28 March 2017

Afraid of the Dark

Fourth Sunday of Lent
Part of moving into a new house, as I did last July, is getting used to it.  A foreign house, especially if you live in it alone, can be a little scary.  Probably a few of those first weeks, as I went to bed, my heart started to beat a little faster as I heard creaks and different noises in my house.  Of course, there was nothing there, but because it was a new house, I wasn’t used to the different noises it would make at night.  What didn’t help was that Flint does not have the reputation of being the safest place in Michigan (though I have to say I have not had any problems here).  The other big issue was that, especially immediately after going to bed, the house was dark, and the fact that I couldn’t see and wasn’t familiar with the different parts of the house and how the shadows fall probably kept me alert without any real cause for concern.
Not being able to see can often change the way we approach things.  To a child, those clothes hanging in the closet or the stuff underneath the bed can seem like monsters.  But even adults, in an unknown area might try to be more attentive as they walk to their car from a restaurant.  Law enforcement is always trying to keep their eyes open, especially these days, so that they are not taken by surprise by someone trying to harm them.
Our readings today remind us of the importance of seeing correctly.  In our first reading, even one of the great prophets, Samuel, does not see as God sees when trying to find the next king of Israel among the sons of Jesse.  Samuel was looking at outward appearances; God was looking at the heart.  
And St. Paul in the second reading reminded us to take advantage of the light of Christ, since we are children of the light, not of darkness.  We do not belong to the night or the darkness, no matter what Pat Benatar sings.  In baptism, we were given the light of Christ, and Christ always gives us the light of His grace to help us know right from wrong.  He does that through our conscience, but even our conscience has to be formed by the light that the Church gives us.  Especially living in an age which, in many ways, are contrary to the teachings of Jesus, our conscience is not always a sure guide for the choices we should make.  
The Gospel we heard, about the man born blind, is one we hear maybe every year, but definitely every three years.  Ironically, in this passage, the person who sees the best (besides Jesus) is the Blind Man.  Neither the Pharisees, nor even the disciples, see as Christ sees.  The disciples think the man is blind because of some sin.  Christ corrects them and says that it’s so that God may be glorified and His works be more visible.  The Pharisees cannot see that Jesus is displaying His divinity in healing the man.  They do not accept Jesus’ miracles, and therefore do not accept Jesus Himself.  Even the man, now formerly blind, exclaims, “‘This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.  […] It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”
But, if we are honest, sometimes we do not see as God sees.  We do not let the light of Christ illumine our lives.  We have a type of spiritual glaucoma, and no marijuana, medical or not, will cure our spiritual glaucoma.  Only Christ can heal us; only he can restore our sight.
Throughout the history of the Church we have examples of people who saw with the light of Christ.  They had 20/20 spiritual vision.  We call them saints, and we should strive to follow their example in our own lives.  I’ll mention just a few.
St. Martin of Tours, who lived in the fourth century, was a soldier, and later became a bishop.  But one of the stories about him mentions that, as a soldier, he was riding a horse in the cold.  He saw a poor man on the side of the road, with very little clothing.  St. Martin cut his cloak in half, and gave half to the man.  That night, Martin had a dream where Jesus was wearing his cloak.  St. Martin did not simply see a poor man, but saw Jesus, and tried to help him.

St. Francis of Assisi needs almost no introduction.  But how many of you have heard the story of how St. Francis, who had started to give up his father’s wealth, saw a leper, whose skin was rotting away from his body, but dismounted from his horse, gave him money to help, and even kissed his hand.  As hard as it was, Francis saw past his fear of contracting leprosy, and dared to touch, and even kiss, the lepers as a sign of his love for Jesus.

In our own more recent times, St. Teresa of Calcutta is someone who saw with the eyes of Jesus.  In the streets of Calcutta, Mother Teresa would see the “untouchables,” those whom society had rejected, literally rotting away in the streets as they died, flies likely laying their eggs in the putrid flesh, and Mother would care for them and show them the respect and love that she had for Jesus.  I worked in Rome with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, not so much with the dying, but with the poor and neglected of the Eternal City.  I will admit: I struggled to see Jesus.  But for me I knew that my sight was not quite right, and that I need the healing of Jesus not to be blind to Him in the least of His brothers and sisters.  I’m sure I’m not there yet.  I still pray that I can see.  How is your spiritual sight?

