Cure for a Cult-Personality Parish

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Today the Church celebrates the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which has also been called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because the Gospels for each year come from John 10, where Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd.   The Church uses a three-year Sunday cycle of readings (we refer to them as Year A, B, and C), and it is very rare that the Gospels for Years A, B, and C would all have the same theme.  But, for this Sunday of Easter, we do.

Of course, this year the readings take on a new meaning for me as I prepare to leave this flock and shepherd (pastor) another flock.  So many of you have been very kind in your outpouring of love and support for me during this time of transition.  Many of you have asked the question, “Do you really have to leave?”  Some have even threatened to write letters to the bishop (and some have followed through).  One of the Adrian firefighters must have figured that he didn’t want to mess with middle management; he was sending his letter straight to Pope Francis.  In any case, it has been touching to me to have this demonstration of your love for me as your pastor.

At the same time, though, as we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, I am not the Good Shepherd.  That’s Jesus.  I hope I have been a good shepherd, but I am not the Good Shepherd.  Families are often the ones who are most cognizant of each other’s faults, and I am sure that you are very cognizant of mine, along with my idiosyncrasies.  But this parish is not about me.  If I have given that impression, then I owe you a huge apology.  This parish is about Jesus, and how the people of this parish can follow Him more closely.  It should be Jesus’ voice that you hear and recognize and follow; not mine.  

Of course, each priest is called to be as close of an icon of the Good Shepherd as he can be.  But each priest has his own gifts and talents and his own failings.  Fr. Dave, who is still so loved here, and rightly so, brought with him as pastor his gifts and his failings.  I brought with me my gifts and failings.  And Fr. Kurian will bring with him his own gifts and failings.  Some of our gifts and some of our failings are probably the same.  Some of them are certainly different.  But we all, Fr. Dave, myself, and Fr. Kurian, all try to lead you to the Good Shepherd.

The temptation in our day is the cult-personality parish.  Because of our increased mobility, it is easy to travel 20 or 30 minutes without thinking about it because we like this priest or don’t like that one.  Maybe we like this way this one celebrates the Mass better than that one.  Maybe we like that one’s homilies better than this one’s.  But the Church is not meant to be built around any one person; she is meant to be built around Three Divine Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If our faith and our religious practice is built around anyone else, it is built on sand, and is always in danger of collapsing.  

St. Paul, whose preaching to the Gentiles we heard about today, was no stranger to this.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul bemoans the fact that there is a cult-personality parish being built in Corinth.  He writes: 

Whenever someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?  What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul?  Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.  Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes growth.

He then writes a little further, “So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”  It isn’t about Fr. Dave, or Fr. Anthony, or Fr. Kurian, or any other priest.  Only Jesus, the Good Shepherd, saves.  Inasmuch as certain priests lead us to God, let us give thanks to God for them.  Inasmuch as we struggle to find God in them, let us pray to God for them.  But may our faith be centered in Jesus, and may we follow His voice, so that we can have eternal life and never perish.  

Having said all that, I treasure my time that I have spent with you, and the next two and a half months that I will spend with you.  Pray for me, that I may be a good shepherd after the heart of the Good Shepherd.  Pray that I can continue to build you up as disciples of Jesus in Adrian, those who recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd, who follow Him, and who are led to the verdant pastures in which He wants to give us repose.

"Peace" not "Really?"

Second Sunday of Easter (or Sunday of Divine Mercy)

I have a niece, and another niece or nephew due to be born in mid-April.  And one of the big things for families that I have come to experience in my own family are the big firsts: the first tooth; the first crawl; the first solid food; and the first word.  There are probably countless comedic scenes about moms and dads trying to get the little child to say mama or dada first, as a sign of which parent is the best.  

So it is interesting that Jesus’ first word to His apostles after He rises from the dead, in both the Gospel according to Luke and the Gospel according to John (which we heard today) is: peace be with you, or shlama amkhon in the Aramaic Jesus would have used (a phrase which is still used in some Eastern Catholic liturgies).  After all that Jesus had gone through, and all the most of the apostles had not been through with Him, Jesus chooses to say: peace.  What a merciful response!  Even if we weren’t mad, how many of us would’ve said something like: “where were you?”; “why did you abandon me?”; or maybe just “really?”

On this Divine Mercy Sunday, we rejoice in God’s mercy, which flows from the piercèd side of Jesus.  We rejoice that Jesus, whom we have crucified with our sins, does not say, “Where were you?” or “Why did you abandon me?” or even “Really?”  Jesus gives us His peace.  

And if we rewind 6 chapters to John 14, when Jesus was speaking to the apostles, again in the upper room, on the night of His Last Supper, we hear more about that peace.  Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”  Jesus’ peace, the peace of heart, peace of mind, is the peace that comes from God’s mercy being showered upon us.  It is not simply the worldly notion of peace: the cessation of violence.  It is a wholeness and integrity of God with us, and we with God.  It is a right ordering of our souls and minds and body, as well as with our neighbors.  

But that mercy is not something that we put in a bottle on a shelf.  It is something that is meant to be shared.  Immediately after giving the apostles His peace, Jesus also says, “‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’”  Jesus’ mercy, God’s mercy, Divine Mercy, is meant to be shared with others, just as the Father shared Jesus with us.  In fact, in encountering us, others should encounter Jesus, and His mercy, just as St. Thomas did a week after the Resurrection.

What is mercy?  Mercy is God’s love.  In Hebrew, they word chesed can be translated as mercy and as love.  The Psalm we heard today is one example of this: chi leolam chesedo: for his mercy endures forever.  It is the way God shows His love for us.  Otherwise, it would have be judgment, not mercy.  Instead, the justice of God for sin fell upon Jesus, so that we could receive the mercy of God, which is offered to us as long as we are alive.  Our sins, as St. Faustina reminded us, as a drop in the ocean of God’s mercy.

But mercy does not call wrong right, or ignore it.  Neither ignorance nor rationalization is mercy.  Instead, mercy recognizes that there is a debt to be paid, but does not demand its payment.  Mercy acknowledges that good has been rejected, but returns an embrace when a punishment could have been dealt.  

We see mercy in one of Jesus’ last acts before He died.  St. Dismas, the Good Thief, admits his sin before Jesus as they both hang on the cross.  But then asks the unthinkable: for mercy.  And Jesus responds, “‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”  One of my favorite readings from the saints is from a sermon by St. Maximus of Turin, a bishop, which reads, “And so, my brothers, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day.  […] Sinner he may indeed be, but he must not despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?”  May we never despair of God’s pardon, God’s mercy, God’s peace, but acknowledge our sins, confess them in the Sacrament of Penance, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries, in anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven.