Obvious to Some, Not to All

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Country star Randy Travis

    Country music is the best non-liturgical music there is.  Others may think differently, and they’re entitled to their opinions, but they’re wrong.  That’s not to say that there aren’t other good songs.  I grew up on lite rock (with bands and singers like Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Cher, etc.), and also listened to the great songs of the 50s and 60s, so I enjoy other types of music, too.  But, as a whole, country music is the best.  Now, what amazes me is that not everyone shares my opinion.  Even good people sometimes don’t appreciate fully (or at all) how wonderful country music is.  While country music is just three chords and the truth (which is part of what makes it great), others will joke that when you play a country song backwards you get your dog back, your truck back, and your wife back.      Of course, I jest…somewhat.  But sometimes things can seem so obvious to one person, but others do not appreciate the same things.  And we hear that reality in our first reading, which regards the people’s appreciation for something even greater than country music: the faith.  We skip what Paul said to the synagogue, but we get the reaction of those who heard: they start arguing with Paul and telling him that he’s wrong, all because the Gentiles, non-Jews, started to believe Paul and Barnabas and began following Christ.  
    But this makes no sense!  Paul was so learned in Judaism because he had been a Pharisee and had studied his faith deeply.  He understood how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, and could explain that to the Jews, who would understand those prophecies.  So how could they reject Paul’s preaching?
    Following Jesus is not just a matter of understanding facts.  St. James reminds us in his letter that the demons know who God is.  But they do not follow him.  They have all the facts in the world, but they do not love Him.  Catholicism is not just a matter of the head (though we certainly have things we need to believe).  Living the Catholic life means loving Jesus and conforming our lives to His.  So if we wish to be disciples, we do not only need to form our minds, but also form our hearts so that we love what God loves, and will what God wills.
    And this is where people struggle, because their hearts are not always totally given over to God, and their wills desire things on their own, contrary to what God wants.  We call this concupiscence.  We may know what is right, but because of some other factor, we reject what is right for what is convenient or less challenging.  God wants us to be His sheep, to belong to His sheepfold, but we wander away, because we would rather listen to a voice that does not lead us towards happiness, but leads us to temporary pleasure.

    Knowing the disconnect that can happen between the head and the heart is not only important in our own lives and helping us to follow Christ, but also when we seek to share the Gospel, like Sts. Paul and Barnabas did.  We might be able to give people facts about Jesus, but can we help them love Him?  Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, recalled a time when he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His Jewish classmates would ask him questions about the faith and he would respond, but without much success.  He said, “I answered as the catechism answers and I realized from her face that she had not understood anything.  I was unable to make myself understood. It took some time for me to understand that the Resurrection is not explained.”  He wrote that what makes the difference is helping people understand that “there is nothing better in life than to encounter Jesus Christ.”  Again, that goes beyond just head knowledge, and goes to the heart, to loving Christ.
    If, in times past, we erred on the side of the head, that we know what God teaches us, today we err on the side of the heart, which then seems to ignore sinful activity because a person is good in other areas.  In reality, we need to affirm both head and heart.  Simply hitting others over the head with the teachings of Christ often does not work, but neither is it helpful to ignore the teachings of Christ so that we pretend what is evil is, in fact, good.  Of course our actions, living the connection of head and heart out, needs the virtue of prudence and has to be motivated by true love for the other person and their eternal salvation.
    What can seem obvious to some is not obvious to all.  We should always be looking for new ways to share the Gospel, and finding ways to make the proclamation more effective.  This is the heart of the New Evangelization: the teachings of the Church are the same, but we find new ways to proclaim them in convincing ways to new generations of people who have new struggles and new needs.  We connect head and heart in sharing the Good News about Jesus and His teachings.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with wisdom, courage, and prudence to share the joy of the Resurrection, and all that Christ has revealed to us as necessary for salvation.  

A Domesticated Good Shepherd?

