Journeying Into Mystery

NOTE: This reflection on the Holy Family of God arose out of my pastoral experience of 41 years of ministry in many diverse parish communities.

J.M.J.
When I was a kid attending Catholic School in the 1950’s, it was taught that the first thing to be handwritten at the top of each page were the letters J.M.J., initials for Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Of all families, the penultimate family was not those portrayed in TV sitcoms of the time, namely, the Andersons of “Father Knows Best”, or the Nelsons of “Ozzie and Harriet”, nor the Cleavers of “Leave It To Beaver.” The penultimate family, was the “Holy Family” consisting of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The fact that the evangelist Mark, Matthew, and Luke brought up the “other” brothers and sisters of Jesus in their Gospel accounts was not the immediate concern of the religious Sisters who taught me. That was an issue left to the pervue of Biblical scholars and Christian denominations over which to argue and resolve. As far as far as the Sisters were concerned the most important point to impart was that the family unit of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was the perfect family. Hence, the constant reminder of inscribing J.M.J. at the top of all handwritten pages.

I am sure that many homilies given this past weekend painted a picture of a family so perfect that the aura of holiness around them protected them like an invisible force shield from all the violence, all the injustices, and all hunger and poverty of their real world in first century Palestine and Judea. One of the homilies I heard gave me the image of “real life” bouncing off this sacred force field that surrounded them as they went about their daily business. The primary difficulty of this image is that the Holy Family becomes no more than a fairy tale that has nothing in common with the real life daily struggles of the typical human family. It is so totally “other” that the Holy Family is nothing more than a just stain glass window. There is no “common” ground of humanity that is shared with real families from which to learn or to emulate.

The other primary difficulty is that the gospels paint a different picture of this Holy Family. The Holy Family was a family living in destitution, their child born in a barn. They were political refugees who had to flee the violence of a cruel, despotic king and live for a while in a foreign land until that despot died. The Holy Family was a family in which things were anything but idyllic and where they had to ponder and think about the meaning of what had happened to them. We all struggle to figure out where God is in the good and the bad that happen to us in life. So it was the same with the Holy Family. Even Jesus did not have all the answers to this struggle of finding God in the tragedies of life. We hear Jesus questioning up to his last breath, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

For me the ultimate reality of the Feast of the Holy Family is revealed in the first chapter of Genesis, in which it is stated that all of humanity is made in the image and the likeness of God. Within each and every human being, male and female, of every race, of every religious or non-religious tradition, heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual or transgender is the DNA of God. Each and every one of us, are daughters and sons of God. And as Christians we believe that Jesus is the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus. It matters not whether we are Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, Christian or whatever, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus. In short, we ALL share the DNA of God and are members of the Holy Family of God.

The greatest heresy that humanity has perpetuated and continues to perpetuate is that there are some of humanity who are NOT sons and daughters of God. That some are NOT members of the Holy Family of God. As we examine the religious wars, tribal wars, nation against nation throughout world history, and the history of our own nation, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the enslavement of African, Asian, Latino, and indigenous peoples of the United States, we find this insidious heresy that people not made in our skin color or espousing our religion or culture are NOT sons and daughters of God. Racial and religious genocide thrives on this heresy.

We presently have an administration and many in the Congress who believe wholeheartedly that only some people, generally defined as white, wealthy, heterosexual, and Christian, are made in the image and likeness of God. It is evident in the immigration policies, the religious prejudice, the tax law that was just passed, the attempt to take away healthcare from the poor, the elderly, and the middle class of our nation. Is it any wonder that I may rant about the injustice of the present administration, especially the one who occupies the Oval Office, and the political party that dominates Congress? They perpetuate the sin of Cain! They are spreading a heresy that attacks the Holy Family of God. Is it any wonder that Pope Francis 1 is quoted as saying that there will be many Atheists who will experience Heaven and many Christians who will not?

The Feast of the Holy Family of God is not just about the nuclear family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This is a Feast about the entire human Holy Family of God created in the image and the likeness of God. The Gospel message of Jesus was God’s love and compassion extends to the entire Human Family, not just certain groups, nationalities, races, or cultures. Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if, when we see another person, we see the image and likeness of our God. We must not only see the initials of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but the initials of every human being on the top of our handwritten, or, in this case, typed page.

