tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31395097731716506092023-11-15T22:07:21.585-08:00STILL Living the QuestionsFather Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-84173874484509520762016-05-15T12:22:00.001-07:002016-05-15T12:24:35.961-07:00Pentecost Sunday<div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is a pious story I recall from childhood about St. Augustine walking along a beach one day pondering and reflecting on the Trinity. He finds a young child digging a hole in the sand. Repeatedly, the child takes a few steps to the ocean, fills a small pail with water, and dumps the water into the hole. When asked by St. Augustine what he is doing, the child casually explains that he is putting the ocean into the hole. St. Augustine laughs and tells the child he could never do such a thing in a million years. The child tells St. Augustine that neither could he ever understand the Trinity on which he is reflecting.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yes, we cannot </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">understand the doctrine of the Trinity. We can reflect on it and we can pray about it; we can find meaning in it for our own faith. But there is no way to explain it. On this feast of Pentecost we celebrate one aspect of our Trinitarian life - the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. Pentecost means 50. We are 50 days from Easter and our celebration of the second Person of the Trinity. We refer to today as the birthday of the Church. It is the end of the Easter season and tomorrow begins Ordinary Time. These are liturgical terms that signify change in the way we worship during this season. Pentecost is the culmination of the work of Jesus on earth. Just as he ended his time on earth by ascending to the Father, so now he Jesus sends the Holy Spirit who he promised would guide the Apostles in their ministry of preaching the good news about Himself.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We continue to receive this gift of the Holy Spirit specifically through the sacrament of Confirmation. Bishop Robert Barron identifies three ways in which this sacrament strengthens Christians: the Spirit strengthens us in our relationship to Jesus; the Spirit strengthens us in our capacity to defend the faith; the Spirit strengthens us in our capacity to spread the faith.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yet if we associate this Spirit only with the sacrament of Confirmation, then we have missed much that is vital in our lives of faith. The Spirit is alive among us to guide us in our daily lives of faith, in the decisions we make, in the way we live.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">St. Cyril of Jerusalem, one of the Church Fathers, tells us that for the first believers it seemed that as long as Christ was with them they “possessed every blessing in him.” But “when the time came for him to ascend to his heavenly Father, it was necessary for him to be united through his Spirit to those who worshiped him, and to dwell in our hearts through faith.” St. Cyril continues, “Only by his own presence within us in this way could he give us confidence to cry out, <i>Abba, Father,</i> make it easy for us to grow in holiness and, through our possession of the all-powerful Spirit, fortify us invincibly against the wiles of the devil and the assaults of men.”</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Spirit is the active life of the Trinity within us that transforms us. We even hear of the work of the Spirit in the Old Testament. The prophet Samuel, for example, said “The Spirit of the Lord will take possession of you, and you shall be changed into another man.” St. Paul wrote, “As we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, that glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, transforms us all into his own likeness, from one degree of glory to another.”</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What happened to the Apostles after the Ascension of Jesus? They hid away in that Upper Room spending time worthily in prayer and reflection, it is true. But they were afraid to go out of that room and face what is in the world. Is that not how we often carry our own Christianity? In its extreme, we are sometimes tempted to fill the moat around our castles, pull up the drawbridge, and withdraw from all that is taking place in our world because we fear being destroyed by it. We are often afraid to confront and face the world which is hostile to us and we try to remain closed up in our own upper rooms. Pope Francis calls us to be missionaries. Once the Apostles received the Spirit, they went forth to preach and to teach. They were strengthened in their relationship to Jesus by that gift of the Spirit. They were strengthened in their capacity to defend the faith. They were strengthened in their capacity to spread the faith. In St. Cyril’s words, the strength the Apostles “received from the Spirit enabled them to hold firmly to the love of Christ, facing the violence of their persecutors unafraid.”</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a word, the Apostles overcame the fear they had because the world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket. The world was a frightful place. And it can still be so. But it is all too easy for us as Christians to forget that God is running this show. He is the one in charge. It is human for us to be afraid of our own attempts to confront and change the world. Thomas Merton called this the spirituality of evasion. In 1963 Merton referred to this ‘spirituality’ as a “cult of other worldliness that refuses to take account of the inescapable implication of all men in the problems and responsibilities of the nuclear age.” This spirituality of evasion is not a spirituality at all. It is the extreme of what was happening to the Apostles after having been cooped up in the upper room for a while. They were afraid to go out and face their critics, their enemies, their accusers. But then the Spirit descended on them. And that changed everything. It changed the world.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is no less true today. Jesus had to go to his Father so the Spirit could come to us and strengthen us to continue Jesus’ work through this Spirit. It is what each and every Christian is called t be. We are all witnesses of the truth of the life of Jesus. We cannot help but live a life of witness to his truth and to preach in his name if so called. Some of those who heard the Apostles on Pentecost thought them drunk. So be it! Whatever names we may be called, we are not free <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not</span> to live as witnesses to the Gospel. We must speak the name of Jesus!</span></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-18386524392929736952016-04-12T10:14:00.001-07:002016-04-12T10:21:28.138-07:00Two loves of the Apostle Peter<div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the seventh chapter of the Apostolic Exhortation <i>Amoris Letitia</i>, Pope Francis addresses the education of children by their parents. The question he says is not where our children are physically, or whom they are with but where are they existentially, where they stand in terms of their convictions, goals, desires and dreams. "Do we seek to understand where our children are in their journey? Where is their soul, do we know? Do we really want to know?"</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Saint John Paul II once proposed the so-called “law of gradualness” in the knowledge that the human being “knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth”.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Language is everything. We use language to communicate and we had better know what we mean to say lest we commit ourselves to something we'd rather not. Communication between parents and children can frequently be a battle zone.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In reading the Scriptures, complexities can trouble us or puzzle us or confuse us or just excite and enlighten us. Various feelings come forth in the gospel for the third Sunday of Easter. In the liturgical celebration, we are invited to read a longer form or a shorter form. The longer form, the whole of chapter 21 of the Gospel of John, has two sections. In the first section, the Apostles go fishing after the death of Jesus. From this source it would appear that they are trying to get themselves back to a kind of normalcy in which they return to their previous occupation and keep themselves occupied by doing what they always knew best. But Jesus appears to them and the simple task of putting food on the table turns into an instruction on faith.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The second section of this Gospel uses two different verbs in Peter's expression of love for Jesus. Anyone familiar with C.S. Lewis’s <i>The Four Loves</i> knows there are at least four different Greek verbs for the English word ‘love.’ <i>Storge</i>, for example, is a word indicating parental love. <i>Eros</i> indicates passionate love. <i>Philia</i> is friendship and <i>Agape</i> is unconditional love. Scripture was first composed in the Greek language. When Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Jesus uses the verb form <i>agape</i>. But Peter responds with the verb <i>philia</i> when he tells Jesus, “Of course, I love you.” Jesus repeats the question using <i>agape</i> again and Peter once again responds with <i>philia</i>. But then a twist. The third time Jesus asks the question he uses the verb Peter uses - <i>philia</i>. Jesus approaches Peter at his level. He meets Peter where he is. Peter is not ready to profess an undying commitment to Jesus. It has only been a short time since he betrayed him, after all. But Jesus knew he would give himself completely eventually.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What is going on? Peter is yet a child in his profession of faith. Peter is being reconciled with Jesus, but at a slower pace, a gradual one. Just as he denied Jesus three times so now Peter three times professes his love for Jesus. Jesus is calling Peter to a companionship with lots of strings, suffering and dying for Jesus. This demands unconditional love - <i>agape</i>. But Peter only offers a lesser yet important kind of love - <i>philia</i> - however good and helpful it may be. Yet Jesus then tells him that someday he will indeed get there. Peter will indeed give his life for Jesus. </span></div><div style="margin: 0px; min-height: 13px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What does this mean for us in pastoral ministry? We recognize the importance of suffering with Christ but we have to recognize that not everyone is ready to follow Jesus to the cross the first time they meet him. We draw one another into that suffering over time. We can't just be pushed or prodded into it. Jesus will welcome us when we are ready.</span></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-29705640148489333942016-03-17T17:27:00.001-07:002016-03-18T08:37:09.460-07:00Friday Week 5 in Lent 2016Jeremiah hears the whisperings of many. The whispers say, "Denounce him." Even Jeremiah's friends speak against him. They look for a way to trap him. He is the Lord's prophet and the people he addresses will have none of him. They will not listen to his words which are God's words. But Jeremiah is not cowed by their threats. Most of the selection for today's first reading in the liturgy is Jeremiah's threat to his enemies. He is very certain that God is with him, that God will protect him and save him.<div><br></div><div>God tests the just, he claims, which is why Jeremiah can speak so optimistically, so assuredly. He knows God so well. He knows God's desire that Jeremiah suffer is how Jeremiah is subjected to God's testing of him. The Lord probes the mind and the heart. Jeremiah lives in the knowledge that God knows him through and through. Thus Jeremiah can praise the Lord. He can rejoice in the Lord even though he is the object of persecution by his own countrymen. He recognizes himself having been rescued by God.<div><br></div><div>Jesus does not just hear whisperings in the Gospe reading. Men are actually picking up stones ready to destroy Jesus. Why, Jesus wants to know? You blaspheme, they tell him. You are making yourself God. There is some clever word play here on Jesus' part. Scripture says, "You are gods, so why can I not say I am the son of God?" But forget all that. "Recognize me by what I do if you cannot believe'" he tells his enemies. Not infrequently we ask one another to prove that we are who we say we are by demanding we act accordingly. "If I don't do the work of God," Jesus announces, "don't believe me. But if I do the work of God, acknowledge the goodness of the works. Thus, see God in me." God is in Jesus just as much as Jeremiah recognized what God had done in him.</div><div><br></div><div>So Jesus goes back across the Jordan and many come to him now because they do believe.</div><div><br></div><div>All of Lent has been a preparation for the coming week. All of Lent precedes Holy Week and the death of Jesus. Just as all of our lives are a preparation for our deaths, so with Jesus. Lent is very serious now. If we have paid attention to the Scripture, we have been aware that Jesus is stretching his disciples as well as the people of Israel. He is pushing the envelope. He is challenging us to follow him further. This is not just about saying our prayers and sticking with our petty Lenten 'sacrifices'. This is about following Jesus to the cross.</div><div><br></div><div>Have you ever sat with someone who is dying? One way to look at this week is to imagine yourself accompanying a dying person. Years ago I was called out of my sleep to anoint a parishioner in a hospital known to be dying of cancer but who had taken a turn for the worse. I was told he would not live through the morning. I went to see him, found him sitting up in bed, looking very alert and speaking as articulately and clearly as any two-person conversation might be. When he saw me, he asked me if it was as bad as that? I anointed him, chatted with him a bit, left, and he was dead within the next six hours.</div><div><br></div><div>Jesus is on his way to his death. Can we go with him and watch him die? Can we sit beside him and watch him as he goes through his suffering and death? We are going to want to look for things to do while we are waiting for him to die - check our email or the latest Instagram or Snapchat we've received. We are going to want to turn on some tunes with our headsets so we don't have to think about death. We are going to want to turn on the TV which is only a distraction to us and just noise to the dying. We are going to want to find excuses for leaving his bedside - I have to use the bathroom - I need a smoke - I need to eat. Anything to keep ourselves from watching Jesus die. And as horrific as the scenes of Jesus' passion were in the movie, it was, after all, only a movie, and the actors might have shown up at the end of the film to take their bows. But Jesus really died. And his desth was agonizing and ugly.</div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">He invites us to die with him. Every time we are asked to live in His name, we are invited to die with Him. I resist that and I suspect you do too. As we look to Holy Week, would you seriously consider staying with this dying man? Would you willingly accompany him on his final journey and stay with him through the pain of his suffering and carry him to his place of rest?</span></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-11840848129807047962015-02-19T15:31:00.000-08:002015-02-19T15:31:37.596-08:00Travel may not improve the mind<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px;">
There is a travel program on PBS the narrator of which always concludes by quoting Mark Twain who wrote “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”</div>
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That's good advice to any of us who have thoughts that we live on the only piece of ground worth living on. Even Jesus learned that as we see in the Gospel of Mark.</div>
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The Genesis accounts of creation explain to us that God is doing something new. Every day of creation was something new. In one of the accounts, God created man and woman, human beings. Something really new. </div>
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God's creation ultimately resulted in the birth of his son who ministers first to his own people, the Israelites, the Jews. But in the Gospel of Mark we also see Jesus traveling to foreign territory, to Gentile territory. And while we know the Gentiles were pagans, it doesn't really mean much to us. If we put it in terms of today, we might understand it better if we saw the wall that divides Israel from the rest of Palestine. Like my generation did with the Berlin wall, the wall dividing Israel from Palestine has become something taken for granted by my generation. Or, when I was growing up there were parts of Indianapolis an East side white boy never visited because blacks lived there. Now it is frequently Latino populations. There are people different from us.</div>
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The human Jesus is at a period in his life when he has a bit of anxiety, uncomfortableness, uncertainty about who he is, about his mission. Today he is in pagan territory. Perhaps he had to pass through it to get to where he wanted to go but he is known as well here as he is on his home turf. And he is stopped by a woman seeking healing not for herself but for her daughter. </div>
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Jesus is obviously edgey for he insults here. He shows absolutely no compassion at all. She is a dog. The Greek word here is puppy, but that still doesn't soften it. The woman is no better than an animal. But the woman is not cowed. There was grace here. The woman comes back at him and Jesus recognizes her and answers her for her persistence and courage. The woman will not give up because her need is desperate.</div>
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Is there not desperation among millions of people in our world? Refugees flood nearly every developed country in the world. There are also refugees who hide among us, the homeless, the unemployed. Did you see the video of Pope Francis making an unscheduled stop at the shantytown outside Rome on his way to visit a Rome parish? We may not think there are desperate people in this country but have you visited a nursing home recently?</div>
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What happens with Jesus? He talks with the woman and he responds to her desperation. In the Gospel of Mark it is the first indication that Jesus' ministry will not just remain among the Jews. Jesus has had a lesson in overcoming prejudice and bigotry. Jesus has talked with the woman and his anxiety lessened.</div>
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At a very simple level we too need to engage in dialogue with those we do not understand or dislike or don't want to know even here. We are in foreign lands when we feel the discomfort of a new situation. We have only to face it head on in order to deflate the balloons of prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.</div>
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Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-69851544513738280522015-01-18T16:18:00.001-08:002015-01-22T09:25:53.704-08:00Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians reminds us our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. "Glorify God in your body" is Paul's admonition.<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> "You are not your own."</span><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">In 1954 Flannery O'Connor published a short story titled "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" in which two 14-year old girls who attend a convent boarding school identify themselves as Temple One and Temple Two mocking the nun who repeatedly reminds them they are temples of the Holy Ghost. On a weekend visit with a distant cousin, the two girls attend a fair at which they see a hermaphrodite in a freak show. The hermaphrodite keeps repeating to the crowd that "God done this to me and I praise Him. He could strike you thisaway." Later it is the cousin who is most affected by this and who has a vision of the sun as "an elevated Host drenched in blood .. "</span><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The two girls live in their own world until, for the sake of adventure, they go to see this freak show, something that is totally other than their 'teeny-bopper' selves.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The first reading for the second Sunday in Ordinary Time reveals the boy Samuel living in his own world. He is to be trained by his mentor Eli. Samuel is a boy who likes his sleep. Three times he is awakened by a voice and each time he believes it is Eli calling him. The third time Eli recognizes that God is calling the boy and he tells Samuel when he hears the voice again to reply, "Speak Lord, your servant is listening." Samuel lived in his own world and could not recognize God's call to him. He did not know he was a temple of the Holy Spirit.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Two disciples of John the Baptist in the Gospel today are told Jesus is the lamb of God. They immediately follow Jesus and one of them, Andrew, takes the news to his own brother Peter. These men all lived in their own worlds until they saw or heard Jesus calling them. What attracted them to Jesus? Scripture is never full of detail. We only receive basic information. Whatever it is, Jesus pulls them out of their own worlds and invites them into his world. He invites them to something new and different. Andrew and Peter are called in their own bodies to become temples of the Holy Spirit, to glorify God in their bodies now by following Jesus and living in a new way.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">During his recent trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis identified three challenges for young people to the religious leaders of the University of Santo Tomas. One is integrity. He told them that learning to love was their greatest challenge and that in doing so they must maintain their own integrity. Learn to love and be loved. Secondly, he said, it is important to care for the environment. Thirdly, we must care for the poor.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Recent weeks have shown us so much violence in our world. Fear is corrupting each of us. As followers of Christ, we cannot allow ourselves ro be governed by fear. We are temples of the Holy Spirit and recognize that there is more to this life than what we find on any of our electronic devices, including television or the movies. Pope Francis also reminded us that we are accountable to Christ for our speech and our action.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">We glorify God in our bodies and become temples of the Holy Spirit when we leave our own worlds and move out to follow Jesus, when we listen to his call to us, when we say yes to the one who calls us to live his life. Scripture readings in the liturgy this past week have shown us Jesus moving forward, moving beyond his own world, beyond his home at Nazareth. He cures and heals and he goes to pray. But then he moves on. Crowds want him to stay and get comfortable with him but Jesus must reach others. He must move on. He is not his own. Neither are we.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-65557264819943016452015-01-08T16:44:00.001-08:002015-01-16T04:47:31.576-08:00Saints and seminariansOur seminarians at Bishop Brute visited the shrine of St. Mother Theodore Guerin at the end of their retreat this week. Following our four day experience at St. Meinrad, we trekked to Terre Haute and the few miles outside the city to St. Mary of the Woods College and the shrine on the grounds that now house the historical beginnings of the Sisters of Providence.<div><br></div><div>While still a priest of the archdiocese, I had frequent interaction with Sr. Ann Kathleen Brawley, who served many years as archdiocesan archivist. Sister Ann Kathleen would share much about Mother Theodore, the founding of the Woods campus and the process for canonization. She once showed me some translations of the correspondence between Mother Theodore and Bishop Hailandiere. Hailandiere became bishop of the diocese of Vincennes following the death of Bishop Brute who brought the Sisters of Providence from France to the wilderness of Indiana to establish schools and begin a mission of education. His death occurred before their arrival, however.</div><div><br></div><div>The relationship between the Bishop Hailandiere and Mother Theodore was contentious because Mother Theodore fought ferociously for her sisters against some of the unjust demands of the bishop. At one point he locked her in her room, removed her as superior, and began making assignments of the sisters much against the order's constitutions. He excommunicated her as well. What saved the day was the bishop's resignation and return to France where he lived another 35 years. Reconciliation did come between him and the order but not until after Mother Theodore died.</div><div><br></div><div>What struck me about the correspondence was the depth of emotion expressed. Both Mother Theodore and the bishop were cultured and well-educated Frenchwoman and Frenchman living in a wilderness still untamed. They likely both understood each other very well. They both likely experienced a great deal of loneliness. Neither had others to whom they could easily relate. Their correspondence reveals this in indirect ways. Yet each was set on a course of dedication to a mutual cause expressed by very different interpretations. The correspondence is so revealing, in fact, that at the time I thought Mother Theodore will never be canonized. There is too much humanness in the correspondence. And yet it happened.