 Fourth Sunday of Easter
    When people think of cherubs, I think our minds immediately go to the pudgy, babies with little wings, like what you would see in a Raphael painting.  In the Book of Ezekiel, they are described as having two sets of wings, and four faces (lion, ox, human, and eagle).  John describes them similarly in the Book of Revelation, but with three sets of wings, instead of two.  If a cherub as described in the Bible showed up, you might understand why the first words out of angels’ mouths are generally, “Do not be afraid!”

    Today is called Good Shepherd Sunday, after the Gospels used in all three years of the Sunday cycles of the Gospels.  We don’t quite hear Jesus say today that He is the Good Shepherd, but He talks about His sheep hearing His voice and following Him.  Perhaps we have domesticated the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, in much the same way we have domesticated cherubs.
    First of all, to be called a sheep is not a compliment.  Sheep are not smart animals.  That is why they need shepherds.  Not only are they easy prey, but I read somewhere that the reason they have to be moved, is because they will eat up all the grass, roots and all, if left in a solitary pasture.  So not too flattering for us.
    We do hear how the Good Shepherd knows His sheep, and elsewhere, Jesus says that He will go after the lost sheep.  We like that image.  Probably because we, like sheep, wander off to dangerous places that we should not go.  But this presumes that, when we hear the voice of the shepherd, we want to return to the good pastures.  The picture we hear from the Acts of the Apostles today gives us a different glimpse.  
    Paul and Barnabas are preaching in the synagogue in Antioch, in modern-day Turkey.  As Paul preaches to them that Jesus is the Messiah, at first they are open.  But, as they see non-Jews starting to accept the message, they turn and become agitated with Paul and Barnabas, and start rejecting them and their message of salvation through Jesus.  They eventually get enough people to expel Paul and Barnabas from the territory.  The message of life and truth as rejected, even by the people prepared by God to accept that same message, because they had the prophets preparing them for the Messiah, the prophecies of which Jesus fulfilled.
    So, too, we can think that if we hear the truth that we will readily accept it.  If the Good Shepherd tells us something that we need to hear, we will listen, especially if it’s for our own good.  And if He invites us back to the good pastures, that we will naturally follow.
    As we celebrate Mother’s Day today, we honor our mothers for all they have done for us, especially giving us the gift of life.  But think about your own mothers: even when they were saying something that was for your own good, did you always listen?  I’ll admit I didn’t.  So if we don’t do that with our own mothers, from whom we learn what love is, do we think that we’ll do better with Jesus?
    The same goes with our Holy Mother Church.  She often tells us that we should do X, or should avoid Y, and how often do we end up saying something like, “Mind your own business!”?  The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.  She speaks for Her Groom, Christ Jesus.  She applies what He taught us for salvation to new times and circumstances.  When it comes to faith and morals, hers is the voice of the Good Shepherd, leading us to the pastures of everlasting life.  But how often would we rather do our own will and follow our own so-called wisdom, rather than following the wisdom and will of the Good Shepherd?
    We see this in our own day with abortion.  If you’ve seen the news recently, you’ve seen an opinion paper, leaked from the Supreme Court, which advocates overturning Roe v. Wade.  Now, the Church has been clear since the first century of Christianity, that abortion is not consistent with being a follower of Christ.  Anyone who truly follows Christ cannot support abortion.  The Church, especially in recent years, has “followed the science” (to use a phrase in vogue right now) to remind us that the infant in the womb is a unique human being, with unique DNA, even while in the womb of the mother.  It is not a potential human, it is a human with potential.  We have marched and talked about the value of every human life, and promoted adoption, in case a mother has no support to raise the child she has conceived.  Even children born from sexual assault have talked about their own value as a human being, and how glad they are that their mother followed the will of God and chose life.  And yet, with all these good witnesses, people, sometimes even Catholics, sometimes even very prominent Catholics like our president, promote abortion and do not heed the voice of the Good Shepherd, pleading for the life of those little lambs in the womb.  
    Today, let’s listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd, in all areas that He speaks.  Let’s pray for all mothers today and ask God to help them to be the best mothers they can be.  That includes mothers whose children came to term and whom they raised; mothers who suffered the great sorrow and loss of miscarriage or stillborn children; and especially pray for mothers who made the decision to abort their child, that they have a conversion of heart and that the wounds that abortion causes are healed.  May we all–mothers, fathers, and children–be attentive to and listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd today and every day. 

