POPULISM, ITS CHALLENGES AND ITS DANGERS

In the present presidential race, we are experiencing the populist wave of discontent toward the established political parties in the candidacy of Donald Trump, and to some extent that of Bernie Sanders. Political scientists will acknowledge that populism is inherent to democracy. When a certain percentage of the populace believe that their cries for reform are largely unheard by those elected to office, they will seek a candidate who will challenge the status quo.

The populism of the State of Minnesota led to the election of professional wrestler, “I ain’t got time to bleed” Jessie Ventura, an independent, to the office of governor. The combined ineptitude on the part of Ventura, and the State legislatures’ unwillingness to work with Ventura made this experiment in populism a disaster for the people of Minnesota. I think it is safe to say that the citizens of Minnesota have learned from that huge electoral mistake.

The revolutionary populist movements against established governments can lead to great disasters. Witness the French Revolution in which French populism led to the taking down of the French monarchy, with many of those French nobles and their families executed on the guillotine. However, the hate and bitterness experienced by the nobility of France at the hands of the populists, was then turned in upon the populists themselves as the Reign of Terror continued, and they themselves were then summarily executed. It was said that the streets of Paris ran with the blood from the bodies of the many beheaded corpses. Ironically, the French populist sought refuge from their own carnage by establishing a new monarchy, crowning Napoleon emperor of France.

As in the French Revolution, the populist movements of the 20th century that overthrew oppressive governments led to even more oppressive and brutal governments. To name just a few, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia that took down the Russian Czars, but replaced it with the totalitarianism of Leninist and later Stalinist Communism. Then there was the populist overthrow of Germany’s Weimar Republic replacing it with the Nazis government of Adolf Hitler. Then there was the rise of Facism with Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain. One by one, the terror of one form of government was replaced with a more horrific terror.

The only instance in which populism led to something better was in the American Revolution. Though, we as a nation have had our good and bad times, the establishment of a two party political system, and the checks and balances of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government has been able to ride out the challenges of unchecked populism. While our democracy is not perfect, is not always just, and is always in need of improvement, it has served the people better than most other governments.

Over the past thirty years, or more, both the Republicans and the Democrats have listened more to the lobbyists than their constituents. This more than any ideology has given rise to the populism that is represented by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. If these two political parties wish to survive the threat of imminent and permanent rupture, though this is presently more pronounced for the Republican Party than for the Democratic Party, they must begin to listen in earnest to the grievances of the populist movement. The aggrieved must come away knowing that they have been heard by those in political office and that their voices hold more weight than that of the moneyed interests influencing the Senate and the House of Representatives. This must be followed through by those elected with appropriate action on the behalf of the common good within the constraints of government.

Let’s Get Small – a homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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“The Pharisee and the Publican”, fresco from Ottobeuren Basilica.

The comedian, Steve Martin, was a frequent guest of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970’s.  This was during Steve Martin’s, “wild and crazy guy,” period as a comedian. He would come out with his 5 string banjo, a fake arrow through his head and do or say something outrageous.  One night during his opening monologue, he told the audience that some people, when they have free time, like to go out and get high. He said, “when I have some free time, I don’t want to get high. I like to get small.” Then he described how it was not wise to get small and drive while under the influence of the drug because you can’t see over the steering wheel. One day a cop pulled him over and said, ‘Are you small?’ Martin said, “No-o-o! I’m not!” The cop said, “Well, I’m gonna have to measure you.” They have this little test they give you – they give you a balloon.. and if you can get inside of it, they know you’re small.” Steve Martin ended the routine by saying, once he got so small he crawled inside a vacuum cleaner, at which point the drug wore off and he retained the shape of a vacuum cleaner for the next couple of weeks.

The readings for this weekend tell us that if we want to follow Jesus, we need to, “get small.” Of course, this is not meant to be in the same manner as described by Steve Martin. The readings detail for us a message that runs throughout the entirety of the Bible. Greatness, in the eyes of God, is not defined by power, position, wealth, and possessions. That is the world’s definition of greatness. The Seven Deadly Sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride, are derived by that which the world calls great.

Throughout the Holy Scriptures, God equates greatness with those who are the lowly, the powerless, the vulnerable, and the weak.  In the Song of Hannah from 1 Samuel, we hear Hannah sing that God will raise the needy from the ash heaps and place them in the places of the nobility. The hungry will feast, while the well fed will go hungry.  The swords of the mighty will be broken, while the weak and stumbling God will endow with great strength. Hundreds of years later, Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her great canticle, “The Magnificat,” will echo Hannah’s words.  Mary says to her cousin, Elizabeth, that God will scatter the proud in their conceit. God will cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. God will fill the hungry with good things, and the rich God will send away empty.