</div><div><br></div><div>The shrine which just opened this past fall is a most impressive experience and well worth a day trip to St. Mary of the Woods. Artefacts used by Mother Theodore are present as is a lengthy timeline on the wall of one hallway revealing events in the life of Mother Theodore, the Church, and the larger history of the world. There are dioramas of life in the wilderness in 1840. Her remains have been moved to a shrine room and encased in a wooden coffin made locally from native trees. The room itself is quite prayerful. Our group was directed by Sr. Nancy Nolan, a former superior general, who was both welcoming and thorough in her presentation. A half hour film at the beginning of the tour covers the history of the American branch of the Sisters of Providence.</div><div><br></div><div>We ended our tour with a visit to the beautiful Blessed Sacrament chapel in the larger Church of the Immaculate Conception followed by Mass in that church. One of our students, who is from Effingham, Illinois, told me that when driving back and forth between Effingham and Indianapolis, he has often stopped at the Woods for a few minutes of prayer in that chapel.</div><div><br></div><div>The visit to the shrine was a fitting end to a week retreat. It is a truly exciting find in Catholic heritage in Indiana.<div><br></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-50862744476198568672015-01-01T14:17:00.001-08:002015-01-04T09:06:46.825-08:00We've only just begunAnother year. The tenth semester of ministering to young college men aspiring to the priesthood is about to unfold. Like a book in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, I wonder what new adventures lie along the travels in Middle Earth as these men seek the answers to questions both imagined and real. Or are we beginning an episode more in the style of "Downton Abbey" in which melodrama often seems to overcome the good sense of people who otherwise move inexorably toward a future of love and sacrifice?<div><br></div><div>Working with this lot is not easy. The difficult part has less to do with the seminarians than it does with my peers. I am a priest from a generation designated by Andrew Greeley as a 'new breed.' Most young men today do not know who Andrew Greeley was and even less do they know that term - new breed. Neither can they appreciate the excitement that priests and especially laity felt at the time I was ordained for many things these young men take for granted were new or unknown to us at that time. The activity and responsibility of the laity alone are perhaps the most significant differences in the two ages. But it is difficult to explain to young men today.</div><div><br></div><div>Realizing that they too were a part of the Church was a concept that was totally new and unexpected for the laity. Young people today can't understand that before Vatican II the laity had only to show up to Mass on Sunday. That was basically the extent of their responsibility as a Catholic Christian. That's why the Council provoked such excitement. The laity discovered they too had a place in the Church. They were not simply receptors of what clergy offered, like feeding animals in a zoo. No wonder expectations ran high. It was like Zechariah's lips being opened on a large scale. But expectations could never be fulfilled. Clergy had spent little energy preparing the laity for acceptance of their rightful role in the Church.</div><div><br></div><div>Now there is frequently great disaffection between the Church and many of those Catholics who, though well-educated, counted themselves as members of a Church that had for so long kept them in the dark about so many things. These are my peers. They worry that the new crop of potential priests will withdraw the riches to which they have become accustomed like mean parents who tease their children with loss of a gift given and then taken away for reasons unexplained. They ask me, for example, <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">how conservative the seminarians are. My peers often worry about seminarians' attachments to devotions. What my generation threw out, many of them have retrieved.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Seminarians are indeed often attached to non-essentials but they are young and inexperienced. It is only by encouraging their prayer and study that their focus begins to correct itself. The most important thing is not that there is a crucifix on the altar but that the altar is the place where the Eucharistic sacrifice occurs.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Still many of my generation have become moribund in their expectations because they keep making the same mistakes generations before them made. They presume future generations want the same thing they do. They have gotten used to thinking that the Church of 1965 should be the Church of 2015. All of us need to remain open to the work of the Spirit. God moves us forward to more challenge and not to places of rest and comfortability.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-58224890253969343152014-12-29T17:40:00.001-08:002015-01-01T13:32:04.406-08:00One's orenda needs careSome friends who live in western Indiana had me visit during the Christmas holidays. Years ago they completed what had been a weekend cabin for themselves and their children and today they enjoy a beautiful and somewhat rambling retirement home somewhere in the woods.<div><br></div><div>I've previously visited them and one of the things I most enjoy about seeing them is that they have a huge library of books, all of which they've read, and continue to read. One wall of their living room is full of books as is another wall in an upstairs loft. They are both voracious readers. Cynthia worked for me at one time and she continues to regularly put forth practical wisdom in the archdiocesan newspaper. She and her husband Ed continue to travel as well given that their family is scattered from the East coast to Europe. One family member, their eldest son, a retired naval officer, was in an English comp and lit class I taught about 40 years ago.</div><div><br></div><div>I am always eager to catch up on Ed and Cynthia's lives and adventures and reading. They are regular participants in conferences about Ernest Hemingway and are looking forward to one in his home town Oak Park, Illinois, in the coming year.</div><div><br><div>This year I told them of discovering a new book of fiction and for me a new writer. "The Orenda" is a book I couldn't put down and yet it is a book that did not leave me with warm, fuzzy feelings. Narrated by three different people, the story relates the clash of cultures between two tribes of native Americans and the French Jesuit missionaries of New France in the 17th century. Bird is a Wendat (Huron) who has killed an Iroquois family taking the daughter as his own. The daughter, named Snow Falls, does everything she can to alienate Bird but eventually comes to accept her new life. A French Jesuit missionary priest named Christophe is abandoned by his native guides and taken prisoner by Bird. All three provide the narration, obviously from different perspectives and motives, and the novel moves relentlessly toward a tragic end.</div><div><br></div><div>Christophe seeks converts. Bird seeks the welfare of his tribe, dependent on agriculture, and now prepares to move them to a new place as their planting grounds have become exhausted. Snow Falls only wants to return to her people. Each wants to outdo the other.</div><div><br></div><div>The title is a word defined as "<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">a</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">supernatural</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">force</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">believed</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">by</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Iroquois Indians</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">to</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">be</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">present,</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">varying</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">degrees,</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">in</span> all objects <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">or</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">persons,</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">to</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">be</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">spiritual</span> force by <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">which</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">human</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">accomplishment</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">is</span> <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">attained</span> or accounted <span class="oneClick-link" style="box-sizing: border-box;">for." Just what each seeks to accomplish is far more simple and ordinary than modern ambitions demand. </span></span></div><div><br></div><div>I came across the book while working at the Jesuit Martyrs' Shrine in Midland, Ontario this past summer. Someone there told me about this novel by a Canadian writer that was apparently quite popular in Canada. Published in 2013 it is the third novel of Joseph Boyden and I enjoyed it such that I now want to read more of his work. When I told Ed and Cynthia about this, Cynthia commented to me that she thought it was exciting not just to find a new book one enjoys reading but to find a new author and to want to read more of that author's writing.</div><div><br></div><div>Though historical fiction, Boyden takes liberties with his characters and events. The story roughly follows that of the Jesuit missionaries in New France. Christophe is modeled on Jean de Brebeuf though he often exhibits much less compassion and understanding of the natives than the Jesuit relations, the letters the missionaries sent back to France, convey. Two other Jesuits who arrive later - one named Gabriel and the other named Isaac - suggest Gabriel Lalemant and Isaac Jogues. In fact, the Isaac in the novel had his fingers chewed off in torture by the natives as the real Isaac Jogues did. But the novel's Isaac also loses his mental stability toward the end and attempts to poison everyone as the Iroquois attack so they may avoid similar torture.</div><div><br></div><div>The book is not an easy read because of the narrative style and because it is quite graphic in its depiction of torture. What helped put the story in perspective, however, and what left me with a very slight glimmer of hope, was the book's last line as Bird invokes his native goddess's wisdom. "What's happened in the past can't stay in the past (because) the future is always just a breath away. Now is what's most important. Orenda can't be lost, just misplaced. The past and the future are present."</div><div><br></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-62259595265314579442014-12-29T16:54:00.001-08:002014-12-30T21:12:17.381-08:00God's tendernessI have a friend who cared for his brother in the last few months of the brother's illness from cancer. The brother was a successful man, single, and in need of nothing materially. The brother was not a man of faith, at least, not a man of faith who followed certain religious practices. The brother had abandoned these a long time ago and my friend stated that his brother had great difficulty understanding or accepting any notion of faith. What did make sense to him was the virtue of hope and that's where they left their discussions on faith - with the possibility of hope. The brother was heard to say before he died, "I am receptive!". Had he heard someone invite him to greater hope? To whom was the brother speaking? No one knows.<div><br></div><div>Abraham received promises from God that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky (Genesis 15). Abraham was an old man and he and his wife Sarah were childless. Yet Sarah bore a son. Abraham put his faith in the Lord. He believed God and he hoped. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that "by faith" Abraham obeyed and led his people from their home in the Chaldees and walked to Palestine. "By faith" Abraham obeyed and received the power to generate. Again Abraham obeyed and "by faith" offered up his son Isaac. Abraham believed that God's promises would be fulfilled. How is such faith possible?</div><div><br></div><div>Simeon and Anna waited in prayer in the Temple to see God's promise fulfilled. Simeon understood from the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he would see 'God's consolation' with his own eyes. Simeon trusted God with great faith and lived in the hope that God's promise would come true. Anna gave praise and thanksgiving for the fulfillment of the promise. Both lived in faith and awaited the fulfillment of God's promise in hope.