Category: Deep Church Thoughts

Hey, it’s Gaudete Sunday, where we take a break from the penance of the season and put on the ROSE (not pink) vestments.

    It reminds me of that fellow who was chatting with his neighbor.  He was saying that he was worried that he was getting forgetful, so he was taking a memory course.

    “That’s very interesting,” his friend says, “What kind of course is it?”

    “It’s associative,” he replies. “If I want to remember something I associate it with something else. That way I don’t forget it.”

    “That’s very interesting,” his neighbor says, “What’s the course called?”

    He stops for a moment and says, “I knew you were going to ask me that. Hold on, it’s like a flower, long stem, thorns, and a bud on the end.”

    “You mean a rose?”

    “Yeah…hey, Rose! What’s the name of that course I’m taking?”

    You laugh, but I’ve got my 40^th high school class reunion coming up this summer…right in the middle of fishing season!

    But reunions are a great way to get reconnected with old classmates. 

    How many times has this happened to you?  It’s a few years out of school, and you run into someone from high school. You recognize each other. But the conversation goes like this…

    “So…it’s great to see you!  How are you doing? Yeah, I’m great.  Are you living around here?  Great….great…yeah, me too….yeah, great.

    And you keep stalling because you just can’t remember their name!!!

    It looks like John the Baptist is having a senior moment . In Chapter 3, at the Baptism of Jesus, there is the voice from the cloud that said, “This is my beloved Son…”  Now, here in Chapter 11, he doesn’t even seem to know who Jesus is. “Are you ‘he who is to come?’”  What’s up with that?

     Our clue, of course, is in Jesus’ reply to John’s messengers. The blind regaining their sight, the lame walking, lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, the dead being raised, the poor having the good news proclaimed to them…all these are definitive signs of the Messiah.  Jesus could simply answer them, “Yep, I’m the guy.”  Instead, he lets his actions do the talking.

     Just this past week I got a good lesson in the old adage: “People will seldom remember what you say, but they will never forget what you did and how you made them feel.”  So it was with Jesus.  So it should be for us.

    In the second part of today’s gospel passage there is a line that just leaps out at me, “…among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

    Sometimes we might feel like we are the least in the Kingdom.  It amazes me that Jesus would say that even at times like that, folks like us are greater than John the Baptist was at that time. 

    Still, it makes sense when you think about it for awhile. The Church firmly believes that all old testament prophecies were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.  John was the last and greatest prophet of the old covenant. He even preached its fulfillment in the person of Jesus and got to see Jesus with his own eyes. Even so, the new covenant of grace is of such a higher order that even the least of those of us who are baptized into Christ would be considered greater than John the Baptist.  Mind blown! 

    Gaudete Sunday is a day to rejoice. John saw the fulfillment of his hope in the person of Jesus and he leapt in the womb for joy. Advent calls us to rejoice that the fulfillment of our hope is near as we await the coming of the Lord in glory at the end of the age.

[The painting the church joke.] 

     John the Baptist just fascinates the heck out of me.  He is at once terrifying and compelling. Like that scene in the movie you just don’t want to see, yet you cannot look away, even as you squish yourself deeper and deeper into your see and cover your eyes. Why is this so?

       Let’s put him into context.  John was the last and the greatest of the prophets. To understand him, it’s important to understand what prophets were all about. First of all, it’s important to remember that while prophets prophesied, their primary vocation was not to tell the future. Rather, they were seen literally as the mouthpiece of God. God spoke through them. The kings and rulers of Israel were anointed by God through the prophets. (See 1Samuel 16 , 1-13.) The prosperity of the kingdom depended on fidelity to the Covenant.  Therefore, eccentric as prophets were, they had complete access to the halls of power. The primary role was to be the conscience of the nation, the voice of God calling the leaders and the people to fidelity to the Lord.

       Sometimes the leaders of the people were not faithful. At this point the prophets would chastise the leaders to amend their ways or, they prophesied, God’s people would face dire punishments. These punishments were imposed so that the leaders would reform their lives and society and return to the Lord. When they did, the prophets would prophesy great benefits for the people and the return of a true, just, and righteous king. As much as the leaders and the people may or may not have wanted to hear what the prophet had to say, their faith in God compelled them to listen to what God was saying through him.

       Now let’s fast forward to the setting of today’s gospel passage. 

It was a tough time for the Jews in the days of Jesus. Palestine had been under Roman occupation for several generations. Now the people were once again looking forward to deliverance, and the coming of a new Messiah who would establish the Kingdom of Israel once again. 

