fruit of good works. Jesus also promises you as he did his disciples that he will be with you always.
Although Jesus isn’t even mentioned in our story of Alice and Lenny, whenever his work is being done, Jesus is present.
Alice was a disciple of Jesus because she continued his work of caring for the least, in this case, Lenny.
How seriously do you take your obligation of being Jesus’ disciple?
Is your discipleship being shown forth by your caring for those who can no longer care for themselves? For example, a lonely neighbor who can’t get out to the store. Or someone like Lenny who is in a nursing home. Or a child who is mentally disabled.
Every time you come here to celebrate Eucharist, you are presented with a choice: for exmple to continue to be a disciple of Jesus by continuing his work of caring for others or just to take care of your own private piety, your own selfish salvation.
When you come forward to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, you are saying, I will continue your work, Jesus, because you are depending on me.
HUMOR There was a group of church goers who established their own church and thought they were so special that they put out a sign, Jesus Only. They never reached out to the community at large but ministered only to themselves. One day a passer by saw that the first three letters in the sign had fallen off. The sign now read Us Only.
The thought I leave with you today is this: Always continue Jesus’ work.

ASCENSION 2008

2008-05-05T19:12:00.001-04:00

SIXTH SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T19:08:00.001-04:00

Sixth Sunday of Easter A 12:15 John 14: 15-21 2008

Joyce Schowalter tells this story:

My Aunt, Mildred Dungan, was born in 1898 on a farm near Sedan, Kansas.
Her family believed in hard work, education, honesty, and service to
one's community. To attend high school, she "boarded out" in a nearby
town -- it was too far to travel daily on horseback.

When Mildred retired after a career in Colorado, she moved back to
Kansas, to a duplex next to an orphanage. She volunteered to
tutor children needing help in reading or math. At first she was sent
sixth-graders. She solved kids' problems backwards through the grades,
until at last she tutored first-graders.

When one of her Black students arrived upset over being called racist
names, she held her own hand up to a white page, pointing out that it was
pink, not white. She then held his hand up to a black object, pointing
out that it was brown, not black. Her message: "Those silly names are not
reality. NEVER let them distract you from your potential!"

One morning a girl from the orphanage came crying to Mildred's door. The
little girl had fallen and ripped the leaf for her school clay project.
My aunt showed her how the leaf could fit together again, and the child
left for school smiling. The finished clay leaf came back to Mildred, and
was displayed in her living room.

For her nieces and nephews, she was a magical figure. She discussed the
most complicated ideas with us at length. She always said, "I'm so
impressed with how you're growing up!" She gave the impression that our
parents and teachers were perhaps a bit addled if they hadn't noticed we
were growing into "such fine young people."

When Mildred's life ended at age 86, her family gathered at her
funeral, exchanging stories of how she had inspired us. But the last was
yet to be told.

After the service, a young man came up whom none of us knew. He had been in
the front row. He told us Mildred and his father had worked together in Colorado. After both his parents were killed in an accident, he was sent to live in the orphanage next to Mildred’s home. Mildred became an ongoing presence in his life.
She told him he needed to be strong, to have courage, that he could
overcome this tragedy and build a positive future. And there he was,
living proof of her inspiration.

If Mildred could give you one message today, she would say, "There IS a
child near you who needs a hand. When you find him or her, don't look back,
or wonder for a second why someone else isn't helping. Be present in that
child's life, help that child to have courage, and inspire that child to face the
future with a desire to learn, work hard, be honest, and be of service to
their community."

In our gospel story, Jesus promises with eternal fidelity that he would never leave you orphans.
In other words, he would never allow an emptiness like a huge crater in your life. Rather he would always be a presence to you and within you, filling you with himself.

What a wonderful consolation! Jesus lives where you live and you live to celebrate it.

The message of Easter is this: Jesus, who rose out of death into new life, is not a dead memory but a living presence – a living presence within you.

And because Jesus lives within you, you are empowered to reach out with a loving hand of affirmation to others, especially, for example, like Mildred in our story, children who are in any kind of need.

As far as you are concerned, when, for example, you are feeling suffocating loneliness or abandoned even within your family or among people you know or, for example, when you feel shattered by the disappointment in the way your life has turned out, you are not alone, you are not orphaned. You have Jesus always present within you, closer to you than you are to yourself. This is what he meant when he said, I will not leave you orphans.

This is the consolation of our gospel story today. What a magnificent gift!
HUMOR about gifts:
On the last day of kindergarten, all the children brought presents for their
teacher. The florist’s son handed the teacher a gift. She shook it, held it up
and said, “I bet I know what it is - it’s some flowers!”
“That’s right!” shouted the little boy.
Then the candy store owner’s daughter handed the teacher a gift She held it up, shook it and said. “I bet I know what it is - it’s a box of candy!”
“That’s right!” shouted the little girl.
The next gift was from the liquor store owner’s son. The teacher held it up and saw that it was leaking. She touched a drop with her finger and tasted it. “Is it wine?” she asked.
“No,” the boy answered.
The teacher touched another drop to her tongue. “Is it champagne?” she asked.
“No,” the boy answered.
Finally, the teacher said, “I give up. What is it?”
The little boy replied, “A puppy!”

THOUGHT: Always reach out to help all children.

FIFTH SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T19:05:00.000-04:00

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER A 10:30 John 14: 1-12 2008
Story: Every week a beggar would come to a millionaire philanthropist and tell him his tale of woe. And every week the millionaire would graciously dole out enough to get the beggar through the next week. One day the millionaire took the beggar aside. “Listen,” the millionaire said, “you don’t have to tell me your tale of woe every week. I will always give you something. You know that. So a little less cringing, a little less whining and we will both be happier.”
The beggar drew himself up to the full stature of his ragged pride and dignity and said,
“My good sir, I don’t tell you how to be a millionaire so don’t you tell me how to be a beggar.”
This story tells you obviously that the two men have different life stories.
We all have different life stories, but our different life stories are influenced with the force of a striking meteor by one life story, the life story of Jesus. And the life of Jesus story has a common impact on our life stories, evoking the particular response of each one of us.
In our gospel story, Jesus announces with a flash of divine revelation: I am the way, the truth and the life.
His words, I am the way, the truth and the life signal the dynamic, transforming interaction between Jesus’ life story and your life story.
It is by entering the Jesus story that you come to the truth that is the way to living life to the fullest.
You come to the Jesus story in the gospel with your needs and interests and emerge from the Jesus story with clarity of vision to see your life and relationships with urgent honesty, and with values that empower you to live your life with shameless generosity as self-sacrificing as a mother giving birth.
Since Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, you need to approach the gospel story with an answering imagination.
John Shea in his book, Starlight, says our answering imagination responds to the inspired imagination of the gospel writer and expands the meaning of the gospel.
For example, the story of the woman who begs Jesus to heal her daughter. Too much attention is given to Jesus’ statement about not giving the food of the children to the dogs.
The deeper meaning that should come out of this story is that this story is about differences between Jesus and the woman coming together and being overcome.
Then you enter your life story: with whom do you have differences? How can you come together and find some unity, some togetherness?
It may be, for example, differences between husband and wife or between parents and children or between a divorced couple or between two classmates or between the piously lukewarm and the fanatical zealot.
You need, for example, to especially imagine how you can resolve conflicts or give yourself more self-sacrificially. You need to imagine where in your life story you can put the Jesus story into action.
There is another example of a gospel story which your answering imagination can probe for a deeper meaning.
It’s the Jesus story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof. The emphasis is put on the four people who carried the paralyzed man on the mat. What about this angle? Those who gathered to listen to Jesus blocked the paralyzed man from access to Jesus.
You enter your life story. How are you blocking others from coming to Jesus?
For example, is your piety so self-righteous that you demean the piety of others making them feel unworthy of approaching Jeus? Or does your refusal to forgive make others feel too guilty to come to Jesus?
Jesuit Fr Walter Burghardt in his book, Long Have I Loved You: A Theologin Reflects on his Church, says, Our people need to hear a word that nourishes as well as challenges them.

The Jesus story is forever like a challenger in an election race, challenging you, challenging especially your self-satisfied complacency, challenging you, for example, to be more welcoming to everyone, to have an all-inclusive love that treats a homeless person on the street with the same respect as you would treat a celebrity on a pedestal.
HUMOR
The first grade teacher was reading the story of the three little pigs to her class. She came to the part of the story where the first pig was trying to accumulate the building materials for his home.
She read, “... and so the pig went up to the man with the wheelbarrow full of straw and said, “Pardon me, sir, but may I have some of that straw to build my house?”
The teacher paused and then asked the class “And what do you think the man said?”
One little boy raised his hand and said, “I think he said, “WOW! A talking pig!”

The thought I leave with you today is this: make the Jesus life story your life story.

PENTECOST

2008-05-05T14:23:00.010-04:00

PENTECOST 5/11/08 7:30
A few years ago, I read a novel entitled Mosaic by John Maxim. The plot centered on trying to use people with so-called multiple personalities to train one of those personalities to become sociopathic assassins, feeling no remorse, no regret, no prick of conscience at all.
(I do read spiritual books too).
What made me think of this novel is St. Peter. I thought of Peter because he seems to be a man with two distinct personalities, a split which, I’m willing to bet, you can identify with. I know I can.
There is Peter who, like a gypsy, left everything to follow Jesus but who whined like a spoiled child, Now that we’ve left everything, what’s in it for us?
There is Peter whose faith was as dynamic as lightning so that he dared to walk on water but whose doubt had the magnetic pull of quicksand so that he sank.
There was Peter whose confidence was as sturdy as a oak tree so that he assured Jesus that even though everyone would abandon him, he (Peter) would be there supporting Jesus. Yet his confidence crumbled like a sandcastle in a high tide so that he ended up denying Jesus three times in a row.
Yet with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the split was healed and Peter was made whole so much so that, a few verses down from where our first reading ends today, as he stands up and addresses the huge crowd, 3,000 were converted and baptized that very day! It must have been as noisy as a livestock auction. Or as someone remarked, St. Peter must have had a water hose to baptize that many in one afternoon.
But the point of the story is the power of the Holy Spirit in Peter’s words.
(Makes me wonder about the impact of my own homilies).
That’s what the Holy Spirit did for Peter and does for you: the Spirit makes you whole.
Remember when Jesus was in the Garden of Olives, he said to his three chosen disciples, The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak? And St. Paul echoed these words when he said, That which I want to do, I don’t do and that which I don’t want to do, I do.
There is a split in you, like two scorpions in a bottle turning against each other, and that split needs to be made whole. I suspect that there is a bit of Jekyll and Hyde in all of us.
And the Holy Spirit who comes into you as a fire, cauterizes this psychic wound in you and merges your flesh and spirit until you become whole.
Bob Hulteen in his essay, “Nouwen’s Symphony of Movements.” quotes the wonderfully insightful spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, “The often painful paths to wholeness come in movements from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, from illusion to prayer.
John Navone in his book, The Jesus Story, reminds us that “through the Holy Spirit we can internalize the values of the Jesus story.”
Isn’t this what you want to do? Make the values of Jesus your values?
Jesus’ value of sacrifice even to the cross substituted for your annoyance at the slightest inconvenience. Jesus’ value of compassion replacing your icy indifference. Jesus’ value of forgiveness supplanting your steel-hearted grudge-bearing.
On this Mother’s Day, aren’t these the values you want to inculcate in your children as you try to bestow on them the gift of wholeness.
On this feast of Pentecost and every day, ask the Holy Spirit, dwelling within you, to help you to put into effect his inspirations, his power, his stamina, his energy so that you will live the values of Jesus as perseveringly as someone running a 26 mile marathon, that you will live his values as a whole person, keeping in mind the holiness is wholeness.

HUMOR ; An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest
in his paintings on display at that time.
“I have good news and bad news,” the owner replied. “The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.”
“That’s wonderful,” the artist exclaimed. “What’s the bad news?”
“The guy was your doctor.”
THOUGHT: Always make Jesus’ values your values.

FOURTH SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T14:23:00.003-04:00

Fourth Sunday of Easter John 10: 1-10 9 AM 2008
Story:
In her book, Lessons of the Heart, Pat Livingston describes an afternoon with four year old niece, Clare. Clare introduced her Aunt Pat to all her dolls. She told Pat the names of each doll and when they were born. Clare told Pat all about what each doll had done, when they were good and when they were bad.
The next day after Pat had returned home, her sister called to tell her Clare had drawn stick figures. One of her mother, dad, brother and Aunt Pat. One Aunt Pat’s head were two big circles.
Her mother asked Clare what the circles were. Clare answered, “There ears. Aunt Pat always listens to me. She makes me feel special.
The question this story brings up is this: Do we really listen to Jesus when he speaks to us through the gospel story?
Today Jesus makes a statement that is as pivotal to the gospel as the sun is for daylight. I have come that you may have life to the fullest.
Listening to Jesus’ words is not just hearing them by allowing them to go into one ear and out the other as though your mind were a wind tunnel.
You have to absorb and internalize Jesus’ words which, for example, form, energize, guide and direct the totality of your life and relationships, his words that make you more Christ-like.
Jesus not only says I have come that you may have life to the fullest, he is always giving you the power to seek fullness of life. Fullness of life symbolizes continued growth, for example, the expansion of mind, heart, will, character, selflessness, spiritual development.
But expansion can also go in the opposite direction, for example, the expansion of selfishness, spiritual mediocrity, inconsistency and indifferfence toward the fullness of life.
Then there is a middle of the road choice too, for example, you can develop to a certain point and then quit like an exhausted athlete or a lazy employee.
This may be the position many of you find yourselves in. For example, you expand your minds with knowledge but then you become self-satisfied and stop the process of lifelong learning. Or, for example, you expand your affection and then start asking yourself, What’s in it for me? Or how much can I be expected to give?
Doesn’t seeking the fullness of life Jesus promises and is eager to give you require your ceaseless, daily efforts to grow and expand in every area of your life? For example, the physical, mental, emotional, psychological, moral, social and spiritual areas. This is hard work. But isn’t this work symbolized in your taking up your cross each and every day?
The fullness of life is not automatic like pushing a button on a gadget. Rather you have to sacrifice your tendency to slough off. You have to roll up your sleeves and plunge into the escalating labor of becoming all God wants you to be. The paradox here is that the more you sacrifice yourself, the fuller your life becomes.
When you seek the fullness of life, you are not doing it in robust isolation.
Morton Kelsey in his book, The Drama of Christmas, says, Our growth into the fullness of our potential as children of the divine Creator can be measured accurately by the healing love and caring we give to others.
Ask Jesus to help you to listen and internalize his words so that you can continue in the process of becoming all you can be and enter more and more into the fullness of life Jesus so ardently wants you to have.
HUMOR
There is a humorous story about internalizing:
This is a story about a little boy saying his prayers. “Dear God,” he prayed. “Please help me to be good and kind. Like Jesus.”
Later he asked his mother, “Can I change my mind about being like Jesus?”
“Why would you want to change your mind?” his mother asked, perplexed.
Just in case I decide to grow up and be like daddy.”
THOUGHT
Always make Jesus’ words your actions.

FOURTH SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T14:23:00.002-04:00

THRID SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T14:23:00.001-04:00

THOUGHT An attitude of gratitude is the memory of the heart.

Third Sunday of Easter Luke 24:13-35 7:30 2008

The two disciples dragged themselves down the short road to Emmaus. But it seemed like the journey of the rest of their lives.
The sun above was eclipsed by the gloom of their disappointment. They stumbled over the broken syllables of their crippling despondency.
Then a stranger joined them with the fresh energy of one who could hurdle any obstacle on the way.After the two disciples opened their hearts to this stranger, he opened the book of their memory and with the colorful words of the prophets, he painted a complete portrait of the Messiah from the crimson of his suffering to the golden glory of his resurrection.
But it was during the breaking of the bread that the two disciples understood that the one who had walked along with them was in fact the Way.
It wasn’t until after the bread had been broken and shared that the two disciples realized that their hearts had been set on fire by the divine arsonist.
Just as the two disciples found the security of their faith renewed in the breaking of the bread, so too, you come to Eucharist to be reinforced in the security of your faith.
Not the security, for example, of an anchor that keeps you fastened in the same place, immobilized, going nowhere. Rather it is the security of a well-honed athlete who knows that the victory of the race is hers.
Kathleen Fischer in her book, Reclaiming the Connections, says, “In process spirituality perfection is modeled on a love that takes risks. It is a spirituality that is a challenge to adventure rather than a satisfaction with security or complacency.”
Sometimes, for example, you may go through the gospel story with a scissors and glue pot until you have pasted together a spirituality that is nothing but a certificate of security. The fact is that the only security in life is to learn to live with life’s insecurities.
Yet we all crave security. Sometimes seeking security is like wanting artificial limbs so you won’t feel pain. Sometimes you’re forced to undergo insecurity like the humorous story of the elderly woman. The story goes that a man left the snow covered streets of Chicago for a short vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel he
decided to send his wife a quick email. Unable to find the scrap of paper
on which he written her email address, he did his best to type it from
memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed
instead to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had just passed away
the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email, she took one
look at the monitor, let out a scream and fell to the floor in a dead faint.
At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the
screen: “Dearest wife, just got checked in. Everything prepared for your
arrival tomorrow.” Your loving husband.
P.S. Sure is hot down here......
More often than not the security of your faith depends on your willingness to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others.
Joan Puls in her book Compassion, say, “In our Eucharistic celebration, bread broken and wine poured out are symbols of the demands for our sacrifices.
If your Eucharistic celebration is to be authentic, you cannot, for example, come here to church and then go back into a home where there is vicious wrangling, vituperative altercations, steaming contempt, constant fault finding criticisms or the poison of the silent treatment.
If you truly recognize Jesus in your Eucharist, as the two disciples did in the breaking of the bread, you, as the Body of Christ, will, for example, bring peace where there is anger, compassion where there is suffering, forgiveness where there is injury, hope where there is despair, justice where there is indifference and love where there is loneliness.
The famous inspirational speaker, Leo Buscaglia who died in 1998, said, “It’s not enough to have lived. You must live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what you have for the betterment of others, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.
There is another humorous story about security.
A man and his wife are awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning by the incessant ringing of their front door bell. The man who is obsessed with security takes a baseball bat with him as he goes to the front door and opens it. Standing there was a drunkenstranger, asking for a push."Not a chance," says the husband, "it is 3 o'clock in the morning!" He slams the door and returns to bed."Who was that?" asked his wife."Just some drunk guy asking for a push," he answers."Did you help him?" she asks."No, I did not, it is 3 o'clock in the morning so I told him to get going and slammed the door in his face.”“Well,” his wife said, “that wasn’t a very Christian thing to do.”
“With all the insecurity in households today, I wasn’t going to take any chances,” her husband retorted.
“It still wasn’t the Christian thing to do,” his wife persisted.
Now the man was starting to feel guilty. So he went back and opened the front door.
He couldn’t see the drunk, so he yelled, “Are you still out there?”
“Yeah,” came the response.
“Do you still need a push?” the man shouted.
“Yeah,” came the answer.
“Well,” the man shouted, “where are you?’
“Over here on the swing.”