</div><div><br></div><div><div>In his homily for midnight Mass, Pope Francis asked, "How do we welcome the tenderness of God? Do I allow myself to be taken up by God, to be embraced by him, or do I prevent him from drawing close? 'But I am searching for the Lord' – we could respond. Nevertheless, what is most important is not seeking him, but rather allowing him to find me and caress me with tenderness. The question put to us simply by the Infant’s presence is: do I allow God to love me?" Somehow Abraham, Simeon, and Anna all let God love them. God sought each of them and loved them. It is a challenge to admit that none sought God themselves but God sought each of them.</div><div><br></div></div><div>These figures of the Old Testament experienced the tenderness of God. This seems so despite the difficulties each experienced - Abraham uprooted his family and moved to a strange new land. Then God asked him to sacrifice his son. Simeon waited patiently for an answer to prayer. Anna endured her life as a widow. Did my friend's brother experience God's tenderness through his care?</div><div><br></div><div>God's tenderness often seems absent in our relationships with one another. Only by offering it to someone else can we receive it ourselves. What opportunities do I have to provide tenderness to those in need of faith and hope?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-86422359029166034422014-12-19T05:38:00.001-08:002014-12-23T14:02:57.086-08:00Turning hearts aroundOne of my spiritual directees reminded me that liturgy cannot change our lives. We were talking about the tendency of some of our seminarians to give all their attention to rubrical matters when celebrating liturgy. A few fret about the number of candles on the altar, their position on the altar, the use or non-use of bells for the consecration, the exact position of the chalices and other externals that they tend to magnify out of proportion. They can sometimes become so concerned about such non-essentials that they miss the spirit of the action in the liturgy. Our young men are idealistic and searching for certitude in an environment - our society - that offers very little. Their desire is that liturgy will change their humanness into holiness.<div><br></div><div>Holiness is sought when we participate in the liturgy but it will not lessen our humanness. If we did not bring our humanness to the liturgy, the Mass would be less meaningful. Our humanness is caught up in God's love and mercy. It is there we meet God's saving action, but we are not likely to become disembodied angels by our presence. We still live ordinary, daily lives. We may be disappointed that we remain so far from perfection. Liturgy reminds us we journey to life with God.<br><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div>Some want the liturgy to remain static. Keep it on a shelf like a statue of our favorite saint. Admire it but keep it distant and do not allow it to permeate our being. Liturgy becomes that thing we go to each week, or even each day, and we keep our eyes closed and our hearts turned inward failing to notice God's presence around us. We <font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">sometimes tend to keep the liturgy locked away like a favorite photograph. We often remain frightened of it and do not always allow it to touch us and give us the momentum to bring change to our lives.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><div>A priest recently told me that he felt judged by some of our seminarians. His parish hosted an event for which our seminarians were asked to serve the Mass. Where were the bells? they wanted to know. His parish does not use them. For these seminarians liturgy can become a theater piece and the object is to put on a good show. As a young seminarian myself, I recall meeting Msgr. Martin Hellriegel, author of the words to the hymn "To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King," who was using English in some of the sung parts of Mass at his small parish in the 1920s and 1930s. In later years he became upset with some of the experiences he saw in how some celebrated liturgy after the Council's reform. He remarked that the object of the liturgical movement was to turn hearts around, not to turn altars around. It was not that he favored the altar facing the wall. Too much emphasis, he felt, was being placed on externals and one set of expectations were being replaced by another.</div><div><br></div><div>When I was growing up Mass was a silent affair. Not necessarily a reverent one. Just silent. As one of a few hundred children in the pew at the daily school Mass, I recall lots of squirming and dozing and whispering (if one could get away with it). We did not participate. We observed. If you were smart, you had a St. Joseph Missal and followed the priest. But there were no parts for the laity. The priest read everything. In Latin. One hoped the priest prayed. He read everything to himself. There were no lectors. Anyone attending Mass had to be in the pew by the time the Offertory began. Otherwise one missed the beginning of the principal parts of the Mass and thus one must confess that in confession. One could not leave Mass until after communion. As soon as you received communion, you were free to leave.</div><div><br></div><div>It was only with the advent of the Second Vatican Council that we began to be taught about the unity of the liturgy. It was not just being present for the consecration that was important. The whole Mass was important. Christ was present in the Eucharist (we always formerly just called it communion) not only in the host and its elevation but also in the priest, the Scripture that is read, and in the people who are present. The liturgy was a whole. It was not just the elevation of the host that made the liturgy.</div><div><br></div><div>Two Latin terms were familiar to us. A successful Mass occurred <i>ex opere operato. </i>It made no difference what the priest or the people did or did not do correctly. Sacramental graces existed because the Mass was the Mass. A Mass that was offered <i>Ex opere operantis</i> meant the priest did his part.</div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Jesus once asked if the Son of Man will find faith when he returns? Sometimes we get caught up in Pharisaism and forget to live as Christians. We forget that the liturgy cannot change our lives. What we can do is seek to enrich our prayer and deepen our faith by investing ourselves completely in the liturgy rather than expecting it to be this week's top entertainment event.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><div><br></div></div></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-90153204700889555512014-11-27T11:04:00.001-08:002014-11-27T11:05:25.912-08:00Losing mentors<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Today at St. Michael parish, the pastor, given today is the feast of Thanksgiving, encouraged all of us to recapture a spirit of gratitude in ourselves - not only for the big things in our lives, but especially for the small things. I am grateful for the smiles of the two small children in front of me. I am grateful for the text messages from seminarians wishing me a happy Thanksgiving. I am grateful for the decorations I am beginning to put up for Advent.</span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></span><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I am also grateful for big things. In particular, I am grateful for the life of Sr. Laurencia Listerman, an Oldenburg Franciscan sister who died late last week at 101 years of age. Sister Laurencia never stopped thinking. Her mind was as clear as a bell to the day she died. Recently, she asked for a list of the names of all U.S. senators and congressmen as she had a few letters she wanted to write to them about some issues that were important to her.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She also recently told one of her sisters that all her life, when she reads a book, she reads it twice. Given her age, she had decided that she was going to start reading books only once.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I was a student at Scecina Memorial High School where Sister Laurencia was an important mentor to me, she once told us in class, "Remember that it isn't always what you know. It is who you know." Her practical nature was a close second to her idealism.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sister Laurencia was a true wit and an excellent listener. I recall that she took any thought from her students very seriously. She might look at you incredulously and even disagree with you or sometimes even argue with you - though it was really more of a dialogue - but she always listened to you. She showed her amazement about something you might tell her by opening her mouth and rolling her eyes.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She had the look of a patrician when she wanted to and would raise her head with a glare that suggested she was ready to pose for her closeup.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sister Laurencia's death was the second of two this week that affected me deeply. The other was John O'Connell, a Chicago native, a layman six years older than I, who, along with his wife, befriended me when I was in the seminary in St. Louis. It was in the late 1960s and the seminary offered some lectures on the Second Vatican Council to the public. John attended and, never knowing a stranger, got familiar with the seminarians. Some of us were invited to his home for dinner and to meet his wife Judy and the five children they called their own. The family eventually left St. Louis and moved to Louisville briefly before ending up In Indianapolis where they have lived for more than 30 years. John was another kind of mentor as he ultimately became someone who practiced what we call the works of mercy most generously and frequently. His faith was one of the deepest I knew.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These losses are as important to me as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, is to the nation. They mean more to me than the terror that is in the Islamic state. My world has become much smaller.</span></div><div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-69346699914294403702014-11-10T18:53:00.000-08:002014-11-10T18:54:03.389-08:00Extraordinary in the ordinary<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Most of us don’t want to live dull lives. While we’re young, we like things to be exciting and new, fresh and unusual. We cling to the latest invention, song, personality. Sometimes we forget that everything passes and what is new is always replaced by something that is newer. The worst thing some people can think of themselves is ordinary. Who wants to be ordinary? Most of us want to be special. We want to be extraordinary.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The readings for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica each define a little differently the word “temple.” An angel shows Ezekiel a vision of the temple as a source for life in Israel - water flows from the temple to irrigate the land and provide food for the Israelites, nourishment for people. This is an extraordinary example of God’s care for his people.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Paul then describes the first Christians as buildings which God constructs and then encourages them to build upon the foundations knowing they are made for God. This too is an extraordinary example of God’s care for his people.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the Gospel Jesus flares up in anger at the way in which the Jewish temple is desecrated, misused and abused by those failing to respect its purpose and meaning. This is a really extraordinary example of God’s care for his people because he reminds them not only what they must do but also what they must not do.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here is another example of a major feast of the Church being celebrated on a Sunday displacing the ordinary Sunday feast. Like All Souls, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, SS. Peter and Paul, we’ve seen a number of church feasts since the spring replacing ordinary feasts. We might think of these as a little more extraordinary but they vary. Today’s feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran doesn’t mean much to most of us because the building is not widely known among Catholics outside Rome. It is the cathedral church for the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. It is not quite as big as St. Peter’s and is not located in Vatican City but it is the oldest church in the West. It was dedicated in 324 A.D. Of course, it was more than 1,500 years before it was completed as we know it today. It is considered the mother church of Roman Catholicism. It is quite splendid and extraordinary and there are those who know beautiful churches who prefer it to St. Peter’s. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So we celebrate a piece of architecture that is quite extraordinary. The anger of Jesus regarding the abuse of the temple in Jerusalem is a testament to the inability of the merchants to regard the temple as something extraordinary. The angel with Ezekiel helps him regard the temple as the extraordinary resource for life in Israel. And Paul reminds us that we ourselves are temples and perhaps more extraordinary than any building humans can make. We are extraordinary because we are holy. The temple in Jerusalem was a sign of holiness for the Jews. The Lateran basilica is a sign of holiness for Catholics in Rome. But the holiest object of all of this is the person who comes to the temple, to the basilica. Human beings make the basilica holy because God has deemed us holy. There is ordinariness in our lives, witnessed by the repetition and sameness of much of life. But our lives made extraordinary because of God’s work in us. We ordinary people are the stuff with which God works in order to realize the extraordinariness of the saving task of His Son Jesus.</span></div>
