For Baby Wagner

I have just completed 6 Psalm Offerings written for my grandchildren. The first 5 songs were dedicated to all of the grandchildren. However, the 6th and final Psalm Offering I dedicated to “Baby Wagner.” Between the pregnancies of my grandsons, Aidan and Ollie, my daughter-in-law, Olivia, lost a baby due to a miscarriage. This song is for that beautiful baby that I never knew. The composing of this Psalm Offering evoked very powerful and overwhelming emotions within me. Perhaps, I finally was allowing myself the freedom to grieve the death of this little child. The music for me is laden with a profound beauty and sadness. As I completed the music I found myself weeping. Perhaps, you, too, will find yourself moved by the music.

Psalm Offering 6, Opus 8. (c) 2017 by Deacon Bob Wagner OFS. All rights reserved.

How we keep Christmas is dependent on how we keep Advent.

As Americans, we live torn between two wholly different Christmas world views. Our nation begins the celebration of Christmas on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. On December 25th, as our nation concludes the Christmas Season, the Catholic Church begins the Christmas Season which will end on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. As faithful Catholics living in the United States, how do we reconcile or find any balance between these two very conflicting world views? My parents found a way of reconciling this conflict many years ago.

On the first Sunday of Advent, my father would buy our Christmas tree, and set it up in our living room. My parents would drape the tree with lights and garland. My brother and sister and I would place the ornaments upon the tree. Along the base of the tree was a Christmas tree skirt, on top of which was  placed our Christmas crèche. Around the base of the tree my father would set up the train tracks for our Lionel train. The Christmas crèche served a dual role as railroad station/birthplace of Jesus. However, the crèche was empty of Christmas figurines and no train was placed on the train track.

Where were the figurines of Mary and Joseph? Starting from the furthest place from the Christmas tree, my  mother would move them throughout the living room. As the candles were lit on our Advent wreath, Mary and Joseph would gradually move closer to the stable.  The lights on the tree would be turned on at night, however, the space below the tree remained empty, a visible reminder to us kids that Christmas was not here, yet.

When we came downstairs on Christmas morning, we found the Christmas crèche filled with the figurines of animals and shepherds. In their midst were Mary and Joseph, their gaze fixed upon the baby Jesus. The train would circumnavigate the tree, bringing invisible crowds of people to the stable where they, too, could adore the Christ child.

As we journey in this Season of Advent, basking in the light of Christmas decorations, drowning in the endless choruses of Christmas carols, concerts, and holiday specials, parties and food, let us be mindful that Christmas has not yet begun. The space below the Christmas tree remains empty. The real celebration will only begin when on December 25th, within the Christmas crèche, we see the figures of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus.

Grateful to God in adversity – homily for Thanksgiving

This past Thanksgiving Day I was called on to do a Word and Communion at St. Scholastica Church. This is the homily I gave for that Word and Communion.

HOMILY FOR THANKSGIVING – 2017
Thanksgiving is a holiday in which we pause in our busy lives to be grateful. Grateful for the relationships we have in our lives, especially with those we love and befriend. Grateful for the blessings with which God has given us. Grateful for work and meaning to our lives. All of this part of our lives interacting with God.

For some, however, this day and the rest of the holiday season is a time of great sadness in which they find little to be grateful. This past Tuesday, I facilitated my separated and divorce support group. I ordered special made cupcakes for the meeting knowing that those cupcakes may be the only thing that is positive in their lives this week. Some families are so broken and so dysfunctional that they don’t even gather in fragments to eat a meal together. One participant will bring her blind brother to Perkins for a Thanksgiving meal. Many will sit home, alone, eating a turkey T.V. dinner.

This coming Tuesday I will co-facilitate a support group for families who have lost a loved one to suicide. Though the loss grows less as the year passes, they continue to mourn the absence of that loved one who has died, always wondering whether they could have done anything to help save their loved one’s life.

Oh, that all supplications to God for healing would have the happy ending of the 10 lepers in the gospel story today! And, yet the chronically ill, those acutely ill in hospitals will not have their illnesses so readily and completely cured.
The questions is how to give thanks when there seems to be little for which to be thankful? How do we give thanks when life appears empty of meaning, when our personal losses overwhelm all the good we have? How to give thanks to God in the midst of adversity and suffering?

St. Paul, in the second reading, answers this question. As we read many of the letters of St. Paul, he states the same answer to the questions I have just posed. St. Paul was arrested, whipped, schemed against, tortured, beaten, almost executed by stoning, and eventually would be jailed and martyred by the Romans. Yet, St. Paul always was giving thanks to God for all his suffering? Was he delusional? Was he serious? He was absolutely serious.

In the second reading, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians these words, “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” That for which St. Paul is so grateful is the relationship he was with God through Jesus Christ. St. Paul knows that in the midst of his suffering, God is ever by his side, always in relationship with him. It is this intimate relationship with which St. Paul has with God that fills him with such great thankfulness and joy.

This is not an entirely new concept introduced by St. Paul. In Psalm 23, we hear the psalm writer express, “Though should walk through the Valley of Death, I fear no evil for you are at my side.” The writer of this psalm knows full well that his relationship with God will not prevent hardships in his life. However, the psalm writer knows that he will not have to endure those hardships alone, for God will be right by his side through all the suffering he may have to endure.

Back in 2002, I was involved in a head-on collision that altered my life. The severe injury to my left leg indirectly led to all the joint replacements I have had in recent years. However, the most life altering thing that occurred in that accident was the irreparable damage done to my right hand. Unbeknownst to me and the doctors, all the ligaments in the right hand had been shredded in the accident. Because the damage to the left leg was so severe, the surgeons had to focus on the leg. By the time they noticed the damage done to my right hand, they could do little to restore my hand to full function. The hand surgeon told me he could restore 60% of my hand, but not 100%. This was more devastating than the damage done to my left leg. I earned my living as a musician. I directed church music. I was a professional pianist, and, all of a sudden, my livelihood, the joy of playing music at a professional level ended. I was angry! This loss was too great.

Over time, while I continue to mourn the loss of being able to play well, (I can fake it, but it will never be as good as it once was), I began to give thanks to God for once having had the ability to play piano so very well. I give thanks to God for giving me a gift that not many people have. I once was able to play professionally and I am forever grateful to God for that wonderful time in my life.

Many of our stories at this Thanksgiving do not have the happy ending of the lepers in the gospel story. However, in spite of the losses we have in our lives, we are still able to give thanks for the relationships with others we once had. We are still able to give thanks to God for the gifts we once were able to use. And, most importantly, we give thanks for the relationship that we will always have with the God who created us and has loved us to death. As St. Paul states so very well today, “God is faithful, and by him you were called to fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Will I Be Remembered – a homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

With my wife’s knee replacement surgery and rehab, work commitments and other extra surprises in my life, I haven’t contributed much to this blog as of late. Below is the homily I gave for this weekend at St. Wenceslaus Church. The only inaccuracy is that in the homily I said that my sister, Mary Ruth, died 17 years ago. It has actually been 20 years ago … hard to believe it has been that long.

The gospel for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time is both positive and somber. As we approach the end of this liturgical year, and hear these “end-times” scripture readings, we are reminded of something that St. Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians. All things of earth, including us, are transitory and not quite real. That which is eternal and real, eternal life, lies just beyond the veil that separates this life from the next.

HOMILY FOR THE 33RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A, 2017

I was visiting my sister, Mary, in Intensive Care several days before her death. She knew she was dying. She turned to me and asked me, “Will I be remembered?” She was 42 years of age, not married, had no real significant person in her life other than her family. She asked me again, “Will I be remembered?” I pulled a chair up alongside her hospital bed, sat down and took her hand. Then I began to do a review of her life.

I recalled how she had valiantly battled her chronic disease for 25 years. How, in spite of her chronic illness, she received a degree as an Occupational Therapist from the College of St. Catherine. I reminded her of the great number of cardiac patients she helped during her career as a cardiac occupational therapist. I recalled how proud I was of her when she received her Master of Arts degree in Education from the University of St. Thomas, and how she was working toward receiving a PhD. I reminded her of the many places she traveled with her doctor friends throughout Northern Europe, Hawaii, and the South Pacific, even camping with them in the Boundary Waters. I talked to her about the children’s book she wrote and illustrated to help children suffering from chronic illness, and, when her illness forced her to go on permanent medical leave, how she began to produce and publish greetings cards that were sold in the gift shops around Roseville.

I reminded her as to how important she was to Ruthie and I and our kids. She especially loved my kids taking them to movies, the Christmas display at Daytons in downtown Minneapolis, the many family picnics and pictures she planned. I reminded her of how important she was to her friends and how much they loved and supported her throughout her life. I concluded, “Mary, you wonder if you will be remembered. How can you not be remembered?” She died three days later, her head cradled in the lap of her dear friend, Dr. Bob Conlin, and all of us standing around her bed.

She has now been dead 17 years. If you go to Navy Island in St. Paul, her name is memorialized in the paved stones along the walkway. Every year on her birthday, June 14th, Flag Day, her friends gather at her grave and sing all the songs she loved. My mother still receives cards from my sister’s friends on her birthday. On Thanksgiving, we will all remember how she hogged all the mushrooms in the turkey gravy, and recall stories of how the bees pestered us at those family picnics. We talk about the Santa Bears she bought for Meg and Beth when they were little. “Will I be remembered?” Mary, how could we ever forget you?

The Gospel for today is really about the importance of doing a review of our lives. It makes no difference whether we have many years ahead in our lives, for very few years left of our lives. Jesus reminds us in this parable of the talents, that when we were born, God blessed us with many gifts. How have we used the gifts God has given us in service to God and in service to others? To go back to the Great Commandment of Jesus, have we used the “talents” we have received by God in our lives in loving God and in loving others? Or, have we hoarded the “talents” we have received from God and buried them by using them only to benefit ourselves and no one else, not even our God?

It is important for us to do this review of our lives for ourselves now, before our lives are reviewed by God when we die. As St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians in the second reading, “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, ‘Peace and security, ‘ then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,
and they will not escape. … Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.”

While my sister’s question, “Will I be remembered?”  was important to her, in all honesty, the answer to that question is, “No.” Unless someone does something notable like Abraham Lincoln, or something notorious like Adolf Hitler, not a one of us will be memorialized for all time. All of us who remember my sister, Mary, Ruthie and I, our immediate family, will die. The friends who gather at her gravesite year after year will eventually dwindle, as they grow more frail in mind and body, and, then die. After the death of my own children, the memory of my sister will be remembered only in faded photographs and in government birth records and death records. The wind, snow, rain, and sun will eventually erode and erase her name from the paved stones of that walkway on Navy Island.

The question we must make a point to ask while we are alive, today, is “How will God remember me?” When we die, will we hear God say to us, “’Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.”? Or, will we hear God say, “Throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”? The answer will be determined by how we have used the talents, the gifts, God has given us in service to our God and in service to our neighbor.

All are welcome – a homily for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

I need to preface this homily with this thought. Anyone who follows me on Facebook is well aware of how critical I am of donald trump and many of those who believe in him, including many Republicans elected to public office. As I much as I may despise how they treat, use, and abuse human beings; as much as I may consider them the fecal matter of the Body of Christ (a strong image that I’m sure St. Paul never intended), I do not wish to damn them to hell for eternity. I only know too well my own sins and limitations and hope that God extends the mercy and love that God has for me to them, too, and, vice versa. On to the homily …

A HOMILY FOR THE 28TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

When I was in 4th grade, Sr. Carmelita encouraged us to make friends only with other Catholic children. However, if we insisted on playing with Protestant children, should any of them get injured to the point of death, we were to baptize them immediately with whatever water was handy, so they would not go to hell. It is reminiscent of the joke in which this guy dies and goes to heaven and St. Peter takes him down the hall past a number of doors and then St. Peter stops and says, “You have to be very, very quiet going past that door. That’s where the Catholics are, and they think they’re the only ones here.”

Vainglory is something from which many people suffer. I am no different than anyone else. We all like to think we and those like us are the only ones going to heaven. And, if you are like me, there are times we may have assigned people we do not like to places deep in the lowest, darkest levels of hell.

Praise be to God, the Second Vatican Council was held, ecumenism was promoted and all Christians were encouraged to share their faith in Jesus Christ with other Christians. We learned that none of us were born with devil horns and cloven feet, and while there were still differences in how the many Christian faith traditions celebrate their belief in Jesus Christ, we have learned that what we all share in common is far greater than those differences that separate us.