Celebrating New Year’s Eve has never been a high priority in my life. There is no great gain to be had from getting drunk, other than to see the room spin, puke out your guts, and feel like you head is about to blast off into space. My illegal substance of choice as a music major undergraduate had been weed. You got just as goofy, but without all the ill side effects of overdosing on alcohol. And, even then, I would only smoke a joint or two only after having taken my college finals at the end of each semester. When Ruthie and I got married, and I began teaching, my pot smoking days were over. I reasoned that it would set a poor example for the educator to come stoned to a classroom full of students, no matter that many of the students had come to class stoned. It would get you fired very quickly and in a jail cell very quickly.

Generally, Ruthie is working the night shift as an RN on New Year’s Eve and I am going to bed early because I have Masses to be at on New Year’s Day morning. A quick digression from the narrative … why as Catholics do we celebrate Mass on New Year’s Day? For many years it was the feast of the Circumcision. Why anyone would celebrate the snipping of a baby boy’s foreskin is beyond me, with the exception of King David, who killed 1000 Philistines and presented the foreskins of those he slew as a present to King Saul, who then allowed David to marry his daughter. In the 1970’s, Pope Paul VI, changed the name of the feast from celebrating the circumcision of Jesus, to a Mass praying for World Peace. Then John Paul II changed the name of the feast again, to the feast of Mary, Mother of God. I remember an old retired priest celebrating Mass New Year’s morning at St Hubert, stating in his homily that when he was a newly ordained young priest, he thought that if he ever was made Pope, the first thing he would do would be to abrogate (end) the Holy Day obligation on New Year’s Day. His primary reasoning was that he did not like getting up early in the morning to celebrate the Mass on a typical freezing cold winter’s day in Minnesota. His secondary reason, was that for even those who do show up for the Mass, many are still hungover from the festivities of the night before and weren’t quite into celebrating anything much less Mass. It wasn’t quite the homily message I was expecting on the feast of Mary, Mother of God. Though, I believe 90% of the people who were in church, were probably in agreement with the priest. End of digression … now back to New Year’s Eve.

I only remember 3 memorable New Year’s Eve.

The first was when I accompanied my brother to the home of one of his friends who lived on Mississippi River Blvd in St. Paul. We played poker with some of my brother’s buddies. I won big, lost big, and then broke even and got out of the game. I ended up watching an old W.C. Fields comedy on television, and listening to the newly released album of a group called Buffalo Springfield, that everyone was saying would be America’s Beatles (no, they never became America’s Beatles, though two members of that group would go on to great fame, namely Steven Stills and Neal Young).

The second was New Year’s Eve, 1974, 3 days after Ruthie and I got married. We hosted a New Year’s Eve 500 game for Rob and Cheri DuCharme. Cheri had been Ruthie’s maiden of honor at our wedding. Because Rob is blind, we played with braille cards. At one point that night, he turned off the lights and declared, “Now, let’s really play cards.” We drank some champagne, and a lot of rum and coke. Rob and I lost our shirts to Ruthie and Cheri, both of whom learned the game from Ruthie’s dad. I remember Ruthie calling in sick to St. Joe’s Hospital because she was hungover. I, on the other hand, managed a couple hours of sleep and played the 8 am New Year’s Day Mass (It was celebrated then as a Mass for World Peace). And, no, I wasn’t hungover …

The third was New Year’s Eve, 2002. 2002 had been a horrendous year. In March, our beloved Great Pyr, FloydRMoose, died. The evening of that same day, I was involved in a head on collision on Highway 21. The result of that accident was a high femur break of the my left leg, that took about 18 months from which to recover, and losing 40% of the use of my right hand, which ended my career as a professional pianist. In December, I was just getting fully back into work. Fortunately, I had transitioned from director of music and liturgy to director of pastoral ministry a couple of years earlier so that my ability to work was not severely impacted. So that December, the kids got Ruthie and I a new Great Pyr puppy, which I named Henri, after the character on the television sitcom “Cheers”. At 11:55 pm, December 31st, 2002, I had been watching the John Wayne movie “Donovan’s Reef”. I looked at the puppy and said, “Kid, instead of taking you out for your 3 am dump, I am taking you out now.” I had to be at the 8 am Mass at St Hubert in Chanhassen on New Year’s Day. As I let the puppy out into the yard, the bells of St Wenceslaus were ringing out 2002 and ringing in 2003. At that very moment, the puppy was laying a big dump on the frozen surface of our yard. I praised the puppy for his accomplishment and then said, “That dump pretty much summed up the whole of the year 2002 for me.” I took him inside to his crate, and I went to bed.

