Running for Joy

Easter Sunday – 2011

Acts 10:34; 37-43

Colossians 3:1-4

John 20:1-9

          The first reading for today is really the centerpiece of the account from the Acts of the Apostles of Peter’s mission to Cornelius and all in his household. Peter was the one surely who encouraged those good folk to Baptism, but Peter was himself encouraged by God to take this step through visions and signs, including the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and family just as had happened to the disciples gathered in the Upper Room at Pentecost. The revelation from God was that even though they were pagans Peter should not to hesitate to baptize them and bind them to Jesus, Whose life-giving death upon the Cross and glorious Resurrection were meant to be proclaimed to the ends of the earth and to benefit all who believed in Him. Easter is a universal feast; Easter is for everyone and for all peoples of all times.

          In the second volume of the Holy Father’s book Jesus of Nazareth, which came out not that long ago, he speaks of the clear understanding from the very beginning that the good news of Jesus Christ and His Resurrection was not reserved for the People of the Covenant, the Jews. In fact, quoting St. Paul to the Romans 11:25, the Holy Father unites himself with our whole tradition which teaches that “... a hardening has come upon a part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved…” The mission to the pagans was of the utmost urgency, so that God’s beloved and chosen people could also be brought to Him in Christ in accordance with God’s plan.

This mission is urgent yet today; we need as followers of Christ, as His disciples and ministers, to do all in our power to see to it that all people, starting with family and friends, come in, are bound to Christ, the Savior of all mankind. No one should be left out through the fault of the witnesses to the Resurrection. We through our Catholic faith, we the baptized are obliged and empowered to carry on that same mission today for the sake of the life of the world.

          In this morning’s Gospel everyone is running. Mary of Magdala, saw the stone moved away and ran straight to Peter. Peter and the other disciple then ran to the tomb. We could say that running is what you do in a panic, but I think in this case running is what you do in the face of something this big, this great. As the Gospel says:

“Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

          My hope and prayer for you today, for all of us, is that our Lenten penance, discipline, training (you choose the word!) now completed has us in better shape for a little running. Like Mary of Magdala, like Peter and the other discipline, we are not simply passive spectators to the great mystery of Christ’s victory in the glory of the Resurrection. We form an important part of the picture, which should see us running too, running to tell others the good news so that they with us can be bound to Christ. The goal is that we might sooner reach that “full number of Gentiles” which St. Paul talks about in the hope that Israel might come in too.

          The joy of Easter should not be lost on anyone and it is up to us to run and tell one and all that Jesus has won the victory over sin and death. There is no such thing as oblivion in death, thanks to the Risen One; life is not ended but changed. Alleluia! 

Calling a Spade a Spade

Bearings

            “You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true; remember who your teachers were, and how, ever since you were a child, you have known the holy scriptures – from these you can learn the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching, for refuting error, for guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be holy. This is how the man who is dedicated to God becomes fully equipped and ready for any good work.

            Before God and before Christ Jesus who is to be judge of the living and the dead, I put this duty to you, in the name of his Appearing and of his kingdom: proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. Refute falsehood, correct error, call to obedience – but do all with patience and with the intention of teaching.” (2 Timothy 17:8-13 from the 29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C)

            A couple days ago I viewed Fr. Robert Barron’s latest video, “Fr. Barron comments on The Depressing Pew Forum Study”. I was impressed especially by his image of a disarmed Catholicism of decades past, colorless, beige (as he says it), running naively into the arms of a modernity which is running in the other direction and the Church or parts of it (this caricature of the faith today really) being devoured or torn to shreds by that same modernity, who wants no part of her with or without her tradition. I shared the video with some of my people only to get the surprise of my life by having it categorically rejected by a middle-aged woman, with no particular agenda or leanings to the right or to the left, as off-hand and misty-eyed, “The-Sky-Is-Falling”, Chicken Little speak. Needless to say, I was shocked and decided to sit on the matter and wait for light or some kind of enlightenment.

            If this terse dismissal of Fr. Barron’s read of the “Pew Forum Study” as something valid and telling about Church today had caught my eye in a comment box at the bottom of his blog it would have been different. This double-barreled blast came from someone outside the blogging world, unaccustomed to the frequently jaded banter of the few remaining uncensored bottoms of the pages. This is rather someone in that broad spectrum of your average people in the pew, who might even have been asked to answer questions by the “Forum”. Perhaps, as far as this woman is concerned, Father’s mistake was in lending credence to the “Pew Forum Study”, which could just as well be a setup by the same babes-in-the-woods or over-the-hill types, who still haven’t figured out that modernity is not about to be disarmed by their dull cuteness.