For those of us still vainglorious enough to believe that we are the only ones going to heaven, the scripture readings are telling us today to not count our chickens before they hatch. Many people who we may think will not be admitted to heaven will be there. And many people we thought will be in heaven will not be there. And, don’t be so sure that our own salvation is secure. At the end of our days, we might not find ourselves in heaven, either.

What we hear in both the reading from Isaiah, and the gospel from Matthew is that God’s mercy and love is all inclusive. God’s mercy and love is greater than the petty differences that separate people from people, culture from culture, nationality from nationality, language from language.

In the reading from Isaiah, all people, of all cultures, all languages, and all religions are invited to the heavenly banquet feast on God’s holy mountain. God’s feast is inclusive to the point that even the enemies of the Jewish people are welcomed around his banquet table. God provides “a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines,” for not just some to eat and drink, but for ALL to eat and drink. God destroys the veil that separates us from one another. The Jewish people may have been God’s chosen ones, but God reveals that all of humanity are children of God.

The same is describe in the parable of the wedding banquet hosted by a king. At first, only certain chosen people are invited. They all refuse their invitation claiming that they are too busy or distracted from attending, and, in some cases, killing the servants of the king who invite them to the banquet. So the King then tells his servants that the feast is ready. However, because those who were first invited were not worthy to come, the servants should go out into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever they find. Jesus continues the story saying, “The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests.”

As you know, Archbishop Flynn assigned me as a parish life administrator to St. Stephen’s in 2004. The mission statement of this inner city parish was essentially that the parish was one big circus tent under which all people were welcome. Among this unique grouping of parishioners were great numbers of street people, ex-offenders, ex-priests, ex- nuns, the gay and lesbian community, those who were developmentally disabled, prostitutes, the disenfranchised of other different faith traditions including Lutherans, Methodists, 7th Day Adventists, and a Quaker. There were times at the end of a week I would think to myself, “I think we are still Catholic.”

There was a very conservative and traditionalist group from St. Agnes Catholic Church in St. Paul, they called themselves the Rosary for Truth. They did not like that there were parishes like St. Stephens primarily because the people welcomed at St. Stephen’s didn’t fit their definition of what good Catholics should be. The Rosary for Truth group would arrive 30 minutes before the 11 o’clock Sunday morning Mass to pray the rosary for all whom they considered damned for eternity, namely, all the parishioners of St. Stephen’s. They would stay for a part of the Mass, then, as one, the Rosary for Truth group would walk out in the middle of the consecration. After 3 months of this spiritual abuse, I met them at the door of the church and disinvited them because they were insulting my parishioners and mocking the Catholic faith.

Unlike Pope Francis who preaches a large inclusive Church made up of all people, all cultures, all sexual orientations, all walks of life, the Rosary of Truth group believed that only a certain exclusive group of Catholics, namely them, would be admitted into heaven. In their vainglory, they did not believe that God was all loving and merciful. They could not believe that God welcomes all people around his banquet table, the “bad and good alike”. As Jesus tells us in the Gospel today, there is no limit to the mercy of God.

I remember one parishioner from St. Stephen’s telling me that when he came out and told his family he was gay, his family ostracized him. They kicked him out of the family and he was no longer welcome in the celebrations of the family into which he was born. He fell into a deep depression, contemplating suicide. He came to St. Stephen’s Catholic Church and found that God loved him, and accepted him just as he was. In the liturgies and in many of the parish community who were as broken as he was, he discovered that God did not hate him and condemn him for being gay. Rather, God loved and welcomed him with open arms.

Where do you find yourself today here at church? Do you count yourself among the bad around this banquet table of God, or among the good? Or, are you not too sure where you fit in among the people gathered here today. Jesus is telling us is that God’s love and mercy is great, powerful, and encompasses all people. Jesus is telling us that God welcomes all of us the bad and good alike to this banquet table. All that is required of us is to accept God’s invitation.

trump and hell, but I repeat myself …

Gustave Dore’s illustration of the lowest level of hell, from Dante’s “Inferno.”

The immoral proclamations of trump, his complete disregard for human life, our world’s environment, his lifestyle focused on self-indulgence with no regard to what it is costing others, and an armed with the emotional maturity and intelligence of a two year old, is frightening. That there are those, seemingly stupefied, who are willing to follow him zombiesque off to oblivion is just downright pathetic. One swears that the normal trump follower brainlessly and  eagerly will drink the poisoned Kool Aid he is giving them to drink.

