Prepping for Lent

 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Many of you probably remember my attempt a few years back to practice with the Powers Catholic boys soccer team, and how I broke my thumb in a drill.  Certainly it was a humbling experience in my life.  But it happened because I wasn’t ready.  34-year-old me thought (quite incorrectly) that I was still 20-year-old me, and could simply run around without having really exercised in quite some time and still have the same ability and stamina.  Was I ever wrong!!
    So as we sit today only a few short days away from Lent, we may think that we can just pick-up this Lent where we left off last year, without any real preparation.  Or maybe we’re just procrastinators who live by the motto: don’t do today what you can put off till tomorrow.  But if either of those are our approaches, I’m going to suggest that Lent might not be that fruitful for you.
    And Lent is supposed to be fruitful.  We often think of it as a time of negation and less, but in terms of our spiritual life, it’s a privileged time of growth.  Lent is meant to help us more and more to do what St. Paul said in our second reading: to imitate Christ and the saints.  And we do this in three primary ways during Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
    Prayer is key to our life as followers of Jesus and in imitation of Him.  The lepers today in the Gospel spoke to Jesus, and asked Him for the favor of healing.  That’s what prayer is for us, whatever our physical or spiritual needs.  We talk to God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–and present what’s going on in our life to Him.  Sometimes it’s asking for ourselves, sometimes it’s thanking, sometimes it’s praising, sometimes it’s interceding for another.  In the comedic Will Ferrell movie, “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” the coach says, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”  For prayer, I adapt that to say if you can talk to a friend, you can talk to God.  
    But prayer is also listening.  How much time do you spend listening to God?  How much time do you make for God in silence?  We offer beautiful times for silence before the Blessed Sacrament, almost every Friday from 7-7:45 a.m. and every third Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  But besides that, our church is open usually until 3 p.m. or so each day.  Even if you don’t want to come to church when there are crowds, pick out a time during the day, and for the most part, the church is empty or almost empty.  You can visit the Lord, speaking, listening, and being close to him while social distancing from everyone else.
    Fasting is something we’ve gotten away from in the Church, and I would say to our detriment.  We all have a sickness, not leprosy, but concupiscence, which draws us to avoid good things that should do, and draws us to do bad things that we shouldn’t do.  Our body sometimes draws us in ways that are not in accord with God’s will.  Just like in sports, we have to train our body and soul to perform at its best levels.  Fasting is a great way of training our bodies and souls to reject the bad, but denying ourselves even good things that we don’t necessarily need.  
    When we talk about fasting specifically, we’re talking about not eating certain amounts of food, like we do on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the two days that the Church requires us to fast.  We eat one main meal, and two smaller meals that, combined, equal or are less than the one main meal, and at the same time don’t snack.  But fasting in a broader sense can include what we call abstinence, which, in the case of our penitential practices, means abstaining from beef, pork, and chicken on Fridays, but especially Fridays of Lent.  Many of you are old enough to remember not eating meat on any Friday, and that’s a practice I have taken up, and I do find that it has helped me draw closer to God, choose good things more and bad things less.  Fasting can also mean giving up a particular type of food or drink, either for a time or permanently, in order to help our spiritual life.
    Fasting also is meant to give us solidarity with the poor.  There are so many people in our world, and even in our very rich nation, that don’t eat because they don’t have money to buy food.  Or they rely on the generosity of neighbors and food banks to give them their daily bread.  Fasting reminds us that we are no better than them, and that we are all children of our heavenly Father.  My plan is to give up alcohol this Lent as a sign of solidarity with all those who struggle with alcoholism.
    Almsgiving means giving money or goods.  Almsgiving is, in its original sense, money or goods given to the poor.  It is an imitation of our loving Father who gives blessings to many people, no matter who they are or what they do.  Almsgiving is also stretched to mean giving money to the church or to another charitable organization.  As I mentioned in our annual stewardship report a couple of weeks ago, I am very appreciative of your generosity to the parish, to help us continue to serve you.  This current fiscal year, our Sunday and Holyday collections have accounted for 77% of our income.  Because of your generosity, I don’t talk about money that much, but, as expenses continue to grow each year, we need to keep our weekly income at least at the $7,700 per week level.  Your almsgiving to the church will decide what our staff levels and office hours are for next year.  We can only give what we can, but it’s a way of sustaining not just ourselves, but our entire faith community.
    I would encourage you not to “stumble” into Lent this year.  Take these next few days to really consider how the Lord is asking you to pray, to fast, and to give alms.  Don’t make Lent a quick diet, but by your planning and prayerful consideration of what God is calling you to do, make it a great time of spiritual growth and development!

