Category: Reflection

I am coming off 5 days of vacation. I don’t know about you, but it takes me at least 2 days to shake off the work mode and begin to relax. I really needed this time away from ministry, this year. It has been a very long and gruelling 9 months of ministry. The root of the word “recreation” is the word “recreate”. We all need some to time to “recreate” ourselves. I was certainly in need of some “re-creation.”

Doing ministry in the Church truly requires one to take a break. It matters not if one is ordained or if one is laity, working in the Church takes its toll. The burn-out rate is high in ministry. Being on call to the needs of people who are often in places of desperation requires a lot of spiritual, emotional, and physical energy. I have found that to go for long periods of time without “getting away” or taking some “time out” is detrimental to ministry. It is absolutely necessary to take time off in order to do good ministry in the Church.

I am reflecting on this because I know that 5 days ago, my energy levels were very depleted. Could I still respond if called upon to minister to someone? Of course, but it would have been done with some internal resentment and anger … not a good way to approach someone who is in need of love and care.

The gospels tell us that Jesus was very aware of his own need to “get away” and restore his energy to minister to people. He would go off to some isolated mountain top to pray, often times, not telling his disciples where he was going. He would just “get lost.” Not knowing where he took off to, the disciples would have to go out and search for him.

This is an important lesson for all of us in ministry. When the needs of the people to whom we minister begin to mount up and overwhelm us, we need to do what Jesus did, and “get lost” for a little while. We need to do this so that we can be fully present to the people who rely on us and to serve them well.

On September 9th of this year, I will completed 41 years of ministry will begin my 42nd. year of full-time ministry in the church, the first 17 years as a lay church minister, and the remaining 24 years as an ordained deacon. After all these years, I still don’t take all 4 weeks of vacation to which I am entitled every year … I am lucky to take 2 weeks of vacation. However, I see an increasing need for some time to “get lost” as I age.

Of course, the method by which we “get lost” is important. “Getting lost” in abusing alcohol or other substances is not an option (though, after one of “those days” it sounds a wee bit alluring). I recommend doing what Ruthie and I did these past several days. Drive up to Duluth. Get a room at the Radisson. Spend a lot of time in the hotel hot tub and swimming pool letting the tensions gradually fall away. Go up to the JJ Astor restaurant overlooking Duluth and nurse a cocktail and eat a very fine, albeit expensive supper, as the restaurant revolves and you get a 365 degree view of Duluth. It may not be the mountain top to which Jesus use to escape, but it is still a mighty fine way to find “re-creation”.

 

Why there is evil in our world? Greek mythology blames Pandora for opening up “the box”. The Judeo-Christian tradition lays the blame on Adam and Eve. Flip Wilson’s comedic character, Geraldine, use to say, “The devil made me do it!” In the story of Adam and Eve, the serpent (personifying evil) didn’t make Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. The serpent told them that in eating the fruit, they would become Gods. Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit, and, boy, did that plan backfire on them! We have within our own DNA, the genes of our first parents. We want to become Gods, and, as a result, we commit sin.

Breaking things down to their most elemental state, scripture tells us that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Mixed within our DNA is not only that of our ancestors, but the DNA of God. God’s presence resides in all of us. The sins we commit against another person, we commit against God. When we tell someone a lie, we lie to God. If we cheat, or steal from another person, we cheat or steal from God. St Paul writes in the 2nd reading that as we get closer to death, we begin to see with our eyes that which is truly real and discover that everything we have seen up to that point has been not real. Imagine for a moment we are given the eyesight to see the presence of God in all human beings. How could we ever cheat or steal of even think of causing violence, much less kill another person, knowing and seeing God’s presence in that person?

To remedy the sinful flaw in our nature, Jesus appeals to God’s presence within us, telling us to “love one another as I have loved you.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me. We must appeal to God’s presence within us as we interact with the presence of God in others. The Divine DNA of God within us is the anecdote to the DNA of Adam and Eve within us. The more we see and react to God’s presence in others, AND the presence of God within us, the less sin we will commit, and the more peace we will know in our lives.