There was a time when the immoral acts of trump would elicit from me a curse sending trump to the lowest & most painful bowels of hell. Then, I thought, redundancy is pointless. Why incur a sin when trump has already condemned himself to the lowest & most painful bowels of hell? So, I no longer curse him knowing full well that when his penchant for fatty, greasy foods ends his self-indulgent narcissistic life, he will be spending an eternity in a Dantesque painted agony of hell (see the Gustave Dore illustration of the lowest level of Hell above).

The Church an entryway into Mystery

I have posted this before. The Church acts as an entry way to Divine Mystery, NOT as a black & white place for answers to things that happen in human life. Only divine mandates like the Decalogue, & the Great Commandment of Jesus are absolute. All other teachings are guides to living a good life.

When I was studying to be a spiritual director, I had the delightful opportunity to talk to a religious sister from Italy, who was a member of my class. Her name was Sr. Sophia. She was puzzled at how much importance Americans place on following the letter of the law. As she explained, when driving in Italy, if there is a red light, if no one is coming you run the light. If late at night, there is no one on the road, you do not have to follow the speed limit. She explained that in Italy, the same applied to Church law. It was an important guide to living a good human life, but did not always apply to life in all of its circumstances. Church law was not the end unto itself, as we in America might think. Rather, Church law was there as an aid to the ultimate end of life which is God. If Church law hinders a person’s pathway to God, it must not be followed.

She did not say that Church law was not important. But she said that once must be self-aware of one’s faith and in deep communication with God. If, in that communication, Church law hinders the person’s relationship with God, it must not be applied in that instance.

The world of black and white answers, like Catholic Answers, is for people who lack the ability or are simply too lazy to struggle with the contradictions and challenges that are a part of our life and the lives of those we love. It is the struggle that builds up one’s faith. It is diving into the mystery of these challenges in human life in which one eventually finds the way to God. The law of the Church is a guide to help us understand these challenges for All of life is a Mystery. The law of the Church gives us a framework by which we can meditate and contemplate the mystery of our relationship with God. but NEVER solves that mystery.

I have found personally and in my work with others, that very little in life is absolutely black and white. It is important to have the law of the Church as our guide. It is vitally important, however, to NOT deify the law of the Church. The law of the Church is NOT  God, but simply a tool by which we are guided to a deeper relationship with God. Our relationship is WITH God, and NOT with the law of the Church.

So, I get a little frustrated with the black & white world of sites like Catholic Answers. As a very faithful & very Catholic priest once advised me years ago, the Church teaches to the general & not to the particular. There are times when what the Church teaches may be harmful in particular circumstances. This is why the Church holds very high the teaching of the Internal Forum, when the person sorts things out with God. The mark of a faith that is healthy & vibrant is one NOT of blind obedience, but one that questions, ponders, & then owns one faith in the mystery that is God.

The Challenge of Keeping Holy the Sabbath for Those in Church Ministry

INTRODUCTION: I began this reflection briefly this morning on Facebook and decided to fully flesh it out. Obeying the commandment to keep holy the Lord’s Day is one of the hardest commandments to keep for someone in church ministry. To truly keep holy the Lord’s Day requires more than just to be present in church. This is especially true for those who are ordained and “doing” the services on the Lord’s Day. I acknowledge that all who are ordained may not see honoring this commandment through the same lens that I have. Nonetheless, I believe that keeping holy the Lord’s Day is an ongoing challenge for all in church ministry.

While my work week really begins on Saturday, Monday still feels like the beginning of the week. One of the topics for the next Archdiocesan clergy day is how the ordained can keep holy the Sabbath. When you are working the Sabbath, you don’t celebrate it. Working in the Church can often make one weary of religion. After a load of weekend Masses, baptisms, & pastoral visits the last thing I seek is more religion.

Being essentially an introvert, it takes a great deal of energy to be present and celebrate Mass well. Unlike extroverts who are energized by large groups of people, I find that large groups of people suck the energy from me. So when I am done with Sunday rituals & visits, I need time to just be away to replenish my energy. Sabbath is synonymous with rest. How does one keep holy the Sabbath when in celebrating it, one is exhausted by it? When the Sabbath is anything but a day of rest?