Ask Jesus your Eucharistic friend to empower you with his body and blood to act out your Eucharist by laying down your life for others as Jesus did by putting the needs of others ahead of your own needs.
Thought: bread broken is the symbol of your sacrifices.

SECOND SUNDAY EASTER

2008-05-05T14:20:00.000-04:00

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER – John 20:19 5:30 PM 2008
It was a hot Saturday morning. Because there was no air conditioning, the doors and windows were all open in the church to bring in a bit of air. Some worshipers out of courtesy gathered for the funeral service of an old man who had no family. They could also hear the auctioneer’s voice from the next building almost as clearly as they could hear their own minister.
The service came to an end. “Lord, may thy servant depart in peace,” said the minister. Through the window came the words, “going once, going twice, gone!”
This is the experience the disciples are having. As far as they are concerned, Jesus is gone.
The disciples are hiding out in the upper room. They’re hiding from the Jewish authorities. But even more so, with transparent predictability they’re hiding from their own fear. What will become of us now? they muttered to one another. We should never have followed him, one of the disciples says with more anguish than anger.
Their emotions are running the gamut: from uneasiness to worry to dread to fear and then to turmoil. The mood is like a tornado swirling before it hits its peak of destruction. Finally one of the disciples ties this mix of emotions together like stitching the final thread into a multicolored quilt. I miss him, she says with fierce modesty, I feel so lonely. He filled my every day with his presence and now there is nothing but a void. When he was with us, everything seemed possible. Now nothing seems attainable.
As if directed by a cantor, they all break out in a chorus of response that, yes, it is loneliness that is cutting through their hearts like the nails that pierced Jesus’ hands and feet.

What the disciples are experiencing is this disconnectedness from Jesus. Anyone who has had a relationship that disintegrated knows this feeling with all its nail-piercing hurt and agonizing pain all too well.
But then there is the good news that is refreshingly devoid of wishful thinking. Unlike human relationships that break up, Jesus maintains his relationship by coming and standing in the midst of his disciples. And with the keen insight of divine wisdom, Jesus knows the turmoil of his disciples’ emotions. So he says to them, “Peace be with you.”
It’s not the kind of peace described in Steve Shagan’s novel, The Circle, as the peace that comes from selling and buying of arms to maintain the appearance of harmony. It’s not the world’s peace which is the absence of conflict rather it is the peace of Jesus which is the presence of collaboration.
Jesus’ peace scatters the gloom of loneliness like sunlight dispels darkness.
John Powell says in his book , Happiness Is An Inside Job, For those who accept themselves, being alone is peaceful solitude; for those who don’t accept themselves, solitude is painful loneliness. How essential accepting yourself is if you are suffering from loneliness even within marriage.
If you believe that Jesus is not only risen out of death but is alive within you, living in you, first, you will never be lonely, no matter what disasters strike down your relationships with others. And secondly, you will always be at peace, no matter how many people try to disrupt your life, your plans, your dreams, your joys.
But you must believe that Jesus the resurrected Christ is living in you. You must believe this with your whole heart and mind and soul and with all the strength of your faith.
If you do believe that Jesus the resurrected Lord is living within you, then you, like the first disciples, will go out to others. You will bring to them the loving good news that says to everyone around you, I can raise you up to a new life. A new life of faith, hope, optimism, joy, courage, love, resiliency but most of all peace. Never again will you doubt your faith in cringing loneliness, as Thomas did, because you will believe with unctuous passion that Jesus, who is your Peace, is alive within you.

HUMOR: A salesman was in the country visiting clients and over a couple of days he had to drive down the same dusty road.
Each time he drove down the road he noticed that farmer on one farm was standing in his field with his hands in his pockets looking up at the sky. The salesman did not think much of it the first time, but every time he went down the road, the farmer was always there. Eventually his curiosity got the better of him so he pulled into the farm to find out what was going on.
As he got out of the car he was met by the farmer’s wife.
“Ma’am,” began the salesman, “our country is in dire economic straits and our farmers need to be working hard. But this past few days I have noticed the farmer standing around in his field doing nothing. Can you please explain to me what is going on?”
“Well”, replied the farmer’s wife, “the man in the field is my husband.”
“Yes, but why is he not working?” demanded the salesman.
“He wants to get himself a Nobel Peace Prize” came the reply.
“A Nobel Peace Prize?!!” exclaimed the salesman.
“Yes.” replied the farmer’s wife. “The other day on the news they said that were going to give a Nobel Peace Prize to some one outstanding in his field!”

THOUGHT: Always choose to be peacemakers.

EASTER SUNDAY

2008-05-05T14:19:00.001-04:00

EASTER Sunday 12:15 2008 3/23/08
When I was 13 or 14 years old, I thought I would like to be a writer. With the guidance of two older students, I started to keep notebooks. In them I wrote down thoughts and ideas from my readings, reactions to what I had read, my own thoughts on things and events, some lines that I thought were pretty well written either for their content or their style. As time drifted on I decided that maybe I was just too ordinary to be a writer. Now at a more mellow age and with some experience behind me, I realize that ordinariness is the essential quality of a writer.
When I first took up this craft full-time, I didn’t realize how much time you have to spend alone. And that is exactly how it has to be, because it takes a long, long time to discipline promiscuous words into an approximation of what you have in your head. And if it is something in your heart you want to express, that takes even longer and often involves intense emotion. It was Mark Twain, I think, who said the difference between the precise word and the slipshod word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
One of the reasons I write is to be able to keep the thoughts and insights that come from my observations and to make creative connections whenever I can. And a second reason is to share these thoughts and insights with people who might be interested. Sometimes I think I write to preserve my sanity for just one more day.
For example, I see a mother with her little daughter on her lap. And the mother is singing, “Mary had a little lamb.” Suddenly I realize that a hymn to be sacred doesn’t have to depend on the words but on the person who is singing what and to whom and why. “Mary had a little lamb” can be a far more powerful hymn of praise and beauty than anything in our hymnals. And I make the connection with something I read about Jesus’ parables: that not once in anyone of his parables does Jesus ever mention God. And I make a further connection that what we call secular or profane is really shot through with the sacred because Jesus became human. Then I write something of greater length explaining my insight, hoping that some people might want to share it with me.
One time a young person asked me, “What is the essential characteristic of a writer?” About the only thing I could say in response was that for me it is in noticing God in the ordinary stuff of life that makes me want to write. If I don’t write about it, the wonder and the glory of simple moments will disappear. If I do write about it, sometimes the sacred secrets of events reveal themselves to me and as a result to others. I am convinced, however, that you do not have to be a writer to share your insights and wisdom with others. I think you do this day in and day out in your ordinary conversations.
For example, a mother was driving her second grade daughter home from parochial school.
Her daughter said, “Mommy, do you know that in public school, you can’t even mention God or Jesus?” “Yes I do, dear.” “And do you know that in our Catholic school, we can say God and Jesus all we want?” “Yes I do, honey.” There was a long moment of silence, as they little girl was lost in her thoughts. Then she said, “Mommy, when I grow up, I’m going to have two children. And I’m going to call one God and the other one Jesus. Then I’m going to send both of them to public school.

I have given you this brief autobiographical resume on Easter Sunday because as I was preparing my homily, I was wondering what Mary Magdelene would have written about her Easter experience had she kept a journal or a diary.
She may have written something like this:
This morning I had an experience that I can find no words for. All I can say is that it was comparable to the experience I had when Jesus the Galilean forgave me my sins because, as he said, I loved so much. He did not crush and extinguish the flames of my love. Rather he redirected those flames that I might ignite the hearts of others to love him. It was this love that prompted me to go to the tomb to anoint the body of the man I loved as I had never loved anyone in my life.
I did such a stupid thing. I was crying and, blinded by my tears, I mistook Jesus now risen out of death for the gardener. Now I realize that it is only through tears that I could ever have finally recognized Jesus for who he is. My tears of sorrow were turned into tears of joy when he called me by name. The man I thought was the gardener said to me, “Mary.” In that moment I knew who he really and truly was. I should have remembered how many times he said to us, I will be put to death but on the third day I will rise.
As I look back now at how I thought Jesus was the gardener, Jesus must have stifled a laugh. And if I know him at all, he wanted to shout, “Surprise!” But he didn’t even though he had spent his whole teaching mission revealing God to us as the God of surprises. However it was the same Jesus of the meek and humble heart I encountered this morning.
Now upon reflection, I realize that Jesus, in allowing me to mistake him for the gardener, was telling me that in his resurrected life he would be identified with each person I encountered, whether a humble gardener or a wealthy merchant.
I’m not sure if the others believed my words when I told them that I saw the Master risen out of death, alive. But I’m willing to wager that my exhilaration and joy convinced them.
And, somehow, I believe that the exhilaration and joy of all of us will convince people down through the ages that he who was crucified is now alive and living in them.
For now I am packing. Jesus, now the risen Lord, is sending us to the four corners of the earth and I must do my share. I believe that all his followers down through the ages will do whatever they can to share the good news, He is risen and he lives within us! And I also believe that they will live those words in their loving service to others because Jesus told us that what we do for others we are doing for him.

Perhaps you can take out a piece of paper and write down your thoughts and reactions to the Easter feast, to the Resurrection of Jesus. When you do, you will be giving concrete form to what you are feeling.

HUMOR: A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word processor. Her grandfather asked her what she was writing. She answered that she was writing a story.
“What’s it about?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “You know I can’t read.”

THOUGHT: Always externalize your religious experiences.

PALM SUNDAY 2008

2008-03-10T06:01:00.000-04:00

Palm Sunday 2008

There is a story about a six-year-old granddaughter Sarah who was visiting her grandparents. Sarah’s grandparents are a wonderful couple who have been happily married for over 40 years. They have just moved into their dream retirement home. They love each other very much, but on this particular day when Sarah was there for her visit, they were still in the process of moving and arranging furniture.They were trying to move a large chair through a narrow doorway? and sometimes when a husband and wife try to move a large chair through a narrow doorway, they (how shall I put this?), well? they get a little frustrated and they say things to each other in a different sounding tone of voice than they normally use, things like? "Watch it! Watch it! Don't put it down! Turn it to the left! I said ?the left'! Lift it higher! Hold it up! Twist it this way!"Well, as this husband and wife were moving the chair, trying to maneuver it through the door and shouting instructions to each other, six-year-old Sarah suddenly ran up to them. She held both hands up in the air to get their attention and said, "Stop! Wait a minute! We need to talk. I need to say something to you!" They stopped and she put her hands on her hips and said, "Now, you two are just going to have to learn how to get along? Now, I know your temperatures go up every now and then, but you have to learn how to deal with that and get along with each other!""Oh, Sarah," her grandmother said, (chuckling within), "We love each other dearly. We weren't really fussing." "Well, it sounded like fussing to me," Sarah responded. "Oh, no," they said, "We love each other so much."Sarah’s grandparents began to demonstrate their love by hugging and kissing and patting each other affectionately and saying, "Look, Sarah. See how much we love each other?" And Sarah said, "Now that's the way it's supposed to be!"
I find at times that I can ponder the Passion story as an historical event back then, 2000 years ago. My reaction is that of sadness, sorrow and regret for my sins. But then I recognise that this is strictly a me-and-my-Jesus reaction. A sad privitizing of my beliefs.
I realize that I must expand my consciousness from a one-on-one reaction to include all those who are suffering. I must expand my consciousness because Jesus suffered and died for everyone out of boundless love. And commanded us to love one another as he loves us just as Sarah’s grandparents loved each other. I must expand my consciousness because Jesus is still being crucified in all those who suffer.

We all suffer in ways as different as the colors in a spectrum. In general we all suffer the pangs of reality. In particular some suffer physically. Some suffer emotionally or psychologically. Some suffer in interpersonal relationships. Some suffer from unfulfilled dreams and underachievement. Some suffer spiritually anywhere from neurotic scrupulosity to a devil-may-care indifference. Some suffer in quiet desperation and some suffer in loud rebellion against God.

What is Jesus’ passion and death saying to you today here and now in your everyday life? Jesus passion and death is asking you, Will you, one, find out who is suffering? And, two, will you do something to alleviate the sufferings in those around you?

Once you take these two steps, Jesus’ passion and death will no longer just be an historical event back then. His passion and death will be a living reality guiding and directing your relationships with those who are suffering, especially those in your own family.

GOOD FRIDAY 2008

2008-03-10T05:55:00.002-04:00

GOOD FRIDAY 2008STORY: A young man told the following story:
In their later years, both my mom and dad were finished living on their own and now lived in a life-care retirement center. Partially due to the stress of my mom's Alzheimer's
condition, my dad became ill and was no longer able to care for her.
They lived in separate rooms yet were together as much as they could be.
They loved each other so much. Hand-in-hand, those silver-haired lovers
would stroll the halls, visiting their friends, passing out love. They
were the "romantics" of the retirement center.

When I realized that my mother's condition was worsening, I wrote her a
letter of acknowledgment. I told her how much I loved her. I
apologized for my orneriness when I was growing up. I told her that she
was a great mother and I was proud to be her son. I told her things I
had wanted to say for a long time but had been too stubborn to say until
I realized she might not be in a position to comprehend the love behind
the words. It was a detailed letter of love and of completion. My dad
told me she often spent hours reading and re-reading that letter.

It saddened me to know that my mom no longer knew I was her son. As we finished our visit, She would often ask, "Now, what was your name?" and I would proudly reply
that my name was Larry and I was her son. She would smile and reach for
my hand. I wish I could once again experience that special touch.

On one of my visits, I stopped by the local malt shop and bought my
mother and father each a strawberry malt. I stopped by her room first,
re-introduced myself to her, chatted for a few minutes and then took the
other strawberry malt to my dad's room.

By the time I returned, she had almost finished the malt. She had lain
down on the bed for a rest. She was awake. We both smiled when she saw
me come into the room.

Without a word, I pulled a chair close to the bed and reached over to
hold her hand. It was a divine connection. I silently affirmed my love
for her. In the quiet I could feel the magic of our unconditional love,
even though I knew she was quite unaware of who was holding her hand.
Or was she holding my hand?

After about 10 minutes, I felt her give my hand a tender squeeze...three
squeezes. They were brief and instantly I knew what she was saying
without having to hear any words.

The miracle of unconditional love is nurtured by the power of our infinitely loving God
and our own imagination.

I couldn't believe it! Even though she could no longer express her
innermost thoughts like she used to, no words were necessary. It was as
though she came back for a brief moment.

Many years ago when my father and she were dating, she had invented this
special way of telling my dad, "I love you!" while they were sitting in
church. He would softly give her hand two squeezes to say, "Me too!"

I gave her hand two soft squeezes. She turned her head and gave me a
loving smile I shall never forget. Her countenance radiated love.

I remembered her expressions of unconditional love for my father, our
family and her countless friends. Her unconditional love continues to profoundly
influence my life.

Another eight to ten minutes went by. No words were spoken.

Suddenly, she turned to me and quietly spoke these words: "It's
important to have someone who loves you."

I wept. They were tears of joy. I gave her a warm and tender hug, told
her how very much I loved her and left.

My mother finished her life and passed away shortly after that.

Very few words were spoken that day; those she spoke were words of
gold. Even though she had died, our unconditional love for each other would never be finished. I will always treasure those special moments.

This beautiful story of unconditional love between son and mother is a retelling of the story we are commemorating today.
The story of Jesus’ unconditional love for each one of us by laying down his life for us.
Years ago the Good Friday preacher would dwell on Jesus’ physical sufferings.
The preacher would terrorize the people, describing Jesus’ sufferings with the most gory and bloody details.
The people would shudder as if caught in a winter storm at the preacher’s grotesque delineations of Jesus’ gaping wounds, his suffocating shortness of breath, his desert sand thirst, his plunging exhaustion, his ghostly crying out from the cross.
But today the focus is more one Jesus’ motive for his suffering and death, the theological insight behind his physical sufferings.
Jesus’ motivation is summed up in his tightly woven words, There is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends.
You might wonder why God demanded Jesus’ crucifying death. But God did not make such a demand. Rather God asked Jesus to spread the Kingdom no matter what the cost. And, as it turned out, the cost was Jesus’ life, given up on the cross.
Jesus did not enter into his crucifixion with the total detachment as God. Rather Jesus’ bloody sweat in the Garden of Olives testifies to the fact that Jesus underwent his crucifixion in the totality of his humanness.
Jesus crucifixion was not as easy as welcoming the little children. Rather Jesus’ crucifixion was as torturous as his crown of thorns, as the nails driven into his flesh.
But all Jesus’ sufferings sprang, as a flower from a seed, out of his unconditional love for us.
Today we are not looking back through the dim centuries at Jesus crucified as if searching historical archives.
Rather as Brenden Manning says in his book, The Signature of Jesus, “Jesus’ message to us from the cross is: ‘See how much I love you; see how much you are to love one another.’”
What we celebrate on this Good Friday is Jesus’ challenge to make God’s love visible and palpable through our love for each other.
The challenge of Good Friday was summed up by the famous inspirational speaker Leo Buscaglia. He said, “It's not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of our world, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.”
Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “As gold is purified by fire so love is enriched by sacrifice.”
Today, on this Good Friday, you leave our church renewed in your determination to lay down you life out of self-sacrificing, unconditional love for others, otherwise Good Friday is merely a commemoration, not a challenge, Good Friday is just a sentimental journey not a radical life-changing experience.
Lord Jesus crucified, grant us the power and strength to always lay down our lives for others out of unconditional love.