            The Second Reading for this Sunday kind of came to my rescue as I waited for light. “You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true; remember who your teachers were, and how, ever since you were a child, you have known the holy scriptures – from these you can learn the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

            I think that St. Paul knows what is at issue in the world and he knows his interlocutor within the Church as well: an overseer appointed by him, a bishop of that early Church, St. Timothy. St. Paul picks up the thread to be woven into the tapestry of Timothy’s leadership mantle, capable of doing what Church does for itself and obviously, if we know anything about St. Paul the Missionary, also for our world (modern, post-modern or otherwise): “Before God and before Christ Jesus who is to be judge of the living and the dead, I put this duty to you, in the name of his Appearing and of his kingdom: proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. Refute falsehood, correct error, call to obedience – but do all with patience and with the intention of teaching.” St. Paul is going to build up the Church not by chasing Timothy out after anybody out there in the big, wide Roman or Greek world, but by keeping him home, with his nose to the grindstone, building up the community and otherwise moving only where the Spirit leads him.

            Fr. Barron’s interlocutor remains anonymous. Is it a bishop, a priest, a deacon, a catechist, who? Father is totally right in admonishing (…) to the hard work of recovering real philosophy, salted with metaphysics, theology in the tradition of the Angelic Doctor, and by starting with that gift for the Church in our day, which is the Catechism of the Catholic Church (I wonder if Father Barron and Peter Kreeft don’t read each other?). I’m thinking that Father’s interlocutor has to be the hope of the Church, our seminarians, right? Without being too much of the comment box, I hope you see where I am going: Father seems to be “arm-chairing” the thing in hopes that someone will pick up the ball and run with it. St. Paul took a different approach. 

For those who are in the forefront and hopeful for the Church today, beige is no longer in (the reality of these past decades oft-times might better be described as a romance with tired old heresies). The folly of decades past (all pervasive in some circles but not throughout the Church), which claimed to be courting modernity, was not so much that as the sort of improvisation which in many sectors of Church life (take parish worship and pop Church music) continues to carry the day. Father’s imagery, his caricature of the beige Catholicism, is sort of like Cinderella’s lost slipper, except that nobody is stretching a foot in Prince Charming’s direction in hopes that it might fit. Clever, yes, but not pointed enough to win the kewpie doll, I am sorry. 

I rather think that Father is too good and too ready to believe that reasoned discourse broadcast far and wide will win the day. Timothy! “All scripture is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching, for refuting error, for guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be holy. This is how the man who is dedicated to God becomes fully equipped and ready for any good work.” I doubt seriously if I could have done a better video on the topic. My average woman in the pew has brutally posed the only question worthy of the comment box: “What’s his problem?”

These days lots of people tell me how hard it is to get catechism teachers. I know from my French territories how determined they are to have a second go at young adults by binding them into the instruction of their youngest children and giving Mom and Dad, together with sons and daughters an attempt to come to know the Lord. The challenge is that concrete and we find it at home and in our own back yard. 

            “Before God and before Christ Jesus who is to be judge of the living and the dead, I put this duty to you, in the name of his Appearing and of his kingdom: proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it. Refute falsehood, correct error, call to obedience – but do all with patience and with the intention of teaching.”

            Thank you, St. Paul! Each of you Timothys out there knows who you are and what it is you are called to do. Blessed are those who weep, yes, but let St. Paul call you out to action: “You must keep to what you have been taught and know to be true; remember who your teachers were, and how, ever since you were a child, you have known the holy scriptures – from these you can learn the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” A bow of the head and cordial thanks also go to my sister in Christ, that average woman in the pew!

Choose Life!

Resurrection Day N° 3

The other day on the Solemnity of All Saints (Nov.1) my friend Marion came beaming out of the chapel after Mass. She greeted me saying, “Well, Father, today is the Third Feast of the Resurrection: Easter, the Assumption, and now our day, All Saints!” She stressed the singular purpose demonstrated in the lives of the saints, their longing to be with God and to share life with Christ in the glory of the Resurrection.

On All Souls Day the breviary reading from St. Ambrose struck me in an extraordinary way. Starting from a St. Paul quote (in shorthand: “Life for me is Christ and death is so much gain”), in that homily the great archbishop of Milan urges, among other things, to keep the thought of death a constant part of our life so as not to be carried away by the illusion that life to the full is to be found this side of the grave. I asked those at Mass that morning not to lose the opportunity that day or at some point during the month of November, in which we pray for those who have died while yet in need of the refinement that only the “fuller’s fire” of Purgatory can provide such that they can come before the Lord as pure gold, to share their devotion for the Poor Souls with some young person or child. Even after a millennium and a half St. Ambrose is still capable of inspiring people to realize what is at stake if you or someone you love sells out to “virtuality” or gets lost in the virtual world, whether of the internet or TV or the magazine rack.