Rabbi Harold Kushner addresses the important need for the Sabbath as a time to rest one’s soul in his book, “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm.” He writes: “I read once of a group of tourists on safari in Africa. They had hired several native porters to carry their supplies while they trekked. After three days, the porters told them that they would have to stop and rest for a day. They were not tired, they explained, but “we have walked too far too fast and now we must wait for our souls to catch up to us.” We too can be so busy taking care of things that we neglect our souls. What shall we say about the men and women who invest so much time and energy in their jobs that they have neither time nor energy left for their families when they arrive home? Do they need to pause to let their souls catch up to them?

” … The world asks so much of us. We give ourselves so totally to our work, to the task of raising our family and running a home, to our volunteer commitments that we often forget to take time to nourish our souls, forgetting that we need to rely on the wisdom of the soul to guide our working and our living hours. Our bodies are more active when we are awake than when we are sleeping, sometimes frantically so. But our souls may be as absent during the day as they are at night. We lack the wisdom of those native porters, the wisdom to know that we have left our souls behind and we need to stop and let our souls catch up to us. The psalmist would remind us that God has given us ways to reclaim our humanity when pressures of time and obligation have caused us to misplace it, and that part of God’s role as faithful guardian of the flock is to urge us to remember to be human. Our task is to stop long enough to hear that message.

” … When our souls are on the verge of giving in to compassion fatigue, when we know what the right thing to do is but we are tired of being charitable and helpful, that is when we need God to restore our souls, to replenish our ability to act like human beings, to understand that what is asked of us is not to make the world perfect but to make one person’s life better. When events challenge our faith so that we find it hard to believe that this world is God’s world, that is when we need God to restore our souls, to reinforce our ability to believe in ourselves and in our ability to do good things. Even as a faithful shepherd gives his flock the food and water they need to be sheep, God, our faithful shepherd, gives us the strength of soul we need to be human.”*

Now beginning my 41st year of ministry, in being busy about “doing” the Sabbath for 40 years, I have realized that I have been cheating the Sabbath. It has taken its toll on me. While I have not lost my soul, it takes quite a while for my soul  to “catch up with me.”  And I confess, that some weeks and even some months, particularly the high holy seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter,  my soul may never catch up with me.

I find it ironic that the one thing that those of us in ministry “doing religion” share with those that never darken the door of any church, synagogue, mosque or temple, is distraction from God. Many who do not go to church, synagogue, mosque or temple are distracted from God by all the things of life. Many of us in ministry may be distracted from God by being busy “doing religious things.” Having been busy about “doing religion” for over 40 years, I have come to see that “doing religion” is not being faithful. “Doing religion” is about being busy. It is about work obligations. Rather than building faith, “doing religion” is distracting me from faith, preventing me from being fully faithful.

While many people get excited about Relevant Radio, EWTN, and other religious programming and media, I eschew it all. In ministry, one is immersed in religion, rest does not come from drowning in the glut of religious radio, television, and print media, much of it painfully trite, self-righteous,  filled with religious schmaltz and sentimentality, and, a near occasion of sin (EWTN especially so for me).

I love the Bible, however, I do not find rest in the Bible. Why? Reading the Bible is more about doing than resting for me. Having been thoroughly schooled in Biblical Exegesis in graduate school and the seminary, the Bible has a task oriented focus. It is hard to pray the Bible when one’s mindset has been focused on “studying” the Bible. The Liturgy of the Hours, or breviary, as church neo-cons call it, is pretty much the same. I do faithfully pray it every day. However, its focus is again task oriented. In praying the Liturgy of the Hours, we join our prayer with that of Christ to the Father, praying for the whole world. Noble? Yes! Necessary? Absolutely! Restful? No!

So, how can someone stay in ministry, keep holy the Sabbath, and truly rest in the Sabbath? This question has become my major focus for my 41st year of ministry. With only one day off a week, and that day often spent in doing the necessary things about the house and being present to my family, the day is too task oriented to truly keep holy the Sabbath, to rest as God has commanded us to rest.

I am convinced that the only way for me, as a church minister, to keep holy the Sabbath is to escape doing religion. To clarify, this does not mean to divest myself of Catholicism, to skip Sunday Masses, or to escape God. Rather, by escaping doing religion the quest is to find God.  It is basically doing that which Jesus did during his ministry among us on earth. He went away, literally escaped from the religious demands placed upon him, in order to be faithful to his heavenly Father. Jesus went away by himself to some lonely place so that he could replenish his energy by being in communion with the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses. This is especially true for myself, an introvert.