LOVE CONQUERS DEATH

2008-03-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

FIFTH Sunday Lent A Lazarus 10:30 2008 John 11: 1-45

There’s a humorous story about a fourth grade class who had a class picture taken.
The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture. “Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, ‘There’s Jennifer; she’s a lawyer,’ or ‘That’s Michael. He’s an actor.’ A small voice at the back of the room rang out, “And there’s teacher. She’s dead.”
Of course there is nothing humorous about the death of Jesus’ close friend Lazarus whom Jesus loved.
You might wonder why, after Jesus received the message that the one he loved was ill, why he decided to “stay on.”
If Jesus ran to Lazarus and kept him from dying, then the glorious revelation would never have been made, viz., that love conquers death.
This insight that love conquers death was pinpointed in a magnificently beautiful statement of St. John Chysostom way back in the 4th century.
He said, “Those we have loved and lost to death are no longer where they were; they are now wherever we are.”
For me, that statement is the most consoling I have ever read on death. Let me repeat it.
(REPEAT)
One of the most human statements about Jesus appears in this gospel story. “And Jesus wept.”
Never forget for a moment that Jesus came to reveal God to us.
For those who think that God, for example, is a far away deity, more distant than a space shuttle encircling the earth, disinterested in what goes on in their lives, that God has a total inability to feel any emotion at all, this one statement – and Jesus wept—tells you that our God is a God who weeps.
Our God weeps, for example, with you when you are heartbroken over the death of a loved one.
Our God weeps, for example, with you when you slip and fall in your struggle to climb the mount of holiness.
Our God weeps with you, for example, when love turns sour like cream left out in the blistering sun and loneliness envelops you like a starless, black night.
God also weeps, for example, when you put someone to death by refusing to love him or her.
The true way to mourn the dead is to take care of the living.
There are many other kinds of death besides physical death.
For example, people can be psychologically dead to the awareness of the beauty in the world: dainty pastel flowers in the spring, the roaring ocean waves in the summer, the crisp, crunchy snow in the winter, the sad brownness of autumn.
For the psychologically dead, the poet’s emotional heart is dead within them. They are so busy getting things done and just getting things that they never take a moment in life to stop and contemplate.
They don’t realize that the pauses in a musical score, for example, are as important as the played notes.
And Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead empowers you to bring forth lively realizations in those who are buried in the tomb of unawareness.
Or you yourself may be dead, for example, to the virtues of your husband or wife because you are so intent on criticizing him or her. Or you may be dead, for example, to the potential of your children because your expectations are so unrealistic. Or you may be dead, for example, to affirming others who have accomplished something good, but are scalded alive in the hot cauldron of your jealousy.
And Jesus who raised Lazarus from the dead enables you to rise out of these deaths into a new life of joy and happiness, of caring and sharing, of loving and being loved.
The gospel story is not just about Jesus and Lazarus. It is about Jesus and you.
As Eugene Kennedy says in his book, Believing, “The gospel has always been concerned with us and our meaning.”
What goes on in the gospel story is going on right now in your life. Jesus’ power to raise the dead back to life is in you. You have that same power. You can raise yourself and others out of whatever death they may be into a new life.
When you make the effort to bring life to others and to yourself, you make this gospel story come alive.
What a splendid way to spend the rest of your Lenten season. Going around helping people to come alive to all the beautiful gifts God has given them and to you, both outside yourself and within yourself.

HUMOR on life:
An old man was relaxing at his hundredth birthday party when a reporter went up to him. “Sir, what is the secret of your long life?”
The man considered this for a moment, then replied, “Every day at 9 PM I have a glass of port. Good for the heart I’ve heard.”
The reporter replied, “That’s ALL?”
The man smiled, “That, and canceling my ticket on the Titanic.”

The thought I leave you with is this: during Lent learn to live life to the fullest.

CONNECTING CREATION WITH THE CREATOR

2008-02-25T11:56:00.001-05:00

Fourth Sunday Lent A the blind man John 9: 1-41 7:30 2008
Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room’s only window.
The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men
talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their
homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they
had been on vacation.
And every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit
up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things
he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live
for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and
enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside. The window
overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the
water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm
in arm amidst flowers of every color of the rainbow. Grand old trees
graced the landscape, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen
in the distance.
As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the
man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the
picturesque scene. One warm afternoon the man by the window described a
parade passing by. Although the other man couldn’t hear the band - he
could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed
it with descriptive words. Days and weeks passed.
One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only
to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died
peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital
attendants to take the body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be
moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and
after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly,
painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at
the world outside. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it for
himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the
bed. It faced a blank wall.
The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased
roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.
The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the
wall. She said, “Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.”
So too Jesus in our gospel story encourages the blind man by healing him from his blindness.
This same power is in your life. Maybe not to heal physical blindness but other kinds of blindness.
For example, you may be blind to the virtues of your husband or wife because you are so intent on criticizing him or her.
Or, for example, you may be blind to the potential of your children because your expectations are so unrealistic.
St. Bonaventure, who lived in the 13th century, talked about what he called “a third eye.”
The third eye is the eye that leads you into contemplation.
With the third eye you are able to make creative connections between creation and the Creator.
For example, the awe of a wondrous summer sunset and your connection with God the Creator of that sunset and God’s boundless beauty that will captivate you in breathless wonder for all eternity.
Or, for example, the thrill of a viola’s solo and connecting that with the smooth invisible strings
that hold the Creator’s universe in majestic order.
Or, for example, the discovery of a new medication connected with the Creator’s eternal mysteries yet to be revealed.
Or, for example, watching a little child and connecting him or her with the God who continuously creates new life and is the force of that life’s development.
In other words, you need to develop the consciousness of this third eye.
You need to be aware of the need to make these connections between creation and the Creator.
Why not try some exercises? For example, gaze at the snow. What connection can you make?
Or, for example, stare at a forlorn looking winter tree and come up with a connection.
Always the connection is betwee what you see and what you can see more of; always the connection between creation and the Creator.
HUMOR about connections:

A woman called a local hospital. “Hello. Could you connect me to the person who gives information about patients. I’d like to find out if a patient is getting better, doing as expected, or getting worse.” The voice on the other end said, “What is the patient’s name and room number?” “Sarah Finkel, room 302.” I’ll connect you with the nursing station.”
“3rd floor Nursing Station. How can I help You?” “I’d like to know the condition of Sarah Finkel in room 302.” “Just a moment. Let me look at her records....... Mrs. Finkel is doing very well. In fact, she’s had two full meals, her blood pressure is fine, to be taken off the heart monitor in a couple of hours and, if she continues this improvement, Dr. Cohen is going to send her home Tuesday at noon.”
The woman said, “What a relief! Oh, that’s fantastic... that’s wonderful news!” The nurse said, “From your enthusiasm, I take it you are a close family member or a very close friend!”
“Neither! I’m Sarah Finkel in 302! Nobody here tells me anything.”

THOUGHT: Always connect creation with the Creator.

FORGIVING YOURSELF

2008-02-22T14:07:00.001-05:00

Third Sunday Lent 2008 John 4: 5-42 – 5:30 & 10:30
A beloved rabbi died and rose to heaven. There he was greeted with the hosts of angels singing and praising the rabbi for all his good works."Please don’t make such a fuss," the rabbi protested. "I was not so perfect as you make me seem."At that point the Lord God himself appeared in glory. "What’s the problem, my child? You lived a near-perfect life on earth. You deserve all the honors we can give you.""No, my Lord," the rabbi protested. "I failed miserably with my daughter. You see, she became a Christian.""I understand," said the Lord. "I had a similar problem myself with my son."
You might keep this story in mind the next time you’re disappointed in one of your children or grandchildren.

Like the rabbi often you may take a nose dive into human weakness. And like the woman at the well in our gospel story, you may plunge into sinfulness. As a result, you may think much less of yourself, or even crash into the depths of depression.
For example, impatience with your children that bursts into a volcano of anger or for example, misunderstandings between husband and wife that explode into fiery arguments leaving third degree burns that take a long time to heal.
Or gossip, for example, especially within ear shot of your children, so petty that when you think of it, you’re embarrassed because the pettiness reminds you of how small and insecure you are. Gossip, for example, about co-workers or neighbors or in-laws or fellow students or family members.
You just hate to admit something we all have in common: we are all mistake makers; we are all sinners.
But Jesus reassures you through his gentle dealing with the woman at the well that you always have second chances.
In fact, since Jesus forgives you over and over, again and again, second chances become chances as innumerable as the stars in the midnight sky.
Why then, I ask you, are you so hesitant, so reluctant, so uncertain that you will not forgive yourself?
During Lent you recall your sins in order to do penance for them. But what about the positive side? Recalling your sins so that you can forgive yourself of them.
I think on a spiritual level that one of the most forceful impediments to your spiritual development is your hesitancy or refusal to forgive yourself.
On the psychological level, not forgiving yourself can be one of the heaviest boulders pulling you down into the suffocating depth of depression. A lot of psychological and emotional problems are caused by lack of self-forgiveness.
I cannot emphasize enough how imperative it is for you to forgive yourself. If, for example, you want to feel as free as a soaring eagle, or, for example, as happy as someone who’s just fallen in love, or, for example, as released from bondage as a slave whose chains have been shattered, or, for example, as carefree as a child jumping rope, then forgive yourself!
Dominic Maruca in his essay, “A Reflection on Guilt,” says, “The memory of things past is a worm that will not die; whether that worm continues to grow or is changed into a brightly colored winged creature depends on whether we can find the forgiveness we need to bestow.” And I would add, to bestow forgiveness first and foremost on yourself.
Not forgiving yourself only indicates that you do not actually believe in Jesus’ infinite mercy, that you shove into the archives of forgotten stories, the parable of the Prodigal son, that you prefer to be haunted by the ghosts of past sins than to embrace the cross on which Jesus died for the forgiveness of all your sins and for your power to forgive yourself.
Jesus’ infinite mercy will not get through to you if you constantly put up the barrier of not forgiving yourself.
Even more! How can you truly forgive others if you won’t forgive yourself?
Remember the words of the prophet Isaiah: Though your sins be like scarlet, they will become white as snow.
HUM OR Women will love this...
A Prayer...
Dear Lord,
I pray for Wisdom to understand my husband; Love to forgive him;
And Patience for his moods; Because, Lord, if I pray for Strength, I’ll beat him to death.
AmenTHOUGHT Always forgive yourself.

LISTENING

2008-02-22T14:07:00.000-05:00

Second Sunday of Lent A Matt17:1-9 12:15 2008
Once upon a time, before two-legged creatures walked the earth, earth was at peace. Earth was warm and the animals wanted for nothing. Then one night there was a new thing. Something began to fall from the sky. The animals had never seen it before. It was soft, lovely and very, very cold. It stuck to trees and feathers and the ground. As it lingered it got harder and colder. When the first snowfall came all the animals were delighted at this new thing.
But it kept snowing and so many of the animals had a hard time getting around and searching for food. The animals didn’t know what to do about this new thing that first delighted them but now made life on earth a big problem.
Then one day from high in the pine tree came the sound of the Rainbow Crow, the most beautiful of all birds. Rainbow Crow sang: I’ll go and I will stop the snow from falling. And so Rainbow Crow flew high above the earth until she came into the presence of the Great Spirit. There in the presence of the Great Spirit, Rainbow Crow began to sing the sweetest lullaby.
The Great Spirit was so delighted that she told Rainbow Crow to choose any gift she wanted. Immediately Rainbow Crow asked the Great Spirit to stop the snow from falling on earth because all the animals were disappearing under it.
But the Great Spirit said, I can’t because Snow has a will of her own. But then the Great Spirit picked up a stick and put fire on the end of it. Rainbow Crow had never seen fire before. The Great Spirit gave the fiery stick to Rainbow Crow and told her to fly as fast as she could back to earth.
When Rainbow Crow got to earth, Fire burned the stick until Rainbow Crow was covered with black soot and he started to choke from the smoke and she became very hot. As Rainbow Crow landed on the snow with Fire, the snow began to melt until Rainbow Crow was standing on solid ground. All the animals began to rejoice that once again there was solid ground.
But Rainbow Crow was sad. She who had had the most beautiful feathers, was now as black as night without a moon. And she could no longer sing sweet lullabies because of the smoke that had choked his throat. Now she could only squawk, Caw, Caw, Caw. But the Great Spirit came to Rainbow Crow and told her that her squawking would always warn the other animals of approaching danger. As a reward for your self-sacrifice, the Great Spirit said, you will be their protector. The animals will see your beauty and hear your song in your efforts to warn them.
Then the Great Spirit told all the other animals to always listen when Rainbow Crow’s cawing grew loudest for then she was warning them of impending danger. The Great Spirit’s last words to all the animals of the earth were, Listen to the Black Crow.

In our gospel story today the Great Spirit, God the Father, tells Jesus’ disciples and us, This is my beloved son. Listen to him.
Stern and Marino in their book, Psychotheology, tell you that you do not need to attract Jesus’ attention; he is always speaking to you and you must listen to his simple message about love and peace and justice.
You need to listen to the words of Jesus as you listen, for example, to the music of waves that engulf you at the seashore or, for example, the sound of thunder that awakens you. You have to listen to Jesus especially when he warns you, for example, about accumulating material possessions without a sense of social obligation to the less fortunate.
You need to listen to Jesus when, for example, he asks you to examine whether helping a friend is less important than staying late at work to finish a project or, for example, whether your commitment to a career is more important than participating in the PTA.
You need to listen to Jesus, when, for example, you are feeling anxious or depressed or under stress, and Jesus’ words dare you, to ask yourself questions, for example, like: Why am I so angry? What do I fear losing? What am I demanding of the people around me? Why am I so worried about people seeing me as imperfect? Why do I give power to others to upset me? Why do I take an annoying event and make it worse?
As you enter deeper into the Lenten season, ask Jesus your friend who lives and speaks within you to help you to do more listening in your prayer than talking.
HUMOR An announcement in a church bulletin read: At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What Is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.
THOUGHT Make your listening your love in action.

2008-02-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

FIRST SUNDAY LENT A – FEB 10 2008– 10:30 Mt 4:1-11
STORY: When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his famous The Last Supper, he look for a model of Jesus. He found a young man who was handsome and healthy in appearance and hired him to pose. His name was Pietro Bandenelli. When he had all but finished the painting, he still had to find someone to pose for Judas. He found a man whose face was so distorted with villainy that da Vinci shuddered at the sight. He hired him. When he finished the painting, he said to the ugly looking man: “I don’t even know your name.” The destitute man answered: “Master, I am Pietro Bandenelli. I sat as the model for your Christ.”
You enter the Jesus story. Jesus is being tempted in the same way as Bandinelli was. Unlike Bandinelli who gave into temptation and twisted his Christ-like face into the grotesque mask of Judas, Jesus is as resistant to temptation as God’s eternal word resists the distortions of our culture.
Jesus is truly a human being. As a human being, Jesus’s temptations were as real as the stones that could have been turned into bread. Jessus’ temptations were as real as the bloody sweat in the Garden of Olives when he was being lured into passing the cup of suffering back to his Father. Jesus’ temptations were as real as the bodily flesh the Son of God assumed to himself in the Incarnation.
Jesus did not use his divine power to overcome his temptations like flicking off a bug in the summertime. Jesus had to struggle through his temptations as we do. Jesus is like us in all things except sin, but not except temptation. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that we are tempted not because we are evil but because we are human. And Jesus was totally, fully human.
Jesus whose hunger gnaws at his stomach like a vulture tearing into the carcass of a dead lamb, gears up for a battle that is far more formidable than that of David confronting Goliath. Then it was sword against slingshot. Now it is subtle innuendo trying to seduce the One who says, “I am Truth”. Now it is slithering manipulation versus the One who says, “I have come to do the will of him who sent me.”
Donald Gelpi in his book, Experiencing God, tells us that the temptations of Jesus symbolize the fact that we his followers will enter into a lifetime of being tested.
You’re familiar with tests such as, for example, others’ hostile arguments which you’re called upon to forgive. Or, for example, obnoxious putdowns which you are called upon to turn the other cheek to. Or,for example, gross ingratitude which you are called upon to respond with even greater generosity.
Then there are the tests that come from our gospel-denying culture. For example, human insensitivity and inhumanity, racism, sexism, greed, pollution. Or for example, injustice and violence, muder, unnecessary or unjust wars, white collar dishonesty and thivery, flagrant inequities that make the rich get richer because the poor get poorer?
All these and more are the tests you must face and cope with during your lifetime.
These tests begin in early childhood.
STORY: A teacher on a snowy day is trying to get all the kindergarten children’s coats, gloves and boots on. One little girt starts crying. I can’t find my boots, she wails. Honey, the teacher says, your boots are over there in the corner. They’re not my boots, she sobs. My boots had snow on them.
The temptation in facing these and other tests is to shrug your shoulders and crawl deeper into the cocoon of your own selfish security just as Jesus could have feasted on bread from stones or won the worship of all the powerful nations in the world had he given in to his temptations.
Lent is not a season as somber as a wake. Rather picture Jesus, after he has defeated his tempter, standing there in the desert with his face wreathed in a triumphant smile.
Enter into Lent with this picture of Jesus’ triumphant smile in your mind and you will find that lent is a time of joy as you triumph over temptations and make them occasions of deepening your spiritual life

HUMOR:
"WE WOULD RATHER DO BUSINESS WITH 1000 AL QAEDA TERRORISTS THAN WITH A SINGLE AMERICAN"
This sign was prominently displayed in the window of a business in Philadelphia. You are probably outraged at the thought of such an inflammatory statement.One would think that anti-hate groups from all across the country would be marching on this business... And that the National Guard might have to be called to keep the angry crowds back.But, perhaps in these stressful times one might be tempted to let the proprietors simply make their statement . . . We are a society who holds Freedom of Speech as perhaps our greatest liberty . . . And after all, it is just a sign.You may ask what kind of business would dare post such a sign?Answer: A Funeral Home (Who said morticians had no sense of humor?)

THOUGHT: Use Lent to overcome temptation and deepen your spiritual life.

The Beatitudes

2008-01-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

Fourth Sunday A Matthew 5:1-12a Beatitudes 9 AM

A man who was inspired to live the Beatitudes was Dr. Tom Dooley. After graduating from medical school, Tom Dooley enlisted in the Navy. A turning point in his life came on a hot day in July off the coast of Vietnam. That’s when his ship rescued 1,000 refugees who were drifting helplessly in an open boat.
Many of the refugees were sick and diseased. Tom Dooley was the only available doctor on board. He work tirelessly to give medical aid to the refugees.
“Hours later,” he said, “I straightened up to give my shoulders a rest. Then,” he said, “I discovered something else – the biggest discovery of my life – I was really, truly happy treating these poor people.” That experience changed Dr Tom Dooley’s life forever.
We marvel and delight in how Dr. Dooley was inspired by the corporal works of mercy contained in the Beatitudes which you have just heard proclaimed in our gospel story.
At the same time what is paradoxical about the Christian religion is that so many Catholics still use the Ten Commandments as the standard for their spiritual growth as though Jesus never gave them the Beatitudes. The commandments came through Moses in the Old Testament; the Beatitudes came from Jesus in the New Testament.
Our moral living is not rooted exclusively in the Old Testament. Otherwise why did Jesus come into our world?
Yet you examine your conscience. You go through each commandment, but do you ever examine your life, your thoughts, your actions, your relationships against the Beatitudes as glaring as a searchlight in a dark, tumultuous storm?
For example, as long as you don’t do somebody physical harm, you’re in good shape. But what about being meek and humble of heart? For you as a follower of Jesus, it’s not just a matter of not doing physical harm to someone. It’s a matter of treating others with the kind of meekness that truly respects the dignity of each person. Blessed are the meek, Jesus teaches.
Or, for example, it’s one thing not to steal as the commandment forbids. But what about the Beatitude of working for justice? You may not steal but, but if you do not stand up against injustice in our culture, are you truly living the teachings of Jesus?
And what can be said about followers of Jesus who mock those who are intent on working for justice and peace for that matter?
The reason for people being mired in Old Testament morality like being stuck in quicksand is this: In the legalism of former teaching in moral theology, the commandments were mandatory, the Beatitudes were counsels which left the impression that the Beatitudes were optional. The Commandments had to be kept; the beatitudes could be observed.
In recent teaching, however, moral theologians have finally come to the conclusion that there can be no Christian living whatsoever if you do not live the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are also commands given by Jesus. There is nothing optional about the Beatitudes.
The Beatitudes are the standard of your countercultural living.
Fr Michael Crosby in his book, The Beatitudes, says that “you are formed by the Beatitudes and this makes you a person who must have a countercultural impact on society.”
He gives this example: Blessed are the meek translates into non-violent living and the refusal to control others and is therefore countercultural.
If, for example, you took the value of meekness into our culture and let go of any desire to control, the world would consider you a stumbling block to our culture’s value system which praises and honors ruthless ambition and iron-clad control.
Not only is living the Beatitudes countercultural, it is a subversive activity. For example, a life dedicated to simplicity of living subverts our culture’s canonized dog-eat-dog way of getting ahead.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus turns your world upside down. He calls blessed those considered the losers in our culture: the homeless, the hungry, the poor, the displace, the abused, the imprisoned, to name a few.
The Beatitudes demand more of you than not doing wrong as the Commandments demand. The Beatitudes call you to do what is heroic, for example, feeding the hungry, giving shelter and clothing to the homeless.
The Commandments deal with sins of commission; the Beatitudes with sins of omission, the good you could have done and did not do.

