God you don't scare me anymore.

I was raised in a religion of fear.  I pray that our preachers never again brandish threats of hell fire is they did in my youth.  I’m not afraid of God any longer.  What I learned is that following God in fear and trembling became a burden too great.  So I left, as so many of my generation did.  It’s not my fault – our fault – we were told so many wrong things; things that dismayed and disheartened us.  

We were constantly told it was wrong to do this or that because it was a sin and punishment was the result.  They perverted the Lord's message.  To speak of nothing but the ills and never of the healing was simply wrong.  

I learned the truth after the great Church council of my youth. Like so many councils before it, it corrected errant teaching. I learned that Jesus, came to tell us – and prove to us – that God’s love is infinite and free. Rather than the rule dominated faith of childhood, I learned to live a life worthy of Jesus Christ’s loving sacrifice for my life.  I know now he came in love to save me, and I try to respond to that love with love. 

You came to love us Lord … you came to forgive us Lord … 

you came to save us Lord … I know that now.   

How can one believe that heaven is earned?  As if love can be earned, as if love were for sale.  Jesus taught us the opposite, he taught us love is freely given!

Our call as Christians is to receive God's love … and then give it away.

The church of my childhood was a place where a decent life consisted of the regular practice of religion; we thought that keeping the rules was all that was required.  But that wasn't true … it wasn't enough … and deep in our hearts we knew it.  I now know that our call is to a loving relationship with the Lord, which then begets loving relationships with our neighbor.  

Jesus came to reveal that God is LOVE … and only love.  He even told us to call God Abba - our dear Father. Jesus came to tell us we were God's well-loved children.  He came to tell us there is only one commandment – to love like God.  

Despite Peter’s sin - his denials of Jesus - Jesus only asked him one question – 

“Do you love me, Peter?”   He asks us the exact same question today.  

Substitute your name for Peter and hear Jesus' voice asking you - 

"Do you love me, _________?" 

My only fear now Lord is the fear of 

failing to love enough – to love like you – unconditionally.  

Jesus was a rebel. What's the message for us?

Jesus broke the rules so often that the government and even the church wanted Him dead.  Where is that energy seen in the Church today?  The energy of compassion overriding the rule. 

Over and over in scripture we hear that Jesus chose to associate with people whom the rest of his contemporaries found reprehensible. According to the rule of the day, associating with known sinners or the sick or the unclean rendered a person ritually unclean and therefore unfit to participate in communal rituals, like liturgy, common meals or conversations. Fully aware of this rule, Jesus purposely moved among those with whom others would not associate. He went to their homes. He ate with them. He talked with them. He touched them and welcomed them to himself. Compassion always overruled the law.  Jesus touched lepers when the law forbade it.  He healed people on the Sabbath.  Is that spirit alive in the Church today?

His treatment of women was outrageous in his culture. He consistently treated women and men as equals. He violated numerous Old Testament regulations, which specified gender inequality.  Here are just a few examples:

• He ignored ritual impurity laws: Jesus cured a woman who suffered from menstrual bleeding for 12 years. In Judean society of the day, it was a major transgression for a man to talk to a woman other than his wife or children.
• He even talked to foreign women: John describes Jesus' conversation with a woman of Samaria. She was doubly ritually unclean since she was both a foreigner and a woman. Again he speaks to a woman in public when men were not allowed to talk to women, except within their own families.
• He taught women students: Jewish tradition at the time was to not allow women to be taught.
• He accepted women in his inner circle. You have to wonder if Jesus were here today would he call Mary Magdalene an apostle.
• Mostly women were present at Jesus' execution, the men had fled from the scene.
• He appeared first to one or more women after his resurrection 

So where is that spirit today of confronting rules and traditions that are unkind and unjust? 

In my quite prayer times I wonder: How do we show compassion to the young impoverished mother who has more children that she can feed?  How would Jesus treat the divorced Catholic.  The homosexual?  What kind of assistance would he give to those dealing with today's demons - alcohol, drug, and sex addiction?  It’s difficult to imagine that Jesus would not treat women as equal to men in every way in the twenty first century.  How would Jesus want us to relate to the Islamist?

I don’t have the answers. And my call in life is simply to follow faithfully, and to practice the most radical love I can muster. I know without a doubt that God’s love extends to all people; and His "unconditional" love is what my Church should epitomize. 

Homily - The Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

Reading:

Gospel of John - Chapter 6 – verses 51-58

Homily: 

ª   “… unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,                   you do not have life within you."  

ª  “… Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,”

These statements are dramatic to say the least.  Think what it must have been like to be there that day and hear them. The day that Jesus made these shocking statements, the Gospel tells us that the Jews started arguing saying: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 

This teaching rocked his followers!