If the demands of ministry prevent me from escaping and resting a whole day of Sabbath, I have found that I need to insert a small time of the Sabbath into every day. This small time of Sabbath excludes those “holy things” I am obligated to do as an ordained deacon. To keep holy the tiniest piece of Sabbath every day is to escape doing of religion and fully resting in silence in the presence of God that is all around me. It means finding a quiet place, most often not a church, but a place where I can rest, free from all distraction, and sit in quiet before God.

While it is helpful that this place of respite is a quiet place far from noise, truth be told, the place of respite for which I long is more interior.  Rabbi Martin Buber’s “third threshold” (See Buber’s epic book, I and Thou, for a full examination of the three thresholds in which God and humanity meet) is the place where upon our souls meet face to face with the Divine Presence of our loving God. The journey to that third threshold is an ongoing pilgrimage for me, one in which I have experienced only very briefly. It is the place, the ultimate place of Sabbath, where my soul finally catches up with me, and as one, I rest with the God who created me and loves me.

*Kushner, Harold S.. The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm (pp. 60-62, 72). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

Learning to forgive: a homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Peter asks Jesus how many times must we forgive others. Jesus replies, not just 7 times, but 77 times. In Jewish culture, the perfect number was the number 7. In replying 77 times, Jesus is saying the number of times we, as his disciples must forgive, is an infinite number of times. In other words, we must always forgive others! This is not the way the world operates. Norm Peterson, a character from the T.V. sitcom, “Cheers”, summed it best up on one show. “It’s a dog eat dog world, and I am wearing Milk Bone underwear.” We live in a world in which the acceptable practice is to get even when someone wrongs us. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” is the rule by which our world operates.

Jesus tells us if we are to be his disciples, we cannot live by that rule anymore. Instead of getting even, as his disciples, we need to learn how to forgive. In another parish at which I worked years ago I knew a person I will call Marie, and she has given me permission to tell her story of forgiveness.

Marie had been married 12 years. She was a loving and caring mother of three children. One day she came to me very distraught. Her husband told her he wanted a divorce. Marie’s husband was known to abuse alcohol, and to be very emotionally abusive. He told Marie that he had been having an affair with another woman for over 5 years, and he wanted to dump Marie and his children, and marry the woman with whom he was having this affair.

Marie had worked very hard to make her marriage work. Like many married couples, Marie got married with the dream of building a life with her husband, having children, and growing old together. In cheating on her, he had betrayed the sacred trust of their marriage vows. Now all of Marie’s dreams of married life were now shattered like shards of broken glass on the floor. He moved out and filed for a divorce.

Torn apart by grief, Marie sought healing for her children and herself and they did extensive counseling individually and as a family. With the loss of her former husband’s income, Marie had to go out and find a job to support herself and her children. No longer able to afford it, Marie had to sell their family home, and she and her children moved into a much smaller, cramped townhome which she could afford on her salary. Little by little, over time, the family healed from this tremendous wound in their lives. After some time had passed, I asked Marie to help facilitate a separated/divorce support group in the parish. Having known the anguish of divorce, she was a source of hope to many who were overwhelmed by the nightmare that accompanies the initial stages of divorce. Though her children had their challenges as adolescents, they all survived them and grew into wonderful, faith-filled adults.

Ten years later, on a cold, wintery, sleety February night, Marie was preparing an evening meal for herself when she heard a knock at her door. She opened the door and found her ex-husband on her door step. He looked awful. His face looked thin and drawn. He was depressed, wet and cold. His second wife, tired of his abuse and his alcoholism, threw him out of the house. He had nowhere to go. He was suicidal. He came to Marie as a last desperate gesture for help. Marie invited him in. Took his wet coat and hat and hung them up. She invited him to sit down at her table and shared a warm meal with him. He poured out his heart and his sorrow to her. She listened, and worried that his mental state might endanger his life, convinced him to go with her so that he could seek help for his mental illness. On that cold, sleety February night, she drove him to St. Mary’s hospital in Minneapolis, where he admitted himself into the Psychiatric ward to receive the help he needed.