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Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-17682627990936753202014-11-02T06:30:00.001-08:002014-11-02T06:30:51.696-08:00All Souls' Day<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">On the day of one’s baptism, one is clothed in a white garment. On the day of one’s funeral, a casket is covered in a white pall. The reminder at baptism is that one has been initiated into the life of Christ. The reminder at the time of one’s funeral is that the baptized person has been fully welcomed into the life of Christ for eternity.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Few of us are unfamiliar with death. Some of us more than others. But it is not usually on our minds when we are young. There is too much life to be lived to think of death.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was 15 when my grandmother on my mother’s side died. By the time I was 20 my other three grandparents were dead. Of aunts and uncles, I have only one aunt left and she is confined to a nursing home with dementia at age 99. Three sides of my family are German and funerals were occasions for celebration. Everyone chipped in with a prepared dish for the reception after the funeral. One of my cousins remembers our family funerals as being more fun than family weddings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Death didn’t really mean much to me until I was a senior in high school. A classmate I did not know very well died in an automobile wreck the night before graduation. But it was only in college that it sank in. A girl I knew well in high school was also a close classmate at college. She married at the end of our sophomore year to a graduating senior. Their honeymoon took them to Mexico in their Volkswagen beetle and on the return drive somewhere in Texas a drunk driver in a pickup truck plowed into them killing them both. I remember spending a lot of time with other classmates grieving and disbelieving.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is a woman in Oregon I’m told who has decided to end her life because she apparently has an inoperable brain cancer. I am told that she had set November 1 as her death date but that she has put it off for a bit longer as the love she is experiencing from family and friends is having an effect on her she didn’t expect and she wants to enjoy them a bit longer. I suppose death becomes more desirable to one who does not experience any form of human love than it does for those who do.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For all the things that bother people about the Church, I have never found in my 45 years as a priest that many people have ever complained about the way we do funerals. The liturgy itself focuses us. The souls of the just are in the hands of God. Hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. And there are the words of Jesus himself. This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Bishop Blaise Cupich (soon to be Archbishop Cupich of Chicago) has written, “By setting aside a single day exclusively for those who have passed from this life, we are testifying to our obligation to pray for them. That obligation is founded on our understanding of what it means to be a member of the Body of Christ. We are linked to each other in a bond which death itself cannot break. Death does not diminish our responsibility to support each other as fellow pilgrims. We take that responsibility seriously when we gather for the Eucharist, visit cemeteries, pray for the dead. This day of prayer for the dead offers a corrective to the tendency to reduce our funeral rites to memorial services or mere celebrations of life. While there are good reasons to recall the virtues of someone when they have died, Catholic funerals are first of all about the Body of Christ praying for one of its members. We are confident that just as our prayers assisted the deceased in life, so too they do in death.”</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The commemoration of the faithful departed is a celebration of the hope each of us has that this life is not the end, but the beginning. We are not creatures wallowing in the morbidity of death or the superstition of demonic practices. Our focus is not on what is dead but what lives. Those who have gone before us live and they live in the safety, comfort, and rest of the one who died and rose again. That hope remains ours.</span></div>
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Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-4601448894752910992014-10-26T14:17:00.001-07:002014-10-26T14:23:47.292-07:00Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time<div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Love of God and love of neighbor. The two greatest commandments, Jesus claims. I’m not always certain we believe that they are. My experience suggests that we often try to emphasize one over the other. And it is not uncommon for some adherents of love of God to beat adherents of love of neighbor over the head - and vice-versa. Often we are more interested in scoring points than in practicing either one - love of God or love of neighbor.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And yet Jesus is clear. They go together. In the 1950s Frank Sinatra recorded a song with the verses “Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like the horse and carriage. This I tell you, brother; you can’t have one without the other.” So it is with love of God and love of neighbor. We can't have one without the other.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Today’s Old Testament reading warns the Israelites not to oppress the strangers who live among them, nor to extort the poor among them. All too often we are guided by fear of the unknown. So today some fear the immigrant who comes to us from a foreign land. And these days anyone coming to us from West Africa is regarded not just with fear but with angry fear. With each proscription in today’s first reading, God reminds the Israelites that he will hear those who cry out to him, even to destroying those who fail to care for those most in need.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Paul exhorts the Christians in Thessalonica who turn from idols to the living God. Perhaps we need to exhort our fellow citizens to turn from the idols of prejudice and fear and anger to await the Son of God in heaven who delivers us from the coming wrath.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Then there are the Pharisees in the Gospel. They are not unlike us in this respect - we often look for the magic bullet that will have the answer to everything - the total cure, the diet that works - the app that makes everything possible. The Pharisees want to know what the greatest commandment is. What is the one thing I must do that will make trying to please God easy? So that I don’t have to do all these other little things. Tell me what I must do to get to God so that I don’t have to worry about all 10 commandments, or all the laws on the books, or whatever rules I must obey. Simplify my life.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The question asked by the Pharisees is another way in which they try to trap Jesus. They didn’t care about helping strangers or the poor except for the very narrow proscriptions in their own law. They didn’t really care about his answer. They had their own ideas of loving God and loving neighbor and they wouldn’t have listened to Jesus even if they agreed with him.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So their question is asked so that they can justify themselves. We do similar things do we not? In following God’s law, am I not often more interested in being right rather than wrong and less interested in the practice of love itself.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"> <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All of this only makes sense in the larger context of the whole Gospel. Eventually, Jesus will die and return to His father. The disciples will find themselves hiding in an upper room fearing for their own safety. It is only because the Holy Spirit fills them that they leave that room and begin to preach and witness the life of Jesus. We can be like these disciples. It is tempting to remain in the upper room in fear. But we cannot stay there. Our faith must be lived. God and neighbor both must be loved. We do this by our practice of faith - by prayer and charity.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jesus gives us his body and blood to eat each time we come to the Eucharistic celebration that we may be nourished and strengthened to love God and neighbor. It is tempting to remain always before the tabernacle or in Eucharistic adoration and think we are fulfilling God’s commands to us. We are often convinced of our unworthiness and we fall back on the notion that it may be better just to sit and look at Jesus. We imagine that we are better off gazing on God from afar. Yet Jesus never stops inviting us to come to him. We are called to receive and to act in love by saying yes to God’s invitation and then witnessing by our example to one another that Christ is indeed Lord.</span></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-91328920295230442002014-09-19T21:16:00.001-07:002014-09-24T17:37:22.346-07:00New wineskinsSome years ago a young man I knew who was a home school student told me his mother had used the Baltimore catechism to teach him religion. He said he learned all about sin and the devil but he never knew God loved him. I nearly jumped out of my chair at that revelation and wanted to strangle the young man's parents.<div><br><div>There is a Gospel story in Matthew in which Jesus dines at the house of a Pharisee when a woman comes in with oils, bathes the feet of Jesus and then dries them with her hair. She is praised by Jesus for her great love. She does what Jesus' host did not do. She washed and dried his feet. There was no etiquette in Jewish law requiring such a thing. The host did no wrong. But Jesus makes the point that the woman went farther than what was required. This is the stuff of following Jesus. This is what makes a Christian - doing more than what was required.</div><div><br></div><div>The woman showed great love and so she receives a great reward. Her great love canceled out her sins. Jesus acknowledges this and we ought to learn this too and stop judging and condemning one another, even our own children.</div><div><br></div><div>In an address to priests learning about the sacrament of penance in 2008, Pope Benedict said, "When one insists solely on the accusation of sins, which must nevertheless exist and it is necessary to help the faithful understand its importance, one risks relegating to the background what is central, that is, the personal encounter with God, the Father of goodness and mercy. It is not sin which is at the heart of the sacramental celebration, but rather God's mercy, which is infinitely greater than any guilt of ours."</div></div><div><br></div><div>It is worthy to note that this is from Pope Benedict not Pope Francis. It is also noteworthy that Pope Francis frequently refers to Popes Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Paul VI when making a point. It has probably been said before but in a different way. The gift of Pope Francis is his tone. He does not say new things but he does repeat the old things in a new way.</div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-28527392306939845552014-09-08T07:50:00.001-07:002014-09-08T20:11:15.131-07:00Strange connectionsToday is the 13th anniversary of my profession of final vows as a Jesuit. It is also the feast of the Birth of Mary and the 10th anniversary of the founding of the college seminary where I serve as director of spiritual formation.