Trinity Sunday was a few weeks ago … but I have been busy. For whatever it is worth, here is my reflection on the Trinitarian nature of God. Ruthie went to the Saturday evening, 5 pm Mass on that weekend. If you recall, it was beastly hot, 100 degrees and the humidity was tropical. Fr George Grafsky was presiding that evening at St Wenceslaus and his homily was imply this. “Read Deacon Bob’s reflection in the bulletin. It is the best understanding of the Trinity I have read.” When Ruthie told me what Fr George had said, I was both flattered and a little shaken-up, simply because I don’t think I, along with most theologians alive or canonized have ever gotten an adequate grasp of this great Divine Mystery (though it is nice to stand in the shadows of most of these theologians). Here is the article I wrote:

Trinity Sunday, a day when many homilies border on heresy. We know more about the atmosphere on a faraway planet, like Mars or Jupiter, than that which we know about the Trinitarian nature of God.

In my grad school days at the St Paul Seminary, I had a number of classes taught by theologians. When they would speak, it was as if their minds were able to draw knowledge from spiritual dimensions in otherworldly planes of existence not generally accessible to most of us day to day people. I would ask them a question, and there would be a pause as they searched these other dimensions of knowledge before answering. I remember attempting to read the great Catholic theologian, Fr Karl Rahner’s definition on the “Economic Trinity.” Rahner was a German theologian and he wrote in the German language. It is true that what is expressed in one language is not always directly translatable in another. Case in point, what Rahner wrote in German about the Economic Trinity was very difficult to understand in English. I attempted many times to understand his definition of the Economic Trinity (Note: the Economic Trinity is not a Walmart special, 3 natures of God for the price of one) but to no avail.

So here is my, hopefully, non-heretical, non-understanding of the Trinitarian nature of God. In the Hebrew Testament, we hear about a one, powerful God who breathes upon the waters of the abyss and life was created. The Hebrew Testament writers call the breath of God, Ruah, that is, the Spirit of God. God’s voice speaks to and through the prophets to the people of Israel. The writers of the Hebrew Testament call God’s voice, the Logos or God’s Word. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the Word of God is identified as Jesus, God incarnate. Just as in our human body, our breath and our voice are inseparable and one with our body, so the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, and Jesus, the Word of God, are in separable and one in God. The bottom line is this. Jesus taught that God is a Trinity, one God and three natures: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If that is good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for us.

My father died early in the morning on November 13, 2004. I remember sitting dumbstruck next to his lifeless body. My father was the wisdom figure of the family, which included not only my own nuclear family but all his nieces and nephews and their spouses and children. They would call from all over the United States seeking his wisdom and knowledge, and, now he was gone. I was not only dumbstruck by the loss of my father, but by the realization that my role in the family had undergone a dramatic change. I was no longer a “kid”, anymore. The mantle of leadership and the wisdom, that hopefully accompanies leadership, had been passed on to me. There are many people who have experienced this same dramatic change in their lives as their parents died. The one question I believe we all ask is, “Are we up to the task of being the leaders of our families?”

I am sure the apostles were thinking similar thoughts as they watched Jesus ascend to the Father. Jesus entrusted to them the mission he had of proclaiming the Good News to people everywhere. I love the reaction of the angel in the Acts of the Apostles who basically tells the apostles to quit gawking at the empty sky into which Jesus ascended and get busy fulfilling the mission of Jesus. As we hear in the Gospel account, the apostles did exactly that, going forth to preach the Good News to everyone.

As Jesus entrusted his mission to the apostles, so the apostles have entrusted the same mission to generation after generation up to our present time. Today the angel from the Acts of the Apostles tells us to quit standing around and get busy proclaiming the Good News in word and in action. This mission is not isolated to just a few “holy people” but is entrusted to all who have been baptized.

