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.

Spiritual Sicknesses

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Many people, when hearing what the book of Leviticus said today in our first reading, have a very negative view of the rule that was set out when someone had some sort of skin disease.  Many shudder at the idea of a person being ostracized, sent away from the community, because of an illness which, in most cases, was beyond that person’s control.  But, even today there are some illnesses which cause separation from the community.  The community does not want to become infected, and so people are quarantined, or at least told to stay home.  We do not want sickness to be mingled with health.  We need a doctor to heal the person before they can resume their normal duties and be joined once more to the community.

In our Gospel today, Jesus, the Divine Physician, goes right into the middle of that illness to heal that person of their illness and restore them to the community.  Jesus does not condemn the law separating lepers from the greater community.  In fact, He even upholds the law that the leper was supposed to show himself to the priest and offer what Moses prescribed, fulfilling the law.  Jesus cures the man, thus eliminating the separation that the illness created.  Jesus wants to make us whole, and He goes into the very heart of our illness to do so, so that we can once more worship and be united with the community.

Besides physical illnesses, there are also spiritual illnesses.  These illnesses we call sin.  Now, it’s no longer popular for priests to talk about sin.  It’s no longer popular for people to hear about sin.  But it’s a reality in our lives.  It is an illness, and one that can kill our souls!  What kind of a doctor of souls would I be if I didn’t tell you about the current illnesses that are spreading?!?

Just like all illnesses weren’t leprosy and didn’t separate a person from the community, so not all sins separate us from sanctifying grace, the grace which saves us from eternal death.  In the first letter of St. John, we are told, “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.”  All sin is bad, but not all sin severs our relationship with God.  These may be sins like gossip, ill-thoughts against another, little white lies, etc.  We should not ignore these and pretend they have no effect on our spiritual health, any more than we should ignore small illnesses.  Sometimes, if not treated, they develop into or make us more susceptible to bigger illnesses.  So certainly we need to deal with them.  One way to deal with them is simply by receiving the Eucharist.  When we receive the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus which saves us from sins, Jesus washes away our venial sins (St. Ignatius of Antioch calls the Eucharist the “medicine of immortality) and strengthens us to not commit those sins again.  Another way is by confessing them in the Sacrament of Penance.  When we confess venial sins, even if they have been previously forgiven through reception of the Eucharist, we are strengthened and receive more grace to avoid sin in the future.

But there are also sins which are deadly.  We also use the term mortal.  Mortal sins are the sins we commit that are gravely wrong (they are grave because they cause spiritual death), we know they are wrong, and we freely choose them anyway.  These sins, like murder, missing Mass on purpose, stealing, major lies, pornography, and unchastity with ourselves or another, etc., deprive us of God’s sanctifying grace, and sever our relationship with God.  We are cut off like the leper in the community.  

And because we are cut off from God, we cannot simply receive the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Jesus, and have our sins cleansed.  When we sin mortally, we tell God that we want no part of His rule in our life.  To receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin is uniting our sinful state, our deliberate rebellion against God, with God Himself in an act of sacrilege.  St. Paul clearly teaches this in chapter six of his first letter to the Corinthians.  He corrects those who are Christians but who are committing sins of immorality with prostitutes because they are joining prostitution to the Mystical Body of Christ.  St. Paul also says in chapter 10: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons.  You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.”  He also says in the following chapter, “A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.”  For that reason, the Church has held, from the time of the apostles, that no one who is conscience of grave sin is to present himself or herself for the Eucharist.  

But just like in the Gospel, Jesus wants to heal us.  He does not want us to be cut off.  In the Sacrament of Penance, with sorrow for our sins and an amendment to avoid those sins in the future, we cry out like the leper, “‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’”  And through the ministry of the priest and the prayer of absolution, Jesus also says as He did in today’s Gospel, “‘I do will it.  Be made clean.’”  Through the Sacrament of Penance, the ordinary way to have mortal sins forgiven, our rejection of God is healed, and God restores sanctifying grace to us, so that we can live forever.  We are returned not only to spiritual health, like the leper, but are also, like the leper, restored to full worship with the community.  God does not leave us in our sins, but seeks us out to heal us.  But He will not force His healing upon us.  Inspired by His grace, we have to respond and reach out for His help in the Sacrament of Penance.  And God heals us and strengthens us to avoid those sins in the future.  

And we can then proclaim to others how good God is to us!!  We can be like the leper who cannot contain, even though Jesus tells him to, the good news that God has healed us.  What a powerful witness to those who are afflicted with the disease of sin: to know that there’s a medicine which can heal them!  Right now I hear confessions every Saturday from 3:30-4:30 p.m. and by appointment.  What a great blessing it would be if I had to add another hour on a different day of the week to be able to handle all of the people coming to the Lord to be healed, either from small sins or big ones, and restoring those who are mortally ill to full health and the ability to receive the Eucharist.  Don’t doubt the extent of God’s mercy.  Don’t limit the exercise of His healing on your soul.  Celebrate God’s healing in the Sacrament of Penance.  Be made clean!