When Marie talked about this with her brothers and sister, they were angry with her. This man had destroyed her life and the life of their children. She would have been justified to have slam the door in his face. I asked her why she had helped him. She replied to me, “I saw in his face, the face of the suffering Christ. How could I say no to the presence of Christ within him?” I said to her that not many people in similar circumstances would not have been as compassionate as her. She replied to me, “I forgave him a long time ago the horrible wrong that he did to me and our children. However, I have not forgotten what he did. Forgiving is different from forgetting.” I replied to her, “Marie, the worst thing that ever happened to you was your divorce. And, the best thing that ever happened to you was your divorce. It was through that suffering you experienced that you have become the tremendous person you are today.”

How do we fulfill Jesus’ command to forgive others an infinite number of times? Marie’s words hold the key. When we are able to see in the face of those who wrong us, the face of Jesus, how can we not forgive as Jesus forgives and continues to forgive, an infinite number of times?

Confronting Sin in our lives and in others: a homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

A Catholic priest, an Episcopalian priest, a Lutheran minister, and a Baptist minister went on a hunting trip together. One night at the hunting cabin, they decided to confess their worst sins to each other. The Catholic priest said, “My sin is alcohol. One time a month I binge drink.” The Episcopalian priest said, “My sin is greed. I only put a nickel in the collection basket.” The Lutheran minister said, “My sin is gluttony. Once in a while, I get in my car and go to a faraway town and go through the drive-up window and order four half-pounders and a bucket of fries.” And the Baptist minister said, “My sin is gossip, and I can’t wait to get back from this trip.”

Just like the four clerics in the story, we all have sins and faults that are our Achilles heals. Try as we may to avoid thinking about our sins and faults by keeping extremely busy or by finding all sorts of things to distract us, they are always there. It is impossible to runaway from them. These personal sins and faults are attached to us like our shadows, so much so, that many spiritual writers refer to the dark side of sin in human life they call it our shadow self. As faithful disciples of Jesus, we are called to be self-aware of our shadow self, knowing full well that every day we are in need of conversion. This is why we begin Mass acknowledging our brokenness and our need for healing before God and one another.

The scriptural readings today remind us that we do not live in isolation. We live in community with others. Our relationship with others is vitally important for our spiritual and emotional health. We may like to think that the affect of our personal sins and faults only affect us adversely. The reality is that our personal sins and faults have a ripple effect that impacts the lives of all with whom we are in relationship. Because of this God requires us to personally be accountable for them. We are held accountable to our family and neighbors. We are held accountable to our Church and our civic communities. And, ultimately, we are held accountable to God.

As we hear in all three readings, God’s expectation for us is to live lives of accountability. In the reading from the prophet Ezekial and the Gospel, we are told that if necessary, we are called by God to intervene with another person if that person’s sins and faults are destroying not only the person, but the lives of the people with whom the person is in relationship. Ezekial goes so far as to say that if we remain silent and do not confront the person who is self-destructing, we will be held accountable by God for that person’s demise. There will be times in our lives, when we must confront another person about his or her sins and faults. There will be times in our lives when we will be on the receiving end when others confront us about our sins and faults.

The accountability God requires of us is not based in vindictiveness or revenge, it is based on the law of Divine love. If we truly love one another, and want the best for those we love, we will confront them about those things in their lives that are destructive. Conversely, if they truly love us, they will confront us about that which is destructive in our own lives. As St. Paul writes to us today, “The commandments, ‘you shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Loves does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.’”

Perhaps the best process in which conversion is lived out is in the 12 steps used by Alcoholics Anonymous, Alanon and many other 12 step groups. These 12 steps are: 1) We admit we are powerless over whatever behavior or sin we have and that our lives have become unmanageable. 2) We come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. 3) We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God. 4) We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5) We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6) We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7) We humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. 8) We make a list of all persons we have harmed, and become willing to make amends to all of them. 9) We make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10) We continue to take a personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admit it. 11) We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. 12) Having received a spiritual awakening as the result of these 12 steps, we try to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Like the Catholic priest, the Episcopalian priest, the Lutheran minister, and the Baptist minister in the opening story, we all have sins and faults, something or perhaps many things in our lives that may be destructive not only to ourselves but to others as well. In humbly acknowledging these faults to ourselves, to our neighbors, to our community, and to God, we will find mercy, healing, wholeness and love.