Sunday Readings

Unholy Alone

We are familiar with contagious things. We are in the time of year when colds and viruses are communicated. We use hand sanitizers by the bucketful. We stay at home in order to prevent spreading the flu.

Now imagine living in a pre-scientific world. No one had a microscope or vaccinations. Antibiotics were unheard-of and there were no pharmacies dispensing over-the-counter medications. If someone got sick, it seemed like everyone else would get sick as well. The only reasonable solution was to isolate the person as soon as possible.

The first reading gives us the process and terms of that isolation. The Gospel speaks of Jesus healing this isolation. Obviously, we are not here in church for a lesson in medical procedures. We are here because isolation is deadly.

People who are cut off from everything and everyone do not survive long. God did not create us to be an island and saw that it was not good for us to be alone. He didn't just save us individually but called us to a community in the Church.

But in the creative self-destruction that we are more than capable of demonstrating, we cut ourselves off by sin. Our pride tells us we can do it on our own and our charity need not extend beyond the mirror. We become untethered from the Church and grow used to our condition so much so it becomes a part of our identity. You hear it in the way people say without any shame or remorse, that they are "former Catholics" who have chosen another way. We feel it personally at those times when we are not in the proper state to receive Holy Communion. And we also know the joy of being restored by the gift of God's mercy. We experience the comfort of being together in the way we should be.

Before the Second Vatican Council, these three or four weeks before Ash Wednesday were a period of preparation for the upcoming season of Lent. It was a wise idea to get ready rather than crashing straight into the penitential character of the season. Ash Wednesday will be here soon enough on February 22. And we will, like the leper in today's Gospel, come before the Lord asking for the healing of restoration.

In these few days before that unique celebration, perhaps it is a good idea to ask ourselves what separates us from our Christian vocation to be holy? What isolates us from living the Gospel? What prevents us from receiving all that God offers us?

None of us wants to be alone. Few of us can make it on our own. And God does not want any of his children cut off from everyone else. In this time before Ash Wednesday, ask for directions closer and closer to the heart of God's own community. We pray that the healing of this Sacrament will give us a voice not to cry out, “unclean, unclean” but, “holy, holy, holy.”

I have that nasty, nasty virus and am down for the count.

Purgatory is bit less crowded now……….

Sunday Readings
My Christmas 2011 Video
(in 2 parts)


Authority Question

I am sure we are all confused. Depending on the day, coffee is good for you or coffee is bad for you. Chocolate is healthy or chocolate makes you sick. A glass of wine a day is useful and a glass of wine today is harmful. The message keeps changing and we wonder which one is correct. This is now the quintessential example of authority in the modern world.

Authority can be a powerful thing. A video on the Internet or an article in the newspaper can change the course of history like nothing else. And clearly this is not limited to secular concerns.

A few weeks ago a very well produced video hit the Internet. It's a young man telling how much he loves Jesus but he hates religion. Some saw this as a narcissistic doctrine of personalized believe. He selectively interprets certain passages of Scripture while conveniently disregarding what he does not like. Others saw it as a heartfelt expression that many feel regarding the structures of our faith. But what it comes down to ultimately is a question of authority.

I can tell you that there are a few people in this world who would laugh themselves to death hearing me talk about authority. I would join them if by authority we meant "control." If authority is about power and domination and privilege than every one of us should have a problem with it.

Authentic authority is a safeguard for the truth. It is something positive because it is a reflection of God who is truth Himself. It takes the titanic weight of figuring it all out ourselves off of our shoulders.

This is what God promised through Moses that he would raise up a prophetic authority like himself. It is the authorization that people could see in the things Jesus did and said.

That video by this young man was the establishment of his personal faith as the authority of God Himself. And while each of us has the obligation to freely struggle and come to faith through the reason God has given us, we never land up thinking that we are the final word.

Jesus alone is the final word. It was He who chose to call a Church and to establish the Sacraments and to oblige us to care for the least among us. How we do this is a matter of discernment and discussion. That He established it is not.

One of the negative legacies of the social upheavals of the 1960s has been the exultation of those who question authority. We are completely correct to question the exercise of authority which is very different from questioning authority itself. Anarchy has never been part of God's revelation.

So in this world of constantly shifting authority, as a matter of faith, we need sometimes to have a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar and even a glass of wine. Or not. When it comes to the essentials of our faith, God has given us the gift of authority in the Church to keep us faithful to Himself. No personal opinion or Presidential Mandate can validly deprive us of this security.

For almost 2000 years, we have been given the gift of the authority of the Church to believe what God has called us to live. He can neither be deceived nor be deceived. There is nothing created, visible or invisible, that can take His place.

And I have it on good authority, that nothing ever will.

