Praying Like Veruka Salt

 Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
    It seems to me that recently, Hollywood in general does not know how to make good movies anymore.  They simply rehash old ones that were popular.  A case in point in the newer version of “Willy Wonka” released in 2005, called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which re-told the story of the movie released in 1971.  For me, Willy Wonka is always Gene Wilder, not Johnny Depp, even though the 1971 has some pretty scary scenes in it.

    In both movies, though, we see all sorts of bad character in children.  One in particular, Veruka Salt, is very demanding and self-centered.  She wants what she wants and she wants it now.  She often wants it without any personal labor.  Indeed, to find the golden ticket, her dad forces his workers to open thousands of bars of candy, until it’s found.  And then, when she’s on the tour with Willy Wonka, she wants a goose that lays a golden egg (in the 1971 version), demonstrated by her song, “I Want It Now," which ends with her standing on a scale, that determines that she’s a bad egg, and sends her to garbage chute.  
    While we don’t prefer to think of ourselves this way, this approach, that we want what we want and we want it now, can creep into our faith life.  We heard in the first reading from the Prophet Habakkuk, who probably wrote this book in the 7th century (600s) BC.  Perhaps, in our prayers, we have even used words like his: “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!”  God, I’m praying to you!  You’re supposed to give me what I want as soon as I ask for it!!  Habakkuk, expressing that cry of his people, was not asking for anything bad.  The Babylonians are about to capture Jerusalem, God’s Holy Dwelling.  So they’re asking for His protection.  This is not a bad thing.  But remember, God had previously sent prophets to instruct the people to turn away from their evil, and they had not listened.  The consequences of their rebellion against God are about to fall on their own heads.
    Sometimes, we, too, ask for things that are not bad.  We seek some good that God can give us.  We feel that something should be in accord with God’s will.  And so we want it now.  Of course, we know that God allowed the Babylonians to sack Jerusalem, and the Jews went into exile from 587-539 BC.  But, God conveys through Habakkuk, that “the vision still has its time, pressed on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come.”  God will answer the cries of the people, but it will be on His schedule, not on theirs.  
    God invites us to be patient, and to trust that He will give us what we need, even if it’s after when we think we need it.  That takes faith, which Jesus encourages in the Gospel.  But there’s the curious follow-up to Jesus’ invitation to us to have faith, where He talks about us as servants, who need to wait for the Master’s schedule of dining.  Still, with ears to hear, we can see how often our prayers requests can come from an attitude where we are in charge, and we are the ones around whom God should make His plans.  But we are not the Master, but the unprofitable servants, whose job it is to serve the Master.  God’s will doesn’t have to conform to ours; quite the opposite: our will needs to conform to God’s.  
    I admit, I do not always exemplify that trust in God’s timing and the priority of God’s will over mine.  Because of my strong will (which can help me cling to God even in difficult times), I struggle saying “Thy will be done” and acknowledging that if it didn’t happen, then it’s not for the best.  When I want something, I automatically presume it’s for the best.  But, compared to God’s omniscience, we are like children who want dessert all the time, rather than eating our peas and carrots first.
    I think this struggle to accept God’s will and timing is most evident when someone we love is struggling with poor health and is approaching death.  There’s nothing wrong with seeking alternative treatments and second opinions, to make sure that we have explored every option.  But sometimes there is no other outcome than death.  Still I have seen adult children struggle greatly with accepting that reality, and wanting to keep trying every new medicine and prolong life, even when doctors are clear that there is no cure, beyond a miracle, and death is the only end to a disease or condition.  It’s not wrong to pray for miracles and have faith that God can accomplish mighty deeds, but are we willing to accept when God’s plan is different than ours, no matter how hard that is to accept?  
    And it is hard, especially when the answer we want in prayer deals with someone we love.  Love, we so often think, is doing everything we possibly can for the beloved.  But sometimes love is also accepting that God’s will is not ours, that what we love will not continue in the same way as before, and that love will simply treasure the days, weeks, or maybe months that we have left.  
    Faith is hard; faith requires us to battle our own desires and wills.  If it were easy, everyone would have faith, and it wouldn’t be so important for us in our relationship with God.  But today God invites us to make that move from “I want it now!” to “the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” 

Where Do I Find God?

