A Post-It Note from God

Second Sunday of Lent

In the front of my Breviary for Lent and Easter, the book of prayers that priests, deacons, and consecrated men and women are required to pray throughout the day, is a Post-It note, on which is written: Sirach 6:5-17.  The last part of this Scripture passage reads:

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter;

whoever finds one finds a treasure.

Faithful friends are beyond price,

no amount can balance their worth.

Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;

those who fear God will find them.

Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship,

for as they are, so will their neighbors be.

Fr. Kregg Hochhalter

This Post-It note was put there by one of my best friends from college seminary, Kregg Hochhalter, who is now a priest of the Diocese of Bismarck.  He stuck it there when I visited him once while he was still at St. John Vianney College Seminary.  Every Ash Wednesday I open it up, and I immediately think of him and our friendship.  Because we live so far apart, and because we have such busy lives, we rarely get to see each other.  In fact, after his ordination to the priesthood a few years back, I had not seen him until last summer, when his retreat happened to coincide with my summer studies at Mundelein Seminary in Illinois.  We didn’t have much time to catch up because of his retreat, but we spent the better part of an hour or two finding out how the other was doing.

Friendships like these are not too uncommon.  Many times friends from college move away from each other.  But if they are truly good friends, then all it takes is a meeting, even after a few years, and they can pick back up where they left off.  What is a blessing for me is that every year, I am reminded of our friendship, pray for Fr. Kregg, and try to send him a little note.  That yearly physical reminder I have in my book eases the year’s worth of not being able to see him.

Abraham (still called Abram at this point in the story) in our first reading is given a physical reminder of his covenant, his friendship, with God, who promises Abram descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky.  Abram would never see that promise fulfilled, nor the promise that his descendants would have the land.  But each time Abram looked into the night sky, and saw all the stars, he was reminded of what God had sworn on oath would happen.  In fact, that very bloody covenant ritual of cutting up animals and burning them, was the ancient way of saying, “May I be as these animals if I do not fulfill my part of the covenant.”  Each time Abram saw the stars, he knew that his descendants would one day be many, not just the child of his slave woman, Ishmael, or the child of his wife, Isaac.  

Jesus also gives Peter, James, and John, the Big Three of the apostolic college, a glimpse of something spectacular which is meant to hold them through the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.  Peter, James, and John see what a glorified body will look like, and they see Jesus surrounded by Moses, who represents the law, and Elijah, the greatest of all prophets.  They are given a glimpse of the resurrection.  They don’t really understand it, other than knowing it’s truly awesome.  

Mural of the Transfiguration at the top of Mt. Tabor

And it is even more awesome when one recognizes how much of a change it would have been.  I have been to Mount Tabor, to the place of the Transfiguration.  Today it has a switchback road with small busses to take people up.  But I climbed in my Birkenstock sandals to the top on one of my pilgrimages.  And even though I had showered that morning (as I do every morning), I was a mess by the time I made it to the top.  There were weeds, brambles, thorns, and the like, as well as loose rocks.  I doubt Jesus would have showered that morning; no doubt they were all a bit dirty from walking so much on the dirt roads, the sun beating down on them.  So when Jesus’ face “changed in a appearance and his clothing became dazzling white,” I’m sure Peter, James, and John knew this was something divine, a moment from God that was meant to strengthen their faith in who Jesus is.

God will often give us moments or Post-It notes that are meant to remind us of what is to come.  There is no better moment than the one we have here.  Jesus, under the appearance of bread and wine, is made present for us once again in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  This  place is not heaven, but is meant to be a reminder of us of heaven, where we will worship God and have communion–union with–God.  It is our weekly, or for some of you, daily reminder of God’s love and of what we have to look forward to if we follow Jesus.  May our Lenten practices help us to be aware of the many ways that God gives us a glimpse into what is to come, the bounty, the good things of the Lord that we hope to see in the land of the living.  

You're Invited!!

