Blind Spots

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    More times than I would like to admit, I have been driving on the freeway, with a slow car ahead of me in the right lane (and, for the record, I generally drive 72 miles per hour), and I start to merge into the left lane, and either I notice the other car as I’m turning my head to the side to make sure the lane is clear (I know, I’m supposed to do that before I attempt to merge), or the car in the right lane next to me honks as I start to merge over.  Even with my “blind spot” indicator on the side-view mirror, I am still sometimes unaware of everything going on around me on the road.
    Our Lord heals Bartimaeus today in the Gospel from his blindness.  His blindness involved physically being unable to see.  But, ironically, Bartimaeus’ spiritual sight seemed to be 20/20.  How can we tell?  He cries out, “‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.’”  He cannot see, but he knows that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-foretold son of David who would save Israel.  He hadn’t seen any of Jesus’ miracles, but he trusted in what he heard and in what Jesus could do.  And even when people tell him to be quiet, Bartimaeus just keeps calling out to the Lord.  Ironically, those around Jesus, the “sizable crowd,” as St. Mark reports, had some blindness of their own.  Otherwise they would not have told Bartimaeus to be quiet.  Perhaps the crowd had heard of what this rabbi from Nazareth could do, but they didn’t expect Him to heal the man from the roadside.  
    We all have blindspots.  We all miss things that we should otherwise see.  Luckily, as we hear in the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ “is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and the erring.”  Because we have received so much that should make things so clear.  And yet, sometimes we are as spiritually blind as Bartimaeus was physically.  We fail to recognize what God is doing, or even who God is, though we have opportunities to encounter Him every day.
    Sometimes our blindness comes from our busyness.  When I’m driving and I don’t see the car coming up behind me or along my side, it’s usually because I have focused on the wrong thing, or I am in a rush.  I think that whatever I want to concentrate on is more important, and I miss the other vehicles traveling with me on the road.  This can happen in our faith life.  We get so busy with work, or maybe even with leisure, or maybe even with our family, that we neglect to take time to notice how God works or when God tries to communicate with us directly or through others.  Our minds get clogged with unnecessary worries, and we become like the sizable crowd that fails to recognize Jesus’ power and mission.  

    The antidote to this is daily prayer.  I know that, when we feel busy, we feel like we don’t have time to pray.  But, St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us that if we feel too busy, that’s a sign we need to pray more, not less.  And, let’s be honest, we often can make time for prayer at work, though it might mean not scrolling the news page headlines or playing a game on our phone as a little break.  Or on vacation, we can choose to pray on a beach, or in the woods, and make time for going to Mass while on vacation.  Or even at home, though the kids are screaming, or making a mess, we can try to pray, even if that prayer is, “Lord, give me patience!” or “Thank you, God, for my beautiful children who don’t always act so beautifully,” or even taking more time as you put the kids to bed to pray with them and tell them just how much Jesus loves them.    But don’t let busyness be the disease that causes spiritual blindness.
    Joshua, as you enter into full communion with us, you complete one journey and begin another.  You are finishing a path which led you to seek the truths of the Catholic faith, truths that  you discovered are from Christ Himself through His Mystical Body, the Church.  You started to gain a new vision of the world and of being a disciple of Christ, which began outside the Catholic Church when you were baptized.  Christ gave you a new vision back then, and He continues to give you a new vision now.  But today you also begin a new road on your pilgrimage to the Father’s house.  You begin to walk with us as a Catholic, as we all continue to seek clarity in our spiritual sight from the Lord.  
    As you begin this new pilgrimage, do not be afraid to cry out to the Lord when you need Him.  If a teaching does not seem obvious, or if you are in need of forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, do not fear to cry out, “‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!’”  He will come to you, in one way or another, and heal you from whatever blindness afflicts you at that moment.  And know that you are not alone.  I don’t know if all our parishioners would be considered a “sizable crowd,” but, unlike that crowd outside Jericho, we commit ourselves to helping you encounter the Lord more and more each day.  Do not be afraid to reach out to us, as well all walk towards the Lord and doing His will.
    If we are honest, we all have blind spots.  But, with the Lord’s grace, we can find healing and clear sight.  May the Lord open our eyes and our hearts to His love and truth each day as we seek to follow Him.