HUMOR
Shooting the breeze down at the Veteran’s hospital, a trio of old timers ran out of tales of their own heroic exploits and started bragging about their ancestors. “My great grandfather, at age 13,” one declared proudly, “was a drummer boy at Shiloh.”
“Mine,” boasted another, “went down with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.”
“I’m the only soldier in my family,” confessed vet number three, “but if my great grandfather were living today he’d be the most famous man in the world.”
“What’d he do?” his friends wanted to know.
“Nothing much. But he would be a hundred 165 years old.”

The thought I leave with you this morning is this: Live the Beatitudes with heroism.

Preserving Human Life

2008-01-26T17:16:00.001-05:00

Third Sunday Ordinary A 7:30 AM MATT 4:12-23
A Protestant minister was greeting the people after the service. He was busy trying to give attention to each person. All of this was going on when he felt a tug. He turned around and looked down, and it was his 5-year-old son, Jeff. His first response was parental. He said, I thought to myself, “Jeff, couldn’t this wait till we get to the car? I’m doing big stuff up here! But Jeff was standing there with one hand behind his back and I realized that there was something special and precious about that tug. So I just closed everything else out and dropped down on one knee to get eye to eye with Jeff. Here’s what happened,” the minister said: “When I dropped down he just beamed! I will never forget that expression on his face. He pulled his hand from behind his back and he had a white paper cup with black dirt in it. A little green plant was shooting up from it. He said, ‘Daddy, this is a tomato plant. God and I had been growing it in Sunday School. We’ve been studying how God makes things grow and how we can help Him, and God and I have been working on this tomato plant. It’s my tomato plant but I want to give it to you and Mom this morning.’ He said, ‘You’re always giving me things, but I don’t have any money to get anything for you, so I want to give you my tomato plant this morning, because I love you so much.’” Jeff handed his father the tomato plant and his father hugged him tightly, and nothing else in the world mattered. In that moment time stood still.
Little 5 year old Jeff had successfully fished his father out of rumbling waters of his preoccupation with greeting his parishioners
And the parishioners didn’t mind. They were swept up in the waves of that loving exchange between father and son.
In our gospel story, Jesus tells you as he told his first disciples that he will make you fishers of men.
Being fishers of others sounds rather harmless almost romantic but fishing requires strength and perseverance, it entails stress and strain.
Fishing is hard work peppered with a great deal of patience, whether it’s deep sea fishing or fly casting.
Sometimes you can be so used to sound bites that you are impatient with a person’s story. Hurry up and get to the end.
As John Shea says in his book, On Earth as it is in Heaven, “You’re not interested in the process of the story which may be an adventure.”
And it is in the sea of a person’s story that you are able to hook the rare and unique fish of that person’s truth.
You can fail because you are impatient or self righteous. Actually self righteousness breeds impatience.
On the other hand Jesus frustrated by his disciples’ obtuseness realized that he was getting slim reward for the thick volume of his patience, yet he persevered.
Paula Ripple in her book, Growing Strong in Broken Places, says, “Dealing with others challenges us to be present to and patient with ourselves.” In other words, if you are frustrated and impatient with your own faults, how can you ever be patient and understanding of the faults of others?
Sadly, as Eugene Kennedy points out in his book, Free To Be Human, Patience is as dead and buried as the last casualty at Gettysburg.
To be patient fishers you need to be keenly aware that you and others are human therefore limited, therefore imperfect.
Where can you fish today?
This past Tuesday we observed a day of penance for the violation of the dignity of human life, especially the lives of the unborn.
Abortion, then, is the urgent place to do your fishing. Abortion is the ocean where you need to cast your net, to pull out the priceless value of human life, especially the lives of the unborn. To pull out a culture of life from what Pope John Paul called the culture of death.
Blessed Pope John XXIII wrote in his encyclical, Peace on Earth, “Every person has a right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means necessary for the proper development of life.”
Our nation’s Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident… that all … are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Yet the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court consistently maintain that life is not one of the inalienable rights for the unborn.
The Book of Sirach in the Hebrew Bible states, “I put before you life and death; whatever a person chooses shall be given to him.”
Life and death have been put before the Justices of the Supreme Court. And in the rancid grandeur of their self importance and their official indifference to our nation’s Declaration of Independence, they have chosen death for those who will never have the opportunity to enjoy liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
Today you need to renew your pledge, as fishers of others, to work for the preservation of all human life, but especially of the unborn.

BEING FISHERS OF OTHERS

2008-01-23T10:27:00.000-05:00

Baptism of Jesus

2008-01-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

Baptism of Jesus 1/13/ 2008 12:15

Explaining God by Danny Dutton
There is a story about Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, CA, who wrote an essay
for his third grade homework assignment explaining why he believes in God.
His essay is not only humorous, but surprisingly profound for an 8 year old.
He wrote:
One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the
ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on
earth. He doesn't make grown ups, just babies. I think because babies are
smaller and easier to make. That way, He doesn't have to take up His
valuable time teaching them to talk and walk, He can just leave that to
mothers and fathers.
God's second most important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot
of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at
times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or TV
because of this. Because He hears everything there must be a terrible lot
of noise in His ears, unless He has thought of a way to turn it off.
God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps
Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your
mom and dad's head asking God for something they said you couldn't have.
Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are
any in Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who come to our church.
Jesus is God's son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on
water and performing miracles and trying to teach the people who didn't
want to learn about God. They finally got tired of Him preaching to them
and they crucified Him. But He was good and kind like His Father and He
told His Father that they didn't know what they were doing and to forgive
them, and God said OK.
His Dad (God) appreciated everything that Jesus had done and all His hard
work on earth so He told Him He didn't have to go out on the road anymore
and that He could stay in heaven. So He did. And now He helps His Dad out
by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to
take care of and which ones He can take care of without having to bother
God. Like a secretary, only more important.
You can pray anytime you want and the Father and Jesus are sure to hear you because they
got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the times.
You should always go to Church on Sunday, because it makes God happy,
and if there's anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip
church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach.
This is wrong! Besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon
anyway.
If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very
lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp,
but God can. It is good to know He's around you when you're scared in the
dark or when you can't swim very good and you get thrown into real deep
water by big kids.
But you shouldn't always think of what God can do for you. I figure God
put me here and there’s a lot of stuff he wants me to do. And that's why I
believe in God.

Today we are celebrating the baptism of Jesus. Jesus submitted to John’s baptism not because he was a sinner—he was like us in all things except sin – but as deomonstration of his intimacy with the Father whose voice, like thunderclap, announced: This my beloved son on whom my favor rests.
And his intimacy with his Holy Spirit who descended on him a the dove of peace.

One line that jumped out at me from little Danny Dutton’s essay is this: If you don't believe in God you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you but God can.

Through the grace of your baptism, God the Father, Son and Spirit, the Holy Trinity, took up residence within you and continues to dwell within you.
But how conscious are you of the Trinity’s dwelling within you? I read somewhere that the greatest poverty in the world is the poverty of unawareness.
It seems to me that your consciousness of God’s dwelling within you is predicated on your trust in God. In other words, what I am saying here is that when you lack trust in God’s infinite mercy and unconditional forgiveness, you tend to shy away from God because you feel guilty and ashamed about your sins.
You’re like a child hiding out in a secret corner so his mother can’t find him and scold him. Instead of drawing closer to the God who dwells more intimately within you than your own breath, you distance yourself like a far off tiny star from planet earth.
As a result, you are less willing to make the effort to be more keenly conscious of the Trinity’s dwelling within you.
How tragic if your consciousness is clinging like a hook in a fish’s mouth to your sins and guilt instead of being enveloped totally in the Trinity who lives so lovingly within you.
Trust in the indwelling God’s mercy and forgiveness breaks the chains that hold you bound to your feelings of guilt.
Trust in the indwelling God is the lifeline between your failures and being forgiven.
Trust in the indwelling God is the opening of the door of your heart so that Christ the Light of the world can shine into you and through you into others.
Trust in the indwelling God is your eraser on the blackboard of God’s memory.
Trust in the indwelling God is lowering the drawbridge of the fortress of your self-enclosed ego and marching out to surrender unconditionally to Jesus, to his lavish mercy, to his loving, all-embracing forgiveness.
Trust in the indwelling God means that once God forgives you your sins, God forgets them. And you need not ever again feel guilt over the sins you have committed.
Through your baptism, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwells within you, closer to you than you are to yourself. But you must strive to become more conscious of the Trinity who lives within you. Conscious enough to stop mentally many times during the day to whisper a prayer of love and trust.
Conscious enough to continually celebrate God’s boundless intimacy within you.
When you are this conscious of the indwelling Trinity you are entering into mystical prayer.

HUMOR
A man and his wife are dining at a table in a plush restaurant, and the husband keeps staring at a drunken lady swigging her gin as she sits alone at a nearby table.
The wife asks, “Do you know her?”
“Yes,” sighs the husband. “She’s my ex-wife. She took to drinking right after we divorced seven years ago, and I hear she hasn’t been sober since.”
“My God!” says the wife, “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”

THOUGHT
Always be conscious of the Indwelling Trinity.

Epiphany

2008-01-02T07:07:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 2008 10:30
PERSEVERANCE
Ten-year old Kelley Sperry lives in Denver, Colorado. She has a rare medical condition called Parry-Romberg Syndrome.
This condition causes a deterioration of the muscles and soft tissue
of the face with extreme pain and even strokes. Yet through all of this, Kelley Sperry keeps on going and going... Just like the Energizer Bunny. And it’s this perseverance that
makes Kelley someone very special.
Kelly Sperry perseveres . She endures pain, awkward glances from strangers and the self-conscious doubts that go with a disfiguring condition such as Parry-Romberg.
Her family perseveres too. They endure the visits to physicians, the well-meaning but often rude
comments of others, the fear that Kelley will have another stroke, and
the other stresses that this condition causes within the family.
After Kelley’s story appeared in the “Rocky Mountain News”, the family was inundated with messages of support, but none had more meaning than one from Karen Osborne, the parent of
a student at Kelley’s school. That message gave Kelley the chance to do what other little girls only dream of... to be a cheerleader. Osborne had arranged to have one of the Denver Bronco’s cheer leaders visit Kelley. When she arrived, however, she wasn’t alone. Five other Bronco’s cheer leaders came along with her. They brought an official Broncos cheerleader uniform and an invitation to join them on the field for a Broncos game.
Since the original story in the “Rocky Mountain News”, Kelley has suffered a fifth stroke, but she’s determined to keep persevering. In Kelley’s eyes, her story can be summed up in this one sentence that Kelley left on the computer one
morning: “KELLEY SPERRY IS JUST LIKE ANY OTHER
GIRL...EXCEPT SHE HAS A DISEASE.”
Sometimes a story like that of the Magi is so far back in history that it’s like squinting at a distant horizon. You need a current story like this one about little Kelly to make the Magi story come alive.
Just as the Magi had a star to guide them on their journey, often as confusing as a labyrinth, so you have little Kelley Sperry shinning as your star.
Amid all the shadows of disappointment, heartbreak, desperation, criticism, pain, disillusionment, sorrow, little Kelly shines into your life as perseverance just as the Magi persevered in their quest for the newborn king of the Jews.
Little Kelly reflects the Magi’s realization that in life there are beginnings and endings with living in between.
The stories of the Magi and of little Kelly make you understand that in your spiritual life, success is not measured by what you accomplish but by your tenacity to persevere when you don’t see immediate results.
For example, you may be striving for lyrical mystical prayer as deep as the waters Jesus commands you to launch out into, but all you can show for your efforts is a long shoreline strewn with distractions.
Now do you continue to put your shoulder to the grind and persevere or do you shrug your shoulder in a surrender to despair, convinced that your prayer will always be a rote recitation of words?
As you keep the image of the Magi in your mind, can you believe that great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance? That perseverance is not one long race but many short races one after another?
In the Epiphany, Jesus showed forth himself to both the Jewish and Gentile worlds. If your faith is lively enough, the power of the Epiphany will enable you to show forth Jesus.
You will show forth Jesus in your compassion, your forgiveness, your fervor, your joy, your hopefulness, your self-sacrifice.
But you will need the virtue of perseverance to do this showing forth of Jesus.
Melannie Svoboda in her book, Traits of a Healthy Spirituality, describes perseverance as the ability to persist in an undertaking over a long period of time despite counterinfluences, periodic setbacks or bouts with discouragement.
Isn’t this a description of the life of little Kelly? Isn’t this the story of the travel-weary Magi?
Keep in mind the saying: with perseverance, the snail finally reached the ark.

HUMOR – PERSEVERANCE
A young man about to go on his first date asks his father for advice.
“What should I talk about?”
“Son, there are three subjects that always work: food, family, and philosophy. Just persevere in these categories.”
The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for a long time, as the boy’s nervousness builds. Recalling his father’s advice he tries the subject of food, “Do you like potato pancakes?” he asks
His date replies, “No” and the silence returns.
So he tries the subject of family,“Uhhhh ... do you have a brother?”
“No.” More silence.
Finally he tries the category of philosophy,“Well, then ... if you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?”

The thought I leave with you today here at the beginning of a new year and use as a mantra in your prayer this week is this: Always persevere in following your star.

PERSEVERANCE

2007-12-30T15:49:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 2008 10:30

Ten-year old Kelley Sperry lives in Denver, Colorado. She has a rare medical condition called Parry-Romberg Syndrome.
This condition causes a deterioration of the muscles and soft tissue
of the face with extreme pain and even strokes. Yet through all of this, Kelley Sperry keeps on going and going... Just like the Energizer Bunny. And it’s this perseverance that
makes Kelley someone very special.
Kelly Sperry perseveres . She endures pain, awkward glances from strangers and the self-conscious doubts that go with a disfiguring condition such as Parry-Romberg.
Her family perseveres too. They endure the visits to physicians, the well-meaning but often rude
comments of others, the fear that Kelley will have another stroke, and
the other stresses that this condition causes within the family.
After Kelley’s story appeared in the “Rocky Mountain News”, the family was inundated with messages of support, but none had more meaning than one from Karen Osborne, the parent of
a student at Kelley’s school. That message gave Kelley the chance to do what other little girls only dream of... to be a cheerleader. Osborne had arranged to have one of the Denver Bronco’s cheer leaders visit Kelley. When she arrived, however, she wasn’t alone. Five other Bronco’s cheer leaders came along with her. They brought an official Broncos cheerleader uniform and an invitation to join them on the field for a Broncos game.
Since the original story in the “Rocky Mountain News”, Kelley has suffered a fifth stroke, but she’s determined to keep persevering. In Kelley’s eyes, her story can be summed up in this one sentence that Kelley left on the computer one
morning: “KELLEY SPERRY IS JUST LIKE ANY OTHER
GIRL...EXCEPT SHE HAS A DISEASE.”
Sometimes a story like that of the Magi is so far back in history that it’s like squinting at a distant horizon. We need a current story like this one about little Kelly to make the Magi story come alive.
Just the Wise Men had a star to guide them on their way, often as baffling as a labyrinth, so little Kelly is like a star shinning into your lives.
Amid all the shadows of disappointment, heartbreak, desperation, criticism, pain, disillusionment, sorrow, little Kelly shines into your life as perseverance just as the Magi persevered in their quest for the newborn king of the Jews.
Little Kelly reflects the Magi’s realization that in life there are beginnings and endings with living in between.
The stories of the Magi and of little Kelly make you understand that in your spiritual life, success is not measured by what you accomplish but by your tenacity to persevere when you don’t see immediate results.
For example, you may be striving for lyrical mystical prayer as deep as the waters Jesus commands you to launch out into, but all you can show for your efforts is a long shoreline strewn with distractions.
Now do you continue to put your shoulder to the grind and persevere or do you shrug your shoulder in a surrender to despair, convinced that your prayer will always be a rote recitation of words?
As you keep the image of the Magi in your mind, can you believe that great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance? That perseverance is not one long race but many short races one after another?
In the Epiphany, Jesus showed forth himself to both the Jewish and Gentile worlds. If your faith is lively enough, the power of the Epiphany will enable you to show forth Jesus.
You will show forth Jesus in your compassion, your forgiveness, your fervor, your joy, your hopefulness, your self-sacrifice.
But you will need the virtue of perseverance to do this showing forth of Jesus.
Melannie Svoboda in her book, Traits of a Healthy Spirituality, describes perseverance as the ability to persist in an undertaking over a long period of time despite couterinfluences, periodic setbacks or bouts with discouragement.
Isn’t this a description of the life of little Kelly? Isn’t this the story of the travel-weary Magi?
HUMOR – PERSEVERANCE
A young man about to go on his first date asks his father for advice.
“What should I talk about?”
“Son, there are three subjects that always work: food, family, and philosophy. Just persevere in these categories.”
The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for a long time, as the boy’s nervousness builds. Recalling his father’s advice he tries the subject of food, “Do you like potato pancakes?” he asks
His date replies, “No” and the silence returns.
So he tries the subject of family,“Uhhhh ... do you have a brother?”
“No.” More silence.
Finally he tries the category of philosophy,“Well, then ... if you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?”

The thought I leave with you today here at the beginning of a new year and use as a mantra in your prayer this week is this: Always persevere in following your star.