Job and Detroit Lions Fans

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    I am convinced that at some point in the future, the Lions will make it to the Super Bowl.  It will be the fourth quarter, and the Lions will be losing by 1 point.  They’ll be on the opponent’s 20 yard line, ready to kick the game-winning field goal, with 1 second left on the clock.  The kicker will kick the ball, and it will go straight, ready to pass through the uprights, and just as it’s about to pass through, and the refs are about to raise their hands, Jesus Christ will return in glory, and the Lions will forever be the team that never won a Super Bowl.
    As Lions fans we are used to disappointment.  There are other bad teams, but only the Lions seem to find new and exciting ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  So perhaps we can sympathize with Job from our first reading and say “I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”  In case you’re unfamiliar with Job, it’s a beautiful book of the Bible.  It may be more of a parable than a literal story, but it tells the story of a man who is faithful to God, but then undergoes great trials.  His first trial is that his oxen and donkeys were grazing, and were stolen by Sabeans, who killed all the herdsmen, save one.  Lightening struck all his sheep and shepherds and killed all but one shepherd.  Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels, and killed all their caretakers, save one.  His seven sons and three daughters were all killed when their house collapsed during a party, and only one servant survived.  To this Job says: “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”  Quite the ordeal!
 

   But then, Job is struck by severe boils “from the soles of his feet to the crown of the head.”  Life is so bad that his wife, obviously a loving and caring woman, tells Job, “‘Curse God and die.’”  The Book of Job makes clear that Job has done nothing wrong, and yet he suffers greatly.  This story of Job is an attempt to understand why bad things happen to good people.  I encourage you to read the rest of the book (we only hear a part of chapter 7 today) to see how it ends.
    Suffering is a part of life, not just for Lions’ fans.  There are moral evils that we have to suffer with (crimes, betrayals, loneliness from others’ rejection of us); there are also natural evils that make us suffer (natural disasters, illnesses, pandemics).  People of all faiths and none struggle with this question, sometimes called Theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people, and why there is evil in the world.  In case you’re wondering, there is no easy answer.
    Jesus, as He so often does, turns the question on its head.  What does He do?  He heals; He grants wholeness; He saves.  Our Gospel today relates healings that Jesus did, exorcisms, and preaching.  Jesus shows us that He enters into our evils, some of our own making, some that we have no control over, and He brings healing.  The very word for savior in Latin, Salvator, is connected to another word, salus, meaning health.  The Salvator is the one who brings salus.  
    But Jesus, our Savior, doesn’t do so extrinsically, outside of all our sufferings.  He doesn’t watch from afar and offer us health while social distancing.  He enters into our pain, our suffering, our illness, and brings us delight, wholeness, and health.  And that’s part of the beautiful message of the Gospel: Jesus defeats sin and death through His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; but we still see it happening, until Jesus returns and ushers in the fullness of His Kingdom.  Until then, Jesus suffers with and in us; He does not abandon us.  And while suffering is not good, it always helps to know that we are not alone, that our suffering has not separated us from the One who loves us above all, as suffering often does make us feel segregated.
    I think this is so clear from our pandemic.  I’m not here to argue against science and taking necessary precautions to protect one’s health.  But one of the greatest evils in this pandemic, whether physically necessary or not, is that we are being disconnected from each other.  Whether we have symptoms, are asymptomatic, or are virus-free, COVID has sought to divide us from each other.  The age-old wounds of sin and division, that were always just below the surface, have come to the top and are festering.  And because we lack a physical unity with each other, that spiritual and emotional unity has also been stretched, or even torn.  
    In the midst of that division, Jesus continues to heal and make whole.  There are stories of heroic Catholics–priests, deacons, and lay faithful–who have refused to let people die alone, even if they had COVID.  The Church has continued to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, educate adults and children, because that is Jesus’ work, and that work does not stop just because there’s a pandemic.  My mind is drawn, by way of an earlier example, to St. Damian of Molokai, whose Belgian blood I share, who gave up his own life to bring Jesus and His healing, especially spiritual healing, to the leper colony in the Hawaiian islands.  
    But even today, through the Sacrament of Penance (confession) and the Eucharist, Jesus continues to heal, and continues to walk with us through our suffering.  He has defeated it, and suffering will end when Christ is all in all.  But until then, Jesus does not leave us orphans; He does not leave us to suffer alone, but suffers with and in us, so that we can bear our burden with Him.
    In the times when you feel most alone, most abandoned, most bereft of human interaction, turn to Jesus in prayer.  Come to the church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  Look to the crucifix, and lay all your trials on that cross.  If you do, life, victory, and wholeness will be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Listening

 Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Jim Rolph

    Last Sunday I went to a family’s house for dinner, a family that I have visited before.  When I visit, the adult children in the family like to tease me and say how much more they like Fr. Jim Rolph, the chaplain at Powers Catholic.  So during dinner conversation last Sunday I was talking to someone else at the table, but one of the kids interjected and said something, but all I heard was “in Flint.”  At first I just let it pass and figured it wasn’t anything important, but then young man started laughing, and realizing it was connected to what I had missed, I said, “Wait; what did you say?”  He started laughing and said, “I wondered why you didn’t react.  I said, ‘After all, Fr. Jim is the best priest in the Flint area!’”  
    Sometimes our attention is divided, and we don’t hear what’s going on.  And because we don’t hear, we miss something that we would want to know.  It’s not such a big deal when a young man is poking fun and saying that a brother priest is better than you (for the record, Fr. Jim and I are good friends, and I respect him greatly!).  But if it’s not teasing, but the voice of God, it’s much more important to pay attention and listen.
    In our first reading, Moses prophesies that God will send another prophet, like Moses, to whom the people need to listen.  This prophet will have very important messages to communicate.  Of course, we know that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the prophets, and was a prophet Himself, since He spoke for God.  But He didn’t even speak like the other prophets, but spoke with authority, authority that came from Himself, since He is God.  The people listening to Jesus recognize this, and they recognize “a new teaching with authority.”  
    Part of this authority is that Jesus, unlike the other rabbis of His time, would not appeal to an earlier rabbi.  That was the way the interpretation of laws and teachings worked for the Jewish people.  If you were a rabbi, people wouldn’t necessarily believe what you were teaching or interpreting.  But if you could appeal to an earlier rabbi who was well-respected, then your teaching took on more authority.  And the closer you could get to Moses, the more authority you would have.  
    But Jesus did not appeal to any other rabbi.  He simply spoke as if it were true.  Think back to Matthew chapter 5.  Jesus keeps saying, “You have heard it said…but I say to you…”. He teaches as one who is authentically interpreting God’s will, authentically speaking for God, like Moses, but even more authoritative than even Moses.  And even unclean spirits respond to the words that Jesus speaks.  It’s not even a contest about who has authority; Jesus speaks and they have to obey, because He is the Creator, and they are mere creatures.
    It is with this same authority that the Church, when teaching on faith or morals, speaks.  Because the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and because Jesus has given His authority to the pope and bishops who lead His Church (remember that Jesus said to the apostles that whoever listens to them listens to Him), the Church can say that, to be in union with Jesus, you have to believe this, or you can’t believe that.  The Church can also say with the authority of Jesus that, in order to be living as a disciple, you should do this or you shouldn’t do that.  It’s not simply the opinion of some old men who wear pointy hats; it is Jesus Himself teaching.
    Our psalm today encourages us: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  How often do our hearts harden when someone tells us something that we have to do, especially in the area of faith (what to believe) or morals (how to live).  It’s almost like an instantaneous reaction that someone tells us what to do and we automatically want to do the opposite.  That’s our fallen human intellect and will.  When the Church says we cannot support abortion, or we need to assist the poor, we have a responsibility as followers of Jesus to obey.  When the Church says that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, or that marriage is only between one man and one woman, to be loyal to Jesus we conform our lives to that teaching.  Sometimes it’s hard.  Sometimes it’s very hard, and may even seem counterintuitive, but God asks us to listen to His Son, who will never lead us astray if we follow Him.
    But besides the struggles to listen to Jesus as He speaks through His Church, it can also simply be hard to listen to Jesus.  Our age is filled with cacophony, which comes from the Greek meaning “bad sounds.”  We often surround ourselves with noise, and in doing so, drown out the God who likes to speak to us like He spoke to the Prophet Elijah: in the whisper in the silence.  Hardening our hearts can include not making time for God in daily prayer.  Maybe the only time you have is five minutes; maybe it’s turning off the radio in your car; maybe it’s coming to a daily Mass, or spending time in adoration.  But in order to hear God, we have to carve out time for Him, especially in silence, not only speaking to God, but listening to how God responds.  Sometimes silence can be scary, but God will, in His way, in His time, speak to us.  All we have to do is pay attention and listen.
    Don’t miss the conversation God wants to have with you.  Don’t miss out on how God teaches us to follow Him and to find true happiness.  Listen to the Church when it comes to faith and morals.  Make time for silence with God each week.  You will find the happiness for which you long.