       Enter John the Baptist.

As the last and greatest prophet, John is doing what prophets do. He is announcing the coming of the ultimate Messiah, exhorting the nation to fidelity to the Lord. Thus, he urges the people to get their lives in order in preparation for his coming, especially the religious leaders – “to make straight the way of the Lord.”

John’s message to them is a good message for us this Advent. What are some of the ways we can “prepare the way of the Lord” in our homes and our hearts. We do so in two ways, practically and spiritually.     

Practically, I always advocate the “Advent Purge.” Get rid of all the physical clutter in your dwelling. Are there good coats you have not used in a year or two? Donate them to the warm clothing drive. Are there things that have been taking up space in your garage for years? Give them away or get rid of them! At the very least, clean out the junk drawer in the kitchen!

Next, get rid of all the spiritual clutter in your life. Start first with a good confession. We have several confessors coming the third week of Advent who have no idea who you are. What a great opportunity to avail yourself of the sacrament.

After that, take a good inventory of your time. Are there things that are stealing your time so that you don’t have time as a family or as an individual to pray? If so, it’s time to make adjustments, no excuses.

       Make no mistake, the Lord is coming again in glory, maybe even before Christmas. The time is short. We need to be ready. Now is a good time for a good practical and spiritual inventory. Let us prepare our parish, our homes and our hearts so that Christ may find us ready to welcome him when he comes.

[Hey, folks. Deacon Mick Fornelli hit another one out of the park this weekend. I do like to hear him preach. Here is the vid of his homily on what we are to make of Jesus words about the tribulations in his age and in our own.

My own musings on the same readings, albeit with a very different take, are below.]

BECAUSE OF THE NAME

Fall is football season. With football comes  pre-game. With pre-game, comes pep talks.

     The purpose of a pep talk is to inspire the squad to achieve higher than their expectations of others and perhaps even of themselves. Pep talks inspire confidence, build courage, unite teammates and set the heart on fire to aspire to great deeds. They usually have a great punchline like, “Win one for the Gipper!”

       Today in the gospel, Jesus is also giving a kind of pep talk. He mentions how his disciples will be betrayed by those closest to them. How they will be dragged before religious and civil authorities because of his name.  And so what is his punchline? 

“You will be hated by all because of my name!”

What’s up with that?!

Unlike the first Christians, we have the benefit of history. We know what happened in the three centuries following Pentecost.    Almost immediately, Christians were persecuted, first in the synagogues, and then at various times in the Roman Empire until Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD.  (Ironically, because they did not sacrifice to the gods, the early Christians were persecuted as atheists.)

But it has not stopped there. According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, 900,000 Christians were killed  in the last decade, about one every six minutes. Fortunately, this is down by about half from the previous decade that saw 1.9 million Christians killed in various parts of the world. These are sobering numbers.

Jesus was not being morbid, he was simply being realistic. It’s no different today than it was then. The simple fact of the matter is this. In today’s world, to be Christian, and especially to be Catholic, is to put a target on your back. If the political climate of the last few years in this country has taught us anything, it is that if you try to live your faith, even if you do it poorly, there are those in society who will find this very annoying. Finding it very annoying, they seek to remove us from the public square. 

In this country, this has taken on the guise of the privatization of religious sentiment. Briefly put, it goes thus: “You may believe what you want, but don’t bring the insights or collective wisdom of your faith into polite public discourse. I find it offensive that your faith might seek to make a contribution to public discourse, let alone public policy.” 

The fallacy of such a position seems obvious. Is this the only age in which human beings have existed in history? Could we not learn from the lived experience of our forebears? Are we doomed to simply repeat the errors of history, content in our own self-aggrandizement? 

Hardly. For the past 2100 years, the Church is the only institution which has seen every political power and social movement come and go. We are not going anywhere. We have a place in the public square.  As we have spoken in every age, we have a sacred duty to speak to the present age. A polite silence helps no one, saves no one.

Catholics in America are no strangers to subtle, polite persecution.

The question is, will we speak or remain silent?  

Last Sunday evening, I was celebrating Mass at St. Elizabeth’s.  You know how you always check out things at another parish to see what good ideas you can steal. I learned from a poster in their Narthex that they have I have a Trivia Night every so often to raise money for their World Youth Day pilgrims.  Let’s take a team over and clean house!

       It got me to thinking that how much cool stuff I have been privileged to learn in the course of my life, but also how much little known and useless information I have amassed over that same period. 

       For example, in high school, a friend of mine and I challenged each other to learn all the American presidents, the order in which they served, and the years that they served.

       I found that much like the genealogies of Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the American presidents are a diverse lot. There are great saints and great sinners. Geniuses and men of…shall we say, elusive intelligence. However, all seem to have wanted what was best for their country.

       One of the most maligned is Calvin Coolidge, the nation’s 30^th president who served the White House from 1923 to 1929, and was in office at the outset of the Great Depression. His nicknames were: Cautious Cal, Cool Cal, Silent Cal, and the Sphinx of the Potomac.

Not many people know much about President Coolidge today. But if you Google him, the first 49,000 citations will mention this one passage that he gave in a speech in 1929. He said: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

     Mr. Coolidge was right. In a way, he is echoing what our Lord is saying in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Does she prevail solely on the merits of her case? Not really. Does she prevail because of the benevolence of the judge? Hardly. No, it is her persistence that wins the day. 

     Why does Jesus ask us to be so persistent in prayer? Our prayer certainly does not change God’s mind.  God already knows what we need long before we ask. Parents are the best examples of this. Our mom or dad could give us what we need without our asking, but would we really appreciate it? Probably not. How delightful it is to a parent when a child comes to their own realization of what is best and then asks for it.

    Three and a half millennia of human experience has shown that persistence in prayer has profound effects upon the one doing the praying. God does not change as a result of prayer. We do. Persistence in prayer allows us to discern God’s ultimate desire for us and to make that desire our own.

       As I said before, more often than not, time is an ingredient. A monk much wiser than me once said,

“I have found that so much of prayer is simply waiting on God; and I have learned that if I am willing to wait long enough, insight always comes.”

       Timing is everything. And God’s timing is so much better than our own. He not only knows what we need, but when we need it.

Persistence in prayer allows us to move from praying, “MY will be done.” to “THY will be done.” 

As we spend more time in prayer we begin to realize that God has three ways of answering prayer. 1) “Yes.” 2) “Not yet.” and 3) “I have something better in mind for you.” 

       Okay great, Fr. Leo. How do I do this?

It’s not that complicated, but it require some discipline.  You need to find a time and a place. To take some time each day to unplug from the distractions of this world. Find a quiet place and spend some time with the Lord. Decide on a time each day that will work for you. You may have to tweak this a bit. And this may change depending on your situation.

For example, at one parish my prayer time happened at 9:00 at night. Here at St. Pat’s, since we are the party parish, it has to happen in the morning at 7:30. 

You may need to adjust this time, you may need to fight for this time, but you need to make time.

I’ve said it about 163 times so far as your pastor, so you should be able to complete this quote for me.

“If you can’t find ten minutes a day for private prayer with our Lord, your life is what…? [OUT OF CONTROL!]

And you need to do what…? [MAKE ADJUSTMENTS]

Any excuses….?  [NO!]

You are not far from the kingdom.

 So first, make the time.

Second, find a place.

       Create a space in the home.

       Or change your routine to bring you to a holy place.   

       I love this one quotation that is popping up on the door in many churches in France.  In four short sentences it says: 

       It is possible that on entering this church, you may hear the Call of God.    

       On the other hand, it is not likely that he will contact you by phone. Thank you for turning off your phone.   

 If you would like to talk to God, come in, choose a quiet place, and talk to him.   

       If you would like to see him, send him a text while driving.

Or get creative. I love to tell the story of the fellow at St. Benedict’s who had two issues. First, because of his weird work schedule, he couldn’t find his ten minutes and he kept bringing the stress of his work home with him.

       As we chatted, the Holy Spirit kicked in and I asked him, “You live right down the street from the parish, right?

Why don’t you just pull your truck in and park in front of that big crucifix in front of the church on your way home?”

       You know, he did.

       About a month later he was in my office again and said, “You know, Father, that ten minutes has made all the difference.  I don’t even get out of my truck. I just do my Magnificat right there.  And I’ve also found that I can just leave all of the stresses and burdens of the day right there at the foot of the Cross. I suppose I could pick them back up again, but I’ve never seen the need.”

Let me end by paraphrasing Mr. Coolidge.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence in prayer. Vocation will not; nothing is more common than unfulfilled vocations. Cleverness will not; you cannot outmaneuver God. Erudition will not; the world is full of theological derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Pray On! has opened and always will open the door to grace for the human race.”