The Hard Way

 Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord–At the Vigil Mass

When I was a freshman in high school I had a science class.  I like science, in general, but I’m not good at science.  One of our final projects in the class was to make a car from a mousetrap and have it travel 3 feet or so.  We could use anything we wanted to, as long it didn’t include a motor.  All we were given were the mousetrap and four plastic wheels.  I had seen someone else use CDs for wheels, and though that was a good idea.  Besides, what else would I do with all those AOL CDs that we got in the mail each month?  Try as I might, I could not get it to go forward.  I was left with simply pulling the arm of the trap back, and quickly releasing, trying to get enough forward momentum from my arm releasing it quickly.  It didn’t work.  When it came time for us to demonstrate what we had done, I watched my classmates and saw their cars.  They used strings or rubber bands attached to the arm of the trap, which were connected to the axels of the wheels, which, when the arm was released, propelled the mousetrap car forward.  It seemed so obvious, and yet it hadn’t occurred to me at all.  I certainly hadn’t found the easiest way to do things.  In fact, I have a special gift for often missing the easiest way, and finding the hardest way to do something.
    It may seem like God also chooses to do things the most difficult way.  St. Paul gives the basics of the Gospel as he is preaching in the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia, which we heard in our second readings.  God chose a people, is where St. Paul starts.  The story would have been familiar to the Jews.  But in case it’s not as familiar to us, let’s make sure we know that the people God chose were not a strong nation, or the best warriors, or the smartest.  No, God chose a family, Abram and Sarai, who were very old, had no children, and lived in modern-day Iraq, and told them to go to the land of Canaan.  That family, starting with the miracle child, Isaac, slowly grows into a small household, who sell one of the brothers into slavery, and then they have to beg from that brother for food during a famine.  
    The family makes its way to Egypt, lives comfortably there for a while, before Pharaoh gets nervous about their fecundity, and enslaves them.  God sends them Moses to free them from slavery, but this people, this nation now, always seems to think life was better in Egypt as slaves as God tries to give them Canaan and freedom.  God promises them the land and peace as long as they follow Him, but they can’t do it for even one generation.  So they struggle with the surrounding nations, until they beg God for a king, even though God tells them they have a king: Him; they don’t need another.  But they whine some more, and God gives them what they want.  First comes Saul, who is pretty bad at following God, and then David, who is much better at following God, except when he’s murdering to cover-up his adulterous relationship.  Still, David is mostly for God, which is good, because he’s the last king like that.  
    The people, throughout the centuries, wander away from God, get in trouble, cry out to God, and then God saves them, only for the people to get comfortable again, and turn away from God.  Then God sends John the Baptist to prepare the way for the Messiah, Jesus.
    One would think that the Messiah, God’s own co-eternal Son, would have things easier.  Instead, His mother is almost divorced by His foster-father; He has to make numerous trips, first in the womb, then as an infant, then as a young boy.  Jesus’ foster-father, Joseph, dies before Jesus reaches the age of thirty, and then Jesus preaches God’s message, first welcomed with open arms, but eventually rejected by his followers, betrayed by one of his closest friends, and then dies on the cross, abandoned by almost everyone except His mother and few others.
    That’s not the easiest way.  As we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate that God took flesh, and so could feel the jostling in the womb on the road to Bethlehem; was cold as he was delivered in a cave, because no inns had room.  Jesus, the eternal God, could be hungry and thirsty, could stink from soiling his diapers, and could feel the emotional struggle of rejection as He grew up, similar to everyone else in appearance, but clearly very different from his neighborhood friends.  
    God didn’t choose the easiest way to save us; but He chose the best way.  He entered into our forsakenness, our desolation, so that He could change us into His Delight and His Espoused.  It was not clean and easy, but neither was humanity.  Whether it’s building mousetraps or trying to live as disciples of Jesus, we seem to choose the harder, not smarter, way.  But God loves us enough to enter into that messiness so that, by His grace, we can clean up.  
    What we celebrate at Christmas is that God didn’t take the easy way out.  He could have simply willed to save us, but instead He sent His only-begotten Son to become like us in all ways but sin.  He took on our messy history, the saints and the sinners, and made it His own history.  God became man, so that man could become God, to paraphrase St. Athanasius.  
    This Christmas is hard, no doubt about it.  But the Good News is that God is here, and He understands our challenges, our difficulties, probably better than we do ourselves.  But God is still working to save us, no matter how hard, how difficult.  And that love, that dedication to us and to our eternal happiness that humbled itself to become like us in all things but sin, is definitely worth celebrating, and is something that not even COVID-19 can take away.  O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!