The way I celebrated New Year’s Eve last night was to see Ruth drive off to South Minneapolis to work the night shift at the Vet’s Home. I then watched a little television, wrote a bulletin article on the “epiphanies” in our lives, while sipping a brandy manhattan (an epiphany experience unto itself), and waiting for Luke to return from the Corner Bar in New Prague. … One quick anecdote about the Corner Bar in New Prague. When I was working at St Hubert, there was another co-worker from New Prague who also worked there. One Monday morning we were conversing with the baby priest (newly ordained priest) at the parish. The priest remarked that he was feeling “whimsical” that morning. My co-worker turned to me and said, “What the hell does whimsical mean?” I explained to him the meaning of the word and how it is often used in sentences, e.g., “I am full of whimsy today.” My co-worker then stated, “If you said that down at the Corner Bar, they would beat the shit out of you!” … but I digress. When Luke got home around 1:15 am, I got ready for bed, prayed Night Prayer, pulled the covers over me and fell asleep. Around 2:30/3 in the morning, I awakened by the dog barking. This was followed by the sound of clothes being discarded in my bedroom, and the dog rushed in all excited. There was Ruthie undressing and getting into bed. I was surprised for I wasn’t expecting her to get home from work until 8 am. I asked her, “Ruthie, did you get sick.” She said, “No. I got there and found out I didn’t have to work.” She then explained that she went to check up on a co-worker who was going to have a hip replacement and she was worried that the co-worker did not have sick time saved up for the surgery and recovery, much less any disability insurance. After talking with the co-worker she did a few things on the floor and headed home.

Hearing Ruthie’s voice and feeling her warmth beside me in bed last night is probably the best New Year’s Eve (though technically early New Year’s Day) we have had since we were first married. I told her, I was thinking of our first New Year’s Eve together as a married couple. And that at that moment, I felt like a new husband in bed with his bride. With Ruthie working full time night shifts the past 30 years, we have very few nights in which we both are in bed side by side. After the horrendous events of this past 2017 which has impacted not only our nation but the entire world and will take years to undo, I finally felt some hope for 2018 the moment I felt Ruthie’s body next to mine.

It is Gaudete Sunday, “Rejoice Sunday”!

In most Advent seasons, Gaudete Sunday marks the halfway point in Advent. This year with Advent lasting 3 weeks and about 10 hours, we are almost to Christmas Day. This is the time when little children begin to salivate at the thought of all the Christmas cookies, candy, and other Christmas treats they will be eating. And, yes, the presents, the little kids will salivate at the thought of those. While all of the food, the treats, and presents are good reasons to cause one to rejoice, the bottom line is that the food and treats will be eaten and disappear. The toys and other gifts received may break, or be played with and laid aside, or returned. The readings for today, however, give us the true reason to rejoice on this Sunday.

From Isaiah we hear, “The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the LORD.” These words, though spoken thousands of years ago, have never gotten stale or moldy like food, nor have they ever been cast aside due to boredom. These words from the prophet Isaiah still excite us, still give us cause to rejoice, because we know that they have been fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. And, though Jesus has risen and ascended to the Father, we know that these words will be fulfilled again, when Jesus returns at the end of time.

To breathe in the excitement and the wonder of that first coming when the whole world had a cause to rejoice, I invite you to join our students from the Disciples of Christ formation program at our Christmas pageant at 7 pm this coming Wednesday evening, December 20th, at St. John the Evangelist Church in Union Hill. The Christmas pageant will be celebrated within a Word and Communion service, in which we will not only see the words of the Christmas story enacted, but at which we will also receive the risen Lord in Holy Communion. Refreshments will follow the pageant in Koenig Hall on the lower level of St. John’s School.