   

Regrettably, we don’t hear the conclusion of this story from John’s Gospel.  The story goes on and it says: “Many of his followers heard this and said, ‘This teaching is too hard. Who can listen to it?’” And it tells us that because of this teaching many of Jesus' followers turned away, and would not go with him anymore.  This moment was actually so bad that he turned to the twelve Apostles and the passage says: “… he asked the twelve disciples, ‘And you—would you also like to leave?’”

Think about that … His whole mission hung on this moment.

He looked at his closest followers – the 12 apostles – and said: Do you want to leave too? You have to wonder what history would look like if they too rejected this teaching.

 

Eating his flesh drinking his blood – who wouldn’t be confused?!

It’s interesting that even though it looked like this teaching might cause him to lose all his followers, Jesus didn’t retract these statements.  He didn’t say he was only speaking symbolically.  He stood there that day and basically said, believe this teaching or walk away.

Did his closest apostles stop being confused by this teaching?

                  

Of course not, but they trusted him.  They had enough faith in Him to continue on. I am sure they thought, at some point, it would all make sense.  And it did! It made sense the night before He died. As Jesus sat with his disciples at the Last Supper, he picked up a loaf of bread. He broke it; prayed over it and said: THIS is my body. Then he picked up the cup and said: THIS is my blood.

That night was an A-ha moment for the Apostles, a moment of sudden insight about this whole incredible teaching.  Finally it made sense for them – in the Eucharist.

Scott Hahn had that same A-ha moment when he went to daily Mass one day.  Scott Hahn is a theologian and one of the most prolific writers in the Catholic Church today. Scott’s books are some of the best read Catholic books ever written.  But when Scott was young he was militantly anti-Catholic. For example, he gave out anti-Catholic literature in front of Churches.  He ripped apart a rosary in anger, and tore up a Catholic prayer book. So what changed this man from a Catholic hater to one of the most important Catholic authors of all time?

As a young man, after his seminary training, Scott became pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Virginia. He also became a part-time instructor at a local Presbyterian seminary. The first course he was assigned to teach was the “Gospel According to John.”  While preparing for chapter 6 from which we just read something happened to him. He began to question what he’d been taught, and was now teaching others, about the Eucharist – that it was only a symbol of Christ’s body, not the real body of Christ.

This questioning started a journey that led him into the Catholic Church. He began studying Catholic teaching. And the more he learned, the more convinced he became that Christ was present in the Eucharist – body and blood, humanity and divinity. Then one weekday he decided to do something that he never dreamed he would ever do. He decided to attend a daily Mass. He writes in his book which is called Rome Sweet Home, “All of a sudden I realized this was the setting in which the Bible was meant to be read – in the Mass. Then came the Liturgy of the Eucharist.” Hahn said that when the priest held up the Host, after the words of consecration, all doubt about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist vanished.     

              

He wrote:  “With all my heart I whispered 'My Lord and my God.'”

He concludes saying: “I left the chapel not telling a soul where I had been or what I had done. But the next day I was back, and the next, and the next. I don’t know how to say it other than to say, I had fallen in love with our Lord in the Eucharist!”

Like so many converts Scott gained an enthusiastic love of for the Eucharist.  This reminds us of the tragic fact that we who are cradle Catholics tend to take the Eucharist for granted. This is not due to irreverence on our part, or a lack of faith in Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.  It is simply due to something that happens to every human being with the passage of time, namely we tend to take things and people for granted.

This is exactly why the Church sets aside this Sunday, to remind us of the great gift we have in the Eucharist.  Today as you walk down the aisle to receive Communion in a few minutes, focus your thoughts in a special way on who it is you will receive – the Body of Christ.

ª   You will receive the Body of the same Christ who was born in a stable. 

ª  You will receive the Body of the same Christ who died on the cross.

ª  You will receive the Body of the same Christ who rose on Easter.

This is the message of today’s readings.

This is the mystery we celebrate in this liturgy.

My friends this is what unites us !

This is what makes us the Body of Christ alive in the world. 

Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

The wisdom of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., 

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

Consider asking yourself these questions:

•           Who do I spend my time with?

•           What do I spend my time doing?

•           Where do I feel pulled or drawn in in my life?

•           Where do I feel expectations pushing me, 

             like I “should” rather than “want” to do?

•           How do I see God active in my everyday life?

What if we looked at our lives as one big unfolding endeavor of love, where what we chose to be and do was out of a place of love?  Imagine how generative we would be with our talents, skills, and pursuits if we could intentionally listen how to God (Love) is calling us to become our true selves. 

One great tool for listening to God is to examine our lives at the end of each day.  

Saint Ignatius taught a technique known as Examen to accomplish this 

– go ahead, give it a try!