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Where do you find God?  A lot of people will talk about finding God in nature.  Maybe you find God in the lyrics of a song that, as the young people say, hits you right in the feels (that means it gave you an emotional response).  Hopefully, you find God in reading Scripture, and in the Mass and the Sacraments.  But there’s another unlikely place where we can find God.
    Maybe it’s strange to say, but can we find God in suffering?  Can we find God in pain and sorrow?  Can we find God in the down times of life?  Because on earth there is no place we can go where God is not.  And that includes even in the darkest times in life.
    Habakkuk the prophet is speaking for God not long before the Babylonian Exile in 587 BC.  Things are not going well for Judah.  Ever since King Solomon, most of the kings had been pretty bad, with a few shining exceptions.  Judah is on a downward trajectory away from the Lord.  And Habakkuk is crying for help, but God does not seem to be listening.  But God tells Habakkuk to be patient, and speak what God tells him, “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint.”  God promises something better for Habakkuk in the future, but He also reminds Habakkuk (in the sections we didn’t hear today) that He is in the midst of whatever happens, even if it seems dark and dismal.
    St. Paul in our second reading corresponds with St. Timothy for a second time, and reminds St. Timothy to hold fast to the gift of God that St. Timothy received in ordination when St. Paul laid hands St. Timothy.  St. Paul alludes to the fact that he is a prisoner.  He had been arrested and taken to Rome after the Jews tried to condemn St. Paul on trumped-up charges.  But because St. Paul was a Roman citizen, he could appeal to the emperor.  While the judgement was being decided (and we know that St. Paul was eventually beheaded by the Emperor Nero, so it didn’t turn out well).  But in the midst of that, and even the trial that Paul’s situation must have been for Timothy, St. Paul says not to give up, but “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”
    I think we often like to pretend that following God means an easy life.  We may tell ourselves that if we’re living like saints, then trouble won’t find us.  But that’s not the case.  Many people who have followed God have suffered.  Think of the myriad army of martyrs who suffered simply because they followed Jesus, starting with St. Stephen, all the way to the martyrs of the 20th and now 21st centuries.  Think of Mary, who never sinned at all.  And yet, in September we remember Our Lady of Sorrows and the seven sorrows of Mary, culminating in watching her Son and God die on the cross.
    But Jesus dying on the cross is exactly the good news that the world needs.  It doesn’t sound like good news, but when we go beyond the surface, we realize what a great thing the crucifixion is.  In Christianity, we profess God who entered into everything that is truly human.  And that includes suffering.  God loves us so much, that He even experience in Jesus the sorrow, pain, and darkness of human suffering.  He was abandoned, misunderstood, and experienced the death of his friends.  He was betrayed, unjustly incarcerated, and unjustly put to death in the most shameful way possible.  Jesus went to the darkest part of human existence, and redeemed it.  He didn’t take it away on earth, but met us there so that we would not be alone when we suffer. 
    That is truly news that does not disappoint, the vision that presses on to fulfillment.  No matter what pain and sorrow we are going through–from a hang nail, to a broken heart from a break-up, to a hospitalization, and even to the loss of a friend or family member through death–Jesus is there, and He does not leave us alone.
    In the midst of our sorrows and pain, we need to stir into flame the gift of faith that we received in baptism, that gift of trust in Jesus that He will never abandon us.  Life may not be a rose garden, but if we unite it to Jesus, then there’s no better place to be than with him.   
 

Signs of Fall

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

There are some tell-tale signs that we are in the Fall: Friday night high school football, college football Saturdays, less daylight each day, cooler evenings and mornings, young ladies are starting to break out their uggs and ordering pumpkin spice everything.  Fall is upon us!  And it can be tough with less darker mornings and evenings.  Even during the days, it seems like there is more and more dreariness.