2007-12-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

HOLY FAMILY 2007 9am

One mother says that she is always sorry when Christmas is over because she knows that after her family has hung up their stockings on Christmas Eve it will be a whole year before any one of them will hang up anything again.
On this feast of the Holy Family, how many of us, looking back, thank God that our mothers sacrificed their impulse to be imptient.
Our families will never be like the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Yet you can strive toward that ideal by your personal sacrifices

Bernard Bush in his book, Belonging, states as clearly as peering through a magnifying glass, “To share another’s life you must be willing to sacrifice yourself and to affirm another’s freedom means sacrificing your own selfishness.”
If you refuse to sacrifice you will become prisoners of your possessions and your own desires.
Richard North Patterson in his novel, Protect and Defend, one character said, “People of obsessive ambition sacrifice so much of value in themselves and in their lives that, when they fail, there’s nothing left inside.”
There are self-sacrificers who use self-sacrifice to cloak their self-seeking and become bitter when people don’t praise them.
The fact is that community is real when there is a welcome as self-sacrificing as logs that burn themselves to ashes
In his encyclical, On the Development of Peoples, Pope Paul VI wrote, “Christians know that union with the sacrifice of our Savior contributes to the building up of the Body of Christ.”
In the Mystical Body of Christ, there are people you will never know, never see, yet on the mystical level, you are as intimately united with them as with the members of your family.
But you must be actively conscious of this intimate union with all the members of Christ’s Mystical Body.
Jo Carr tells about a children's Christmas program she once attended: "All the songs had been sung, and the candles lit. The shepherds had come to peek at the baby, and the wise men had brought their gifts. The angels had given their message. Then all the cast in the story of the first Christmas began to leave...wise men, shepherds, angels. Only Mary and Joseph and the child remained. Then Joseph turned to go. And Mary, glancing back at the crib, began to follow. But suddenly she turned back, snatched up the baby doll by the foot, clutched it under her arm, and left
Sometimes like that little girl, you may forget that Jesus with all his power is within you motivating you to sacrifice yourself for the others in your family as Jesus did by laying down his life for you.
How often, for example, do you sacrifice your preferences in favor of what another member of your family wants?
How willing are you, for example, to sacrifice your comfort in order to get involved in a cause?
For example, the cause of peace as opposed to the continuing warfare in Iraq.
How willing are you, for example, to sacrifice your time to help your children or grandchildren with their homework or just spend some quality time relaxing with them?
Sacrifice is not just one long string of excruciating minuses stretched like a hangman’s rope to choke the joy of living our of you.

At Christmas you need to share not only with your own family, but your extended family and relatives, friends, co workers and parishioners.
And share not only at Christmas but all throughout the year.

Humor: Young Harold and young Peter didn’t like each other too well. But they were both in the Sunday School Christmas pageant. Harold was the innkeeper. Peter was Joseph. And Peter knew that Harold would do something, in front of all those people, to embarrass him. He did.
Joseph (Peter) and Mary came up to the innkeeper (Harold), expecting of course, to be
turned away. But Harold the innkeeper said, “Come right in, we’ve got lots of room.”
Joseph was ready for this. Looking past the innkeeper, he said to Mary. “Nah. This place
is a dump. Let’s go sleep in the barn.”

THOUGHT: Always make sacrifices for your family.

3rd Sunday Advet 2007: Giving

2007-12-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2007 5:30 PM

There can be no doubt that the lilting or solemn music of magical Christmas carols adds a beauty to the Christmas season as joyfully magnetic as that first choir on that Silent Night.
The Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslaus,” has always been one of my favorites, even though it is not sung that much.
It seems to me that this carol embodies the true Christmas spirit without all the jingle-bells sentimentalism.
A king giving food and drink to a poor stranger.
The Christmas carol says that what Wenceslaus did occurred on the feast of St. Stephen. The day after Christmas. The day after Christmas gifts have been exchanged.
The day after the Christmas celebration is finished.
The day when there is a bit of a let down because Christmas day, for which you have been preparing for so long, ends like a blown fuse.
But it was on this day that Wenceslaus continued the Christmas spirit, as you should do all the year through, with your spirit of caring and generosity.
Note: Wenceslaus knew that the care and generosity he gave to the peasant could never be returned. His action put flesh on Jesus’ instruction: “…when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”
This carol has Eucharistic overtones. Jesus, the King of glory, who comes on Christmas day as a helpless babe, eventually would give you his body and blood as your food and drink.

Wenceslaus’ giving the material gifts of food and drink might stir a discussion on the materialism of Christmas.
To say that Christmas is too materialistic is to miss the point; the paradox is that Christmas is not materialistic enough. To do away with the materialism of Christmas is to remove the symbols that give you a deeper meaning of the underlying spirit of Christmas.
The so-called secular customs, stories, cards and material gifts of Christmas do not demean the feast; if anything they enhance it. They attempt to extend and expand the central story of Christmas: God as gift in the Babe of Bethlehem.
If anything is demeaned, it is your failed imaginative response to see beneath these so-called secular Christmas expressions of our culture to the religious riches they symbolize.
There are those who berate the commercialism of Christmas; they may be forgetting that commercialism was first introduced by the Magi with their gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh and continued by Wenceslaus with his gifts of food and drink.
Commercialism is not inherently bad as long as the gifts are symbols of the selflessness of the gift-giver.
Christmas itself is the symbol of the total fulfillment that comes out of the total selflessness of giving.
It is this selflessness of giving away himself that King Wenceslaus showed to the peasant. A true Christmas selflessness of giving.

Wenceslaus is more than a character in a Christmas carol. He was an historical person and a genuine saint.
Wenceslaus lived in the 10th century. At age 15 he was crowned king of Bohemia. He was known for giving himself to works of charity and mercy.
But his predominant work was that of giving himself to unifying Bohemia. But here he ran into the buzz saw of opposition. Princes, Counts and Dukes did not want to surrender their power to one monarch. It was an out and out turf war.
In the palace there was the shroud of secret intrigues. His brother, Boslislaus, was filled with jealousy and hatred.
One morning when Wenceslaus was on his way to the chapel for early morning Mass, his brother and his supporters attacked Wenceslaus and killed him.
Wenceslaus was no longer. But he left behind the legacy of the Christmas spirit: giving yourself to caring, generosity, peace and unity. The primary virtues you see when you gaze at the Christmas crèche.
The death of Wenceslaus resonates with Jesus’ words, “There is no greater love than to lay down your life for others.”
Jesus who was laid in a manger, was finally laid on a cross so great was his love for us.
Like Wenceslaus, you need to work for unity within your human family. You can begin this work, for example, by striving for peace in all your relationships, not just a Christmas time, but all the year through. And by being generous without looking for a return, without asking what’s in it for me?
To extend Christmas peace is to actively take down all the barriers between yourself and others, to be open and accepting of others, to be vulnerable not defensive.
Isn’t this what your Christmas giving symbolizes?
On this feast of Christmas and all year long, ask St. Wenceslaus to intercede for you that you will be a generous peacemaker, always working diligently for unity.
Ask St Wenceslaus to help you to give yourself generously to others, especially to the members of your family.
HUMOR: There is a humorous story about giving:
A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation
of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer,
she said, “Now, class, if I stood on my head, the
blood, as you know, would run into my head, and I
would turn red in the face.”
“Yes,” the class responded in sing-song fashion.
“Then why is it that while I am standing upright
on my feet the blood doesn’t run into my feet?”

A little fellow shouted, “Cause your feet ain’t empty.”
THOUGHT: Give yourself to others to become more of who you are.

SECOND SUNDAY ADVENT 2007

2007-12-03T14:28:00.000-05:00

Second Sunday Advent 12:15

There are many ways to celebrate Christmas. Brenda King tells this story.
In 1994, on a cold, foggy winter day, in December in San Francisco, California, my friend Bill was strolling down the street, chatting with his wife, Nina. He noticed a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, rubbing his hands together to keep warm. Bill walked on another block or so, but something was nagging at him, perhaps the Christmas spirit.
Spontaneously Bill went back, took off his own gloves and gave them to the man. The look of pure astonishment and gratitude that Bill received in return inspired him, and he determined to do more.
The next day, three days before Christmas, he went to a store, bought all their gloves, and walked the streets giving them out to other homeless people. Then he began turning this simple gesture into a non-profit organization called “Warm Wishes”.
In the last days before Christmas, 2002, amid all the flurry of Christmas preparations, I was with 300 volunteers who met at the local church in the San Francisco Bay area. Warm Wishes brought together all kinds of people, aged 3 to 80, in a great Christmas spirit of joy and service. We filled each of 5,000 sturdy bags with warm thermal socks, ski gloves, a knit hat, and a rain poncho. The final touch was Christmas cards hand-made by an elementary school students. We packed over 33,000 items in 90 minutes!
We created special packs for women and children who are in homeless shelters, and for police officers, fire truck and EMT drivers. In eight years, Warm Wishes has helped over 20,000 people stay warmer and dryer throughout the winter months.
After the packing, the real heart of the Warm Wishes project begins. Groups of two to four people take the bags to the streets, and distribute them to homeless citizens. Bill stresses that we should give out one bag at a time, and really look at and connect with each recipient.
I carry a few bags in my car, Brenda King said, to hand out when I see someone on the street in need. The first time I approached a homeless man, sitting alone in a park with all his belongings in a shopping cart I was scared. Since it was daylight and other people were around, I decided it was safe. I walked up and handed him the pack, saying I hoped he would accept this gift from Warm Wishes, I said.
The man’s gaze, which had been glassy and unfocused, sharpened. Then he looked right at me and said, “Warm Wishes! I’ve been hearing about you folks— God bless you!”
I went back to my car and cried for several minutes. My tears were of joy. The joy of a true spirit of the Christmas season.
Clearly, I had received more than I had given.
Joy is certainly one of the most obvious emotional experiences of the Christmas season.
The simple, trusting joy of Mary and Joseph as sturdy as the Christmas cave of birth.
The bewildered joy of the shepherds which lingers with us like a scented Christmas candle.
The solemn joy of the Magi as magnetic as their long journey leading them to the place of fulfillment and happiness and peace.
Christmas joy is not being filled to the brim rather joy is always pouring out some of what you have that others may have something too.
Christmas joy is not a not a matter of events in your life. Rather joy depends on your attitude toward events. If your attitude is positive, your joy is assured.
Your Christmas joy is the by product of the effort to make someone else happy.
Your Christmas joy is doubled by your positive interactions with others and burdens are cut in half.
To be joyful you need something worth doing, someone worthy of your love, and something worth hoping for.
Christmas joy is as contagious as laughter, as spontaneous Christmas greetings to passers-by.
You find your Christmas joy by being truly interested in what others are doing.
Your Christmas joy is guaranteed when you help someone else find joy.
Anxiety is anchored self-devaluation; joy rides high on the crest of self worth.
Joy is spontaneous, not duty bound. Duty can become a dark cloud eclipsing the radiance of joy.
The Christmas story infuses us with joy like that which we experience when we know we have been forgiven,. The Christmas story makes us tremble with fervor like an innocent first communicant.
HUMOR: There is a humorous story about joy. For months he had been her devoted admirer. Now, at long last, he had collected sufficient courage to ask her the most momentous of all questions. But he felt he had to do a preamble before asking the life changing question."There are quite a lot of advantages to being a bachelor," he began, "but there has come a time in my life when I long for the companionship of another being -- a being who will regard me as perfect, as an idol; a being whom I can treat as my absolute own; who will be faithful when times are hard; who will bring innumerable joys into my life. To his delight he saw a sympathetic gleam in her eyes. Then she nodded in agreement.Finally, she responded, "I think its a great idea! Can I help you choose which puppy to buy?"

The thought I leave with you today is this: Christmas is contagious joy.

CHRIST THE KING

2007-12-01T18:18:00.000-05:00

If you were to see Jesus on the street today, would you recognize him as your King.

To be genuine followers of Jesus, Christ our King, you have to recognize who and what you are. What your strengths and weaknesses are, what gifts and limitations you have.
For example, you may have the gift of intergenerational persuasion but be limited in your ability to organize. Obviously what you need to do, while you are enhancing your gift of persuasion, like a concert pianist practicing, is to develop your ability to organize.
St Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians enumerates with inspired mathematics the many and varied gifts received from the Holy Spirit. There is the expression of wisdom; the expression of knowledge; the gifts of healing; the gift of prophecy; the discernment of spirits; the varieties of tongues and the interpretation of tongues.
So too you all have gifts from Christ the King. All you can do comes from the power of Christ the King living within you like an electric current. All gifts are given to you. All gifts are gratuitous.
Where do poets get their words, artists their colors, architects their shapes, sculptors their forms, doctors their healing power, mechanics their skill, computer programmers their organization if not from Christ the King?
In all you are able to do, all your power comes from Christ your King.
But no matter what gifts Christ the King gives you, you have to use your cooperative efforts to make these gifts effective in your lives and relationships just as a sprinter uses her legs to demonstrate her ability to win a race.
In the movie, Appearances, one of the characters says, God gives us the ingredients but not the recipe.
And someone else observed, God feeds the birds but he doesn’t throw the food into their nests.
When you pray, “Thy will be done” or “Thy kingdom come,” these are not pleas for something to happen but pleas for the grace and power so that you can make something happen.
As a true follower of Christ the King, you can never expect God to do it all. God never waves a magic wand and makes it all nice.
For example, if you are having difficulties in your marriage, you can pray for guidance. But then you need to examine the quality of your communication, the selflessness of your giving, the sensitivity of your understanding. Then you have to work on what is weak or lacking. There is where your cooperative efforts come into play.
Or, for example, if you’re a teenager, and you feel left out, unpopular, you can ask God to help you to be liked more. But then you must take stock of how you are interacting with your peers. Are you self-centered or disinterested in others? Then what you need to do is work on being more outgoing, more concerned for what is happening in the lives of others. These are your cooperative efforts.
Your cooperative efforts must be rooted, like a flower in a garden, in your beliefs.
The feast of Christ the King challenges you to do what you can do according to the beliefs that rule your heart and mind and according to the values that govern your every decision, according to the gifts and talents you have.
This is why you have to stop in meditative prayer and find out just what beliefs and values and talents you are living by.
Bernard Bush in his book, Belonging, says, “We are being driven by God’s inner activity and our cooperation toward the fullness destined for us in Christ.”
XXXSoon you will be contemplating Christ the King whose palace was a stable, whose throne was a manger, whose scepter was a stick of straw, whose retinue was dumb animals.
This is Christ your King who is commanding you to use all your God-given gifts and talents and abilities to give loving service to all those around you who are in need.
Speaking of talents, there’s a humorous story about an elderly man who showed up at the country club with a beautiful, young blonde on his arm.
His friends gathered around him after the beautiful blonde went off to the powder room. “Where did you get the trophy girlfriend?” one friend asked the elderly man.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” the elderly man answered, “she’s my wife.”
“Well,” another friend exclaimed, “what did you do to get her to marry you, tell her you were 50?”
“Nope,” the elderly man responded, “I told her I was 90.”

Ask Jesus, you King, to help you to use your cooperative efforts to make his dream for all of us come true.
THOUGHT: Always use your talents cooperatively.

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

2007-12-01T16:23:00.000-05:00

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT A 7:30 & 10:30
A newly commissioned colonel had just moved into his office. A private entered. To impress the private, the colonel said, “I’ll be with you in moment, soldier. I got a phone call while you were knocking.” Picking up his phone, the colonel said, “General! How good to hear from you. How can I help you?” A dramatic pause followed. Then the colonel said, “No problem, sir. I’ll phone Washington at once and talk to the president about it.” Putting down the phone the colonel said to the private, “Now what can I do for you, Private?” The private shuffled his feet and said sheepishly, “Sir, they sent me over to hook up your phone.”
Sadly, nothing is so gratifying than to see the balloon of exaggerated self-importance punctured.
Exaggerated self-importance is an ego trip.
And this is what I want to talk about today – exaggerated self-importance. You may find this topic as exciting as the middle of a bottle of glue, but bear with me.
As you begin or have begun your preparations for Christmas, you might meditate on the God who did not cling to his importance as God, but humbled himself to become one like us in all things but sin. As St. Paul said, “Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped at but emptied himself, being born in human likeness.”
In the sprawling Roman Empire, clanging with the swords of victory and overflowing with the wine of luxury, how important could the birth of a baby in a stable have been?
Our gospel story reminds you of the end time when the Son of Man will come when he is least expected. And he will come as your judge.
The feast of Christmas indicates one of the issues you will be judged on: whether or not you lived your lives filled with Christ Jesus or filled with your own egos.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, for example, in one of his television talks made this comparison: if a box is filled with salt, it cannot be filled with pepper. So too if you are filled with your own exaggerated self-importance, how can you be filled with Christ Jesus? Exaggerated self-importance is an ego trip.
Robert Furey in his book, So I’m Not Perfect: A Psychology of Humility, points out that pride can be an exaggerated opinion of our own importance or superiority. Sounds like the colonel in our story, doesn’t it?
What people who are filled with their own exaggerated self-importance don’t realize, for example, is that egotism is the overcompensation for mediocrity. Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of insecurity. People refuse to recognize that exaggerated self-importance is a sign of inner emptiness and self-doubt.
Some of the characteristics of exaggerated self-importance are, for example, haughtiness, sarcasm, put downs and airs of disdain, arrogance and obnoxiousness.
For example, a man who abuses his wife, not necessarily physically but mentally and emotionally has a self-important ego that wants not only domination but enslavement. Exaggerated self-importance is an ego trip.
How, for example, can you meditate on the humility of the Babe of Bethlehem and persist in your exaggerated self-importance?
You may have talent oozing out of your every pore. You may have accomplishments stacked as high as Mount Everest. But as St. Paul asks, “What do you have that you have not received?” Christmas reminds you that everything you have and are is a precious gift from God.
As you continue to prepare for the Christmas feast, make every effort to fill yourself with Christ Jesus. How? By filling yourself with generosity, sensitivity, the willingness to forgive, compassion, eagerness to help others no matter how draining this is.
Christmas is not just the time for filling people’s arms with gifts; rather it is the time for renewing your efforts to fill your lives and the lives of others with Christ Jesus, born in a stable in Bethlehem.
HUMOR: There’s a cute story about a lady who made no secret of the fact that she resided on the top of the upper crust of society. She said to the kennel owner, “I want a dog I can be proud of and show off. Does this dog have a pedigree?” The man answered, “Oh, yes, if he could talk he wouldn’t speak to either of us.” Exaggerated self-importance is an ego trip.
THOUGHT: Always strive for the humilty of the Christ Child.