Sunday Readings
My Christmas 2011 Video
(in 2 parts)


PowerWords

Words are powerful things. They have the ability to offend people to the core of their being or build them up like nothing else ever can. They can change the direction of a life in a moment and motivate people to eternity itself. The right thing said at the right time is worth more than money or any earthly treasure.

Parents, teachers, politicians and anyone with influence knows this deeply. Priests and preachers experience that same power but when aided by God’s grace, it is truly awesome. It is both a burden and a privilege.

For all of us, the power of our words beg a single, important question: Which direction are we aiming towards?

Jonah preached a word of correction and the pagan city repented. Jesus speaks a word of invitation and the first disciples are called. In a way we cannot explain and often barely notice, human words take on a harmony with the divine word of God. Or, in other words, these words are inspired.

In God's plan, our words are not really all that different. As we interact with one another, our goal – our final goal – is the same. Whatever good we do and whatever words we use, these are directed towards an eternal life with God in the glory of eternity.

We live in a world of many words. Most of them are the incidental chatter of daily living. But sometimes, even in the middle of this chatter, a moment of grace occurs and someone's life is changed. On the sad anniversary of Roe versus Wade, we know the tragic power of the decision to end an innocent human life. But we also know the strength of the encouragement and support we can offer one another if we take the opportunity to do so.

We make it our prayer today that we can use our words to build up and strengthen the bonds of the human community we are so fortunate to live in. We ask for the wisdom and courage to speak a word of true hope in the moments when despair can take its toll.

If you turn on the evening news, there are many people with a multitude of words trying to gain respect, influence, and power. Today we celebrate that we, by the grace of God, already have that power. We are not trying to manipulate and control others into doing what we want.

No, we are following in the footsteps of the Master and speaking His words. And as we do, as we are faithful, we can look behind us and see others dropping their nets to follow Him as we are.

Sunday Readings
My Christmas 2011 Video
(in 2 parts)


Speak Lord

I think when many Catholics hear the word "vocation" they think of it as a lottery. When their name is called, by God of course, they will begin to hear a little voice in their head telling them to enter the seminary or the convent. Personally, I am not big on people following voices they hear in their heads. I'm not an expert in the subject, but that does not strike me as healthy.

But a vocation is not limited to just these few and unique ways of living out a calling. The Second Vatican Council reminded us what countless saints and spiritual writers have told us all along: there is a universal call to holiness. In other words, each member of the Church has a particular vocation. Every one of us has a purpose in God's plan and will.

What is also abundantly clear, Jesus intends His followers to know they have a vocation. At the very beginning of His public ministry, He calls others to join Him. God Himself will not go it alone.

But a vocation, a calling, demands a response. And even before that response, that calling has to have an audience that is listening. Today, we have two accounts of those who listened and who responded.

In the first reading, Samuel as a youngster hears the voice of God calling him in the quiet of the night. The Gospel recounts the first disciples of Jesus following Him in the middle of the afternoon. In both cases, their interest was sparked by curiosity and helped them to answer the call of God Himself.

God called them in the middle of something else. They did not schedule a mystical encounter with the divine apart from their ordinary activities. Samuel was essentially a kid in a religious boarding school. The first disciples were at work. They were not wandering sheep who were well down the path of a sinful life or dissolute living. There was nothing wrong with the way they had chosen up to that point. And perhaps it was precisely because they were doing what they were supposed to do, that God found a perfect opportunity to reveal Himself to them. God does not reach out to us only when things go bad or we are wrong. To us, it seems He makes no less effort to speak to our hearts when we are doing exactly already what He has called us to do.

This seems to be God’s way. He always has the element of surprise but always a surprise in the most ordinary way. The call to holiness is a call to be holy in the world in which we are.

Whoever we are in life, whatever situation we are in, we are called to be holy. It is a vocation to live in the world as if we are living in the presence of God Himself. A parent, a child, married, single, widowed – it doesn't matter. The calling, after all, is God's not ours.

If we believe - as we should - that God wants us to be happy, our happiness in this life depends on living it according to the will of God. Our vocation is really our way of finding happiness by living in holiness. It may not be what we ordinarily would choose or sometimes even feel good. That's a form of happiness God does not exactly promise us. But He assures us that when we are doing and living what He calls us to do we cannot go wrong.

And He always invites. He says to us what He said to those first disciples – come and see. As Pope John Paul II so often said, God proposes, not imposes. He created us free and we have the freedom to listen or not.

Our prayer today is that each one of us will learn to listen, in the most ordinary of circumstances, to the call of God. We pray for the courage and the wisdom to listen clearly to the invitation of our God to live in holiness of life.

And we pray, as Samuel did, "speak, Lord, your servant is listening."