<div><br></div><div>Thirteen years ago I was assigned to the headquarters of the Jesuit Conference in Washington, D.C. I spent five years there as director of communications for the 10 Jesuit provinces. In 2001 I was approved to receive final vows and I made plans to do so in my Jesuit community there. Although I announced the event to family and friends, I expected to go through a simple ceremony within my local community. The president of the Jesuit Conference had been my provincial just a few years prior to this and I asked him to receive the vows. </div><div><br></div><div>My family and friends were not to be deterred, however. What I expected to be a simple event with myself and my fellow Jesuits turned out to be a social event of large proportions. All my brothers with their wives came into town. So did an aunt and uncle and three cousins and their spouses. In addition, some friends from home in Indiana also traveled to the east coast as did the family of a fellow Jesuit from Ohio. The ceremony occurred on a Saturday afternoon. The entire weekend was a festive family reunion. The ceremony took place in the Holy Trinity Parish chapel in Georgetown, a much smaller edifice than the parish church itself but historical because it was the parish's original building.</div><div><br></div><div>The one thing everyone remembered were the shadows of the airplanes flying down the Potomac river toward landing paths at Washington National Airport. Because the Potomac sat just below the university campus, the planes followed a path down the curving river just before landing. The chapel has a large window at its rear and the shadows of planes passed by regularly.</div><div><br></div><div>Exactly three days later terrorists struck targets in New York and Washington and the festivity of that weekend was gone. The World Trade Center was no more and the Pentagon was badly damaged. One of my brothers and his wife had stayed on in D.C. for a few days to do some sightseeing. They were able to leave Washington at their own leisure as they had driven in for the event. But a couple I knew well had flown in. They too remained to do some sightseeing and were due to fly out that September 11. They had even checked out of their hotel and were on their way to National. When it became evident there were no flights leaving, they returned to D.C. and tried to check back into their hotel to no avail. It took some doing but they found another hotel where they stayed an extra couple of days before finding a flight that took them through Charlotte getting back to Indianapolis.</div><div><br></div><div>Washington was all chaos and it continued for a month. I recall not sleeping well those nights. At that time no one knew what might happen but there was wide speculation as to what could happen. We all began to realize that if we had to evacuate the city, the only way to do so was to start walking the direction opposite central Washington. Later that week I took a walk down to the Mall and walked into a mostly deserted National Gallery of Art to view the section of American art. I remember buying a hot dog from a vendor on the street and the woman selling the food just shook her head when I asked how business was those days.</div><div><br></div><div>It is difficult to get very "spiritual" or think pious thoughts recalling my final profession. The weekend seems years away and the vows strike me as unimportant in the face of the disaster of that week. Only the reminder that one is obliged to keep living faithfully to God keeps the vow profession important in my mind and life. Evil can make us forget who we are and can frighten us into forgetting that God remains in control of what a Preston Sturges character once described as a 'cock-eyed caravan.' Only love destroys the hate and there sometimes does not seem to be much of that going around.</div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-79572834212569595162014-08-26T13:36:00.001-07:002014-08-31T13:07:28.523-07:00Whither religious life?In recent years I have been on a number of teams at retreat houses directing individual persons on silent retreats of eight days. The number of retreats on which I've worked is not huge but I have guided my fair share of persons seeking closer relationships with God. Many, if not the majority of these individuals, are women religious. I am more and more puzzled by this work.<div><br></div><div>The women religious have begun to all sound very similar. The more elderly sisters speak completely sincerely and faithfully about their relationship with God. They have developed disciplines of prayer and reflection through years of struggle with the many changes of religious life. They are resilient women and want to be active in their religious lives as long as they can. In other words, they want to remain faithful to the lives of prayer they have nurtured and to be of service to whomever they can. They still see themselves as women on mission. Sometimes this service may be directed only toward others like themselves who are growing older and advancing in physical helplessness. These women still see and know God.<div><br></div><div>But there are also many religious women who come to retreat from another direction. These women seem to have given up on religious life altogether. Many of them have created an environment of religious life that suits their needs. They do not intend to make any adjustments or adaptations for anyone or for any perceived ideal of religious life. They are close to spitefulness if one even hints of assuming degrees of authority or proclaim obedience a virtue. They have carried renewal to a point of engagement within professional lives emphasizing the identity and power of women within their own ranks. Often they appear to have uncritically adopted ideas and positions that disregard thinking with the Church. There is often negative reaction to patriarchies real or imagined.</div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div>The most worrisome issue for me is the impression I get from <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">some women religious that their orders are dying out and yet they have no problem with this. It is an historical fact that religious orders come and go. But some of these women seem unwilling and uninterested in reinventing themselves as members of the Church. The desire seems to be redefining theselves according to their identities as women and not their identities as women in Christ. Thus, some live a sort of religious life that is really something quite different.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">One newly professed woman religious came from a highly responsible and highly well paid position in business and she has returned to that position now that she is professed. What does that have to do with religious life? How is she centered in community life? I thought of </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Philippa Talbot in Rumer Godden's novel "In This House of Brede." Philippa gave up a successful business career to become a contemplative nun. At the end of the novel she becomes novice mistress to the crop of Japanese novices in the order's mission to that country. Thoroughly grounded in contemplative life, Philippa uses her leadership skills from the business world and offers her service to younger members of her community. Her mission is to renew the best of religious life in a new generation of women religious.</span></div><div><br></div><div>Another woman religious I knew was bothered most by a decision she made to move out of the apartment she shared with another woman religious and move back into the larger motherhouse. She was tortured by the lack of freedom she expected there. She worried about the view she would have from any particular room she might be assigned. Are these the prescient issues in community life? Scores of religious women I know either live alone or in groups of two or perhaps three. What is this witness? Whether the religious be female or male, which comes first - religious life or the professional occupation?</div><div><br></div><div>Religious life often seems a life of professionalism and a kind of witness of women proving they can work in the larger world much as men. But where is the religious life here? What is mission? Who are they serving? There was and still is somewhat a period in which many religious women were forced from their convents in order to find good paying jobs in order to support their convents. What has that done to religious life? </div><div><br></div><div>I grew up in an elementary school, high school, and even a college education led by religious women. I recently visited my high school journalism teacher, a 101 year-old very alert, very brilliant woman who still maintains her religious life faithfully. There are many, many women religious still struggling to redefine their lives for this century. But I have also met women religious, aging ones, who tell me they cannot have Eucharistic adoration in their motherhouses because middle-aged sisters will not allow it. What is that all about? Or that they will not allow priests to concelebrate in their chapels. A contemporary antipathy toward men is understandable given historic actions and attitudes on the part of many in the hierarchy. Perhaps religious life has to die somewhat. But what will replace it? Can an authentic witness of religious life ever grow out of a sense of individualistic pursuit of one's own interests?</div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-42876313862041239522014-08-24T03:52:00.001-07:002014-08-24T10:02:38.939-07:00Dreams, assumptions, illusions<div>Hold on to your dreams! Hold on to your ideals! Beginning a new life, a new project, means bringing fresh thinking to something we've admired from afar. It means considering your goal in a new light, acquiring a different way of thinking. In the seminary, new men arrive with assumptions about seminary and the priesthood which quickly grow confusing and uncertain. It doesn't take long to become disillusioned about the life of a seminarian. If you think we all walk around with our hands folded in prayer, it comes as a surprise to realize that we are more likely to be working our electronic devices.</div><div><br></div><div>So we begin to wonder if this is the place for us. I can never emphasize enough that the reason we stay is never the reason we arrive. You will be challenged about your ideals all through your college life. Sometimes, perhaps often, you will have to find better reasons for continuing your formation than those for which you came.</div><div><br></div><div>Calvin tells Hobbes in the comic strip, "I go to school but I never learn what I want to know." Some ideals you will adjust as you gain knowledge and experience. Some ideals you will abandon because they no longer apply. Some ideals will grow stronger. The key is our openness to God's will. Are we ready to look at our new lives from God's perspective or from ours alone? We constantly have to question who is in charge - do we only see things our way or do we see them God's way?</div><div><br></div><div>Today's Gospel (Matthew 16: 13 - 20, Peter's profession of faith) is so familiar that we can be tempted to idealize it and not look more deeply. As a younger Catholic, I was sure this Scripture passage proved beyond doubt that Peter was the first pope but my Protestant friends weren't convinced and I didn't have enough knowledge to explain it. This reading does nothing of the sort, of course. It does show us that Jesus appointed Peter for the most important leadership role among the Apostles. But being a pope wasn't a question that came into being until after Jesus died. Many bishops in the first years of Christianity had the title 'Pope' but it wasn't until nearly the fifth century with Pope St. Leo the Great that the title was exclusive to the bishop of Rome.</div><div><br></div><div>What the Gospel does here reminds us that it is really more important that we focus on Jesus' question. Who do you and I say that He is? Our concern should not be Peter but Jesus. Are our minds and hearts open to hearing God's will here. Apparently Peter's mind and heart were. It is less important that Peter is the chosen one, that Peter is called the first pope, than that Jesus chose Peter to play a special role among the Apostles. Peter is the one who recognizes the hand of God here and thus Peter receives recognition none of the others do. Peter was open to hearing God's word as it was and not as Peter thought it was. It is Jesus who calls.</div><div><br></div><div>But the emphasis here is not on Peter. Peter is only as important as his recognition of Christ as the Messiah. Christ is the one who has come to save Israel. Christ is the Son of God. We may want to use this Scripture to beat our non-believing friends over the head but be careful. They may come back and tell you to read this Scripture in context. The passage that follows here in Matthew's Gospel is the one in which Jesus begins speaking to his disciples about his death and resurrection. In that reading the chosen Peter tells Jesus that he would never allow that to happen to him. Jesus calls him Satan.</div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-52976819880118166792014-08-20T19:44:00.001-07:002014-08-21T19:28:42.213-07:00A feast of a popeThere are two things the feast of Pope St. Pius X - which we celebrate today - brings to mind from my Catholic past. One is the late 19th and early 20th fight against the heresy of Modernism which very few contemporary Catholics remember. The other is the significant liturgical changes which that pope made and which most Catholics today take for granted.