In the first reading from Sirach, we hear that God is not deaf to the cries of the orphan or the widow, the most vulnerable and poor of people of that time in history. Sirach continues, saying, the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds and will not rest until heard by God. The Second Vatican Council  referred to God’s love and care for the lowly of the world as God’s Preferential Option for the Poor.

The meaning of greatness is exemplified best in the life of Jesus. The early Christian hymn found in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians says it all. “Jesus, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are: and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” The greatness of Jesus became even greater by Jesus becoming small.

To become great in the eyes of God, we must become small. This is why Jesus tells everyone in the gospel that it is the lowly tax collector, a sinner and a traitor to the Jewish people, who is greater than the self-righteous Pharisee, who  sneers with disdain at the tax collector. What does the tax collector pray? “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.” What does the Pharisee pray? “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” Jesus concludes that God will hear the prayer of the tax collector, but God’s ears will be shut to the prayer of the Pharisee, “for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

What does this mean for us today? How do we become small so as to be great in the eyes of God? St Paul tells us in the opening line of our second reading. “Beloved, I am being poured out as a libation.” Following the example of Jesus, Paul becomes less, becomes small, as he pours his life out in loving service to God and those to whom God entrusted to him. In the words of Jesus, to become great requires us to lose ourselves. Unlike the Pharisee in the Gospel who seeks to inflate his own false ego by separating himself from the lowly Tax Collector, we must empty ourselves of our false egos, allowing God to fill our lives instead, so that we may become one with the rest of humanity. To be one with the lowly of our world, as Jesus did, we must become small.

Our starting point begins today in this church. As we look around us, we will see the image and likeness of Jesus imprinted on the faces of everyone here. Baptized into Christ Jesus, our individual identities are actually just a small part of the one greater living organism that is known as THE Body of Christ. Individually and collectively, we ARE the living and breathing Body of Christ in the world. Our hands, our feet, our faces, our bodies, do not belong to us, they belong to the Body of Christ, in whom we are one. Though God has bestowed upon each individual here with different gifts, the gifts we have are shared mutually with the entire Body of Christ. And as the Body of Christ, we go from this place as a living Sacrament to share our gifts with the lowly of our world. In our smallness  we become great.

In the communion hymn, “You Satisfy the Hungry Heart”, we sing,  “The myst’ry of your presence, Lord, no mortal tongue can tell: whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell.”  (Repeat spoken) “Whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell.” Jesus, the Word of God, the Ruler of the Universe, becomes small so that he can become one with us in our lowliness, in Holy Communion, so that he may continue to become one  and minister to the lowly of this world, through us. So, in the words of Steve Martin, “Let’s get small,” that we, as the Body of Christ, may continue to be one as Christ and serve the small of our world.

To think and to act critically as a faith filled people.

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With election day looming closer it seems certain that Donald Trump will be defeated in this election. Those who have pledged blind allegiance to the candidate are vowing to disrupt government even to the point of dismantling the government. The more radical declare an armed revolution, while others opt for a revolution of civil disobedience and noncompliance to all three branches of government.

One could look upon this group of Trump devotees as an angry group of uneducated, white people afraid of losing what is left of their white privilege to people of color. While it is a fact that among them are white racists, brigands, and vigilantes, to castigate the entirety of these devotees as such is as wrong as associating all Latinos with members of the drug cartels, all African Americans with gangbangers, and all Muslims with terrorists. Trump has played upon the fears, real or imagined of this white demographic, and while some have been duped and misled by his rhetoric, they are not all dopes.

If this demographic is guilty of anything, it is the failure to think and to act critically. Instead of educating themselves about the issues, about the candidates, and doing the critical reading and listening that is a requirement of citizens of a democracy, they have abrogated their right and obligation to be educated and placed it on other people and political pundits, largely untrustworthy. This is the easy and painless way to go. To think and to act critically at elections takes a lot of work. To not do so is to be lazy and irresponsible.

The same can be said about how we live our faith life. As people of faith, we are called to think and to act critically on our faith. To think and act critically is not defined as one “criticizing” or “acting in opposition” to our faith. It is to come to know the “why” of our faith. It is coming to know why Jesus is central to everything we believe. It is coming to know why we gather on the Lord’s Day to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. It is coming to know why and what the Church teaches in regard to doctrine and a moral way of life.

Thinking and acting critically on our faith is not blindly following rules and regulations sent down from on high by a hierarchical clergy. It is not living with our “eyes wide shut.” Thinking and acting on our faith requires us to know the why of those rules and regulations and when it might be important to our faith to be at a place in opposition to them. The Church’s teaching of the primacy of conscience is based upon the bedrock of thinking and acting critically on our faith. This is what is meant to have an “informed conscience.”