HEAVEN

2007-11-09T10:57:00.000-05:00

32nd SUNDAY ORDINARY C Luke 20: 27-38 10:30
Now Jesus is being attacked by the Sadducees – those who believed that the deceased were planted in a grave forever with no springtime of immortality to believe in
or to hope for.
“You who claim to have existed before Abraham was, prove to us that you will exist after you die,” the Sadducees challenged.
“If you’re so smart,” they baited, “that you believe in an afterlife, tell us about a widow and her seven husbands: whose wife will she be and in whose heavenly mansion will she dwell?”
“Silly people,” Jesuse retorted, “don’t you know that in my Father’s kingdom you’ll be far closer to each other than marriage could ever make you be?
“There won’t be any weddings in heaven because heaven itself is the wedding feast for all. You’ll be as close to each other as the merging of angelic songs.”
And his words, like springtime flowers, perfumed the air with hope.
But the Sadducees refused to smell the perfume, refused to experience the hope.
Our gospel story today about the seven brothers and the one wife directs your attention to heaven.
There is a story about Marge. Marge ran into a friend she hadn’t seen in some time. “And how is your husband?” Marge asked her friend. “Oh, he’s in heaven now,” her friend answered sadly. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Marge said and then realized that wasn’t what she meant. So she said, “I mean, I’m glad.” That didn’t sound right either. So Marge finally said, “Well, I’m really surprised to hear it.”
Which one of us hasn’t wondered what heaven will be like?
I was visiting with the heart doctor, a nice young man from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. At the end of the visit he asked me if I had any questions. I said, “Yes, what’s going to happen to me when I die?” He laughed and said, “I’ve been thinking about the same thing.”

It is sometimes as frustrating as being trapped in a labyrinth at how our theologians can turn the simple images of Jesus into complex, heavily technical and at times indecipherable statements to explain what Jesus was saying.
Theological definitions of heaven can make it seem like it’s not worth the effort to get there. How appealing, for example, is it to be told by theologians that heaven is finally entering into the eternal circumincession of the Trinity. Just makes you want to be consumed with efforts to get there, doesn’t it?
And now Jesus speaks, stripped of all the theological jargon. He looks around at vineyards and wheat fields and his eyes come to rest on a mustard plant. The light of recognition sparkles in his eyes. His face breaks into a smile more captivating than a gorgeous sunset.
Look, he says, at the mustard shrub standing in the sunlight of God’s glorious generosity. And look at how it offers shade for the nests of the birds of the air. Isn’t this as beautiful as the lilies of the field?
You are all familiar with a mustard seed, Jesus says. It’s smaller than a fingernail, as tiny as a baby’s eyelash. Yet look at what happens when that seed bursts into the growth God calls it to have.
From this simple image of the mustard shrub you can conclude that heaven is your continuous growth
Throughout the entire gospel story, Jesus offers you the hope of everlasting life in heaven.
And that hope is yours today. No matter how discouraging your life may be, you should never despair because God is forever calling you to continual growth
Like the mustard seed you are in the process of growing and developing now and that process of growing and developing, I believe, will continue forever in heaven.

HUMOR Real life is unpredictable and full of interruptions. The church is not immune to real life. We organize our worship, print an “Order of Worship,” and hope that everything goes as planned. But real life doesn’t follow a program. In a large and very formal church a particular woman visited one Sunday who just wasn’t with the program. She kept shouting out “Amen,” during the sermon. One of the ushers hushed her, but she kept shouting “Amen” until finally the usher approached her and, in a loud whisper asked, “Madam, what are you doing?” “I’m praising the Lord,” she said. To which he responded, “Well, church is no place for that sort of thing.”

THOUGHT: Always hope for everlasting growth.

THE NEED FOR SELF KNOWLEDGE

2007-10-24T12:07:00.000-04:00

30th Sunday C Luke 18: 9-14 10:30 10/28/07
One sunny day an elephant was taking a relaxed dip in the jungle pool. A little mouse came to edge of the pool and demanded that the elephant get out. “Why?” the elephant asked. “I’ll tell you when you get out,” the little mouse retorted. So the elephant got out and asked, “OK what is it you want?” The little mouse replied, “I just wanted to see if you were wearing a bathing suit.”

Isn’t it possible that you can think that you, like the little mouse, are superior to others?
Isn’t it possible that you can make yourself delusional, deceiving yourself as to the reality of who you are or what you are capable of doing?
For example, have you talked yourself into thinking you are smarter than any of your family members or your fellow workers or your acquaintances? And you come off as an obnoxious know it all.
Or have you deceived yourself into thinking you can solve problems better by yourself without asking others to help you which is as silly as someone refusing help out of a swamp of quicksand?
How many people can be delusional about being superior to others just as the Pharisee was in our gospel story.
The gospel story’s power dispels self-deception and inspires the courage of seeking true self-knowledge.
The Pharisee in our gospel story was convinced that he was superior to the tax collector.
O God I thank you that I am not like this tax collector, greedy, dishonest, adulterous.
What can you do about these delusions of being superior to others?
You can make every effort to gain true and genuine self-knowledge.
As Sam Keen & Anne Valley-Fox wrote in their book, Your Mythic Journey, Self-knowledge begins with self-revelation; we don’t know who we are until we hear ourselves speaking the drama of our lives to another.
In other words, Self-knowledge emerges through your interactions with others. Interactions as honest and truthful as swearing an oath on a Bible in a courtroom.
Sally Hill in her book, New Clothes from Old Threads, in her meditation on the fairy tale: “East of the Sun,” says, “The self-knowledge and self-acceptance we gain from sifting through our lives also helps us to know and accept others.”
Recall how Jesus bore through his disciples’ defenses with the piercing question, Who do you say I am? He of infinite knowledge sought self-knowledge through his interaction with his closest friends.
John Navone in his book, The Jesus Story, says, “Your self-knowledge is an admission not only of your frailties but also of your strengths.
By entering actively into Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, you will experience Jesus’ power to free you from your delusions of superiority just as birds of the air are free to swing through the reality of pink-blue skies.
What you need to recognize is this: My self-knowledge determines my attitude toward others.
The more you know your true self, the less you will think you are superior to others.
You all have your talents and abilities. And you should never use your talents and abilities to lord it over others like a crazed tyrant. Your talents and abilities should always be placed at the service of others with the tenderness of a mother breast feeding her baby.
Why not begin today to work at achieving honest self-knowledge?
Realizing that the more you seek knowledge in general, the more you can grow in self-knowledge.
HUMOR
A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of children home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog’s duties.
They use him to keep crowds back,” said one youngster.
“No, said another, “he’s just for good luck.”
A third child brought the argument to a close. “They use the dogs”, she said firmly, “to find the fire hydrant.
THOUGHT Always strive for greater self knowledge.

GRATITUDE

2007-10-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

28th Sunday C Oct 14, 2007 7:30 AM
STORY:
Winston Churchill loved to tell this story. A young boy fell off a pier into the rough ocean waters. An older sailor dived into the water despite the danger. After struggling, he brought the boy to shore. Two days later the mother of the boy came to the pier. She asked the old sailor, “Are you the one who saved my boy?” “I am,” the sailor answered modestly. “Then,” the mother asked, “where is his hat?’
Before you judge this mother harshly for her incredible lack of gratitude, try to remember the many times when you concentrated on what you lacked instead of what you had.
For example, you might say – even just to yourself – I wish I could take a month-long trip, forgetting to be grateful for the good health that would make such a trip possible. Or I wish my son was making more money, ignoring the fact that he is a tender husband and solicitous father.
For you here today, men and women of faith, gratitude is an awareness that should be reflected in every moment of your lives.
Like the Samaritan in today’s gospel story, you realize that you are being healed despite the problems you face or the hurts you must endure; that your blessings far outweigh your struggles; that you have many more reasons to hope and rejoice than you do to sink into despondency or be convulsed by anxieties.

There is a story about a police department in New England that implemented an interesting program. A lady told of her experience to mine. She was driving along when she saw those frightening lights in her rearview mirror!
The officer leaned over to her window and said, “Here’s a ticket, Ma’am, commending you for such good driving! It’s great to have people who obey the law as well as you do and we want to acknowledge you for it!”
Others in the town began sharing similar stories. They shared the odd feelings of having a policeman pull them over to give them a compliment! “It’s unfortunate that people’s first reaction when they see a policeman is usually fear,” the police said. They wanted to change that to an attitude of relief, of gratitude and so this New England community responded with deep gratitude.

Affirmation is one way of expressing gratitude.
A friend of mine said, “If only we would tell people when they’re alive all the good things we say about them at their funerals.”
In his book, Seeds of Sensitivity: Deepening Your Spiritual Life, Robert J Wicks says “One of the main obstacles to gratitude is bitterness. Bitterness prevents us from letting go of hurts; bitterness holds on to what we have lost or are convinced we never had.
In the movie, Marriage Fool, Walter Matthau, a widower is talking with Carol Burnett, a widow. He says, “I’m really proud of my three sons.” She asks, “Do you ever tell them?” He mumbles a no. She says, “My husband, God rest him, absolutely adored our daughter. Then he died. The first thing my daughter asked me was, ‘Mom, what did Daddy really think of me?’”
Affirmation is one way of expressing gratitude.
Isn’t it true that an attitude of gratitude is the oil that makes the wheels of human relationships run smoothly? Isn’t gratitude the balm that can heal all those wounds so often unconsciously inflicted just from living together or associating with one another?
Isn’t thanks as contagious as laughter and meant to be shared. And like laughter, doesn’t a word or gesture of thanks lighten you heart, revitalize your energy and make you feel that life is worthwhile?
Another obstacle to gratitude is selfishness.
Let me leave you with a story about selfishness that is humorous but may be a stimulant for you to show more gratitude than you’ve been doing.

STORY: A man went to the doctor for a physical checkup. The doctor pulled the man’s wife aside. “Your husband is under great stress. It could be a matter of life or death.So you have to shelter him. Every morning make him his favorite breakfast. Make him a nice lunch. Spend the afternoon cleaning the house. Then make him a luscious dinner. You must do this each and every day. And remember, it’s a matter of life or death.” On their way home, the husband asked his wife what the doctor had to day. “The doctor said,” his wife replied, “that you’re going to die.”

THOUGHT: Always strive for a gratitude that counteracts selfishness.

Respect life 10/6/07

2007-10-06T19:15:00.000-04:00

27th Sunday C Respect Life Sunday 5:30 PM Saturday

A woman told this story: When our son Jimmy went to Navy boot camp, we waited impatiently for word from him. Finally we received a post card telling us he was doing well and we shouldn’t worry. It went on to say that he was being kept busy acclimating to a military lifestyle and that he would send a detailed letter in a couple of weeks.
After reading his card a second time, however, we noticed that Jimmy had faintly underlined letters throughout the note. When the letters were combined, his hidden message read, “Help me!”
The month of October is set aside as Respect Life Month. It is a time of intense consciousness raising with regards the sacredness of human life and, again, especially the human lives of the unborn.
Unlike Jimmy in the bootcamp, the unborn babies cannot send out the plea, “Help me!:

Respect life month reminds all of us that there is no area of life that is not subject to gospel values.
The value in the gospel highlighted by pro-life activities is Jesus’ coming that we might have the fullness of life and his restoration of people to the wholeness of life by his miraculous deeds.
Obviously there can be no fullness or wholeness of life if there is no life in the first place.
Sister Joan Puls in her book, The Spirituality of Compassion, echoes the gospel when she says, “Human life is lived in relationship and love is the essential experience.”
Abortion is the rejection and negation of human life. Abortion is the ravaging of the lived relationship of human life and the destruction of the love which expresses this relationship.
In other words, abortion demolishes the essence of human life: love. And the same is true of all other unjustified and immoral killing.
We are living in a “culture of death” because we exist in a society of lovelessness.
“All life is an interconnected membrane,” Annie Dillard said in Teaching A Stone To Talk. The redundancy, interconnected and membrane, is a deliberate attempt on her part to emphasize the fact that we cannot put life into various compartments. The life of the unborn and the life of the born, for example, cannot be treated as separate kinds of life. All life is a whole.

There are many excuses offered for the committing of abortion. The primary claim is that a woman has control over her body which no one, not even God, can regulate the use of her body.
A variety of other excuses and rationalizations are offered: financial insecurity, unmarried status, other children to be raised and the most tragic of all, inconvenience. These are but a few of the excuses.
But John J. Collins in Chicago Studies (Spring, 1982) appeals to the Christmas image to dispel these excuses. He says, “The stable of Bethlehem is an abiding symbol for the triumph of the gift of life over poverty of circumstance.”
As applied to abortion, his image says that there is no excuse or rationalization for the taking of the life of the unborn.
Father Bernard Bush in the book Belonging challenges our “culture of death” with these words: “To share another’s life we must be willing to sacrifice because to affirm another’s freedom and identity can mean sacrificing our own self-assertion and selfishness.”
Is not a pregnant woman sharing in the life of her unborn child? Is she not obliged to affirm her child’s freedom to be born? Affirm the child’s identity as a human being? Is not the aborting of that child an act of self-assertion and selfishness? Is not abortion the vilest, the most atrocious, the most repugnant refusal to sacrifice?
And lest there be any doubt, the pregnant woman is not always alone in her decision to abort a child. More often than not the father of the child is a reinforcing coercion behind that decision. Often it his decision alone.
Every person, born or unborn, is a divine expression of life and love.
But can a loveless culture accept that statement?
Cornel West in his book, Race Matters, formulated a challenging observation. He wrote that “The cause of violence is the monumental eclipse of hope, the unprecedented collapse of meaning and the incredible disregard of human life.”
He was writing about racial bigotry but what he said about violence is most applicable to abortion.
Abortion is violence. Not just another act of violence but violence at the very root of human life.
If anyone has been involved in an abortion, that person should not plunge into the deep pit of guilt feelings, God in his infinite mercy has forgiven that person. So that person should move on and work tirelessly for the preservation of the lives of the unborn.
All of us need to pray for the grace of receiving life as a promise, as a response of gratitude for our own lives, as a pledge of bringing all human life to fulfillment.
All of us must work together to transform our culture of death into a culture of life, not becoming discouraged but keeping in mind that it is not the triumph but the struggle that develops, enhances and fortifies hope.
Ask Jesus, your indwelling friend, to give you the perseverance to continue the work of preserving the life of the unborn.
THOUGHT: Always recognize and remember that all life is a gift from God.

SELFLESS LOVE

2007-09-21T12:58:00.000-04:00

25TH Sunday C Luke 16: 1-13 10:30
Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived:
Happiness, Sadness, and all of the others including Love. One day it was
announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all repaired their
boats and left. Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to persevere
until the last possible moment. When the island was almost sinking, Love
decided to ask for help.
Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, “Richness, can you
take me with you?” Richness answered, “No I can’t.. There is a lot of gold and
silver in my boat. There is no place for you here.”
Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel,
“Vanity, please help me!” “I can’t help you Love. You are all wet and dirty. You’ll make my boat filthy,” Vanity answered.
Sadness was close by so Love asked for help, “Sadness let me go with you.”
“Oh...Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!”
Happiness passed by Love too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear
when Love called her!
Suddenly, there was a voice, “Come Love, I will take you.” Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that he even forgot to ask her rescuer his name.
When they arrived at dry land, the rescuer went his own way. Love realizing how much she owed the rescuer , asked Knowledge, “Who helped me?”
“It was Time”, Knowledge answered.
“Time?” asked Love. “But why did Time help me?
Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, “Because only Time is capable
of understanding how great Love is.”
The moral of this story in the light of the gospel parable of the unjust steward is this: true ,selfless love is timeless; egotistical self-love is time-consuming.
For example, a husband or wife who indulges in egotistical self-love will make selfish demands on the other which are next to impossible to fulfill. For instance, changing the way of chewing food.
Or a teenager who is self-centered will treat his or her parents as if they were indentured servants, here on earth for no reason but to grant instant gratification of every whim the teenager has.
Egotistical self-love is a thin veil hiding the reality which is self-hatred. People who truly love themselves do not perpetrate acts of hatred.
We have recently commemorated the sixth anniversary of the insane extent self-hatred can go in the savage crime of the terrorist attack on our nation. And we are still trying to grapple with how true love should respond to this heartless, barbaric attack.
True, selfless love seeks to give; egotistical self-love is bent on getting.
True, selfless love enriches others; egotistical self-love hoards at the expense of others.
The unjust steward of the gospel parable was enveloped with egotistical self-love. All he was concerned about was taking care of number one, enriching himself. Only a person chained to self-hatred would act this way.
On the spiritual level Abraham Maslow in his book, Religions, Values and Peak Experiences, carries the unjust steward’s attitude to the spiritual level. He wrote, “In sacred moments or peak experiences one may become simply a selfish person seeking his own personal salvation, trying to get into heaven even if other people can’t.”
True, selfless love combines love of God and love of neighbor as the single stream of your love.
There is a humorous aphorism that goes, Those who live only for themselves confer a wonderful benefit on the world whey they die.
The question: do you live a true, selfless love that benefits others or do you live a egotistical self-love that benefits only yourself?
You need to constantly ascend from the dark pit of selfishness to the stained-glass beauty of love in order to share all the affection you have experienced.
Winston Churchill wrote in a note to his wife: Thank you for being rash enough to marry me, foolish enough to stay with me and loving me in a way I never thought I could be loved.
Ask Jesus, your indwelling friend, to empower you to always live a true, selfless love, keeping in mind that true, selfless love is a power and a process; a power to heal past wounds and a process toward future healings.
HUMOR
Mr. Fenton was retired. When his wife went shopping at Walmart, she insisted he go with her. Mr. Fenton didn’t want to go but because he loved his wife so selflessly he always went .But he usually became bored because he’d rather get in and out of the store as fast as possible but his wife loved to browse.
One day Mrs. Fenton received a letter from Walmart. It read:
Dear Mrs. Fenton,
Over the past six months, your husband has been causing quite a commotion
in our store.
We cannot tolerate this behavior and so we are banning both of you from our stores.
We have documented all incidents on our video surveillance equipment.
All complaints against Mr. Fenton are listed below.
Things Mr. Bill Fenton has done while his spouse was shopping in Walmart:
Set all the alarm clocks in House wares to go off at 5-minute
intervals.
Moved a 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.
Set up a tent in the camping department and told other
shoppers he'd invite them in if they'll bring pillows from the bedding department.
When a clerk asks if he can help him, he begins to cry
and asks, 'Why can't you people just leave me alone?'
While handling guns in the hunting department, asked the
clerk if he knows where the antidepressants are.
Hid in a clothing rack and when people browse through,
yelled "PICK ME!" "PICK ME!"
When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he
assumes the fetal position and screams "NO ! NO! It's those voices again!!!!"
Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited a while,
then yelled very loudly, "There ain't NO toilet paper in here!"
Went to the Service Desk and asked to put a bag of M&M's on
layaway.

Regards,
WalmartTHOUGHT Always share yourselves with others with a more selfless love.