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

            In terms of the social life, it seems to me that there is nothing bigger in the mind of a kindergartner than being invited to a birthday party.  It’s a sign that you’ve made it in the innocent jungle of social interactions between 6-year-olds.  And it doesn’t seem to leave us.  Even as we progress through school, we want to be invited to a friend’s house; we want to be chosen for the basketball team; we want to be chosen as first chair in our instrument’s section of the band; we want to be chosen as the lead in the play or musical.  And let’s be honest: as adults we still like being invited over: to a friend’s house; to a sports game; maybe for an adult beverage at the local watering hole. 

            Jesus invites Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John in our Gospel today.  And maybe they, too, were just so happy to be invited and chosen.  But it is amazing that they just left everything.  This Jesus, whom they didn’t know well, called them to follow Him, to be his disciples, and they did.  There were no questions, no caveats, no conditions.  They just followed Him.  And, as we know the rest of the story, their acceptance of the invitation took them many places they never imagined: the Sermon on the Mount; the feeding of the 5,000; Mt. Tabor and the Transfiguration for Peter, James, and John; the triumphant entry into Jerusalem right before Passover; the Upper Room as both the priesthood and the Eucharist were established; the Garden of Gethsemane, again for Peter, James, and John; the foot of the cross for John; and the Upper Room again where they saw the risen Christ.  And then they continued the work of Jesus after Pentecost, “teaching,…proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.” 

            We were given the same invitation at our Baptism.  We were called to put Jesus ahead of everything else.  We were invited to be a follower of Jesus and to teach, proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, and heal people.  As we celebrate Catholic Schools Week this week, we celebrate schools that can offer that invitation to our children Monday through Friday, not just in religion class, but throughout the entire day.  But have we, no matter where we went to school, accepted this invitation?  Or do we stand at the fringes of our faith, like the Rich Young Man who wanted to follow Jesus, but was not willing to give up anything to follow Him?  Is the extent of our faith life, our relationship with Jesus, simply going through the motions each week, or do we know Jesus personally?  To put it another way, if I were a stranger and I came up to you and said, “Why do you follow Jesus?  What’s so important about Him?  Why should I become Catholic?” what would you say?  Think about that for a second.  What would you say?

            In our preface, our prayer reminds us that even though we had abandoned God through sin, through Jesus’ blood and the power of the Holy Spirit God reconciled us to Himself, made us the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Church.  That’s the invitation we received: to claim as our own that reconciliation and the gift of God’s friendship.  Because without God’s friendship, we are at enmity with God, as St. Paul says.  Without God’s friendship, we deserve God’s wrath.  But God invites us to His banquet, and to be a part of Jesus through the Church.

            And that Church is supposed to be one as the Trinity is one God.  This past week we celebrated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  Too often, those who are invited, and who seek that invitation, work against that unity by dividing into camps: “‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’  Is Christ divided?”  Pope Francis recently said that there is one word that describes Christians not being united: scandal.  We have grown too accustomed to the disunity of Christians.  We have grown too used to divided Christians.  Instead, there should be one Church of Christ, united in true belief of what God teaches us through the authority of Scripture and the Teaching of the Apostles and their successors; united in governance under the one Vicar of Christ, the visible sign of the unity of the many Christians spread throughout the world; united in the sevenfold sacramental economy of salvation, where we receive God’s life of grace in the way Jesus Himself established.  If we have friends, and many of us probably do, who have left the Church, how have we invited them to come back home to the Catholic Church?  If we have Christians friends, and I’m sure all of us do, who are non-Catholic Christians, have we done our best to explain our faith to them to promote understanding? 

We have received the greatest invitation, better than a birthday party, or a spot in the band or the play, or a member of a sports team.  We have been invited to be a part of the one Church of Christ and to use our diverse gifts and personalities to spread the kingdom of God and invite others to follow Jesus, not from far away, but in a close, intimate relationship with Him.  Yes, we may have to leave some things behind that were dear to us, like Peter, Andrew, James, and John did.  But we will receive a hundredfold in this life and in the life to come if we accept the invitation from Jesus to follow after Him and become fishers of men.