It can also feel darker and darker sometimes in terms of our city.  As you might have guessed, when I told people I was going to Flint, most people quickly responded with, “Don’t drink the water.”  Our water crisis, though we have started to address it, rages on.  As of April 2015, the unemployment rate in Flint was still 9.7%; city-data.com still lists Flint as a high crime area.  It seems like there is little good news for us!

In spite of this, the Word of God gives us some encouragement.  The Book of the Prophet Habakkuk, written likely in the 7th century BC, is written shortly before the Babylonians sack Jerusalem and exile the Chosen People to modern-day Iraq.  There was not very much good news for them, either.  In fact, the prophet says, “How long, O Lord?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  […] Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  Perhaps this is our prayer as well.  But the Lord does not remain silent.  He responds, “the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  God promises not to abandon his people, even if things look very dark.  What are the people to do in the meantime?  “The just one,” Habakkuk writes, “because of his faith, shall live.”  

Faith is hard, because, as the Letter to the Hebrews states, it is the “evidence of things not seen.”  We see darkness around us.  The light is not visible to our eyes.  It takes faith to trust that the dawn will break forth and scatter the darkness.  When our experience is negative, it’s hard to know there is any positive at all.  And we can sometimes rationalize not having faith by saying that we’re realists.  

But if we wish to see better times, then faith is necessary.  And we don’t need a large amount of faith, but only the size of a mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds around.  If we have faith that small, then we can command trees to move to their death, and they will do it.  Now, I’m pretty sure the Lord is not telling us to have faith that so we can landscape differently.  But he is saying that if we have a little bit of faith, anything can happen.

Having faith has made a difference in my life.  When I was a parochial vicar in East Lansing, there was a young man I knew who was attending Michigan State.  I had taught him a little at Lansing Catholic High School.  One day he contacted me and asked for prayers because his bike, which was locked on a bike rack, was stolen, and the police had very little hope of getting it back.  He relied on the bike to make it to class and to football practice.  I prayed, through the intercession of St. Anthony and St. Dominic, and had faith that God would answer my prayers according to His will.  I pleaded with God that this young man needed his bike to be a good student, and that getting his bike back would strengthen his faith.  A day after I prayed, the bike was found and returned to its owner.   This definitely did help to increase that young man’s faith.  This young man had been sure that he would never see his bike again.  The police were sure he was right.  Faith made the impossible happen.  

If we have faith, what we see is not what will always be.  That’s true for our spiritual lives: the struggles we have, if united to Jesus, can one day lead to glory in heaven.  It’s true for our city: I see signs of hope that Flint is coming back, and if we follow God’s will we can once more have a thriving city.  And I am excited to be a part of that renewal right here in our parish.  If we have faith in God’s will, and trust in God, we can be major contributors to the flourishing of Flint.  Things may still look bleak, but the Lord invites us to follow Him and trust in Him.  “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  Trust that being obedient to God’s will will give us things that we never thought could be.  Have faith!

"If you're going through hell, keep on going"

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

            “Is anybody there?”  This is the question the Prophet Habakkuk asks God in the first reading.  He is frustrated by the evil that is all around him, how violence and wickedness seem to be everywhere.  And yet God, who is supposed to be the source of justice, the one who punishes the wicked, seems absent from the situation.  The wrongs are not being righted.  The oppressed are not being liberated.  The wicked are not being punished.  Where is God in this situation?

            “Is anybody there?”  This is probably a question that we have asked God from time to time.  “Don’t you care what’s going on in my life?  Don’t you care how bad things are?”  Maybe it’s not violence like the Prophet Habakkuk is frustrated by.  Maybe you’re a senior citizen and no one comes to visit you and you feel alone.  Maybe you’re married, yet the spark of love seems to have died, and all you seem to do is fight with your spouse.  Maybe you’re divorced and feel alienated.  Maybe you’re a college student and the pressure of midterms is weighing heavily upon you and you feel like you’re drowning in your classes.  Maybe you’re a child and nothing seems to be going right with friends, family, or school.  Maybe someone you love has just died and you don’t know how to live without him or her.  No matter what the scenario, many people have dark times in their life.  And what makes it particularly dark is when God doesn’t seem to care, and when the answer to prayer that we want, the thing we are sure will fix the whole situation, doesn’t come. 

