I will be in Lourdes
with the Order of Malta
Youth Pilgrimages
until August 7.

HERE is the Quasi-Blog

Sunday Readings

I'm heading to Lourdes for the
Malta Summer Youth Pilgrimage 21 July - 7 Aug.

Sheep & Shepherds

Since I am a lazy person by nature, I recoil at the thought of being a shepherd. Sure, we have those pleasant pictures of well-contented, happy people resting peacefully while keeping an eye on the blissful sheep quietly grazing on abundant pastures. You never see shepherds with that half crazed look running after the wandering sheep, bored out of their minds, or caught in a rainstorm. When it comes to the job ladder in the ancient world, shepherding is nowhere near the top.

If Christ is the Good Shepherd, priests are shepherds trying to be good. And like a real shepherd, this is not an easy job. We run about half-crazed trying to keep things together in parishes or in lives. We can get into the habit of doing things so often we can kindly call them a “routine.” And when it rains, it can really pour. But please do not mistake what I'm saying here. Yes, there are aspects that can be compared with any job, but this is not any job.

Pope Benedict has made this year a special year to mark and celebrate the life of priests. It is an opportunity to appreciate and understand the gift and roll of this sacrament in the life of the church. It is a grace to give all of us the opportunity to "Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while" in the words of the Gospel today. But this is not a self-congratulatory moment. Nor is it a moment to demand that every layperson swoon with gratitude for their local clergy. No, this is serious; this is a sacrament. And given all that has happened in the past couple of years with priests not being faithful and bishops derelict in their obligations, it is something the entire church needs.

Why is it then that the church needs the sacrament of the priesthood anyway? Why do we need shepherds -- good or bad?

Jesus sees the crowd and sees so much more. He, as only God can, looks to that hidden place no one can see and no one can express. He sees us in that crowd as people needing, even craving, refreshment. He saw that we were "like sheep without a shepherd." In all of our human attempts to find that refreshment, we get lost. In quiet -and not so quiet - desperation, human beings live and do things that betray our lack of direction. We can so easily seek the empty nourishment and false illusions that promise us rest, but leave us restless. We start to mistake the good things in this life with living a good life.

Christ saw the need, and continues to see the need, to feed the hungry. And this hunger is not merely physical. The human soul craves what only the Sacraments can give. Tangible signs of unseen grace are the provisions of our God. And by His will and direction, the Sacraments were given to the church to be communicated through the ages. In particular, the Eucharist -- which is the “source and the summit of the Christian life” -- is entrusted to the ministry of the priesthood.

And it is through this priesthood that people are fed. Maybe in this ‘Year of the Priest’, we need to correct and clarify our understanding of the sacrament. The priesthood is not about popularity or personality. It is not about names and numbers. And it is most certainly not about what some call "power." It is about what happens on this altar. Good homilies -- like all of mine RIGHT? -- are good and can be a real assistance to spiritual growth. Smooth operations of plants and programs make life easier and can be very helpful. But what matters most is that moment when the priest consecrates the Eucharist. Our modern Church has too often forgotten this. Yes, it was easier in the old days with the Latin Mass. But nothing has changed; the consecration of the Eucharist is the preeminent reason priests are ordained. This is the only "power" worth talking about and since it comes from God himself, it is not the priest’s own or for that matter even the Church’s.

But clearly, this is not always been faithfully exercised. We can all list our disappointments. We can begin with the awful abuse scandals that have damaged so many. We can speak of those who believed that their sacramental authority gave them a worldly power. We can recall those moments when the priest's humanity shined brighter than the ideals of our spirituality. Some, seeing these faults, militate for a revolution of prerequisites without the burden of practical consequences. Others, practically deny the sacramentality of the priesthood and reduce the ministry to functionality. And, sadly, some have just left.

But the Good Shepherd still has to feed the hungry. With all the controversies and theologies, the sheep still wander close to the cliff and close to the wolf. When the Holy Father declare this to be the ‘Year of the Priest’, he was declaring this a year for the church to be honest about our need for what only the Good Shepherd can give in the way He – not us - has chosen to give it.

The priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church is not about priests or bishops or even the church itself as much as it is about God. As a sacrament, a visible sign instituted by Christ to give grace to the world, we can speak of how it is lived out (or not). But we as a church must never mistake those discussions for what it is. A few months ago I was at a dinner when so many of these issues were being discussed among people of varying opinions. Towards the end of the discussion, as it was getting late, one of the guests asked me what I thought. I told them, "there is much we can talk about but I have the eight o'clock Mass tomorrow morning."

So maybe enough of words. The sheep had to be fed. They still do.

Sunday Readings


I'm heading to Lourdes for the
Malta Summer Youth Pilgrimage 21 July - 7 Aug.

Travel Lightly

We all know it is the nature of things to grow more complex. The more we know, the more we do. Human beings have an inbuilt quest for improvement and complexity. We took the idea of a road and made a superhighway. We like a cool breeze and we invented air conditioning. We invented the telephone and now we are stuck with cell phones that are mini super-computers. The question we can ask is whether or not things are better. Complexity does not automatically create improvement. Often, as I have found with cell phones, it means the opposite. This is on my mind as I prepare for another pilgrimage to Lourdes. I have to pack and keep it simple. If I take too much, or make it too complex, it becomes a burden and a hindrance. Anyone who has traveled or moved or carried something home from school or the store knows what I'm talking about. To put it straight forwardly, more does not mean better. But instead of a tool, we bring the hardware store.