In a recent conversation with my cousin, Kathy, I was touched to hear that my dad, when he was alive, often spoke highly of me to her, saying, that I was his twin. May Jesus say the same of us as we continue his mission to our world.

Have you ever noticed the number of “The Joy of …” books that are available either in hardcopy or digital formats? There are many books promising joy on all sorts of topics. The Joy of 1) Cooking, 2) Mathematics, 3) Running, 4) Sex, 5) Cookies, 6) Doing Nothing, 7) Retirement,  to name just a few. Over my lifetime I have read quite a number of “The Joy of …” books. For all the topics on “joy” I have read, none has increased the level of joy in my life. Today, Jesus makes a promise to us. If we remain in him and he in us, and if we live his commandment, then we will not only have joy in our lives, we will experience “complete joy.”

So what is this commandment we must live in order to attain complete joy? It is expressed by Jesus as “love one another as I have loved you.” In 1 John, it is expressed that we must love one another because love is of God. To find complete joy we cannot focus our joy in loving only ourselves. Rather, complete joy is found in our lives only by focusing our love on someone else.

All the books that begin with the words “The Joy of …” are about only finding joy and fulfillment for ourselves. Our society is currently one in which the only person that is important is “me” to the exclusion of everyone else. This is narcissistic individualism. It breaks down the relationships that must exist for a healthy human society, including the relationships within our own families. Narcissism is not the path to complete joy, rather, it is the path to complete despair.

To find the complete joy that Jesus promises, we must love as Jesus loved, in short, focusing our love on God and on our neighbor. This act of giving our love to God and others empties ourselves of the narcissism that fills our lives. In emptying the self-conceit and self-centeredness from our lives, we will find God filling the empty space with Divine joy.

In his homily on April 19^th of this year, Pope Francis said that we are not to be “benchwarmers” in the efforts of evangelization. He preached, “A ‘couch potato’ evangelization doesn’t exist. Get up and go! Be always on the move. Go to the place where you must speak the word of God.”

In the readings chosen for today, we hear how on fire St Paul was to preach the Word of God. Paul’s evangelizing got him in trouble with the Hellenists (Greeks) of Jerusalem. For his own safety, the apostles had to whisk Paul out of Jerusalem to the community of Tarsus. In John’s first letter he exhorts his disciples, “Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.” In the Gospel, just prior to leaving for the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus uses the image of the vine and the branches to describe his relationship with the apostles. “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”If they are truly his disciples they are to bear much fruit by continuing to spread the Gospel Jesus taught them.

This brings us back to the image that Pope Francis used in his homily. Are we just Catholic Christian “couch potatoes”?  Do we just do “what we think we have to do by obligation” to go to heaven? Instead of being alive and living our mission as disciples of Jesus, bearing much fruit, do we just lethargically remain on the couch, covered in the dust of our own Christian complacency? Pope Francis urges us to rouse ourselves from the sink holes of our spiritual couches, brush off the dust of our complacency and follow the example of St Paul, St John and the other apostles by actively living the Good News of Jesus, not just in the spoken and written word, but in deed.

In the “old days”, many Catholics thought that evangelization was the “job” of the priests and the nuns. As the scriptures and Pope Francis say quite clearly, there is no room for lazy Catholicism. The job of evangelization belongs to all of us who are baptized.

Have you ever felt abandoned? I have known many people who have felt abandoned. Abandonment comes in many forms. When a spouse dies, the widow or widower experience not only grief of losing someone they loved, but also the feeling of being left all alone. There is the loneliness of being the sole surviving sibling of a family. There are those going through separation and divorce who experience not only being abandoned by their ex-spouse, but also by many of their family and friends. There are many children, caught in the world of foster homes who feel abandoned and unwanted. There are those children and adolescents who are so cruelly bullied and abandoned by their peers  that they opt to die by suicide.

Abandonment is the curse of a society that glorifies the individual to the point of narcissism. We find that our world of “me first and the heck with everybody else”, condemns many to a life of loneliness and neglect. The readings for today are a much needed comfort for all who feel lonely and abandoned.