AFFIRMATION

2007-09-11T16:34:00.001-04:00

24TH Sunday C 9AM Luke 15: 1-32STORY
In one of the Peanuts cartoons, Lucy is holding a helium balloon. She turns to Snoopy and says, “I’m going for lunch. Hold onto this balloon till I get back.” She sticks the string between Snoopy’s teeth. “Now don’t let go,” she scolds.
Snoopy sits there with the balloon between his teeth for the longest time. Finally he falls asleep. While he’s asleep, he yawns and of course the balloon takes off into the wild blue yonder. Snoopy wakes up in a panic. The last frame shows Snoopy walking down the railroad tracks in the moonlight, with his belongings in a little bundle on a stick over his shoulder. Snoopy mutters to himself, “Make one mistake and you’re doomed for life.”

Unlike Snoopy you believe that you will never be doomed for life because God’s forgiveness is always yours.

William Bausch in his book, The Yellow Brick Road: A Storyteller’s Approach to the Spiritual, calls God the God of second chances

Bausch cites the woman of the tears and perfume forgiven at the banquet, the woman caught in adultery, the good thief, Augustine and in our own day, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

The reality, as soothing as a warm embrace, is that our God is the God not of second chances but of infinite chances.

If anything the story about the prodigal son reinforces your belief in God’s infinite mercy and forgiveness.

Let’s face it. We are all mistake makers and we will continue to be mistake makers.
One of the most captivating aspects of Jesus’ parable is the fact that the wayward son’s father forgives his son before he can get his whole practiced apology out. What a revelation of how God reacts to our sins! Do you really understand what you mean when you say, God is infinitely merciful?

Jesus’ stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son tell you as clearly as a streak of lightning in the midnight sky that God never gives up on you. God’s love for you is as persevering as the shepherd’s love for his lost lamb in our gospel story – only infinitely and unconditionally more so. Do you believe this? Really believe?

What practical lesson can you take from this parable of the prodigal son? There are many lessons but the one I would like of emphasize today is this: For me, Jesus’ parable is about affirmation, an affirmation story as wonderful as his words, “Love one another as I love you.”

I think you can identify with how one human being – you! -- can not only forgive others but complete the cycle by affirming another human being’s feelings of worth and value.

You have the power to say to another human being (perhaps someone very close to you) what the father in the parable said in effect to his son, “You have a lot of worth qualities. You are a worthwhile person. You are valuable enough to be loved.”

What a far cry from the unnecessary, often petty, criticisms people level at one another like the line up of nuclear warheads! How different from all the fault finding that goes on and on like a needle stuck in a old time record.

Harold Kushner in his taped lecture, How Good Do We Have To Be, says, “We misinterpret the message of religion if we interpret this message as urging us to criticize and condemn others rather the message of religion is encouragement and affirmation.”

In the movie, Dead Man Walking, there is a magnificent line. “Everyone is worth far more than his or her worst act.”

Imagine what your relationships would be like if you lived that insight! “Everyone is worth far more than his or her worst act.”

Isn’t this what the father said to his wayward son? You’re worth far more than this, your worst act of deserting me, your father. Isn’t this what makes this story so fascinating? So passionately attractive?

Like the Prodigal Son, everyone has lovable qualities no matter what faults they may also have. It’s up to each of you to forgive the faults and seek out those lovable qualities in others. Then you can affirm those lovable qualities by telling people, especially the members of your family, that you recognize and appreciate their lovable qualities.

You might also try to do some self-affirming instead of always putting yourself down like the man in this story:

HUMOR
A noted psychiatrist was a guest at a gathering of humor editors, and his host naturally broached the subject in which the doctor was most at ease. "Would you mind telling me, Doctor," he asked, "how you detect a mental deficiency in somebody who appears completely normal?" "Nothing is easier," he replied. "You ask him a simple question which everyone should answer with no trouble. If he hesitates, that puts you on the track." "What sort of question?" "Well, you might ask him, 'Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?'" The editor thought a moment, then said with a nervous laugh, "You wouldn't happen to have another example would you? I must confess I don't know much about history." THOUGHTAlways affirm others with hopeful optimism.

COMMITMENT

2007-09-04T10:30:00.000-04:00

23rd Sunday C September 9, 7:30 Luke 14: 25-33
STORY:
A frog found himself trapped on a large lily pad surrounded by hungry alligators. His only hope for escape was to hop over the alligators to the next lily pad. An owl sitting on a branch overhead said with cool detachment, “Why don’t you just take off and fly to the next lily pad?” The frog got a running start and flapped his legs as fast and as hard as he could, took off and landed right in front of the massive jaws of an alligator. “You stupid owl,” the frog screamed, “frogs can’t fly.” “Please,” said the owl disdainfully, “You’re talking about a practical matter. I only deal in theories.”
What this story is telling you is that you can be an abstract theorist about following Jesus or a concrete practitioner. What’s the difference? Let a little parable tell you.
Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, “So and so tells me that he was one of year students.” The scholar answered devastatingly, “He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students.”
In other words, it is one of the supreme handicaps of the church that in it there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.
There are so many who build their houses on the shifting sands of superficial piety instead of on the rock of steadfast commitment to living the gospel values counterculturally.
For example, when our culture’s value demands a star-spangled salute to the need to make war, our gospel value proclaims, “Blessed are the peacemakers …”
The contrast between these two values pours out into your political lives, your political convictions, your political loyalties and that makes living the gospel value of peace making all the more difficult but not impossible.
As St Paul says, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”
Jesus is not asking you literally to hate your father and mother, wife and children. Rather he is asking you to set up your priorities in such a way that no human love will ever topple your love for Jesus from first place.
What Jesus wants from you is a total, absolute, unconditional commitment to him.
Randolf Miller in his book, This We Can Believe, says, “Religious faith depends on more than beliefs; it demands an active sense of God’s presence and an unreserved commitment to the God who lives within us.”
What our two stories are saying is that there are those who prefer to sit on the fence. To say, I am committed to Jesus but in your actions you prove that your commitment to Jesus is half-hearted, lukewarm, perfunctory. A matter of fudging, of cutting corners, of giving Jesus 60 minutes on a Sunday but keeping the other 10020 minutes a week for yourself.
In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, the soldiers who were sent to find Private Ryan ran into innumerable, life threatening obstacles. Yet they persevered in their
commitment to fulfill the duty that was assigned to them. Finally they found him.
This is the kind of commitment Jesus wants from you. No matter what the difficulties are or how many obstacles there are, you will, for example, forgive 70 times 7 times – even the same person! Forgive over and over realizing how God-like this makes you since God not only forgives again and again but is Forgiveness itself. And you are the one who benefits most from God’s forgiveness.
Donald Gelpi in his book, Experiencing God, a monumental study of the charismatic movement, says that “the response to God’s call demands a love commitment to the person of Jesus , his teachings and the community that flows from him.”
Are you capable of this kind of commitment? I sincerely believe you are. You have the infinite all-powerful God dwelling within you. All you have to do is tap into the power he is always offering you through your persevering prayer.

HUMOR
A man was chosen for jury duty who very much wanted to be
dismissed from the commitment of serving. He tried every excuse he could think
of but none of them worked. On the day of the trial he
decided to give it one more shot. As the trial was about to
begin he asked if he could approach the bench.

“Your Honor,” he said, “ I must be excused from this trial
because I am prejudiced against the defendant. I took one
look at the man in the blue suit with those beady eyes and
that dishonest face and I said, “He’s a crook! He’s guilty,
guilty, guilty.” So your Honor, I could not possibly stay
on this jury!”

With a tired annoyance the judge replied, “Get back in the
jury box. That man is his lawyer.”

THOUGHT: Always remember that commitment has no expiration date.

LABOR DAY

2007-08-30T10:53:00.000-04:00

22nd Sunday C Labor Day 5:30PM
LABOR DAY: HOLIDAY OR HOLYDAY?

A man of piety complained to the Spiritual Master, saying: "I have labored hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet l I have seen little improvement in myself. I am still an ordinary and ignorant person."
The Spiritual Master answered: "You have gained the realization that
you are ordinary and ignorant, and this in itself is a worthy accomplishment. When you break open this story like the shell of an oyster, you find this pearl: the labor to discover self knowledge of any kind is a precious find.
As you prepare to celebrate Labor Day, you might keep in mind that God created you out of matter to teach you that you matter and that there is nothing in the work you do that doesn’t matter.
Your work is sacred because God has made you his co-creators.
This, of course, does not mean that you are able to make something out of nothing. That is the definition of God’s work alone.
Being co-creators means that you who were created in the image and likeness of God can enter into the continuing creation work of our Creator with your creativity.
Pope John Paul has developed this idea in his encyclical, On Human Work (Laborem Exercens).
“The Word of God’s revelation is profoundly marked by the fundamental truth that man, created in the image of God, shares by his work in the activity of the Creator and that … man in a sense continues to develop that activity.” (#25)
Bishop Morneau, Auxiliary of Green Bay, in his enlightening book, Themes and Theses of Six Recent Papal Documents: A Commentary, sums up this section of Pope John Paul’s encyclical with this insight: “Work is inextricably bound up with the mystery of God’s creative activity; each person shares in the wonder of creation through work.”

LABOR DAY

Is Labor Day, for example, merely a break from the strenuous, often stressfully competitive, workaday world?
Or is Labor Day a time set aside for you to ponder, for example, Joyce Rupp’s statement in her book, May I Have This Dance, that “We need to make our work a sacred place where God’s presence is acknowledged and allowed to influence our activity.”
From our countercultural faith perspective, your workplace, whether in or outside the home, will be sacred when you recognize with dynamic faith that you are God’s co-creators.
You need to meditate on the fact that Labor Day is more a holyday than a holiday because it symbolizes your cooperation in the continuing creative work of God.
Pope John Paul says in his encyclical, On Human Work, that “the primary basis of the value of work is man himself,” and that “work is ‘for man’ not man ‘for work’.” (#6)
In our culture’s anti gospel values of technological, assembly-line, high-pressured and compulsively competitive workaday world, Pope John Paul’s words call your attention to the fact that you should not be mere producers of more things for human consumption but you should be the products of more development for human growth.

LABOR OF LOVE

Your work should be the signature of human beings, not an anonymous note dropped into the annals of human history.
For such a signature you need a spirituality that enhances your work. It should be a spirituality that not only enables workers to offer their work to God but also empowers them to open up their work and discover themselves as co-creators with God.
From our countercultural faith perspective, you need a spirituality for the workplace that reminds you that whatever else your work includes, it always includes the continuation of God’s creative activity throughout history and your continuing contribution to that activity and to the common good.
Years ago, Archbishop Fulton Sheen in one of his televised broadcasts, Life Is Worth Living, said, “No work is ever degrading, only workmanship can be degrading. All work is noble if it is done out of love.”
It takes the love of work to elevate the drudgery or stress of the workplace to the excitement and enthusiasm of being co-creators with God, to transpose a dirge of boredom into a hymn of praise.
HUMOR
An elderly Irishman lay dying in his bed.
While suffering the agony of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favorite chocolate chip cookies wafting up the stairs.
Gathering his remaining strength, with great labor, he lifted himself from the bed.
Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom.
Gripping the railing with both hands, and with great labor, he crawled downstairs.
With labored breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen.
Were it not for death’s agony, he would have thought he was already in Heaven, for there, spread out on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favorite chocolate chip cookies.
Was it Heaven or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted Irish wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?
Mustering one great final effort, again with great labor, the dying Irishman threw himself towards the table and he landed in a rumpled posture.
The cookies seemed to bring the dying man back to life.
His aged and withered hand trembled on its way to a cookie at the edge of the table.
Suddenly, his hand was smacked with a spatula by his wife with the warning:
“Don’t touch! These cookies are for the funeral.”

THOUGHT
Always make your work a labor of love.

SCHOOL OPENING

2007-08-30T10:44:00.000-04:00

THE MORNING SCHOOLYARD
"Learn from me…"
As the sun grants a new day of adventure
I stand fully vested,
knifeless for the sacrifice
as unbloody as the white altar cloth.
For a few minutes before entering
into the Eucharistic
‘cloud of unknowing,’
I consume the consecrated gift of viewing through the chapel window,
as narrow as a monk’s cell,
the broad vista
of the school’s parking lot.
I watch
as if glimpsing into cosmic secrets
as little children scamper
in a fast forward blur
carrying the bulky burden of books
on their backs
as though as light as summer sunrays.
The cars and vans pull to a sacred stop
like a hurried procession in need
of a solemn moment of relief
for the Holy-Grail seeking pilgrims.
As inevitable as homework
there is the goodbye kiss
between parent and child
that places God on each other’s lips.
There is the child’s wave and smile
that lets go for a while
of parental security
as warm and comfortable
as the inside of the car.
As if coaxing adorability,
there is a return of wave and smile
that sends the hope of growth
into a little heart as fertile
as a field of hundredfold harvest.
Then a watchful parental eye –
the lens of divine Providence –
follows the skipping feet
until they carry an eager mind
into the safety of the school,
into the stretching future,
as the car drives off
into the demanding present.
I turn and gaze at the altar
and quietly revel in the unctuous
vision into divine love
soon to be the mystery
that falls across the bread and wine,
the Body and Blood of the one who says,
Allow the little children to come to me.

PERSEVERENCE

2007-08-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

21st Sunday C Luke 13: 22-30 12: 15

Scott Peck, the best selling author and popular speaker, became famous when he wrote his first book entitled The Road Less Traveled. The first sentence in that book is a perceptive commentary on life -- simple and direct: "Life is difficult." For some, that is an understatement. I’ve heard people say, “Hell is living here on earth.” For all who are alive and aware, it is an experienced truth :Life is difficult.
Jesus would concur.
Jesus is always calling you to decide -- to choose your way -- and that way is often "The Road Less Traveled". Here in Luke's Gospel, it is expressed in a cryptic sentence. "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to...."
Let's begin with that simple but profound and provocative statement: Life is difficult. That statement, Life is difficult, is a huge lake into which you can jump at any number of places.
For example, there was minister who had a terrible day on the golf course. On the last hole, he actually went into a tantrum, cursing and beating the ground with his club. Finally recovering himself, he looked woefully at the caddy, and muttered, "I guess I'll have to give it up."
"Give up golf?" asked the caddy.
"No, not golf," the minister said, "my ministry." Life is difficult. Just think of rearing children. Have you heard it put this way? "The trouble with children is that when they are not being a lump in the throat, they are being a pain in the neck.” How many of you -- just this week -- have had lumps in your throat because of your children? Some of those lumps came out of sheer joy. Something happened that was so pleasing to you -- maybe surprising, but deeply moving -- So deeply moving that your emotions welled up and a lump in your throat kept you from speaking. The tears in your eyes were tears of joy and they glistened as you smiled with unbridled delight. For others, the lump in the throat was not a delight as sweet as an angel’s kiss, but sorrow as bitter as sucking on a lemon.. Your child disappointed you gravely, betrayed your trust. But more painful and destructive, betrayed his or her best self, and there was nothing you could do about it but cry and swallow hard and try to breathe more easily around that lump in your throat that blocked life and joy. Life is as difficult as Jesus’ narrow door.
What you need to enter that narrow door, to cope with the difficulties of life is perseverance – The Road Less Traveled.
Robert Wicks in his book, Seeds of Sensitivity: Deepening Your Spiritual Life, says, “Spiritual success is not measured by what we accomplish but by the tenacity to persevere when we don’t see immediate results.”
A sense of duty, a sense of obligation will not lead to perseverance but to a stale and tedious struggle.
In the TV series, the XFiles, Agent Scully says, that what can be imagined can be achieved, that you must dare to dream but there is no substitute for perseverance and hard work and team work because no one gets to where he is going alone.
Melannie Svoboda in her book Traits of a Healthy Spirituality wrote, Perseverance is the ability to persist in an undertaking over a long period of time despite counterinfluences, periodic setbacks or bouts of discouragement.
At the Judgment God will not ask you how long you stayed in a certain vocation or place or relationship or occupation but how well you persevered in loving.
The acorn does not persevere in remaining an acorn; it perseveres in becoming an oak tree.
God calls you not to be stubborn acorns but to become majestic oak tress and that takes perseverance.
Someone said, the mighty oak tree is just an acorn that held its ground.
To switch metaphors, keep in mind that perseverance isn't just trudging through a snowstorm of frigid determination.
For example, perseverance in prayer is not the craving for prompt responses or easy visions.
Perseverance is not the tongue parched from repetitive prayers in a superstitious cycle.
Perseverance in prayer is not a backroom plot to bribe God.
Perseverance in prayer is a slow process like a brook wearing away a stone.
Perseverance in prayer is time consuming like the planting and reaping of a harvest.
Prayer of perseverance is like painstakingly picking your way through the twists and turns of the Appalachian Trail not a prayer of anxiety like fleeing from imagined dangers along that Trail
Perseverance is not one long race but many short races one after another.

HUMOR
Billy Bob wanted a job as a signalman on the railways. He was told to meet the inspector at the signal box. The inspector asked, “What would you do if you realized that 2 trains were heading for each other on the same track?”
Billy Bob replied, “I would switch the points for one of the trains.”
“What if the lever broke?” asked the inspector.
“Then I’d dash down out of the signal box,” said Billy Bob, “and I’d use the manual lever over there.”
“What if that had been struck by lightning?”
“Then,” Billy Bob persevered, “I’d run back into the signal box and phone the next signal box.”
“What if the phone was engaged?”
“Well in that case,” persevered Billy Bob, “I’d rush down and use the public emergency phone.
“What if that was vandalized?”
“Oh, well then I’d run into the village and get my uncle.” Billy Bob persevered, “Because he ain’t never seen a train crash.”
THOUGHT: Enter the narrow door through constant perseverance.

THE RAIN

2007-08-21T12:09:00.000-04:00

A RAINY DAY

“…but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,
and immediately blood and water flowed out.”

We never hear how
you played in the rain.
As a child did you
puddle-jump and
stick out your tongue
in an I-thirst yearning?

As you danced in the rain
circling around in the drops,
did your memory leap frog
like a sundial back
to Noah’s flood?
Back to the rescuing salvation
as you shivered at the prospect
of the cross that would make it whole?

Did you stand on the shore
of the Sea of Galilee,
wondering what would happen
if you tried the light fantastic
on the gulping waves?

On a rainy day
did you have a predilection
of your power sinking
into deep jugs of waiting water,
breathing your intoxicating Spirit
and bringing forth the sweet aroma
of the best wine saved for last?

As the rain fell into the town well
did you have any idea
of sitting by the well of Jacob’s bounty,
asking the town’s shunned woman
for a drink to slake your thirst
and talking to her about water
that would refresh and renew her soul?

On rainy days
as you wiped the mud
from your feet,
did you plan one day
to wash the feet of those
who reverently called you Master?

On a rainy day
as the raindrops trickled
down your sunny face
did you ever imagine
the water that would run
with your last drops of lifeblood
from your pierced side?