            But in our first reading, God responds.  He does not leave Habakkuk in silence.  He says, “Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets…For the vision still has its time…if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”  In essence, God tells the prophet, “Just wait.  I am going to work things out in my own time.”  That’s probably not the answer we want to hear when we feel like everything is going wrong.  But God doesn’t answer our prayers exactly the way we want.  He loves us too much to give us only what we want.  He loves us so much, that He knows how and when to give us what we need.  But to persevere through the tough times takes trust and faith in God.

            It’s easy to say with St. Paul, “All things work for the good of those who love God,” when we’ve just won the lottery, when we feel on top of the world, when everything seems to be going well.  It is much harder to say that same phrase when loss and darkness seem to be the norm.  But the gift of faith gives us the strength to trust that all things are working for our good if we love God, and to say with Job, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!”  With faith, great things are possible.

            Certainly this is the point of what Jesus said to the apostles in today’s Gospel.  Jesus wasn’t talking about landscaping when he said you could move mulberry trees if you have faith.  In some sense, that’s quite easy.  How much harder is it to trust in God when everything seems to be working against us!  And how much more impressive is it to continue to remain faithful to God and persevere than just to move a tree!  In one sense, moving a tree with faith is easy.  Remaining faithful to God and continuing to trust in Him when your heart and your will tell you just to give up is much more of a miracle.  And that is possible if we have faith the size of a mustard seed.  That’s not a lot of faith.  Mustard seeds are not big.  If I were to hold a mustard seed between my finger and thumb, no one could see it, unless you’re Clark Kent.

           

But we were all given the gift of faith in Baptism.  All of us received that precious gift when we became an adopted son or daughter of God.  Sometimes people will say to me, “Father, I don’t have any faith!”  Well, if you were baptized, then you do, even if you don’t feel it.  St. Paul, speaking to St. Timothy in the second reading, reminds St. Timothy to stir into flame the gift of God that he received through the imposition of hands.  St. Paul is talking here about the ordination of St. Timothy, and stirring into flame that gift of the Sacrament of Holy Order.  But the same could be said for the gift of baptism.  We have to stir into flame that gift of the Sacrament of Baptism, the gift of faith, so that we do not fall into the spirit of cowardice or apathy or despair.  We have to exercise that gift of faith, especially when it is tough. 

            Think of a few, small, burning embers in a fire that was burning the night before.  All it takes is some paper and small twigs, some gentle breaths of oxygen, and that fire can start burning once again the next morning and can return to the greatness of the night before.  The same is true with our faith: even when we feel our faith is nothing but a small ember, a small remnant of what it was before, with the proper fuel, our faith can once again be a roaring fire.  How does this happen?  Through reading the Word of God, either alone or in a Bible Study; by sharing with others the little bit of faith we have through Small Faith Sharing Groups; by taking time for prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration; by removing any obstacles to faith through the Sacrament of Penance.  In that way we nurture the mustard seed of faith, until it grows into a large tree that provides home and comfort for others.

            In a country song, Rodney Atkins sings, “If you’re going through hell, keep on going.”  By the gift of faith we can persevere through all the trials of life, even when we feel like it’s going through hell, knowing that God never abandons us, but sometimes asks us to wait to receive the best things that He has in store for us in the way and the time that He wants to give it.  “If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.”

Jesus' Landscaping Company

Twenty-seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

            On Thursday I had the pleasure of going up to Camp Leelanau with the seventh-graders from St. Thomas Aquinas School.  I went to spend time with them and to offer Mass for them on Friday morning.  One of the things they did while there was a ropes course.  I was really impressed when they, while secured to a steel cable, had to jump from one platform to another, which was about 3-4 feet away.  Oh, and did I mention that they were about 20 feet in the air?