Yesterday the Church celebrated St. Martin de Porres. When you think about it, this saint is an eloquent witness for us today. He was born of a forbidden union between a Spanish conquistador and an Afro woman of slave descent. What many might have considered a powerful disadvantage, to say the least, in Martin became a point of contact for him and a supernatural inspiration for the lowly and the “powers that be” whose lives he touched, because of his great humility and unbounded charity, both of which were fueled by his passion for Jesus Crucified and for the Holy Eucharist.

Last evening I made a futile attempt to watch Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto, but I soon switched it off because I found his art too close to life and what he was saying about the “culture of death” (to use an expression of Pope John Paul II) frightfully insistent. Even the brief encounter inspired some thoughts however.

I remembered what people told me back in the late 1990’s in Bonn, Germany about the elderly people from Holland who had fled almost like refugees to the neighborhood of Kevelaer in Germany for their retirement, to escape the devastation of the Dutch Catholic Church and in the Marian Shrine at Kevelaer find something closer to the religion of their youth. They also fled in fear from Holland’s euthanasia laws, not trusting the State, their children or other relatives who might be tempted to “put them to sleep” should they lose consciousness for a moment. What started in Holland has spread to many places around the globe.

The Holy Father made headlines the other day in a talk to pharmacists by urging what the papers referred to as conscientious objection or civil disobedience by pharmacists in the face of the push to impose what is commonly referred to as the “morning after pill” as a part of emergency room protocol for rape victims. The Aztecs tried to maintain hegemony over a vast region by sacrificing their neighbors, tearing out their hearts, ostensibly to assure that the sun would rise and the rain would fall. An unreflective cross-section of humanity would choose the death of the unwanted child or elderly person to assure their own continuance, sanity or comfort. You can be sure that St. Martin de Porres would have no part of such an approach to life and neighbor.

Two Halloween stories have come my way. The first is from the rector of Sacred Heart Seminary in the old city center of Detroit, Michigan. He told me they were expecting 4,000 children at a Halloween party which has remained popular for years in an inner city where tension and conflict are everyday affairs. We seek safety, life and celebration; we intuitively seek community and all things good, especially for our children.

The other story is actually told by my Mother! Her neighborhood has become the Halloween place to go for parents with small children in that town. Whether the treats are better than elsewhere in Hutch no one is saying. What seems to be true is that people find safety and society in likeminded numbers and wish thereby to assure their children a nice Halloween experience.

When given a chance, be it in the inner city or in a small town environment, people choose life and community. Perhaps because they are caught in a world of illusion they may not get beyond providing for a nice Halloween experience for their children, a Merry Christmas and a series of great getaways or vacations in the course of the year. Nonetheless, the will to life and happiness is there.

St. Martin de Porres could perhaps have openly decried, condemned or explicitly abhorred the injustices and cruelty both toward himself and others in his day and time. He chose to focus on Christ and find nourishment in the Eucharist. Martin was so satisfied by the love of God which came to him in prayer that he had love and strength for doctoring, serving, counseling and loving others whether they loved or respected him or not. “Martin, the charitable” brightened and transformed his world. He was not a victim but rather a protagonist in God’s plan for the salvation of the world.

The “red carpet” Aztecs of our own day and time would love to sell us on the salvation procured through the cutting and pasting done to their bodies by their Beverly Hills plastic surgeons and the seemingly lifelike glow bestowed by their tanning experts. Personal training schemes seem to be more and more the order of the day. Neither have they found the fountain of youth nor can we share their joy over the removal of loose skin, the tightening of that chin or whatever else it is that they have had done to themselves and at a price. They fool themselves and no one else in ignoring Saints Paul and Ambrose: life for me is Christ and death is so much gain.

November is a Catholic month with a mission as we beg the Lord to purify our loved ones and other poor souls in Purgatory for the fullness of life and light in the Resurrection. As you visit your parish church or local cemetery with this intention, see if you can’t free a little hand from the mouse, the joystick or the channel changer which holds them bound and take him or her along on an adventure into freedom and into life, real life which has no end.

What Matters to God

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
4-5 August 2007, Hutchinson, Kansas
Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish

“Vanity of vanities… Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and yet to another who has not labored over it, he must leave his property”.

“…seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”

“Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

The readings for this Sunday lend themselves to a real rip-roaring sermon on detachment from material things. Just quoting Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel, I guess I could really come down hard on a congregation exhorting them not only to change their ways and seek first the kingdom of God, and I could also urge them to give of what they have to help those in need, instead of leaving it to their estate. Giving a tough sermon like that, however, is a job for the pastor and not for a guest like me, so I suppose you could say that Fr. Ned is getting off easy this week. He asked me to give a missionary sort of talk to you and I’ll try to do that not losing sight of the powerful message in these readings.

“Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

What is it that matters to God? Who is it today who merits Jesus’ condemnation like the successful big farmer in the Gospel, if not the person in any walk of life and at any age who is totally caught up in himself or herself? The farmer with his storage barns for years to come is right in not worrying about next year’s drought. He’s wrong in concentrating on creature comforts as if having them was all there is to life. What are those things which “matter to God” in which we should be rich and thereby spare ourselves the Old Testament writer’s head shaking “vanity of vanities”? Let it be clear that we’re going much beyond the question posed in the First Reading of what’s the point of storing up this world’s goods with hard work and intelligence, if it means leaving them for someone else to squander? In asking what matters for God and how can I be a part of that kind of important business, I’m asking the profound and basic question concerning why I was placed on this earth and which is the way to the really big happiness which God has willed for me. It is certainly seeking God’s kingship over me, but more than that, it’s sharing joy; it’s sharing truth with all those I can. It’s sharing the wealth, not only in the material sense, but in terms of life and ideas. It’s what it means to be a missionary.
What is being missionary all about? It’s about reaching out beyond me and inviting others to know truth and share my joy. In that part of the world of today which we glorify with that funny expression “virtual reality” sharing truth and joy seems to be harder than it was in the past. People read blogs and listen to podcasts but the virtual nature of that sort of activity gives one the sense that things are just sort of out there, that people don’t really, I mean really, exchange ideas or reach out to one another.

The Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries were times when the missionary consciousness of the Catholic Church was truly dynamic. Not only were there lots of vocations to the missions from countries like France, but this was the time of the birth and growth in France and beyond of what we call today the Pontifical Mission Societies. We’re most familiar with two of them: the Propagation of the Faith, which manages the October Mission Sunday collections from around the world, and the Missionary Childhood, which works to involve small children in praying and sacrificing for the sake of other children their age in mission countries, that those children might come to know Jesus, too.
I can remember yet as a little boy in the 1950’s how strong the Missionary Society of the Holy Childhood was in our parish and school and how we used to save money and say our prayers for children elsewhere in the world that they too might come to know, love and serve God as Catholic Christians.

If I have a message for you today, that would be it. Namely, I would like to invite all here present to rediscover that kind of focus from the past now in the Twenty-first Century. My hope would be that all of you, young and old, might prize the spread of the Gospel more than creature comforts. That you would do something in proportion to your age and state in life to share the Good News about Jesus with someone else near or far.
That’s saying it a little too abruptly. In a sense you are already going beyond yourselves. You’re here today at Mass and I’m sure that you’re here on every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, offering God the praise He is due. I’m sure prayer is a part of your daily life as well, and that you strive to live a good and holy life. I’m sure that all of you parents have taught and are teaching your children their basic prayers; I am sure that you pray with them at mealtimes and most certainly also at bedtime – no doubt you talk to them about God Our Father, about Jesus, His Son and Our Lord, about Mary, the Virgin Mother of God and our Mother, too. I am confident that you all share the wealth of your faith, that you are all truly missionary, at home.
What I’m not so sure of is whether you are eager to share your faith with others farther afield, that you really are convinced that your life is at its best within the Church and that others would be happier too if they shared your same faith. I guess I’d like to see another “golden age” of missionary zeal in our day and time. I say this because I know that the little children who in significant numbers in 19th Century France dreamt of spreading the Gospel in North American or China haven’t crossed my path in the Midwest of the United States today. Whether such an environment of mission consciousness exists or not determines whether or not there will be the numerous vocations necessary to preach the Gospel to those who have not as yet heard about Jesus. I’m wondering too where the people will come from who will come to the part of the world where I serve and provide for those numbers which are missing. I had the great joy of seeing Father Boor the other day and he said that one of the big things he’s preaching about out in the Dodge City diocese where he’s helping out these days is vocations. He’s convinced and I’m sure he’s right that the Lord is calling more than enough young men and women in Western Kansas to be priests and sisters. They just have to hear the call and respond. The region of the Antilles Episcopal Conference, where I live, is not that fortunate for a lot of different reasons. The regional seminary is almost empty and that means that even if things were to turn around in a big way those good people (let’s say a million Catholics) have to face a whole generation without ordinations and desperately short of priests to celebrate Mass for them, hear their confessions and do all the things only priests can do for their people. The life of the Church in the Antilles is very much endangered.
The Caribbean is right on your door step. I’d ask you to keep your neighbors down south in your prayers. Let your prayer reach out in missionary fashion beyond your home and neighborhood.
“Lord, let the Gospel be alive in our hearts, in our parish, in our community, in our diocese. Lord, call forth priests from our parishes, from our families, from our homes for the service of your Church here in the diocese of Wichita, in the Dodge City diocese and farther afield. Lord, let the Gospel be proclaimed anew in the countries our ancestors came from. Lord, send workers into your harvest for the sake of your people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.”