1. Become aware of God’s presence. 

    Pause for a few moments to be quiet and still.

2. Review the day with gratitude. 

    Take a moment to give thanks for all that you experienced as gift.

3. Pay attention to your emotions. 

    Scan the day and see where your energy was life-giving or life-draining.

4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it. 

    Identify where you would like to grow and change.

5. Look toward tomorrow. 

    Ask for the light or grace needed to live more fully next time.

Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

The parable of the Two Wolves.

The parable of the Two Wolves.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on

 inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

“One is Evil - It is … anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, 

self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good - It is … joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness,  benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, confidence, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:

           “Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied:

          “The one you feed."

The choice is yours …

Which wolf will you feed?

Memorial Day 2014 - some thoughts on hope and despair.

Reflection – Hope and Despair

 Paraphrased from Thomas Merton:

How close God is to us when we come to a point in our lives

that we know and accept our desperation

and cast our care entirely upon Him.

Against all human expectation He sustains us

when we need to be sustained,

helping us to do what seemed impossible.

We learn to know Him … really know Him …

not as we conjure Him in our imaginative powers

- a presence in which we dress Him in our own finery –

but in the emptiness of a hope that may come close to despair.

For perfect hope

is achieved on the brink of despair when,

instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on the air. 

Hope is always just about to turn into despair,

but never does so,

for at the moment of supreme crisis

God's power is suddenly made perfect in our infirmity. 

So we learn to expect

His mercy most calmly when all is most dangerous, 

to seek Him quietly in the face of peril, certain that He cannot fail us.

Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter – cycle A - "I am the way ... the truth ... and the life."

Readings:  Acts 6:1-7; 1 Peter 2:4-9;  – Gospel  – John 14:1-12

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, then you will also know my Father.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”  Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own.  The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.  Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Homily:

The scene of this scripture passage is the Last Supper. The apostles are confused.  Jesus was just given a triumphant entrance into the city.  He is at the pinnacle of his popularity. The people are ready to crown him their King – their Messiah. He had what the world says is valuable fame, popularity, success. Yet right at this moment of triumph, he tells them he is going to be put to death.  Then he gets down on his hands and knees and washes their feet like a slave.  And He tells them, “I am going to prepare a place for you. Where I am going you know the way.”

They are reeling.  They are in shock. They are totally confused.  Their world has been turned upside down.  Thomas and Philip say:  Where are you going?  Master we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?  Master just show us the Father that will be enough!

They don’t get it. They don’t see what’s going on.  They don’t understand that He came to give his life away … for us … for our salvation.  They don't understand that he came to die and then go prepare a place for us with him. 

They did not understand that this was His ultimate goal, his reason for coming, to prepare a place for us with the Father.  Jesus says, and you can almost hear the sadness in his voice, 

“Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me?"

In a way, this scene allows us to be a bit more understanding of our age; an age that also seems confused about Jesus and his mission.  Jesus could say today the same thing as he said that day: 

Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know Me?

He says to us:  

I am the way … 

but many in the world seem so lost, wondering aimlessly, heading the wrong way.

I am the truth … 

and yet so many chose to embrace the lies of the world.

I am the life … 

yet people are living such lifeless lives, depressed, addicted and dying inside.

The problem we face as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, is that ... his way ... his truth ... and his life ... looks crazy to the world.  As St. Peter said it in the second reading, his way - truth - and life have been rejected by human beings.  His ways are a stumbling block for the world.  But for us, they should be the cornerstone on which our lives are built.  The early church the church of the apostles and first deacons, after his death and resurrection, “got it.” So much so, they called their movement “The Way.”  They completely accepted the teaching that believing in Him and living as He lived was the right way to live.

And what is that way? 

It is to believe in the TRUTH that Jesus spoke; and to embrace the WAY of LIFE that Jesus lived.

And how did Jesus live? 

Jesus humbled himself. He became one of us. Being in his very nature God,  he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant. He took on our humanity and then gave his life so we might live.  Rather than us serving Him, he came to serve us.

Jesus’ way, his truth and life are the opposite of the world’s way. Jesus’ way, his truth and life come from living unselfishly, even sacrificially; humbling ourselves like Him, serving others, giving up our lives so others might live.  When and where do we do this?  Ideally, parents do this, husbands and wives do this, true friends do this, co-workers, neighbors, parishioners do this.  Living as Jesus calls us to live – unselfishly – sacrificially – can be hard; and when it is.  When it isn’t easy serving others, remember what Jesus said that day, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Whenever living as a Christian,  living the way, the truth, the life that Jesus dares us 

to live seems a bit daunting,  a bit challenging, a bit too counter cultural, a bit uncomfortable.  Read this verse as slowly as you like, and savor it like honey – 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”