Jesus gave the disciples some pretty simple cautions. Don't bring too much with you, travel lightly, don't clutter things up. We may be tempted to think that He was just trying to be efficient. He was, but there is a deeper issue. He wanted the disciples to trust the message. He wanted them to rely on what He gave them more than what they could bring to it. He wanted them to have faith more than religion.

You see, we take the message of the Gospel and we add more to it then we should. That human tendency to complexity has to be expected but we need to be cautious. We can take the message of conversion and salvation and clutter it up with self-justifying practices and conclusions. We can get caught up in what we say we should do to the point that we forget why we started in the first place. We can place a demand for perfection on ourselves and each other that God would never dream of Himself.

We have all heard messages like this. I remember someone saying "Okay, don't give me theology, give me Jesus." We see religion as something complicated and difficult and our safety valve kicks in. In the face of anything more complicated than the bottom line, we reject the whole project. For example, if I have a problem with the Church's teaching on one issue, I reject the Catholic faith. I convinced myself that God loves me anyway so why bother with morality and its rules? If I believe I can pick and choose everything, I will end up with nothing.

So what is Jesus trying to say? He seems to be saying keep it simple but remember it is not. No, He is saying something very different. He is telling us to have faith in what He said and what He did. In other words, in the end, it is not about us. We have been given this faith and the truth of this faith. The One who gave it to us can, as the old prayer used to say, "neither deceive nor be deceived." He does something amazing. God trusts us to carry His message and His very presence. We are weak at times, inconsistent, and flawed. We are, as St. Paul said, "earthen vessels." Well formed or not, quality or cracked, we are chosen to hold the precious gospel within us.

Amos knew this. He was a landscaper and a farmer who was given the task of communicating the word of God. He was not a professional or an academic but he went. The disciples were fishermen and ordinary people who knew it as well. They have a personality defects and virtues. And they were deeply convinced that what they have been given was theirs but not their own.

That is why, after two millennia, the church continues to proclaim the hope of humanity in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And look who has carried this message forth! To call some of them ‘scoundrels’ would be an understatement. And in our own lives, we've been disappointed by those who have seemed to be the embodiment of faith but who fell very short of living it themselves. And last of all, we can look in the mirror and see someone with so much baggage that the message of hope can be buried underneath.

But don't give up. Go back and begin again. Stay with this simple truth of our faith and start there. Clutter is often the luxury of boredom. It is not essential nor is it lasting. It is amazing that even with our most creative self-destruction, the burning truth of the Gospel still shines through. Trust that messag;, trust that hope. Keep it as thoughtful as we need to and as simple as we can.

And when we do, as all the saints tell us, we find it is more than enough.

Sunday Readings

Independence Day

This weekend, we are celebrating the beginning of a new nation. As usual, we marked the celebration by blowing things up and eating unhealthy foods. Someone asked me why I described Independence Day weekend in those terms. I simply replied, "because I can." I guess they meant I should describe it in flowery or even reverent terms. I could tell they didn't like what I said. But I meant what I replied. I describe Independence Day weekend in any way I independently choose to do.

The tension here is not about manners. It goes to the heart of what it means to celebrate this moment in history. And no one can look at this event without referring to what was called "the old world" -- whether it be in Europe, Africa, or anywhere else. Since we are creatures of habit, it takes a couple of generations to break the habits of the old world. One of the reasons (we or) our ancestors came to this country was to make a break with that older world. The lack of opportunity or the quest for adventure was strong enough to urge people to abandon everything and everyone they knew and start again. We all have to sift through traditions we brought with us and mould them into what we call the "American way of life." Some customs will fit in very well; others must be discarded. The whole point of coming here was to have a chance and to throw off the uncountable things that held us back and in place.

And in a very understandable way, that is what the townsfolk in the Gospel did not understand. They had Jesus pegged because they thought they knew His history. They did not have a vision of freedom that they – or He – could have anything different, never mind better. Yes, we know that the ancient world was far from the modern concepts of mobility and change. It really was not their fault. But this remains a cautionary tale for us. It is a demand to hope in a very similar way to what those who came here dared to hope.

Why is this “cautionary?” The Gospel is clear on this point. It is the lack of vision and that created a barrier to the work of God. “He could work no miracle there.” If they could not see anything possible in Him, they absolutely could not see it in themselves. And this danger is not far from us either.

You can see how easily we can make the same mistake when it comes to matters of faith. If we limit our expectations of ourselves or others based on family, ethnic background, or the usual social factors, it will be no great we do how we can do the same in matters spiritual.

Take any example of sin, mistakes, failed attempts at virtue or anything like that and we can find more than enough reason to condemn. We declare that no one, including ourselves, can change. And we jump to the conclusion that because we cannot, God is wasting His time.

Well, grace tells another story. God is great and kind and lovely and all that but God is also tenacious. He simply refuses to accept the condemnations and histories we offer. The things He allows and prevents are the opportunities of grace to do a new thing. For some, this means going to a new place just like those "huddled masses yearning for freedom" once did and still do. For others, it may mean nothing more than a slight change of schedule. But whatever it is, whenever we accept or reject, God is still working. We may doubt God, but he never doubts us.

So on this Independence Day weekend, declared your independence. Find the freedom to reject hopelessness. Celebrate the liberty of the children of God that is yours. Learn from the old and dusty history books of your mistakes but never allow them to become a constitution of today. We have every right to be what God calls each of us to be. Take a revolutionary stand and reject the voices that say we will be never more than who we are now and claim your birthright to be saints.

Have a happy and a holy Independence Day every day.