Stagnancy and complacency are not descriptive adjectives of an active life of faith. A faith that is thought about and acted upon critically can be and is often marked by uncertainty, discomfort, inconvenience, and a restlessness that continually prompts us to do something about it. In our wrestling with our faith and in our restlessness, we find ourselves like Jacob wrestling with the angel of God, and come to a deeper knowledge and trust of the God who is our beginning and our end.

Thinking and acting critically on our faith ultimately leads us to only one certainty in life, and that is God. As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 139,

“LORD, you have probed me, you know me:

you know when I sit and stand,

you understand my thoughts from afar.

You sift through my travels and my rest;

with all my ways you are familiar.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

LORD, you know it all.

Behind and before you encircle me

and rest your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

far too lofty for me to reach.

Where can I go from your spirit?

From your presence, where can I flee?

If I ascend to the heavens, you are there;

if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.

If I take the wings of dawn–

and dwell beyond the sea,

Even there your hand guides me,

your right hand holds me fast. (Ps 139: 1b-10. NAB)

Living the Justice of God – a reflection on the Gospel for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

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This past week we have heard a presidential candidate in a televised debate call for the imprisonment of his political opponent. Throughout the week, the mobs gathered at his rallies have chanted, “Lock her up!” For those who have studied any American history, this brings to mind the senseless and violent mob justice of American vigilante groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, who executed and burned down all whom they despised and hated. For a presidential candidate to incite a mob to injustice is a criminal miscarriage of justice. In contrast to the nonsensical and hate filled justice of this past week at this candidate’s political rallies, in the Gospel for this Sunday, we encounter the justice of God.

While at a Permanent Diaconate Conference in Milwaukee about 16 years ago, one of the presenters, the auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee, Bishops Sklba, a biblical scholar and professor of scripture, described the justice of God as that which fulfills the intention of God. He used a pencil as an example. In the realm of God’s justice, a pencil is “just” if it fulfills its reason for being created, namely, to write on paper or some other surface. If we follow the Bishop’s definition of the justice of God, humanity is only “just” when we fulfill the reasons for which we were created, namely, to love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus, God made human, is the only human being created who has fulfilled God the Father’s intention for humanity. Only Jesus is the full embodiment of Divine Justice.

In spite of our best intentions, collectively as human beings, we fall far short of being the embodiment of God’s justice. Granted, there are those who have dedicated their lives to living as fully God’s intention for humanity. Dorothy Day, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, amongst many others, have sought to embody God’s justice, but have acknowledged either in speech or writing, their inability to fully live the justice of God. In their acknowledgement of their falling short, they, nonetheless, did not give up but aspired and pushed themselves harder to embrace and live the justice of God to the best of their ability.

Toward the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that the justice of God will come quickly for those who have faith. Jesus follows that statement with the question, “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” At the second coming of Jesus, will he find people who aspire to love God with all their heart, with all their mind, and with all their strength, and love their neighbor as themselves?

There are many Christians who have lived under the delusion that the United States was founded on the Christian religion. The truth is that while the Founding Fathers, welcomed Christianity, they also welcome all religious expression. To protect all citizens from religious persecution, the caveat of the Founding Fathers was that no one religion, be it Christian or non-Christian, would dominate or direct the nation. The only “religious” document that had priority was the Constitution of the United States. In the eyes of our Founding Fathers, this document holds the high place over the Torah, The Christian Bible, the Koran and all other religious books.

To live in this environment calls us as Catholic Christians to live counter-culturally. Our starting point to living a full “just” life is the Holy Eucharist. It is within the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist in which we give thanks and praise to our God who created us. It is within the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist in which we encounter in one another the living and breathing presence of God. It is in immersing ourselves fully into this mystery that we are able to begin our aspiration to live God’s justice as fully as we are able. It is in recognizing the presence of God in humanity, as broken and as ugly as we may be, that we abhor the mob mentality of injustice that we have seen this week at Trump’s rallies, while we love the very people who are being incited to violence.

This is what it means to live a “just” life. This is what Jesus is referring to when he asks whether he will find faith when he returns again in glory. Will he find those faithful to living as fully as they are able the Great Commandment of loving God and neighbor? Among whom will we number ourselves, the senseless mentality of mob vigilante justice, or those who embody the justice of God? As in all things, it comes to a personal choice. Following the example of Joshua, the prophets, the saints, and Jesus, I choose God!

Thanks for the memories – a homily on the readings for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

the_healing_of_ten_lepers_guerison_de_dix_lepreux_-_james_tissot_-_overallThe Healing Of The Ten Lepers (artist James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum)

Today, we are taught a lesson in gratitude. We hear of Naaman the leper, the commander of the Aramean army, an enemy of Israel, cured of leprosy by God. Naaman, cured of his illness, rejoices and gives praise to God of the Israelites, stating that their God will be the only one he will adore. In the Gospel, we hear about the 10 men, whom Jesus cured of leprosy. Only one, a Samaritan, an outsider, returns in gratitude, thanking Jesus for having been cured.  As a rule, when something positive happens to us we are genuinely grateful.