A Birthday and a Wedding

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

    When we think of Christmas as a celebration, we often think of it as a birthday celebration.  And it certainly is.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus in the flesh in Bethlehem.  Some families have even gone so far as to have birthday cake on Christmas, or to sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus at the family Christmas.
    But we can also think about Christmas as a wedding.  Our church takes on some of the appearance of a wedding.  At wedding, the church often is decorated with lots of flowers, like the poinsettias that we have here.  Often times you’ll have more candles lit at a wedding.  At wedding Masses we sing the Gloria, the song of the angels in heaven when Jesus was born.  And people dress up for weddings, like so many of you are dressed up today. 
    But the wedding that we celebrate is not between a man and wife, but between heaven and earth, between divinity and humanity, between God and man.  At Christmas heaven descends to earth as Jesus is born.  At Christmas we come to know of the union, never to be broken or divorced, between divinity and humanity in the Person of Jesus.  At Christmas, the angels make known the birth of the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and son of Mary. 
    The Prophet Isaiah himself uses the image of a wedding:

No more shall people call you “Forsaken,” or your land, “Desolate,” but you shall be called “My Delight,” and your land, “Espoused.”  For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.  As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.

God is our Builder and marries our humanity in Jesus.  God is our bridegroom and we, His people, are His bride.  No longer are we weighed down by our past sinfulness; no longer are we forsaken or desolate.  But we are the delight of the Lord, and espoused to Him. 
    We were not a bride that was desirable, because of our unfaithfulness.  We had been engaged or betrothed to God through Abraham, when God chose to make us His People.  But time and time again, we were unfaithful to God and wandered away from Him.  We were burdened by the yoke of slavery to sin, and Satan was our taskmaster.  But when Jesus Christ was born, He, the only one by whom we are saved, took us back to Himself and freed us from our bondage.  Jesus is truly “a savior…born for [us]” who heals us from our ancient wound of sin and gives us the freedom of the children of God.
    This is Good News!  This is the wedding announcement that should make all of us rejoice and be glad on this holy night/day.  For “The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations;” “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.”  “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.”  God has finally wedded us in Christ, and He will always stay faithful to His marriage vows, even when we stray and are unfaithful. 
    And this Good News is renewed for us each time we come to Mass.  In every Mass, it is as if Jesus is born again, as the bread and wine presented by you become the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Especially on Sunday Masses, we almost always sing the hymn of the angels, the Gloria, as Christ is born in our hearing of the Word of God, and in the confection of the Eucharist.  Heaven is joined to earth, with all the angels and saints, who worship God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.
    But think about a wedding, and think about how you respond to that joyful news.  My sister, Allison, was married this past March, and my sister, Amanda, celebrates her 11th Anniversary on 27 December.  People were so happy and shared the news to those they met, in person and over social media.  Weddings are reasons for celebration and sharing that joy with others.  And so is the wedding of heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, God and man.  Isaiah encourages us: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation.”  Will we keep this good news of this special wedding to ourselves?  Will we keep the lamp of joy under a bushel basket of fear?  Or will we join with the angels and shepherds in proclaiming to the ends of the earth the wedding which brings salvation to all those who have sat in the shadow of death?  The wedding is certainly good news.  And “Blessed are those called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.”

My brother-in-law, Tom, with my sister, Allison

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.