In John’s first letter he writes, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” Though we may feel unloved and abandoned by all in our life, God loves us as His very own children. The bond of love that God has for us can never be severed.  Paul expresses  this in his letter to the Romans, “What can separate us from the love of God?” Paul answers the question saying that  no matter what may happen to us, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God.  Today, Jesus tells us that the love relationship we have with him is as intimate as the relationship he has with the Father.  “I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep.”

Though we may feel abandoned and unloved, Jesus, abandoned and betrayed by those he loved, knows our pain and assures us that his love relationship with us remains for all eternity.

From time to time, I will watch one of the many “ghost hunter” shows for a laugh. It is a lot like watching adults playing the kids’ game, “Red Light, Green Light, hope to see a ghost tonight.” Stumbling around in the dark with infrared cameras, and all sorts of electronic gadgets, they seek to “document” that ghosts exist. The shows all boil down to someone saying to the empty darkness around them, “If there is someone here give me a sign.”

Today we hear Luke’s version of what happened on Easter Sunday. The two disciples having encountered the Risen Lord on their way to Emmaus, return to the apostles hiding out in the upper room and tell them that Jesus is indeed risen! In dramatic fashion, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst, the apostles reacting like our television ghost hunters fearing they have encountered the ghost of Jesus. They do not have to ask for a “sign”, Jesus immediately bestows to them his peace. He then tells them to touch him and feel his flesh and bones. He eats some fish. What ghost can do this, he asks them.

Do we find ourselves, from time to time, asking for a “sign” from Jesus that he is indeed risen? Do we not wish that we had been in that upper room, touching the real flesh and bones of the Risen Lord, and seeing him eat with us? Every time we gather here on Sunday, we encounter the living flesh and bone of Jesus in the Body of Christ around us. The people we greet, those with whom we exchange a sign of peace are the real Body, flesh and blood of Jesus in our world. We see Jesus eat, as we watch those around us receive Holy Communion. We hear his voice as they sing and respond in prayer. In the eyes of those around us, we see Jesus look at us.

We don’t need infrared cameras, or special electronic gadgets, or digital recorders to document that Jesus is Risen and among us. The Risen Lord is alive and well and present in all those gathered around us every Sunday at Mass.

My favorite post-resurrection account is from the Gospel of John, in which Mary Magdalene, weeping, returns to the empty tomb of Jesus, looking for his missing body. Two angels at the tomb ask her why she is weeping. She responds, ““They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” As she says this, she turns and seeing a man she assumes is a gardener asks him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Unbeknownst to Mary, the gardener is really Jesus. Moved, he then speaks her name, “Mary.” Realizing it is Jesus, she says, “Rabbouni!” Jesus tells her, ““Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.” He then tells her to go the apostles and tell them that he is ascending to his Father, “to my God and your God.” Mary quickly returns to the apostles and tells them, “I have seen the Lord!” (NRSV Bible)

The poignancy of this post-resurrection story is beautifully expressed in a poem, entitled, “Mary”, composed by the poet, Elizabeth Rooney.

Mary

The Love I love
Came in the early dawning
Standing as still as light.

How could I ever have dreamed
So sweet a morning
After so dark a night? (from A Widening Light:Poems of the Incarnation, Luci Shaw, editor, (c) 1984, Regent College Publishing)

During this past Holy Week, four members of our faith community, Ralph Weiers, Robert Koppinger, Bernice Lambrecht, and Delores Hoffman passed from this life to the fullness of life, some of them dying during the Easter Triduum, when the Paschal Mystery of Jesus is beautifully and powerfully celebrated in the highest liturgies of the Church year. After years of diminishing health, all four fell into the eternal loving embrace of Jesus. I believe the last few lines of this poem, “How could I ever have dreamed, So sweet a morning After so dark a night?” was on their lips as Jesus lovingly spoke their name. May their grieving families and all of us who grieve similarly take comfort in these same words.