The second reading presents us with a different scenario in which St. Paul, imprisoned, is giving thanks to God. St. Paul is well aware that the only way he will exit his prison cell is when he is led out to be executed. Yet, St. Paul is grateful, he rejoices in his suffering. He writes: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David: such is my gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory.”

St. Paul’s words reflects that of the prophet Isaiah who wrote,” The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it. Yes, the people is grass! The grass withers, the flower wilts, but the word of our God stands forever” (Is 40: 7-8).  St. Paul rejoices because while he may be imprisoned, the Word of God, in which all salvation is found, is not imprisoned. And, the eternal life in glory promised to St. Paul at his death will also be promised to all those who are disciples and followers of Jesus.

While there will be times when things go our way, there will come a time in each and every one of our lives, in which things will not go our way. In the midst of our own suffering, will we have the ability, as did St. Paul, to be grateful?

When I was in seminary, one of the assignments I was given to write was a paper on aging. In my research, I came across a beautiful, simple, yet very significant statement written by the esteemed spiritual writer, Fr. Henri Nouwen. Nouwen wrote that as we age we will undergo all sorts of losses in our lives; loss of health, loss of job, loss of our purpose in life, to name just a few. We have two choices to make at the time. We can either age into bitterness, or age into grace. Listen to those words again. We can either age into bitterness, or age into grace.

This past Wednesday, I had my 7th week post-surgical appointment with my surgeon. I was told that the knee replacement surgery was successful and I was on my way to being healed. I was grateful for the good news. I asked the surgeon whether I would be ever able to get rid of my cane. He shook his head and said no. The MRSA infection I got when I had my first hip replacement in 2011, the consequent 5 ½  months of having no hip at all, while doctors were trying to find a way to kill the infection without killing me, had atrophied the muscles so badly that my left leg would never regain the strength it once had. I would need a cane for the rest of my life.

As I was driving home from my appointment with my surgeon, I remembered  another drive I took on the night of March 7, 2002 in which I was involved in a car crash on Highway 21. I was going to pick my son Luke up from vocational school in Eden Prairie when a car crossed the medium strip and hit me head-on. They had to cut apart the car in order to get me out of it.

I ended up with a high femur break of my left leg, and, as painful as that was, what was more painful for me was the injury done to my right hand. I didn’t know at the time of the accident  that all the ligaments in my right hand were shredded by the impact. I knew my hand and forearm hurt, and all they gave me for that was a brace to wear. By the time the severity of the injury to my hand was discovered, the hand surgeon told me that he could only restore 60% of my hand.

I was a professional pianist. It was the way I made my living. From the time I studied piano at the University of St. Thomas to that March night in 2002, I was a professional pianist. From 1977 to that night in 2002, I taught music in schools, directed choirs, and gave concerts. I was the director of liturgy and music in parishes in our Archdiocese. That all ended the night of the accident.

I was angry. I was angry at the guy that crossed the medium strip and hit me head on. I could have been very angry and bitter at God about this loss. It was a huge loss. Music is what I did, and I was very good and skilled at it. How could God treat someone who had dedicated his life to ministry in the Church in such a harsh way? Instead of being bitter and angry, I found myself grateful to God.  I found myself grateful to God for the many years in which I was able to play at that high performance level. I found myself grateful to God for the musical skills which he gave me and that had served me and the Church so very well for many years. And while I grieve and continue to grieve this great loss in my life, I found myself content. In the words of Nouwen, I decided to age into grace.

As I drove home this past Wednesday, reflecting on all of this, I found myself once more grateful. While I may never again be able to walk without the aid of a cane, I am grateful that I can still walk. I am grateful for all the times I once was able to jump, and hop, ran and walked and play.

This is my story. All of us present have our own stories of loss in our lives, and, if we don’t, we will in the future. When that time comes to confront our losses will we find within ourselves the gratitude that St. Paul expressed today in his second letter to Timothy? St. Paul could have been very bitter about his imprisonment and about his subsequent execution. Yet he chose instead to be grateful. St. Paul knew that the life he was going to experience after death, would be far greater than that he was experiencing as he wrote that epistle.

We are given two choices in life. We can, as Henri Nouwen wrote, choose to age into bitterness or choose to age into grace. As a disciples of Jesus, and knowing that which awaits us after death, let us choose to age into gratefulness and grace.

What’s In A Name? A Reflection on the Gospel from the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

As I listenedthe-rich-man-and-lazarus-meister_des_codex_aureus_epternacensis_001 to Fr Dave’s homily this past Sunday, there was one statement he made that had a great deal of impact on me. He noted that in the Gospel, the rich man had no name. Aside from Father Abraham, the only other person in the Gospel that was named was Lazarus, the beggar covered in sores who begged outside the rich man’s house.