<div><br></div><div>Concerning the so-called Modernist heresy that means little to Catholics in practical terms nowadays, I have one recollection. The year I was ordained I was required to take the Oath against Modernism which the seminary rector was required to administer to those of us about to be ordained. I clearly recall his being somewhat embarrassed after we were called in to his office as a group and advising us just to do it. By 1969 the Oath had become somewhat laughable and seemed to us as well as to him and the faculty a remnant from a less enlightened time. It was no longer taken seriously, a rule that had lost all meaning.</div><div><br></div><div>As far as the Eucharist is concerned, what Pope Pius X did was probably farther reaching. Msgr. John Doyle, former head of the philosophy department at Marian University, told me that when he was an eighth grader at Holy Cross grade school in 1910 every student there made their first communion. Before that time Holy Cross and other Catholic school students made their first communion in the eighth grade. Reception of the Eucharist was not permitted on a daily basis. Frequent communion meant monthly or possibly weekly but not daily. The pontiff encouraged more frequent reception as a better understanding of the theology of the sacrament came to be.</div><div><br></div><div>The feast of Pope Saint Pius X reminds me once again that Catholic practice changes as time passes by. We can never assume that the way we do things is the way it always was.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-89816426850710895512014-08-09T11:04:00.001-07:002014-08-10T06:44:18.251-07:00On the road without Jack KerouacA long summer on the road is coming to a tiring end. It began with a road trip from Indiana to Massachusetts for retreat. Then there was a road trip to Wisconsin for a July 4 holiday with some fellow Jesuits. Lastly, there was an odyssey to Ontario and two weeks' worth of Masses and pastoral work at the Jesuit Martyrs' Shrine.<div><br></div><div>In between I assisted with a directed retreat in Indianapolis itself.</div><div><br></div><div>After a good amount of time on the road, I notice the peculiarities of other drivers. There is nothing peculiar in my own driving, of course. People just need to get out of my way. It does seem clear, however, that most of us are not giving our full attention to one's driving. I suppose this has always been true. Whenever I watch anyone in a movie driving a car with at least one other passenger, I am always amazed the driver can carry on a conversation with the other passenger and look directly at the person riding shotgun for what seems to be an interminable length of time. How do they do it? </div><div><br></div><div>Today the distractions are ubiquitous. Cell phones are the worst, of course, which is why I turn mine off when I drive. But then I have to be more alert the more I become aware of other drivers who seem not to be quite in charge of their own cars as they drive down highways.</div><div><br></div><div>One has to scrutinize the attention of other drivers frequently. From the left lane on a freeway a driver lurches over three lanes to an exit ramp just a few yards ahead. A glance proves the driver is talking on a cell phone. How many times I have witnessed a driver moving over at least two lanes and sometimes more in traffic to make a turn or an exit and the driver has not bothered to look to make certain there is no other traffic in the area. Some folks are just lucky to be alive. </div><div><br></div><div>Some folks are in such hurries that they pay no attention to what is around them. A stop light changes and suddenly a pickup truck barrels areound from behind me because my four cylinder engine doesn't have the pickup to go from 0 to 120 in five seconds. The driver of the pickup truck obviously has something important to do, someone to see, or is behind schedule, or just doesn't like anyone in front of him that he bursts forth in his moment of power.</div><div><br></div><div>Speed limits are likewise meaningless. While driving in Canada, I found myself constantly trying to translate miles into kilometers (my dashboard is not very bright and I could not see the smaller numbers) but I eventually noticed that those 80 kilometers per mile speed limits usually meant 90 or even 100 to some local drivers. i eventually learned to keep up with traffic unless I were on a two-lane highway and leading the pack.</div><div><br></div><div>Billboards. I've learned to ignore them but I had to get a college degree to do so. Driving in Canada was so nice because you notice these things called trees and landscape as you drive along.</div><div><br></div><div>On this trip, however, I discovered a curious distraction. I checked my maps to drive south on the freeway numbered 400 and saw that I could short circuit that trip by exiting at a freeway numbered 407 in order to get to freeway 401 that would take me to the border. As I exited 400 to go onto 407 I noticed the signage indicated this 407 was an ETR (express toll route). I hadn't planned on a toll road, but, oh, well, I was only going to be on it about 30 kilometers or so. But I never passed a tollbooth. At one point I did pass a sign that read "Non-Ontario drivers will be billed." Does someone in Canada have my. mailing address, I thought? I must check this out for it may be something that Americans can learn from Canadians about toll roads.</div><div><br></div><div>Wikipedia tells me that the 407 ETR is the world's first privately owned all electronically controlled highway. It was built by Canadian and Spanish investors to alleviate the traffic burdens of Ontario highway 401 which is deemed the busiest highway in North America. The complete highway is now 107 kilometers long. was on the 407 about 33 kilometers. There is a web site that helped me calculate my fee. For the time of day I was on the freeway I should be getting a bill for about $26 Canadian dollars. The highway is apparently quite controversial but use was quite heavy and I kept waiting for a toll booth . According to Wikipedia, only some U.S. states link their license plate registries with the highway. So I may or may not be billed for those 33 kilometers.</div><div><br></div><div>So summer is at an end even though it is only early August. My great nephew began first grade so it is time to get to work. Now I have but a short distance before returning to life with college seminarians.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-59433714081366324452014-06-21T17:45:00.001-07:002014-06-21T17:45:02.812-07:00Of quiet solitudeMany are celebrating the summer solstice today. For some it is the beginning of the end of summer. The longest day of the year anticipates the shortening of days over the next few weeks. We must now fill the rest of summer with all we had planned at its beginning. For us at the seminary that began May 10. Three weeks of a considerably lessened schedule gave way to a week of my own private retreat. Some appointments were filled and changes began at the seminary for the coming year. Our executive secretary of eight years moves on this week. Our rector is finally taking an extended vacation. Cosmetic changes to the grounds have begun and continue.<div><br></div><div>The week of retreat with the monks at Gethsemani renewed years in college when Thomas Merton sat somewhere in the choir stalls and a very strict silence was observed. There have been many physical changes to that monastery but most noticeable to me was the loss of the gatehouse (it has probably been 25 years or so since I've been there) and the tree-lined lane that I imagined Merton approaching as he entered about 1941.</div><div><br></div><div>Where I am today directing five individuals in an eight-day retreat is also experiencing change. The house will close in September for many months of much needed maintenance. What will be here on the Atlantic coast a year from now? It has been a pleasant surprise to meet with five individuals whose faith and prayer lives are such that what they seek is greater solitude and an ever deepening relationship with the Lord. These are experienced pray-ers and they do not require basic training in finding God. They just recognize that the world in which they are surrounded militates against their establishing a deeper relationship with Christ.</div><div><br></div><div>The ordinariness of daily life is a blessing. Spectacles can be appreciated when they come. But the simple movement of the earth revolving around the sun, the hands of a clock revolving around a circle, the sameness of every day - all these have their own specialness. Today is - and it's a good one.</div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-10767178357984269982014-05-20T08:47:00.001-07:002014-05-20T09:08:20.324-07:00Onward and upwardTen days ago nine of our seminarians graduated from Marian University and received their bachelors' degrees and will now move on to major seminary. Another seminarian who has been in an intensive English language study at IUPUI will also move forward to major seminary. The day was a poignant moment for me because I began my seminary career with most of them. So it was time for me to move on as well.<div><br></div><div>We provided formation for 46 seminarians from 10 different Midwestern dioceses this past year. Of the 10 graduates, two have decided not to continue with major seminary. Another six underclass seminarians decided to discontinue their formation. So we will have 30 returning seminarians and we won't know how many new ones will appear on our doorstep on August 14, which is move-in day.</div><div><br></div><div>For myself and the rest of the seminary formation staff, the break is welcome. We move on - not away from the seminary - but on to a new class and new thinking. This time is akin to recharging the battery of one's computer decices. I spent all last week vegetating. I found myself really tired and I indulged in the luxury of sleeping in late. I have been piddling around updating family history, watching back episodes of Midsomer Murders and Rumpole of the Bailey, visiting friends, getting the summer organized, disposing of clutter in my apartment and reacquainting myself with my Jesuit community who see little of me and who don't seem worse off for it. I have been avoiding people as much as possible and trying to pray but without much success.<div><br></div><div>This week there are things to do. What I cannot come to terms with is the gratitude I have been receiving from a number of seminarians thanking me for all the help I have given them. I try to convince them that whatever has changed in their lives has been their cooperation with God but somehow they still think I am a part of that. I suppose I just have to accept the pleasure of witnessing their growth.</div><div><br></div><div>The seminary is quiet these days save for two underclassmen who are doing manual labor for a couple of weeks. Their devotion is extraordinary and their commitment is real. We await the results of the archdiocesan restructuring of the Indianapolis deaneries. Meanwhile life goes on and the Church survives. The rector had an operation on both his knees, not knee replacements, and that has allowed him also <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">to vegetate for a while as well. The vice rector continues to provide doughnuts on Sunday morning either from Long's bakery or Krispy Kreme.</span></div><div><br></div><div>I am grateful for another joyous year despite its turbulence and perhaps its being the hardest of the four I've spent here. It has been emotionally charged. In some way I feel like a parent watching his children struggle and move on. The faces keep changing but their lives just roll on. Life never stops surprising us. In the long run the totally self-assured freshmen seminarians are no longer so self-assured for they have come smack up against the ambiguities of growing up. It is an amazing process to witness and I cannot be thankful enough to be a part of that.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-152561123345130302014-05-19T10:36:00.004-07:002014-05-19T10:36:52.602-07:00Fifth Sunday of Easter<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">What do we make of Scripture this Fifth Sunday of Easter? The first letter of St. Peter (2: 5) invites us to “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”? What is Scripture asking of us when we are invited to become a spiritual house?</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The reading from the Acts of the Apostles (6: 1) describes the growth of the numbers of the first Christians. The growth is so incredible that the twelve Apostles come together to tackle a practical problem. Some of the needy members of their community were being neglected because they were being missed in the daily distribution of food. The work of the Apostles was to preach the word and yet they were unable sometimes to do so. They were also the practical hands of the early Church as well. This is not unlike the expectations we can put on the pastors of our own communities today. Sometimes we expect them to do everything for us, to unlock doors and sweep floors, to meet our every need, and our every demand. We complain when our pastor does not pay enough attention to us, as if we are totally helpless in caring for our own spiritual and human needs.