20 March 2017

Drawing Closer to Jesus

Third Sunday of Lent
We are a month away from Easter Sunday.  Those words might sound exciting and comforting to you, as your Lenten penances only have 4 more weeks, but as a priest, four weeks to Easter is the busiest time of the year.  In addition to the usual busyness, I am one of the assistant Masters of Ceremonies for the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday morning, so I’m assisting with a lot of the behind the scenes work.  And, this is my first Easter here, so I’m learning how things have been done here before, and feeling my way through the liturgical celebrations as we enter into them.  This is my favorite time of year in the Church calendar, but it’s also the most intense, and, if we let it be, the most powerful.
Today we hear our first long Gospel, prepping us for Holy Week.  That’s not really why we have these long Gospels over the next three weeks, but it seems to work out that we have three long Gospels to prepare us for the Passion Narrative (a super long Gospel) that we will hear on Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  Today’s Gospel and the next two weeks’ Gospels are passages which deal with conversion, our major theme during Lent.  
Today’s conversion story is about a woman of Samaria.  And in her conversion, she comes to know Jesus more and more as the story continues.  She starts out by referring to Jesus simply as “a Jew.”  There’s no personal interaction, only referencing his religion.  But Jesus draws her in more closely, as he offers her living water.
That encounter with Jesus leads to a change in tone.  No longer is Jesus simply “you, a Jew,” but is now “Sir.”  Jesus offers her something, and she’s interested in this “living water” she is speaking about.  She likes the idea of never having to draw water again, because she is drawing water, alone, at the hottest part of the day.  We’ll learn why later in this story.

Then Jesus changes the subject.  And it is probably not the subject that modern, polite people would talk about.  Jesus says, “‘Go call your husband,’” knowing full well what her situation is.  This woman at the well is an adulteress, which is why she’s drawing water alone at the hottest part of the day.  She has been married five times before, and the man she is living with currently is not her husband.  She, of course, doesn’t want to admit this (who would?), and coyly says, “‘I do not have a husband.’”  But Jesus reveals to her a part of her life that is not in order.  This leads her to acknowledge Jesus in a different way; she comes to know Him more.  He is not, “you, a Jew,” and he is no longer just “Sir.”  He is, she says, a prophet.  
But feeling a little uneasy about the trajectory of this conversation about her love life, she changes it to something she knows will divert attention away from her personal life: how to worship.  Not much has changed today: if you want to get someone in a heated conversation, talk about how you think Mass should be celebrated.  But Jesus doesn’t rebuff her question.  He answers by stating that true worshippers will worship God the Father in Spirit and truth. 
After talking to her about worshipping well, she is drawn to talk about the Messiah.  And Jesus says to her, “‘I am he, the one speaking with you.’”  Jesus reveals Himself and His mission.  When she first started, she did not recognize Him as anything but a foreigner.  Now she is led to think of Him as the Messiah, which in Greek, is translated π›ΈπœŒπœ„πœŽπœπœŠπœ, which we translate as Christ.  From there she tells everybody about Jesus, and they come to believe as well.
This process of conversion is present in our own lives, as well.  It is present in the life of our Elect, Alexis, who is preparing for the Sacraments of Initiation.  It is present in Chris, our Candidate, preparing to be received into the Church and receive the Sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist.  But it is, or should be, present in each one of us.  All of us have opportunities to grow closer to Jesus.
Some of us, honestly, don’t know Jesus that well.  He is, we might say, only “you, a Jew.”  He is a stranger to us.  Some of us know about Jesus.  Maybe we come to Mass every week, we do our duty, or we come because that’s what we’ve always done on Sundays.  But Jesus still isn’t known well to us.  He is simply a respected person.  But we keep him at arm’s length, because we like the way we live, and we don’t want to have to change.
Some of us recognize Jesus as a good guy, a religious leader, someone who speaks for God (in other words, a prophet).  We feel that tug at our soul for God, and maybe we’ve even had some religious experiences in our lives when we felt really close to God.  But we still don’t recognize who Jesus fully is.  Some of us recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  We’re very active in our faith, but there are still some areas of our life that we don’t want Jesus to see, and we’re not sure we want to tell others about Jesus.  That seems a bit pushy to tell others about Jesus.  