I remember Mary Deaner, the Director of Pastoral Ministry at St. Stephen’s in South Minneapolis, telling me one day that one of the greatest gifts that St. Stephen gives to the poor and the homeless that come to the church, was that we knew them by name. I reflected on what she said. The poor and the homeless were not just another nameless statistic in some record book. By knowing their name their humanity was restored to them. Calling them by name reminded them that they were human and that someone cared enough for them to know their name.

The rich man in the Gospel was so self-absorbed, so full of himself, he didn’t need a name because he believed that he would always be remembered for his wealth.  This is reminiscent of Psalm 49, prayed in the Liturgy of the Hours on Tuesday night, week two.

‘This is the lot of those who trust in themselves,

who have others at their beck and call.

Like sheep they are driven to the grave,

where death shall be their shepherd

and the just shall become their rulers.

With the morning their outward show vanishes

and the grave becomes their home.

But God will ransom me from death

and take my soul to himself.

Then do not fear when a man grows rich,

when the glory of his house increases.

He takes nothing with him when he dies,

his glory does not follow him below.

Though he flattered himself while he lived:

“Men will praise me for all my success,”

yet he will go to join his father,

who will never see the light any more.

In his riches, man lacks wisdom:

he is like the beasts that are destroyed.’

However nameless the beggar at his door may have been to the rich man, God knew the beggar’s name. God named him Lazarus, and the love and compassion of God for this sick, suffering, neglected man outside the rich man’s door, gifted him with eternal life in heaven. The rich man was rewarded for his neglect of the beggar by spending eternity in eternal damnation.

What I received from the story was had the rich man knew Lazarus by name and responded to the needs of Lazarus, the nameless rich man would have been named and standing by the side of Father Abraham along with Lazarus. Because he willfully neglected Lazarus, the rich man became just one of many nameless souls suffering eternal torment.

Who are the Lazarus’ in our lives? Who are those poor souls around us who are the nameless, and the forgotten in our midst? Do we treat them with the same fear and the same neglect as the rich man treated Lazarus in the Gospel? If the great commandment of Jesus to love God and love neighbor does not compel us to act on behalf of the nameless and the powerless in our society, will the fear of eternal damnation compel us? If, in our society, we are one with the rich man and look upon the plight of the poor and the nameless and adopt the attitude of “I just don’t give a damn,” we may just find that our “not giving a damn,” will become our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

 

Me Almighty Revised – the homily I gave on Sunday morning

Having given the homily I posted here on Saturday at the 5 pm Mass, I was dissatisfied with it. So, I revised it before I went to bed on Saturday night, and when I couldn’t sleep, revised it again around 1 am. What is below is the homily I gave on Sunday morning, one with which I was more satisfied.

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, 2016

When I was very little, like many of us, my mom and dad would read to me. I would sit on either side of mom or dad on the couch and my brother, Bill, or sister, Mary Ruth would sit on the other side, as they would read stories to us. They read us many stories from Golden Books, all richly and elaborately illustrated. And, then there were two books, I called them the red and green book, that was read to us. These two books more than likely were bought by my mom.

The red book was about manners. The proper table manners, asking to be excused from the dinner table, how to address people, especially adults, politely. The green book was about behaviors. There were two characters in the green book, Me First and You First. Me First described his behavior. He budged into line ahead of others, he was rude, he interrupted people, he would hog all the dessert for himself and so on. You First, always placed the needs of others first. Obviously, the point that mom was trying to get across to us kids, was that we should emulate the example of You First, NOT Me First. In the simplistic terms of the green book, the gospel today is asking us to make a choice between being either a Me First or a You First.

From the beginning of creation, God created us in God’s own image. We have the DNA of God’s Divinity within us. This Divine DNA stirs within us the desire for divinity. In the last part of the gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that they have got to make a choice as to who to serve. Will they serve God, or will they serve Mammon? This is an important choice, for who they wish to serve will dictate the path they will follow in their lives.

In choosing to serve God, they will follow the path in becoming Godlike. If they choose Mammon, they will follow the path in trying to become a god. Mammon is the name given to the demon of wealth. It is important to note that Jesus is not condemning money. Money is neither good or evil. Money is only a tool. However, money can be used for either good or evil. Jesus is telling his disciples that if they choose to intentionally choose to be his disciple then the path they must follow is that of serving God, the path into becoming Godlike. This is not the first time that people are asked to make a choice between God or something else. From the very beginning of Genesis, people have had to make similar choices.