            Many of the students did jump, and really demonstrated to me an example of a very natural faith.  The kids had to have faith that they were securely fastened to the steel cables, and that if they jumped, they would land on the other side safe and sound, or just dangle from the cable if they missed.

            In the Gospel passage today, when the apostles ask for more faith, the Lord says that if they had just a small amount of faith, they could make a mulberry tree plant itself in the sea.  The point here is not so much that Jesus is opening a landscaping company, but that faith allows the disciple of the Lord to do what seems impossible.  The Lord is not advocating that, when we want to redecorate our yard, we make an act of faith, and then tell the maple tree to switch places with the oak tree in our front yard, or for the extra mound of dirt in the back yard to fill in the valley in our front yard, but to have faith in the work of the Lord: the salvation of our souls.

            What stands in the way of that salvation is not a mulberry tree, but sin.  Sin blocks the relationship that God wants to have with us by putting other, lesser goods higher than the will of God, which should be the greatest good that we’re pursuing.  It leads us to think that, rather than being a servant, who should be waiting on the master, and making sure he is happy, doing only what we were obliged to do by our status as servant, that we are the master who should be waited on.  It gives us a false view of reality.

            Now, we probably all know this, both intellectually and by experience.  And I’m sure that many of you have prayed that your temptations might cease.  Your words probably echoed the sentiments of Habakkuk from our first reading: “How long, O LORD?  I cry for help but you do not listen!  I cry out to you…but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  We may wonder why the Lord allows us to fall into the same, maybe major or grave, or minor sins.

            Or course, it isn’t the Lord’s fault that we sin.  When we sin we are exercising our free will.  But the Lord doesn’t just leave us to ourselves.  He gives us the great gift of the sacraments to assist us in making the Lord’s will our own, and choosing actions which are in accord with His will.

            In baptism, when either our parents or we first ask for faith, the Lord answers our prayers.  He gives us this gift of faith, to trust in the Lord and to overcome the obstacles of sin.  That’s right: all of you have the grace to avoid all mortal sins by virtue of your baptism.  And you have an even greater gift through Confirmation when the baptismal promises are reaffirmed and the gift of grace is increased.  By your baptism, God gives you all the sufficient grace for avoiding mortal sins.  He allows you to move the trees of sin which stand in the way of your holiness, into the abyss of the sea of darkness where sins belong.  We can think of the graces of baptism and confirmation like a spring, welling up in a river.  As long as we do not block the spring with the rocks of sin, then the waters will flow freely.  But we must allow, by our freedom, to let those waters flow.

            This teaching, that we all have the ability to remain free from mortal sin, may seem new to us.  You might be asking yourself, ‘Well, if I have this gift, how come it hasn’t worked yet?’  The gift is not forced upon us.  Like any other gift, it does not become ours if we do not receive it in freedom.  ‘Well then, Fr. Anthony, how do I receive it?’ 

            St. Paul tells us in the second reading: “stir into flame the gift of God that you have.”  Of course, when talking to St. Timothy, St. Paul was talking about his ordination, when St. Paul laid hands on St. Timothy to impart to him the spring of graces of the Sacrament of Holy Order.  But the same principle applies to our baptism and confirmation: we have that grace like hot embers, and all we must do is to stir that gift into flame by the fuel of our prayers to God, asking for His assistance to avoid sin and be faithful to the Gospel.  Just as a loving father does not give a snake to his child asking for a fish, or a stone when his child asks for a piece of bread, so our Father, if we truly want to avoid major sins, will give us the grace to avoid those sins and remain faithful to him. 

“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power and love and self-control.”  We have the ability to do great things because of our faith in God granted to us by baptism, and confirmed in confirmation.  Let us remove the obstacles in our life that prevent that grace from flowing, so that we might enjoy forever the eternal banquet that Jesus has prepared for us, where He, the Master, will wait on us, the servants as a reward for our fidelity to Him on earth.