No matter where we are in our faith, Jesus calls us to a deeper relationship with Him.  Sometimes, as we grow closer to Him, He reveals our need for Him, a need that only He can satisfy, no matter how much we try to fill that need with other, passing things.  Sometimes Jesus even points out our sins to us, in order to reject our sins and choose Him.  But Jesus always wants us to grow close to Him, especially through our worship of the Trinity in Mass.  And then He wants us to tell others about Him.  Where are we in our conversion?  We are never done; we can always grow closer to God.  Are we open to letting God change our lives?

15 March 2017

Are We There Yet?

Second Sunday of Lent
“Are we there yet?”  This common cry from someone on a long journey is as common as it is annoying.  But it’s also understandable, especially if the long journey is towards a vacation or a nice destination.  Often times we like to skip the travel part, and just arrive at the destination.  The Star Trek idea of using a transporter has for a long time seemed to me an ideal way to travel, in as much as it requires very little time to get from point A to point B.

It can be difficult when we’re not at the destination.  But think about Abram in our first reading.  This is really the beginning of the story of Abram, who would be renamed Abraham.  God calls Abram to leave Haran, where Abram’s father, Terah, had taken him.  Terah had been called to go to the land of Canaan, but something happened and Terah never made it to his destination.  So God calls Abram to go to Canaan.  One website said that the distance between Haran and Canaan was around 500 miles.  To put that in context, 500 miles south of us is the city of Nashville, Tennessee.  And Abram was 75 years old when he started that journey.  Abram did make it, and traveled around Canaan, also going to Egypt, and always seeming to struggle a little.  But he never saw the fulfillment of God’s promise that God would make of Abram a great nation.  In fact, Abram had only 2 sons, and only one of them, Isaac, was actually the son of the promise to be a great nation.  
Jesus, for His part, also knew that the pilgrimage His apostles would be on would be difficult.  He had told them that He would have to suffer and die, but assured them of the Resurrection.  But still, they didn’t really understand.  In their mind, the Messiah was not supposed to bring sorrow and die, but to bring a new Davidic kingdom, with nothing but good times for the Chosen People.  
So, to give them something to hold on to in the midst of their struggles, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on Mt. Tabor, which, from personal experience I can say is no easy hike, and there He is transfigured before them.  Jesus gives them a taste of what the Resurrection will be like so that, as they’re struggling with Jesus’ suffering and death, they will be able to hold on to a little piece of heaven.  Of course, the disciples like this heavenly vision, and would rather not leave, especially Peter.  He basically is saying today, “I’m happy here; let’s not bother with the rest of your mission.  This is good enough.”  But Jesus takes them back down the mountain, and continues His journey, His pilgrimage to Calvary and the cross.
In our own faith life, we may ask from time to time, though maybe not in these words, “Are we there yet?”  We want to be at our destination: heaven.  And that’s good.  But to get there, we have to press on.  We cannot, like Terah, Abram’s father, stop and settle on the way, lest we give up and not reach our destination, the true Promised Land.  In the midst of our sufferings and trials, we want to be done with it all and be in a place where there is no more suffering, no more confusion, no more “not yet.”  That takes courage and perseverance to press on, even in the face of difficulties, when we know that God is calling us to keep going.
Some of you, maybe many of you, feel like this parish is at least in a time of suffering and pain.  God invited you to a new pilgrimage, not so much by you moving, but by me moving here, which is a change from my venerable predecessor.  We might say that we, like Abram, have left Haran, but we haven’t made it to the Promised Land yet, and we’re wondering when, or even if, we will get there.  In many ways I feel your pain and insecurity.  We look at the bulletin and see how far off we are in Sunday/Holyday collections and wonder how we can make it (but don’t worry; I’m cutting back on expenses as much as possible).  Fr. Anthony is different than Fr. Robert, and different is sometimes scary.  Some of our friends have left the parish to go to other parishes.  These things are on my mind and heart as well.  But, I am personally comforted by the words of Jesus we heard two weeks ago, when He told us not to worry and not to be anxious, because God cares for us.  That is what helps to limit the sleepless nights that I sometimes have.

I wish I could suddenly appear in a brilliant, shining light to give you a sense that everything is going to be alright.  There are definitely signs of hope: our school is strong and growing stronger, and it is my firm belief that by spending time with our youth and their families in their schools and in their activities, which I do my best to support and to which I frequently go, our parish will rebound and that through our youth and their families, especially through our wonderful schools, new families will be drawn into our parish.  I’m not saying that everything is going to be easy and painless from here on out.  I seem to find myself on the cross every week, and the words of Psalm 22, the words that Jesus said on the cross, come easily to my mind: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But my hope and my consolation is the Resurrection, which was prefigured in the Transfiguration that we heard about today.  God is continuing to do great things in our parish, as he has since our foundation in 1955.  But we’re not in the Promised Land yet.  We, like Abram, must press on until we get there.