Let us revisit Adam and Eve. As we recall, in the Garden of Eden, they had all their needs and wants lovingly met by God. However, that was not enough for them. They were greedy. They wanted more than just to be creatures of a loving God. They wanted to become gods. The serpent tells them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In doing so, they would become gods. As we all know, they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and in so doing they brought ruin upon themselves and all of their descendants, a ruin that continues to afflict humanity today. They introduce into the DNA of humanity, the evil DNA of Original Sin.

All of us struggle with this desire to become Godlike or to become a god. Wouldn’t we all like to have the world revolve around us? The difficulty in becoming a god, is there can only be one god. You can’t have multiple gods, and in becoming a god, the lives of many people will be ruined. Some seeing the power that money wields in the world, believe that they can buy their way into becoming a god. Money can buy power. Money can buy influence. Money can buy people, and can control them. However, in pursuing the path in becoming a god, a path of self-service, only ruin will occur and the one trying to become a god, will ultimately end up serving Mammon, the demon of wealth.

Jesus tells us that if we truly wish to be his disciples, we must choose the path of becoming Godlike. To become Godlike is not achieved in building up the self with wealth and power, rather it is achieved in diminishing the self. To become Godlike is to follow and emulate the life of Jesus. Jesus did not use his divinity to increase his divinity. Rather he used his divinity in order to increase the goodness of his humanity.  We could say, that he impoverished his divinity so that he could become truly human, the humanity which God intended at the moment of Creation, the humanity at which Adam and Eve so miserably failed. Very rightly so, St. Paul in observing the life of Jesus calls Jesus the “New Adam.”

If we truly wish to be disciples of Jesus, if we truly wish to be Godlike, then we are called to take all the gifts in which God has given us, whatever those gifts may be, and use them in service of those most in need, especially the poor. We may be gifted with wealth. We may have been given the gift of teaching, or the gift of caring. No matter what gifts we may possess, Jesus calls us to use them in service to others.

The one person who excelled at using the gifts that God gave her for others is Mother Teresa, whom the Church canonized a saint last Sunday. Mother Teresa took all that God had given her and used it in serving the poor, the destitute, and the dying of Calcutta. She had a tremendous amount of fame throughout the world, but used that fame not to advance herself, but used it on behalf of the poor she served. In observing her life, we could see the DNA of God grow and grow within her. And, if we were to point that out to her, she would abruptly say that we were mistaken. Nevertheless, it was very evident that the presence of God within her was tremendous.

Over and over throughout all of the gospels, Jesus tells those who wish to follow him to sell all that we have, give it to the poor, take up our cross and follow him. If we wish to become Godlike, we must follow the example of Jesus and use all that which God has given us in service to God and others, especially those most in need.

We have a choice to make today. Do we serve God or do we serve Mammon? Do we wish to become Godlike, or do we wish to become a god? Do we wish to be  “You First”, or do we wish to be a “Me First?” Which will we choose?

Me Almighty – a homily on the gospel of the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

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“For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”

 

When I was very little, I would sit on either side of mom or dad on the couch and my brother, Bill, or sister, Mary Ruth, would sit on the other side, and they would read stories to us. Along with the many stories that Golden Books published for children, I remember specifically two books that my mother would read to us that were different from the others. We knew them as the red book and the green book. The drawings were less elaborate than those found in the Golden Books. The red book, taught the proper manners to be used in social settings, covering everything from excusing oneself from the dinner table to how to address others with respect. The green book was about learning proper behavior.

There were two characters in the green book. One character was called “Me First” and the other, “You first.” One was never to copy the behavior of Me First, who could be best described as selfish and greedy. Me First would budge into line, take all of the dessert, interrupt others who were speaking, steal from others and so on. That green book left quite an impression on me. Quite simplistically todays scripture readings illustrate the same difference between Me First and You First.

In the very last sentence of the gospel, Jesus states that one cannot serve two masters. One cannot serve God and worship mammon. Mammom was the name given to the demon of wealth. Jesus is telling us we need to choose whom we will serve. We need to pick the God whom we will serve. Choosing who to serve will give us two different paths in life. One path will be that of serving God and our neighbor, the other path will be serving our own self. Jesus is not condemning money, for money, in itself, is not evil. Money is a tool. Jesus warns us that in choosing the God to serve, our money and gifts may be used for good, or for evil. This choice as to which God to serve goes all the way back to the Original Sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God created us male and female in God’s own image. Each and everyone of us has God’s DNA inside of us. And because we carry God’s DNA, we yearn to be divine. This yearning drives us to either become Godlike or to become gods. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had everything going for them. All their needs and all their wants were lovingly met by God. However, Adam and Eve were not satisfied, they were greedy. They wanted more than to be Godlike. They wanted to become gods. The serpent tells them that if they eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, the Tree of Knowledge, they would no longer be mere creatures of God, they would become gods. Their avarice, their greediness brought ruin upon themselves and continues to plague we who are their descendants.

To this very day, all human beings have this inherent desire to become a god. We want everything in the world to revolve around us. In the parlance of the Green Book, we all want to be Me Firsts and will do anything and everything in our power to be Me First. Truth be told, the problem with this desire to be a god, is that the position of god can be held only by one person, not multiple people. This inherent greed to be a god leads to the ruin of many people. The principle tool that many people use to try become a god is money. If we look all around us, we find that money is power. Money can buy us positions of power. Money can buy us influence. With money we can buy, sell, and control people. This leads us to the conclusion that money can also buy us to become a god over all, and the original Sin of Adam and Eve grows within us like a cancer, transforming the goodness of our humanity into evil. Utterly caught up in our own avarice to become a god, we end up serving Mammon, the demon of wealth, and not the God who lovingly created us.

Jesus shows us that the path by which we can become Godlike is not to accumulate and augment our wealth and self, rather we must diminish and impoverish ourselves in service to others, particularly to those most in need. Jesus did not use the immense power he had as God to increase his divinity. He used his divine power to increase the goodness of his humanity. One could say, that he impoverished his Divinity so that he could become the humanity that God meant humanity to be at Creation and at which Adam and Eve so miserably failed. Noting the striking difference between Adam and Eve and Jesus, St. Paul rightly calls Jesus, the New Adam.

Throughout all four gospels, Jesus tells you and I that if we intentionally wish to be his disciples, if we intentionally desire to become Godlike, we must live in service to others. The wealth and the gifts that God has given to us are not meant to increase ourselves but be used and shared with those most in need. The perfect example of this Mother Teresa, canonized a saint last Sunday. The DNA of God within her grew as she gave of herself to God and the poor. While she may have argued she was anything but Godlike, those of us who observed her saw how greatly she grew in God’s likeness. In the Last Judgment scene of Chapter 25 in Matthew’s gospel those who are actively engaged in seeing the Godlike presence in others by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting those in prison, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger are the only ones admitted to heaven. Those whose lives were spent in only serving themselves and refusing to serve those in need are sentenced to eternal damnation. Our path to heaven is in the giving of ourselves to others. We cannot buy our way into heaven, we can only buy our way into hell.

Over and over again, Jesus tells those who wish to be his disciples that we must first sell everything we have, give it to the poor, pick up our cross and follow him. To become Godlike, to have the DNA of God grow within us, we must diminish ourselves, impoverish ourselves in the manner of Jesus by the giving of ourselves and our gifts to others. As St. Paul states so very well in the second reading for today, “For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as ransom for all.”

Jesus gives us a choice at the end of today’s Gospel. We can either serve God or Mammom. We can either be You First or Me First. Whom will we serve?

So what’s in your wallet? A reflection on the gospel for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

What do we value the most in our lives? There will be a variety of answers to that question ranging from wealth, possessions, security, health, freedom, relationships with family, and so forth. I, personally, think the answer to the question is the word, “control.” To have wealth and possessions, to have health, to have freedom gives us control to do that which we want to do, to fulfill our every whim. Control is what we want, and when we do not have control, we feel our lives suffer.

In the second reading, we hear of St. Paul’s imprisonment. This vital man, one who traveled extensively has completely lost control of his life. If we listen between the lines of Paul’s words, Jesus’ haunting words to Peter in the epilogue of John’s Gospel can be heard. “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Knowing full well that he would never walk out of that prison cell as a free man, Paul, nonetheless shows no despondency. He sounds content. Why?

Paul knows that the real question in life is not that which we value the most. Rather, the real question in life is what is upon what foundation upon are our lives built? Jesus tells us in the Gospel that Paul has built his life on a foundation that will never collapse. Paul has built his life upon the foundation of the One who created him, namely, God.

In a nation where one’s success is judged primarily on how much money one earns, how much property one owns, how many possessions one owns, it would seem that Jesus’ words would be falling on deaf ears. It matters not what side of the political aisle to which one adheres. We, as a nation, hear relentlessly the propaganda of prosperity as the only means by which one is able to gauge success and by which we can control our lives. The commercials that assail us throughout the day on our radios, televisions, tablets and cell phones, the insane promises of political candidates, entertainments, everything hammers this message without mercy.

Even when it comes to education, perhaps one of the most valuable commodities that society can offer a citizen, we are told that the foundation of education is not to expand our knowledge and of the world, or to better our lives more fully. We are told to be educated so that we can earn more money than the next person, to advance ourselves to a higher economic level within our society, to gain control. The whole notion of a “college liberal arts education” is scoffed at and ridiculed by the wealth chasers of our society.