On rainy days
I think of the waters of Baptism
where you planted my roots
in a community that
celebrates your splendor
and assured me
of my ability to grow,
and I give thanks
for all the living waters
you have poured into my life.

DRY MARTYRDOMS

2007-08-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

DRY MARTYRDOMS

We persecute our prophets
but honor our martyrs
or so the old saw goes
as it slips into the untapped
universal subconscious.

The blood of martyrs saturates
the good soil where seeds
grow into a forest of huge plants
renting rooms to wayward birds.

Yet there are dry martyrdoms:
no true blood from real veins
spilled like the rush of Niagara Falls,
no blood splattered against
the walls of dreams and hopes.

There is the dry martyrdom
of whirlwind perplexity as
confusing as a wispy maze;

of the slicing knife of self-doubt
cutting through the membrane of courage;
of the fear of what others think
that paralyzes like a fence electrified;

of the refusal to reveal our weaknesses
as if we would be mocked
with the artificial laughter of clowns;

of ecstasy that fades
with the chapel candle’s
last flicker of inspiration
and sinks into palaver prayer.

As torturous as these dry
martyrdoms can be,
the problem with bloody martyrs
is that they are never around
to hear the glorious accolades
that canonize them with ruby crowns.

Our dry martyrdoms
are crosses as real as
the nails driven into his flesh
but when we bend our crosses
down and outward to contact others,
we find that our crosses make
the most beautiful, sturdy bridges.

LIVING JESUS' VALUES COUNTERCULTURALLY

2007-08-16T10:33:00.000-04:00

20th Sunday C Aug 19 Luke 12:49-53 10:30
Story: A Protestant minister was hired by a congregation. The first Sunday he delivered a sermon that everyone agreed was quite good. The next Sunday he preached the same sermon.
The third Sunday again the same sermon.
The deacons of the church approached the new minister and asked why he was preaching the same sermon every Sunday. The minister replied, “I’m going to preach this sermon until I’m satisfied that the people are living it.
It’s as obvious as a boil that the people in that congregation did not want the Word of God to disturb the complacency of their lifestyle and value system.
But listen again to Jesus in our gospel story: I have come to bring fire to the earth. Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.
What Jesus is telling you is that his value system, the lifestyle he wants you to live are not easy, are not comfortable. Rather his gospel is challenging and demanding. It can be confrontational and divisive.
Sometimes, for example, the divisions that occur within our faith community are due to one group with its misguided fervor or even fanaticism is trying to control everyone else.
Story: The fourth graders were studying the Pilgrims coming to America. The teacher asked, “Why did the Pilgrims leave England for America?” One little girl answered, “So that they could practice their religion in freedom and in their own way and force others to do the same.”
Sometimes, for example, the divisions are due to a breakdown in communication.
Even in a one on one conversation, it is necessary to know what each person means by the key words they use in order to avoid a disastrous split in their communication.
For example, a father and mother may get into an unnecessary argument because each one is using the word, discipline, in two different ways when they are talking about disciplining one of their children. They need to work toward a common understanding of the word, discipline, before they discuss what consequences their child will have for her or his actions.
Communication is not always easy. I have found that what I say and what people hear can be as radically different as sun and the moon. I remember back in 1960 I gave a sermon (that’s what it was called then) on the right, the duty and the privilege of voting.
Later that Sunday afternoon, I was deluged with phone calls. Some saying I was telling to
vote for Nixon; some saying I told them to vote for Kennedy.
I did not mention either candidate nor either political party. In preparing my sermon I was extremely careful to make sure it was non partisan. But people interpreted my sermon through the earphones of their ideological outlook.
Within a Christian community of faith, for example, there can be divisions because people don’t recognize that there are a variety of spiritualities.
Gerald Broccolo in his book, Vital Spiritualities: Naming the Holy in Your Life, wrote, “As long as we measure each other’s shortcomings by an imaginary ideal we will not encounter Christ in our Christian communities.”
And it’s not just a matter of shortcomings but of preferences in the kind of spirituality we decided to follow.
For example, some enjoy praying in private, others in small groups; some want their spirituality to deal with social justice issues, others do not; some want the rules to be kept absolutely with no exceptions, others want the rules to be applied to varying human conditions; some will join established groups like Cursillio or charismatics or Third Orders, others will avoid such groups because they find them too emotional or too directive.
The point is that no one kind of spirituality is better than another. But all spiritualities should be countercultural. This is what Jesus means when he says he has come to bring division.
You are challenged to live Jesus’ value system each day in opposition to those values in our culture which contradict or deny Jesus’ value system.
For example, when our culture’s value of getting ahead no matter whom you might have to crush along the way, it contradicts Jesus’ value of being meek and humble.
Or for example, when our culture’s value fosters runaway consumerism, it contradicts Jesus’ value of being poor in spirit.
In fact, Edwina Gateley in her book, A Warm Moist Salty God: Women Journeying Towards Wisdom, says, We must refuse to acknowledge a god whom we have shaped in our own image and likeness, a god and a spirituality which condones and endorses all manner of violence and oppression in the name of God.
It’s incumbent upon you to know the gospel well enough to recognize which values in our culture are opposed to the values of the gospel. But when you live the gospel counterculturally, you can be certain that you will be divided from the mainstream of our culture.
This division can be a heavy cross. But when you bend your cross down and outward toward others, you find that crosses make excellent bridges.
Ask Jesus, your friend, dwelling within you, to give you the courage and fiery zeal to one, heal the unnecessary divisions within your faith community, and two, to live the gospel counterculturally.

HUMOR A little boy came home with his parents from church one Sunday. He seemed a little depressed, so his mother asked him if something happened in Sunday School class that he would like to talk about.
He told his mother, “Well, we were singing songs and the teacher made us sing about a poor bear named Gladly that needed glasses and I can’t stop thinking about him. She
The mother couldn’t understand why the teacher would teach such a song in Sunday school, so she decided to call her. To the woman’s amazement, the teacher said she only taught hymns that morning.
Then the teacher began laughing out loud and said to the mother,
“I know what Jeffrey’s talking about! We learned the hymn ‘Gladly The Cross I’d Bear!’”
THOUGHT Always choose to live the gospel counterculturally.

LIVING THE GOSPEL VALUES COUNTERCULTURALLY

2007-08-09T12:40:00.000-04:00

19th Sunday C 9 AM Luke 12:32

It's a classic children's story told time and time again. A little boy is asked by his kindergarten teacher where his heart is. He points to the seat of his pants. "Why do you say that is where your heart is?" asks the kindergarten teacher. "Because," said the little boy, "My grandmother is always patting me there and saying, ˜Bless your little heart.'" There is no more relevant question that we can ask than this one: "Where is your heart?"
In our gospel story today Jesus reminds you that ”Wherever your treasure lies there will be your heart.
Most of you would say that your heart is with your family. And that's as it should be. Your family is your most precious treasure. Of course, no family is perfect.
There is a story of bank robber Dwayne Leroy Bodell who was in prison for bank robbery. Bodell has been in and out of prison since his twenties for various crimes, mostly bank robberies.
Bodell was finally released from prison and sent to a halfway house. Two weeks later, he got permission to attend a family reunion. The next weekend, Bodell escaped from the halfway house in a deliberate attempt to get put back into prison. Bodell got his wish
Dwayne Leroy Bodell at age 71 was sentenced to ten more years in prison. He just didn’t want to attend another family reunion. Family reunions can be a disaster, but the family does remain the core of our society.
We have a major discussion going on in our country concerning what to do about our schools especially school violence.
In his book When the Bough Breaks by Chicago sociologist James S. Coleman says that family background matters more in determining student achievement than any other attribute of the formal educational system:
"Unless we work together to strengthen the family," says Coleman, "all the rest; the schools and playgrounds, public assistance and private concern, will never be enough to save our children. No matter how elaborate are our family support systems, they will do little to advance children's well-being if parents elect to spend little or no time with their children."
As a society, as a church and as responsible individuals we have a moral obligation to do everything we can do to strengthen families.
On the other hand, parents must be on guard against blaming themselves if a son or daughter chooses to follow our culture’s anti gospel path through life, a path as easy to traverse as sliding down a snow covered hill on a toboggan.

For example, young people drinking and carousing like the Romans in the last days of the Empire’s collapse, or not holding down a job and trying to live off their parents like maggots feeding off a felled animal, or putting their sexual fantasies into bed-hopping fornication or adultery with the brutal consequence of abortion or the fatal disease of AIDS.

God has granted each one of you the wondrous gift of free will. Donald Gelpi in his book, Experiencing God, says, a huge study on the charismatic movement, “God created freedom and enhances it therefore he cannot save us without our cooperation.”

With your free will, you can choose to follow the anti gospel values of our culture or to live the countercultural values of our gospel.

For example, do you follow our culture’s value of war making or our gospel value of being peacemakers?

Or for example, do you follow our culture’s value of hoarding possessions as selfish as a miser in a greedy disregard for others? Or do you live our gospel value of generously laying down your life for the benefit of others?

It all depends on where you heart is.

Freedom means responsibility just as the ocean means waves.

Jesus challenges you every day to use your freedom to choose to live the countercultural values of our gospel.

Bernard Bush in his book, Belonging, says, To responsibly accept your power in freedom is essential to becoming all God wants you to become.

Christian freedom disposes you to accomplish the most magnificent tasks like that of making your family the center of the countercultural living of our gospel values.

HUMOR
A seven-year-old boy was at the center of a courtroom drama when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible.The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him.Finally the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him. The boy chose the Cleveland Browns professional football team because the boy firmly believed the Cleveland Browns are not capable of beating anyone.

THOUGHT Always choose to live the countercultural values of our gospel

Paths 8/7/07

2007-08-07T11:53:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the way
isn’t straight and narrow.
Sometimes we veer off
the trodden path
not into desolation
or anxiety or sin,

but into different paths
of arriving at the same goal
like the 72 disciples
who moved to heal those
on various roads in life.

Sometimes our path will lead us
into a desert of fasting and temptations.
Other times our path will lead us
to a mountain side of prayer.
Still other times our path will
be on stormy waves of a tumultuous sea.

Sometimes we climb a mountain
where transformation shudders through us.
Or we drag ourselves up a hill
where the tortures of life
nail us to the reality of our helplessness.

But all divergent paths
lead to a place where
we can come aside and rest
before hiking to the ends of the earth
in the glorious proclamation
that paths become path
and destinations become destiny
where we receive our mantra:
“Well done!”

BEING SOMEONE TO OTHERS

2007-08-02T12:50:00.002-04:00

18th Sunday C Luke 12:13-21 –8/5/07 7AM
Connections #1 A
In Steven Spielberg’s movie AI, (Artificial Intelligence), David is the prototype of a new line of child robots programmed with the ability to love. Monica and Henry take David into their home.
At first Monica is repelled by the spooky human-looking toy. But Henry explains to her that David has an imprinting protocol and if they decided to keep him then all they had to do was activate the code that would hardwire David’s emotional capability.
This they did and David loved them with all the power of his mechanized ability.
But the parents found it almost impossible to return his love.
All throughout the movie, the robot boy, David, exists in the lonely blurred background of interpersonal relationships. His loneliness plunges him, like an Olympic diver, into his search for having his love returned. His search for being loved.
In his novel, The Court, William Coughlin has one of his characters say: Love is not romance. It’s hard to describe. Maybe the best description is that love is the opposite of loneliness. In other words, it seems to me, that love is the need to be loved.
However it is as important as remembering your zip code to keep in mind that if being loved is you goal, the only way to be loved is to be a person worthy of love.
So what flashes on the screen of life is this question: How can you make yourself worthy of love?
The gospel parable offers the answer. You can make yourself lovable by sharing what you have and who you are.
For instance, you make yourself worthy of being loved by developing your abilities and sharing them with others. For example, sharing your ability to be present to others.
How present are you, for example, to a woman who has had an abortion and is locked in the prison of guilt? Are you present to that woman with empathy, understanding, support?
How present are you to someone who is divorced and struggling with the lonely task of being a loving single parent? A parent who may not be experiencing love from children who resent the divorce? A parent who sleeps alone at night with only an extra pillow for company?
How present are you to a lonely shut in with a disease that causes her to be as immobilized as a broken down truck on the side of a desolate road?
How present are you to a classmate who is constantly being shoved to the outer limits of school activities and extracurricular friendships?
One of the main obstacles that blocks your being present to others is your self-absorption. By that I mean that you are so preoccupied with yourself that you pay little or no attention to another person.
In the movie, "As Good As It Gets," the waitress, Helen Hunt, begins to tell her customer, Jack Nicholson, about her sick son. She barely gets started when Nicholson interrupts with something about himself. Helen Hunt shrugs her shoulders and walks away.
And Nicholson is so self-absorbed that he doesn’t even realize what he did.
Our gospel parable warns you against not sharing your possessions with others. But to share what you have with others, you must first be present to them.
HUMOR There’s a humorous story about presence.
A little boy flung open the front door. "Boy, Grandma, am I ever glad you came to visit us."
"Why is that?" the grandmother asked sweetly.
"Because now daddy will do his trick."
"And what trick is that?" Grandma asked sweetly.
"Daddy said if you came to visit us, he’d climb the walls."
THOUGHT Always be someone to others.

BEING SOMEONE TO OTHERS

2007-08-02T12:50:00.001-04:00

18th Sunday C Luke 12:13-21 –8/5/07 7AM

In Steven Spielberg’s movie AI, (Artificial Intelligence), David is the prototype of a new line of child robots programmed with the ability to love. Monica and Henry take David into their home.
At first Monica is repelled by the spooky human-looking toy. But Henry explains to her that David has an imprinting protocol and if they decided to keep him then all they had to do was activate the code that would hardwire David’s emotional capability.
This they did and David loved them with all the power of his mechanized ability.
But the parents found it almost impossible to return his love.
All throughout the movie, the robot boy, David, exists in the lonely blurred background of interpersonal relationships. His loneliness plunges him, like an Olympic diver, into his search for having his love returned. His search for being loved.
In his novel, The Court, William Coughlin has one of his characters say: Love is not romance. It’s hard to describe. Maybe the best description is that love is the opposite of loneliness. In other words, it seems to me, that love is the need to be loved.
However it is as important as remembering your zip code to keep in mind that if being loved is you goal, the only way to be loved is to be a person worthy of love.
So what flashes on the screen of life is this question: How can you make yourself worthy of love?
The gospel parable offers the answer. You can make yourself lovable by sharing what you have and who you are.
For instance, you make yourself worthy of being loved by developing your abilities and sharing them with others. For example, sharing your ability to be present to others.
How present are you, for example, to a woman who has had an abortion and is locked in the prison of guilt? Are you present to that woman with empathy, understanding, support?
How present are you to someone who is divorced and struggling with the lonely task of being a loving single parent? A parent who may not be experiencing love from children who resent the divorce? A parent who sleeps alone at night with only an extra pillow for company?
How present are you to a lonely shut in with a disease that causes her to be as immobilized as a broken down truck on the side of a desolate road?
How present are you to a classmate who is constantly being shoved to the outer limits of school activities and extracurricular friendships?
One of the main obstacles that blocks your being present to others is your self-absorption. By that I mean that you are so preoccupied with yourself that you pay little or no attention to another person.
In the movie, "As Good As It Gets," the waitress, Helen Hunt, begins to tell her customer, Jack Nicholson, about her sick son. She barely gets started when Nicholson interrupts with something about himself. Helen Hunt shrugs her shoulders and walks away.
And Nicholson is so self-absorbed that he doesn’t even realize what he did.
Our gospel parable warns you against not sharing your possessions with others. But to share what you have with others, you must first be present to them.
HUMOR There’s a humorous story about presence.
A little boy flung open the front door. "Boy, Grandma, am I ever glad you came to visit us."
"Why is that?" the grandmother asked sweetly.
"Because now daddy will do his trick."
"And what trick is that?" Grandma asked sweetly.
"Daddy said if you came to visit us, he’d climb the walls."
THOUGHT Always be someone to others.

BEING SOMEONE TO OTHERS

2007-08-02T10:44:00.000-04:00

18th Sunday C Luke 12:13-21 –8/5/07 7AM

In Steven Spielberg’s movie AI, (Artificial Intelligence), David is the prototype of a new line of child robots programmed with the ability to love. Monica and Henry take David into their home.
At first Monica is repelled by the spooky human-looking toy. But Henry explains to her that David has an imprinting protocol and if they decided to keep him then all they had to do was activate the code that would hardwire David’s emotional capability.
This they did and David loved them with all the power of his mechanized ability.
But the parents found it almost impossible to return his love.
All throughout the movie, the robot boy, David, exists in the lonely blurred background of interpersonal relationships. His loneliness plunges him, like an Olympic diver, into his search for having his love returned. His search for being loved.
In his novel, The Court, William Coughlin has one of his characters say: Love is not romance. It’s hard to describe. Maybe the best description is that love is the opposite of loneliness. In other words, it seems to me, that love is the need to be loved.
However it is as important as remembering your zip code to keep in mind that if being loved is you goal, the only way to be loved is to be a person worthy of love.
So what flashes on the screen of life is this question: How can you make yourself worthy of love?
The gospel parable offers the answer. You can make yourself lovable by sharing what you have and who you are.
For instance, you make yourself worthy of being loved by developing your abilities and sharing them with others. For example, sharing your ability to be present to others.
How present are you, for example, to a woman who has had an abortion and is locked in the prison of guilt? Are you present to that woman with empathy, understanding, support?
How present are you to someone who is divorced and struggling with the lonely task of being a loving single parent? A parent who may not be experiencing love from children who resent the divorce? A parent who sleeps alone at night with only an extra pillow for company?
How present are you to a lonely shut in with a disease that causes her to be as immobilized as a broken down truck on the side of a desolate road?
How present are you to a classmate who is constantly being shoved to the outer limits of school activities and extracurricular friendships?

One of the main obstacles that blocks your being present to others is your self-absorption. By that I mean that you are so preoccupied with yourself that you pay little or no attention to another person.
In the movie, “As Good As It Gets,” the waitress, Helen Hunt, begins to tell her customer, Jack Nicholson, about her sick son. She barely gets started when Nicholson interrupts with something about himself. Helen Hunt shrugs her shoulders and walks away.
And Nicholson is so self-absorbed that he doesn’t even realize what he did.
Our gospel parable warns you against not sharing your possessions with others. But to share what you have with others, you must first be present to them.

HUMOR There’s a humorous story about presence.
A little boy flung open the front door. “Boy, Grandma, am I ever glad you came to visit us.”
“Why is that?” the grandmother asked sweetly.
“Because now daddy will do his trick.”
“And what trick is that?” Grandma asked sweetly.
“Daddy said if you came to visit us, he’d climb the walls.”

THOUGHT Always be someone to others.