07 March 2017

Untying Knots

First Sunday of Lent
Have you ever had a string or a chain that seemed to be tied up in knots, so much so that it feels like it’s impossible to untie?  Of course, we always find those knots when we have the least amount of time, and need that chain or that string to be used without it being all bundled up in knots.  Sometimes the knots can be the result of lots of jostling in the pocket or in a backpack, and what started out as two individual sides to the chain or string, suddenly appears to be inseparable without breaking it.

In our first reading today we hear about a familiar story.  Adam and Eve tie themselves up in knots.  We all know the story: God gives them every good thing on earth, but forbids them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Of course, that’s the tree that Satan tries to get Eve to eat, which Eve then gives to Adam.  That was the first knot.  And then Cain murders Abel: the second knot.  And the knots keep on getting more and more entangled with each other as human history unfolds.  Sure, there are some Godly men and women who manage to untie a few, but the chain seems irrevocably tied up in such a way that it can never be returned to its original form.
Now, the story we heard, called The Fall, is usually presented as Eve’s fault.  Maybe some of you ladies received a little elbow nudge from your husbands during that first reading.  And certainly, Eve was the one who disobeyed God first.  But did you hear what St. Paul said in our second reading from his letter to the Romans: “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned…”  St. Paul places the blame not on Eve, but on Adam (this is where you ladies can give a little elbow nudge back to your husbands).  Adam was the head of the human race, and in Adam’s good choices or bad choices, all of humanity was to receive blessings or curses.  
So what does Jesus do in our Gospel?  He starts to untie all the knots.  Jesus, the new Adam, the new head of the human race, who was also fully God, starts to untie the knots that sinful humanity, starting with our first parents, had created.  And Jesus starts by taking it to the one who really caused the mess in the first place: Satan.  
In one sense, Jesus begins at a disadvantage: he has a human nature, which is subject to temptation.  Jesus had also been fasting for 40 days in the desert, so that human nature was weak.  But Jesus was proving that, even in our weakness, united to God, humanity can defeat Satan.  Satan, for his part, gives the three most common areas where humans fall: physical desires, not trusting in God, and worshipping false gods.  How many times have each one of those (or even all of them together!) been the downfall in our lives?!?  How many times has it taken far less tempting than Satan did to Eve to get us to fall?!?  And yet, Jesus stands firm and rebuts Satan’s temptations with the Word of God.  
Jesus unties the knots by resisting the dominion of Satan.  The final knot is untied when Jesus offers Himself, the unblemished Lamb, who knew not sin but took sin upon Himself, and sacrifices even the good of life for the lives of all of humanity.  And the gift of the new Adam, as St. Paul reminds us, far outweighs the punishment that the first Adam brought upon us.  “For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one [Jesus], the many will be made righteous.”
What knots have we tied ourselves in?  How have we so entangled ourselves that we can’t seem to get things straight?  How have we given in to the Tempter’s seductions?  Whatever they are, they do not stand a chance against Jesus.  Jesus knows how to untie each knot, but we have to ask Him to do so.  It is evidence of the evil one to force himself upon us.  God always invites us to accept His way, but never makes us do anything.  
We are not condemned to a life where we constantly give in to the temptations which seek to tie us up, to bind us in the chains of slavery.  If we are baptized, we have all the grace we need to say no to the major temptations of life: misuse of physical desires, mistrust in God, and giving more attention to lesser goods than to the One who is Goodness Himself: God.  
It would be easy if temptations were really two little angels, one of which looked light and glowed, the other of which was red, surrounded by fire, and carrying a pitchfork.  But that’s not the way life works.  The knots we get tied up are often knots that look good, that appeal to our lower appetites, that seem to attractive.  

But Jesus is always there to help us see temptations for what they are: empty, fleeting, and wholly unsatisfying.  And the same way that Jesus fought temptation is a sure recipe for success for us: knowing the Word of God and allowing it to illumine the path we want to take to find out if it’s the path God wants us to take.  Let Jesus untie your knots.  Find freedom in obedience to God’s way and friendship with Him.