At the present, with wealth and the acquisition of wealth as the only goal in life, our nation’s foundation is built on nothing more solid than quicksand. How well do the words from the Book of Wisdom described the situation in which we are living. “For the deliberations of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans. For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.”

So Jesus is asking us to examine very carefully upon what are we basing our lives. What is the foundation of our lives? This is a very pertinent question if we are to be a disciple of Jesus. If our lives are based only upon that which our world recommends, then we will be incapable of being a disciple of Jesus. All the propaganda of wealth, security, possessions will not advance us as disciples of Jesus. In fact, if our sole attention is spent pursuing those ends, then our progress to be disciples of Jesus will be impeded.

Throughout all four Gospels, we are told by Jesus that if we are to be his disciples we must travel lightly and be willing to hand the control of our lives over to God. He tells us to jettison all that will impede our travel. If we have luggage, how much junk of our world have we packed into that luggage? If we insist on carrying our luggage as we follow Jesus, we will lag behind Jesus and, eventually, be left behind. How are we to get into heaven if we all the stuff by which we keep control of our lives is weighing us down?

If wealth is weighing us down, get rid of it. If security is weighing us down, get rid of it. If our possessions are weighing us down, get rid of it. Even if our personal relationships are weighing us down, get rid of them. If God is truly the foundation upon whom our lives are built, then, all we need to carry to follow Jesus is our cross, and, like St. Paul leave the rest to God.

 

 

A post-operative right knee replacement reflection from a butthead believer.

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Glass butterfly wind chime Ruthie gave to me on August 12, 2011, my birthday, the day the orthopedic surgeon had to remove my first artificial hip because of a deadly MRSA infection.

I posted this message on Facebook this morning.

“First day home. It is both wonderful and incredibly scary to come home from the hospital. There are worries surrounding getting into the car, getting out of the car, walking from the car to the house, getting up the steps, and, then, what to do once you get into the house. Of course, generally, there is nothing about which to worry, but somehow life would not seem normal without it. Ruthie provides for me such a safe, comfortable environment and in the midst of worry I fail to appreciate it. I was wondering why I was a bit of an incorrigible asshole last evening and found at its roots the horrifying memories of 2011 and a MRSA infection, a visceral reaction to something that happened a long time ago. There are some things we just don’t forget that get locked into our memory and body memory. I apologized profusely to my beloved Ruth and thanked her for putting up with my sorry ass. Thankfully, reason does win out and stupid fears are put to rest.”

As a pastoral minister, I share in the joys, the hardships, and the tragedies that accompany people in life. While my role is to support others, there is such a thing as role reversal, when the one who provides support is the one most desperately in need of support. The visceral memory of August 12, 2011 is one of those memories that will never go away. Along with the horror of that past, are also the memories of tremendous support. The first starting with that wind chime that my beloved, Ruth, gave me on my birthday. As I was wheeled up to that hospital room, ironically the same room in which I spent these past few post-operative days following my right knee replacement, I saw the wind chime hanging from the trapeze apparatus that was above my hospital bed. Multi-colored glass butterflies, symbol of the Resurrection, new hope and new life, greeted me as I was moved from the surgical gurney to the hospital bed. And, of course, there was my beautiful Ruth, smiling and kissing me as I tried to grapple with the uncertain future of my new condition.

In the days that followed, I remember an aide, arms carrying two large brown paper grocery bags, filled with get well cards. “Just who are you?” he asked as he placed the two bags on the hospital bed side table. “No one ever gets this much mail!” Later, as I spent two to three weeks at the former Queen of Peace Hospital in a swing bed, learning how to hop properly (yes, there are proper and improper ways of hopping) and building up an endurance to hop 100 feet, my daughter Beth took this picture of this perennial  beautiful red Hibiscus blooming next to the bird bath in our front yard. I had this picture as the wallpaper on both my cell phone and computer for the next couple of years. There was something about that picture that gave me a much needed lift in a very dark and foreboding time in my life.

first hibiscus of 2012 (2)

At times, like yesterday evening, when worry and uncertainty clouds the mind, and the best one can say of another is, “he is being a reprehensible, unreasonable butthead,” it is hard to see the hope and the promise that lays beyond the immediate situation. I have written about having to pass through darkness in order to find light. By faith we know that it was only passing through the darkness and misery of his passion and death, that Jesus was able to rise from the dead. We know this by faith but sometimes preclude that that was something only applicable to Jesus and not to ourselves. Whether one believes in Jesus or not, or even whether one believes in God or not, the passage through darkness to light is a part of every human’s life. No one is exempt from this passage, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist alike.

Sometimes, all that it takes to see beyond the immediate darkness is something very simple, a glass butterfly wind chime, two big grocery bags of get well cards, or a blooming bright red hibiscus blossom. While not an end unto themselves, these simple objects point us to that ultimate light which will fulfill all, a God who loves us into eternity.