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The first Christians are obviously concerned about the needs of those in their community who cannot provide for themselves. At the bottom of the food chain in this first century after Christ were widows and orphans. They had no rights in this society. They had the least ability in society to take care of themselves. They had only the good will of others to keep them alive.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The work of the Apostles was twofold - prayer and the ministry of the word. The solution was to choose a number of disciples to engage in the task of caring for the daily needs of the community. When Pope Francis calls us to be a missionary church, he is calling us - among other things - to also take responsibility for the human and spiritual needs of members of our communities. We cannot simply tend to our own needs. We must care about the needs of others.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We see here the image of the two parts of the Church therefore. One is to care for the daily needs of the community, particularly those in most need of help. The other is to continue preaching the message of God’s love and forgiveness. Preaching that word may sound an easy task to some but most people are quite reluctant to believe they are good in God’s eyes. Pastors spend innumerable hours encouraging their own parishioners.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To some extent these tasks - preaching the Gospel and taking care of the community’s needs - intermingle but it was a practical problem in the early believers that required a solution that had not yet been discovered.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Is it any wonder that the disciples in the Gospel (John 14: 1-12) worry when Jesus tells them he is leaving them? What will we do? How can we survive? Jesus tries to reassure them that he has everything worked out. But he is also trying to tell them that it is time for them to step up and take responsibility, to take ownership for their own faith life, their own spiritual life. He has prepared them to live without him. He has prepared them to continue doing the works he had already begun.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The holy temple in Jerusalem, the central religious symbol and place for first century Jews, is the symbol represented in all three readings on this Sunday. The temple was the place where Jews met God. Jesus is the new temple. Things sought previously in the temple were now sought in Jesus. Jesus is the place where we meet God. Christ is the new temple. And Christ has prepared his disciples to become the Church which in the absence of Jesus is now the fulfillment of the temple. Church becomes a priestly people. What Jesus has done for us is to invite us to do his work. Father Robert Barron describes this process when he says, “The integrity of our lives are a sign of hope and a place of refuge for all around us.” Which is why our faith is not just about my own spiritual benefit. It also has a missionary benefit. My life is a sign to others of the work of God in creation.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I grow in life of Christ in order to become a place of growth for others. Jesus is the cornerstone of this temple. Jesus is rejected by the Jewish people but he is approved by God. He is the foundation for this new temple. As the letter of St. Peter recognizes, we are a holy people, a holy priesthood. We are all chosen.</span></div>
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Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-47572071903635375532014-05-03T09:22:00.001-07:002014-05-04T14:36:47.103-07:00Return to JerusalemThe week after Easter Sunday rejoices as each day repeats the Resurrection in increasingly surprising ways. The Church begins its cycle of readings from the Acts of the Apostles with Peter at Pentecost proclaiming to the Jewish citizenry of Jerusalem that God raised Jesus from the dead and has begun an entirely new relationship with human beings. Fear begins to set in. The chief priests concoct stories to prevent blame or outrage from settling on themselves.<div><br></div><div>Many of the Jews are intimidated by Peter's preaching and wonder what to do. We hear the compassionate episode in which Mary Magdalen encounters Jesus thinking him to be the gardener. Peter and John heal a crippled man in the temple who leaps up, walks, jumps and praises God inside the temple. Astoundingly, two disciples encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Peter has to convince many people that the crippled man's healing is not the result of the apostle's magic but is the work of Jesus who died and rose. Then Jesus appears to the disciples and begins setting a plan of action for them.</div><div><br></div><div>The disciples are arrested and interrogated by the chief priests. Jesus makes another appearance, this time to the disciples, as they go fishing and they are overwhelmed by his appearance. Finally, the chief priests are convinced to let well enough alone lest the people turn on them. A recapitulaion of Jesus' three appearances after the Resurrection ends the week.</div><div><br></div><div>What does it all mean? Those of us living in northern states can appreciate the appearance of spring after this long, harsh winter we've experienced. I can watch fresh pine cones growing on the tree outside my window. Everything seems alive and new. Students are bursting with energy and ready to finish the restraining semester's work.</div><div><br></div><div>The disciples on the road to Emmaus may express the change most of all. They are going away from Jerusalem. They are leaving the place at which something remarkable and different has occurred. They fear the challenge laid out before them. They are confused and disappointed for their expectations were not met. How do we make sense of these events?</div><div><br></div><div>Someone had to explain it to them. Someone had to show them how to see in a new way. They were thinking in old categories. Jesus himself shows up to answer them. But they don't know it is Jesus. They only know that things have changed and they are uncomfortable with the change even though they had pinned their hopes on Jesus for another kind of change. They are getting something more. When they listened to Jesus explaining the meaning of the events, their hearts burn. In fact, their hearts are on fire. When Jesus displays his hospitality to them and shares bread with them, their hearts burn. All becomes new and Jesus now occupies rheir hearts and disappears from their presence. Scripture says their eyes were opened, they recognized Jesus, and he vanishes from their sight. They return to Jerusalem and they announce to the disciples what has happened to them.</div><div><br></div><div>This week of readings is crucial to anyone preaching God's word. Unless we ourselves are filled with the excitement of these events, we cannot possibly understand or relate anything else that happens to Jesus in the Scripture. We cannot understand what happens to any other human being in their time spent on earth. We cannot be good pastors or preachers if we have not shared in the joy of the Resurrection. We cannot go forward into the heavenly future. We may be tempted to remain in our upper rooms and hold tight with the Jesus we've possessed since childhood. But Jesus is inviting us out of our childish prison and offering us the reward of an uncertain human future on his terms.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3139509773171650609.post-88233653064691352902014-04-21T20:18:00.001-07:002014-04-21T20:57:51.867-07:00Thoughts on the Francis effect<div>Just what is the so-called Francis effect?</div><div><br></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Those who wish Pope Francis ill proudly claim that church attendance has not increased and Catholic churches do not seem to be experiencing the same kind of enthusiasm found in St. Peter's Square on any given day.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Is church attendance the measure of the Franis effect, I wonder, and is that not a question only an American would ask? Last fall I overheard a bishop wonder what Francis had up his sleeve and then commented that he thought Francis was trying to get bishops to work. </font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">It has been reported that after his first six months as pope Francis had garnered more attendance in St. Peter's Square than both Popes John Paul and Benedict combined. This is not to disparage either one of those great and holy men. But it does indicate that Francis has a charisma that neither of the other two possessed. A different pope brings a different gift. John Paul and Benedict each brought great gifts and great personality to the office. The gift and personality of Francis just different.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Estimates of the crowd in St. Peter's Square on this past Easter Sunday suggested an attendance of about 150,000 people. Francis can draw big crowds. No doubt. And he seems to love nothing more than being in their midst. All of which says that Francis is carrying out a ministry of presence like never before. And when he has to preach his preaching is merciful.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">There is no competition among popes. One commentator summed up John Paul's pontificate by identifying him with the words, "This is what we believe." and much of John Paul's pontificate seems to have reminded us of our identity as Catholic Christians.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The same commentator noted that Benedict's papacy could be summed up in the words, "This is why we believe it." Benedict provided our Catholic identity with a solid grounding, a very necessary rationale. The same commentator now claims Francis can be summed up with the words, "Now go out and do it."</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">What is different in Francis is that he can be identified much more with the sense of Catholic Christians living fully their faith. The emphasis is on action, an active verb.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The Church in my archdiocese is faced with numerous possible parish closings and consolidations. There already has been reaction from parishioners whose parishes are on the block. There are those who want things to stay the same even though there is almost no life left in their parishes at all. One parish whose parishioners are complaining has reportedly not experienced a single baptism in three years. What is the reason for keeping a parish open whose parishioners appear to be indifferent to its current future and growth?</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The machine to which many are clinging is enough to keep them alive but it is not enough to get them to do what Francis wants us to do. It is not enough to get them to do what Jesus asks of us - to preach the Gospel! To tell the Good News to others! To go out on mission like the first disciples did! Instead we wait for the unbeliever to come to us. And then in some places we have to look them over to make sure they fit into our plan.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The bishops call for evangelization but this is almost a joke. What will get parishioners who want their parish to make them comfortable Sunday after Sunday energetic and enthused about preaching the Gospel to neighbors and strangers? What will move us from coffee and donuts after Mass to knocking on doors and inviting others to come join us? Few clergy want to do this.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Oh, of course it's not true of all, but the truth is there is a lot of dead weight among North American Catholics. Our German and Irish and Italian and eastern European immigrant ancestors have built us a church that is a now a haven of rest for us. And we want to keep it that way. Do not bother us with even the cry of Emma Lazarus to give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Let the government take care of them and let us remain in our shells.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The Francis effect is challenging all the moribund thinking in the American church including that of our bishops - some of whom are more concerned about their personal housing than they are about spreading the Gospel. What can we do? Not much really. Except to place ourselves into the hands of God and his mercy. Only God can draw us out of our torpor.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><br></div>Father Tom sjhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10806813379688848302noreply@blogger.com0