How We Build

Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Matthew Church

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When we think about this building, we think of the many parts that came together to make this such a beautiful church.  We have the brickwork, the plaster, the doorframes, the marble, the paint, and everything that fits together in just a particular way so as to make up this church building.  Those different materials and items had to be shaped and placed together particularly so that we could have a temple in which we worship God.  They didn’t simply exist and magically come together.  It took work.  But with the work accomplished, we can rightfully say that we are the most beautiful church in Genesee County, and one of the most beautiful in the Diocese of Lansing.
    St. Peter tells us in his first epistle that we are living stones, being built up into a spiritual house to offer acceptable sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ.  This building is important because it reminds us of what we are called to be.  We each have our different gifts and talents.  But when we are shaped and placed together, united in a single purpose, we form something beautiful that aids in the worship of God. 
    As we celebrate the Anniversary of the Dedication of this church, I wanted to share with you what the leadership team (me, Amanda Williams, Mike Wilson, and Jason Tower) discerned for how we will continue into the future as a parish; how we exist as the invisible temple that this visible temple makes present.  We, with the help of the Catholic Leadership Institute, worked hard over three one-day sessions in the fall, to make sure that we clearly understood and could articulate what makes St. Matthew Parish St. Matthew Parish, as well as how God calls us, not only statically, but dynamically, to continue His work of spreading the Gospel.  And I want to communicate with you our parish purpose, vision, values, and priorities, with the hope that we can each find ways to work together to be purposeful, guided by our vision and values, and working towards the priorities that we believe God has given to St. Matthew.
    The parish purpose and vision give us the “why” of St. Matthew.  Why do we exist as a parish?  What motivates us and moves us?  Our purpose, as discerned by my leadership team, “is to use beauty and truth to inspire and develop disciples to transform the secular order by the grace of God, for His glorification and the edification of man.”  That’s a mouthful, I know.  But basically, we focused on two of the transcendentals, beauty and truth, as a way that we form disciples.  And why are we trying to form disciples?  Because the world is not as it should be.  The world is not as God created it.  But we can work together, by His grace, to make it more like it should be, more according to the plan of God.  And this not only glorifies God, but also builds us up into the people God wants us to be.  You can see this purpose each week on the front page of our bulletin.  It’s meant to be a reminder to each of us of why we exist.
    As to our vision, the big view of what we want to be and accomplish, “We are a Roman Catholic parish in the heart of Flint that worships God with reverence, forms disciples, and serves the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors in communion with the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.”  Our purpose could be applied to any parish.  Our vision puts our purpose in our particular context of where we are (“in the heart of Flint”) and what we do (“worships God…forms disciples…serves the…needs of our neighbors”).  But what we do is not by our own imagining, as if we create the Church.  Our vision happens within the context of the one Church that Christ established, which, as Lumen gentium states, “subsists in the Catholic Church.” 
    That vision is made manifest in our values as a parish.  The leadership team discerned three values of St. Matthew Parish that are important to everything we do: reverence; faithfulness; and family/community.  By reverence, we mean that we “strive to promote the awe and respect that is owed to God.”  How do we do this?  By following the rubrics the Church sets out for the celebration of the sacred liturgy; by allowing time for sacred silence so that God can speak in our hearts; and by appropriate posture and dress, so that the way we carry ourselves and present ourselves in parish life manifests how we live in wonder and awe in God’s presence.
    By faithfulness, we mean that we “support fidelity to the Magisterium and the 2,000 year history of the Church.”  So many love to be only what is happening now.  We stay faithful to what the Church officially teaches, and how that has been revealed to us by God over the entire history of the Church, not just before or after the Second Vatican Council.  How do we do this?  By incorporating legitimate liturgical traditions; by promoting orthodoxy and refuting heresy; and by striving to imitate Christ in all that we do.  In this way we show that we are truly Catholic: welcoming all that is good, while preserving the world as salt from all that is bad.
    Lastly, by family/community, we mean the value we place on every human life from natural conception to natural death.  How do we do this?  By supporting families of all ages; by welcoming families into our parish by what we say, but also by what we do; and by helping families create a strong domestic church, a strong place in their homes where God is present. 
    Based on these values, then, we are currently prioritizing the support of the Domestic Church, the family; evangelization and apologetics so that we can share the faith with others; and community outreach, so that we may serve Christ in the least of his brothers, as He says in Matthew 25. 
    So what?  A lot of ink was spilled, but does it make a difference?  Again, if we are going to continue to be built into the spiritual temple of God, then we have to have an organizing plan.  We cannot simply exist and hope that we’ll all come together, anymore than the bricks, plaster, paint, marble, etc. just existed and then came together without any effort.  All that we do as a parish should fit within these paradigms, paradigms that we did not create so much as discern that God wants us to use.  When you’re donating your money; when you’re volunteering; when you’re asking for this or that activity or program; all of it should fit into one of these categories that I have outlined for you today.  And if we do that, we will continue to grow as a parish, and form a new generation of disciples who will carry out the Great Commission which was given to us by Jesus Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen].