July 31, 2005: Consecrating the Ordinary

+THE EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


I hope you were listening to our Scripture readings today because they’re filled with tantalizing promises.

Isaiah says: Come to the Lord! You don’t need money. Out of love, he’ll feed you richly and bless you with life.

St. Paul adds that nothing—nothing at all—can break the permanent connection of God’s mighty love for you.

And finally, Jesus demonstrates this divine compassion by feeding the hungry crowds starting with nothing more than five loaves of bread and a couple of fish.

Well… all of this sounds great sitting in church on a Sunday morning… but what about tomorrow when life is back to the “same ol’, same ol’”?

Don’t you agree that this is one of the greatest challenges of the Christian life? How do we take the great stuff we hear in mass and bring it alive in our everyday lives?

Actually, this is something that even the greatest saints have struggled with. For instance, take the great 16th century Christian mystic, St. Teresa of Ávila. She had a hard time bringing the life of the spirit into the dull tasks of her Carmelite convent: washing pots, sweeping floors, folding laundry. How could she do it?

With God’s grace, Teresa found that those very ordinary, mundane chores became a kind of prayer for her—a way she could experience being permanently connected to God’s mighty love which is the source of life. Through gentle meditation and conversation—“Look, Jesus! I fold this perfectly just for you!”—Teresa began to see the face of God in the folded sheets.

Most of us find it easy enough to recognize mystery when it presents itself in dramatic ways. Think about a very sick person who is miraculously healed when all hope is gone… the person who is visited by an angel, like Mary or Joseph or John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah—or maybe even someone you know… the person who experiences a coincidence that completely changes their life.

It’s true; most of us seem to be able to hear God best when he shouts. Even Moses required a burning bush… and as we see today, even Jesus’ disciples needed him to feed multitudes with a bit of bread and two small fish.

Yet the beauty of the life of permanent connection to God is that mystery can be anywhere and everywhere… even in the tiniest, run-of-the-mill things of daily life. The secret is developing eyes to behold it. It takes a bit of dedication and practice.
For some of us, it takes a miracle to get our attention. For others, it takes a crisis. But the wonderful news is that we ALL can learn to see God in the folded sheets.

I want to tell you about the little vegetable garden I planted after I was ordained a priest. It was a tiny garden, but I enjoyed it a lot. I especially loved the lettuce I planted in a tight square. Almost every night I harvested my dinner salad from the leaves at the edges. One evening, I had gone out to pick the salad as usual and I ran my hand lightly over the crisp green square of lettuce leaves. I marveled at its vitality, almost as if it were bubbling up out of the ground. Suddenly, words of the mass came flooding into my head… words that I said every day, that I knew by heart… but words that I now heard for the first time:

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life.

Far from being the usual mechanical recitation—maybe even a mumble—these words were suddenly a potent description of something real… a statement about grace and the mystery of life itself. From a handful of tiny seeds and a patch of dirt came this bountiful and very alive source of delicious food! Of course I knew what the words meant, including all the religious truth behind them… but I really had no first-hand experience that these familiar words were simply a description of something true. I had never witnessed them happening in the world before.

And that is the way that we generally deal with rituals and routines in life: automatically. Life can simply become a habit… something done without thinking.

Living life this way doesn’t awaken us or grab us, BUT any of our routines and habits CAN break through the ordinariness of the day.

I think an easy way to start to experience this mystery is through the Scriptures. Read a little of your bible—slowly, meditatively—and see if some phrase or image captivates you. Take it as a sign that God wants to reveal something to you in the course of the day… then look for it. You might find it when you’re taking out the garbage, filling the gas tank, cutting the grass, setting the table for dinner. Try to consciously offer these simplest actions as your gift to God and see what he has in store for you back.

You see, nothing can separate us from the love of God—not evening doing the most common, non-churchy things in the world.

And nothing can draw us more into experiencing that love of God than simply looking for him just where we are and in what we’re doing here and now.




Today’s Readings:
Isaiah 55: 1–3
Psalm 145
Romans 8: 35–39
Matthew 14: 13–21

July 24, 2005: Buried Treasure

+THE SEVENTEETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


When I was growing up, I remember my mother had a set of very fancy dishes that she called her “good china.” The plates and saucers and tea cups had kind of a scalloped edge with delicate flowers painted on them and an edge of gold leaf.

If memory serves, I think my mother said she got these as a wedding gift. It must have been some kind of tradition at the time, since evidently many couples had their own sets of “good china” tucked away on high shelves, dining room cupboards or in closets.

My mother’s dishes were beautiful, but I can’t recall too many times that I ever saw them used. They certainly weren’t our everyday, family dishes. I guess my mom must have figured that if she used these plates all the time, there was a good chance that they could get chipped or broken. So they stayed safely stowed away.

In fact, that’s where they were when my mother died in 2002.

I find it kind of sad that she had a collection of pretty china for 50 years and didn’t allow herself to enjoy it for fear that a piece or two might get damaged. So what happens to it all? What’s her priest-son want with it? I could put it in a yard sale or on eBay and let some perfect stranger wind up with my mother’s treasures.

I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if she just used and enjoyed her beautiful things. So what if a plate got chipped or broken? It’s not the end of the world. But instead she decided that worry and safety were better than taking a risk and living with a little more gusto. In the end, though, she wound up losing it all. That’s how death works. Bad choice, I guess.

Maybe this is the kind of situation Jesus is referring to today when he talks about treasure buried in a field. He says that if you knew that treasure was there, you’d be so eager to get the property that you’d sell everything you had and you’d pay any price.

It’s interesting that the Lord makes a point of saying that the treasure is buried. Why would someone bury their treasure? One reason is that the person is afraid of losing it. They bury it to safeguard it…so it won’t get stolen or lost or destroyed. Kind of like hiding away the good china.

Another reason why there might be buried treasure is because the person may not even know it’s there in the first place. I told a story a couple of months ago about the poor Texan who didn’t know he was sitting on a major oil field. Sometimes you hear about someone who picks up some junky-looking trinket at a flea market that turns out to be extremely valuable. Maybe the old Lotto ticket that you’re using as a bookmark is a big winner after all. Perhaps a person discovers some hidden talent they didn’t know they had.

Those are all situations where you might say that our treasure is buried.

Jesus is always encouraging us to open our eyes and look at the world around us. He says that we should be like you farmers who look up in the sky and can tell whether it’s going to rain. In other words, look around and see if you’ve got treasure under your very feet.

I met a woman once who laughed and told me, “I’m not saving my good perfume just for special parties any more. Don’t grocery store clerks and bank tellers have noses that work just as well as my party friends?” I like that attitude—and Jesus does, too.

What kind of buried treasure do you have in your life these days?

Some of us are blessed with good relationships—family members and friends. That’s a treasure for sure. We had that very sad funeral for young Derek Deany just a week and a half ago. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support for his family. Hundreds and hundreds of you packed this church, prayed, cried, hugged the family, called, visited, cooked food, and helped anyway you could. I’m originally from New York City. I love New York, but truthfully, the person who lives in the next apartment could die and you might not know it for months.

Some people, for their treasure, are blessed with decent health and energy, talent, brains. Isn’t it a blessing when you’re willing to unearth those treasures and use them for the common good? And so many here do that! I go around each week and visit parishioners who are confined to their homes. They never fail to tell me how good you folks are to them: bringing them food, picking up mail or running other errands, driving them places, stopping in for a social visit, checking on them in the heat, doing little chores around the house for them, and so on.

But I suppose there’s one form of buried treasure that we all have, no matter how old or young we are… no matter how healthy or sick… no matter how rich or poor. And that is the treasure of our faith. God is with us day and night, watching over us and guiding us in his divine providence. Every good thing—every success, every bit of good luck or coincidence, every dollar earned or morsel of food on the table—comes directly from his hand. And he’s also working to take every bad thing or setback and to twist it around to make it a source of grace and blessing, too. All he asks of us is that we try to recognize this treasure… that we don’t fight him but let him love us and nudge us in the right direction.

My dear friends, you’ve got all these treasures in your life whether you realize it or not. But it’s good to realize it. Don’t keep your blessings locked away like my mom’s good china. Take it all out and use it! Enjoy it. Spread it around… because the greatest thing about God’s treasure is that the more you use it, the more it grows and multiplies. And the Lord doesn’t want anything more for you than that.



Today’s Readings:
1 Kings 3: 5–12
Psalm 119
Romans 8: 28–30
Matthew 13: 44–46

July 17, 2005: God’s Clemency

+THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


A mother once approached Napoleon to ask for a pardon for her son. The emperor replied that the young man had committed a certain offense twice and justice demanded that he be put to death.

The boy’s mother begged him, “But I don’t ask for justice. I plead for mercy.”

“But your son does not deserve mercy,” Napoleon answered.

“Sir,” the woman cried, “it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask for.”

“Very well, then,” the emperor said. “I will have mercy.” And he spared the woman’s son.

Mercy is a beautiful gift. Maybe it’s the greatest form of love, because it contains kindness, forgiveness, compassion, gentleness, leniency all rolled into one… and it’s offered to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

And when the person who extends mercy is the one who has a duty to mete out punishment—like a judge, or the president, or a governor, for example—that mercy has a special name: clemency.

This is the very word we hear about God in our first reading today from the Book of Wisdom. No matter how much we may be deserving of punishment, God cherishes us so much that he offers us clemency—mercy, leniency, forgiveness—instead.

Jesus repeats that message in his parable. He says that in the world, there are people who do good—the wheat—and people who do bad—the weeds. Don’t pull out the weeds, he says. Let them grow side-by-side with the wheat. Maybe the weeds will become wheat.

What? Weeds become wheat?

Sure, why not? If bread can become Jesus… if sinners can repent… if all things are possible with God, then I repeat: why not?

If this alone weren’t good enough news, look at the next little piece of the puzzle that St. Paul adds. He says that because we are trapped in our weakness, lots of times we don’t even know how to pray for God’s mercy… or for repentance. Why, we may not even know that we need to pray! But Paul writes, But the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. In other words, God even supplies the asking and praying part for us!

Let this amazing church teaching—this amazing reality—sink in for a moment.

Try to remember it the next time somebody does something awful and you wonder, “How can that rotten so-and-so get away with that? Why doesn’t God teach him a lesson?”

Even better, try to remember it the next time you are plagued with guilt or self-recrimination over something in your own life. God is carrying you and working to lift you out of the mess.

God’s incredible patience and gentleness towards us should hopefully bring us to some powerful conclusions in our faith life.

For one thing, we should be filled to the brim with hope. No matter what I have done, or am doing, in my life… no matter how unfortunate, sinful, degrading, hurtful… God still loves me, has mercy and compassion on me, and is not only willing but eager to forgive me and draw me back to himself… even if he himself has to supply the prayers. Maybe all I need to do to start is not to fight him! Not to put on the brakes and say no. But simply let the Holy Spirit penetrate my heart and gently redirect me. This hope says that nothing is hopeless… nothing at all is beyond fixing. With God, all things are possible…

A second powerful lesson is that we simply cannot and must not judge or condemn other people. How dare I be the recipient of God’s clemency—maybe without my even realizing how much!—and then turn around and have the unmitigated gall to believe that another of God’s children shouldn’t be treated with the same divine compassion? If you want a humbling exercise, go through your mind and think about your own personal prejudices against individuals or entire groups of fellow human beings. God is certainly merciful towards them. Why won’t I be?

Still a third important thing to learn is that God may want to use you to bring people to him. If you are cold, judgmental, standoffish, snide—I won’t want to have anything to do with you. But if you are kind, gentle, smiling, welcoming, forgiving—well, of course I’ll want to know you… and be your friend… and listen to you… and learn from you… and meet your God who helps you be a loving, peace-filled person… because I want to be like that, too. You see?

Most of you sitting in these pews are farmers or gardeners. You understand that by properly working the earth, you can produce a bountiful harvest. God is doing the same. His tools are love, mercy, clemency, leniency, forgiveness, patience… and us, his precious children who double as his farm implements.

May we be filled with awe and hope at his profound goodness and compassion… and may we learn from him and his Son.



Today’s Readings:
Wisdom of Solomon 12: 13, 16–19
Psalm 86
Romans 8: 26–27
Matthew 13: 24–30 (Short Form)

July 10, 2005: God’s Perfect Seeds

+THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


In the past, whenever I heard today’s parable of the sower and the seeds, I’d always focus on the different places where the seed could wind up: on the path, on the rocky ground, in the rich soil, and so on. I took the gospel to mean that by our choices in life, we could determine how well we would thrive—in this life, but even more importantly, in our eternal life to come.

Yet this time, the Holy Spirit touched my heart in a completely different way. That’s one of the beauties of the Sacred Scriptures. Because it’s the living word of God, it can always speak to us in fresh, new ways.

This time, I thought about the seed rather than the place where the seed wound up.

The seed, of course, was made by God. He is the sower and the creator. Our God is all-loving, all-wise, all-perfect in every way… therefore, the seed—his creation—is also perfect and whole. By God’s standards, there are no seeds that are duds… no seeds that are weak or that won’t sprout or that will by accident become freaks of nature. And of course, you and I, my sisters and brothers, are those seeds.

But wow. We look around and see lots of people who just don’t strike us as being the product of perfect seeds. This one has a terrible physical disability. That one is stricken with an aggressive cancer in the prime of life. The one over there suffers from crippling depression. Another is gay or lesbian and is treated like a leper—even in our church. Still another is horribly burdened with an addiction. From the outside looking in, we might be sorely tempted to say that these are not perfect or whole seeds.

And worse still, these very people may judge themselves even more harshly. As you can well imagine, thinking about yourself as being deficient or broken can be a real obstacle in a loving, trusting relationship with God.

In Hinduism, there is a concept known as samsara. They call this the world of illusion—the place where most of us live. They say that mistaking illusion for reality is a key reason for our suffering. Yet in a mysterious way, suffering itself can release us from illusion. In times of crisis when we reach for what we think is our strength, we stumble upon our real power... all the perfection and wholeness, you might say, that is built into our seed.

St. Paul talks today about suffering. He says that it’s nothing compared with the glory that will be revealed for us. We wait with eager expectation while we groan away in this life. The trick, then, is to see our suffering not as reality… but as samsara… illusion. Or better yet, we see that the cross is our stepping stone to the reality of our whole and perfect life with Christ.

Coming to wholeness is not just something that happens to us after death… after our earthly suffering is over. Far from it. It should be a process for us as all the while as we venture through life.

I think we all know people who have undergone some crisis in life that then becomes a defining moment. The cancer survivor who goes out and is passionate about educating others about early detection and prevention. The parent who loses a child to a drunk driver who advocates fervently. The accident victim who ministers to others in the same boat with great love and empathy. Even in our own church, the victims of priest-pedophiles who demand accountability and reform from our bishops. In each case, through the experience of profound suffering, the discovery of wholeness and life’s mission emerge. That’s why Jesus says that no one comes to life except through the cross.

The problem for most of us is that we see the cross as something terrible… something to be avoided at all costs. Discomfort… sacrifice… self-denial… losses and setbacks according to our preconceived notions… these are all dirty words. By fleeing, however, we may be cutting ourselves off or turning a blind eye to God’s grace.

There’s a story about Jesus and Mary in their heavenly abode watching over the earth. Naturally they are touched by the challenges and constant suffering of human life. As they’re watching, Mary sees a very poor man walking down a road. Her heart is moved with motherly compassion. Touched by the man’s goodness and struggle, she turns to Jesus and begs him to give this man some gold. Christ looks at the man for a long moment. “My dearest Mother,” he says, “I cannot do that.” Mary is astounded. “Why, what do you mean, my Son? You are Lord of the universe. Why can’t you do this simple thing?”

Jesus replies, “I cannot give this to him because he is not yet ready to receive it.” Mary is disturbed. “Do you mean to say that you cannot drop a bag of gold in his path?”

“Surely I can,” Jesus answers, “but that is quite another thing.”

“Please, my Son,” says Mary.

And so Jesus drops a bag of gold in the man’s path.

The man meanwhile walks along thinking to himself, “I wonder if I will find dinner tonight—or shall I go hungry again?” Turning a bend in the road, he sees something on the path in his way. “Aha,” he says. “Look there, a large rock. How fortunate that I have seen it. I might have torn these poor sandals of mine even further.” And carefully stepping over the bag of gold, he goes on his way.

Dear friends, it seems that life drops many bags of gold in our path. Rarely do they look like what they are. In fact, I propose to you that wherever you see or experience pain, troubles, crises or other sufferings in life, the gold isn’t far away.

Yes, we are God’s perfect seeds—whole and beloved. Where he happens to plant us is a place for us to grow and thrive if we but look with eyes of faith and trust with a heart of love.


Today’s Readings:
Isaiah 55: 10–11
Psalm 65
Romans 8: 18–23
Matthew 13: 1–23

July 3, 2005: Unburdening Yourself

+THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME


Somebody sent me an email story the other day that made an interesting point. It started out by asking: how much do you think that a glass of water weighs? The story went on to say that the exact number in ounces really doesn’t matter. What counts is how heavy the glass of water is. You may be wondering, what’s the difference? Well, think about this. If you were to hold the glass for one minute, it’s no big deal. If you hold it for an hour, your arm will probably be aching. If you have to hold it for an entire day, you’re going to need an ambulance. The point is, the weight is not any different, but the longer you hold up the glass, the heavier the burden becomes.

I’m sure we all know that the same kind of rule applies in the spiritual and emotional world. Worries and anxieties get bigger the longer we hold on to them. Problems with other people—or with God, for that matter—may seem beyond fixing if we don’t take steps to work things out. Fears can become paralyzing if we run away and don’t dare to confront them.

I find it enormously comforting that this is one aspect of life that Jesus talked about specifically. In fact, I think it’s my favorite bible text of all:

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.

Christ wants to teach us how to become unburdened from all these terrible weights that press on us and hold us down.

There are actually a couple of different ways that Jesus helps us accomplish this unburdening.

The first way is a kind of weight- or resistance-training. If you wanted to build up your arms, for example, you might do that by lifting weights. You’d start with light weights and just a few lifts… and over time, you’d add more and more weight, and do more and more reps. Remember that Charles Atlas started out as the 98-pound weakling who got sand kicked in his face at the beach… before he became the muscleman that inspired generations of kids, including Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Back in the 1800s, before there were such things as professional trainers, there was a young Scotsman who dreamed of being a discus thrower. He decided that he would develop his skills on his own. He even made his own discus based on a description he read in a book.

What this lad didn’t know was that the discus used in competitions was made of wood with an outer rim of iron. He thought it was solid iron—so that’s how he made his. His version weighed three or four times more than a regulation discus.

So he marked off the distance in a field of the current record, and he pushed himself and trained every day to try to match it. For almost a year, he practiced relentlessly—and he got to be very good… so good, in fact, that he could consistently match the record distance, and often beat it. He was ready.

The Scotsman traveled down to England for his first competition. When he arrived at the games, he was handed the official wooden discus—which he promptly threw like it was as light as a saucer. He easily set a new record: a distance so far beyond his competitors that no one could touch him. For many years he remained the uncontested champion.

Consider the lesson here. So that’s how you do it. You train under a great burden!

Now think about the spiritual parallel. The pressures and stresses and difficulties of life become the weights that make us stronger… so we can smash them!

But the difference between the discus throwing Scotsman and us is that we do have a professional trainer. That’s Jesus Christ. Listen to what the Lord goes on to promise us:

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.

When two oxen are yoked together, they become a team and share the weight. Each only has to pull half. And the same way, when we yoke ourselves to Christ, he pulls a share of the weight—and I promise you, it’s more than half!

And this leads to the second way of how we are able to get unburdened… or maybe we should say, the way that we can yoke ourselves to Christ so he’ll lift the bulk of our burden.

I’m afraid it’s ridiculously easy… so easy, in fact, that you might scoff at it and not even try it. Are you ready? Here it is: you just ask. “Lord, take my burden.”

You simply give your fears, worries, problems, and so on to Christ. Drop them at his feet… and walk away. “Lord, I’m sick and tired about worrying about this problem. I’m just going to leave it with you. Either you worry about it for me, or take it away… but I don’t want it any more. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.”

If you’re skeptical, try it with something small. Forget that God scratched out the Grand Canyon with the tip of his pinkie. It’s OK. Once you see that a little emotional or spiritual burden can be lifted, hopefully you’ll try it out on something bigger.

And make a mental note of Matthew, chapter 11, verse 28: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.

Read it at home. Believe it. Try it. What a blessing that’s yours for the asking.


Today’s Readings:
Zechariah 9: 9–10
Psalm 145
Romans 8: 9–13
Matthew 11: 25–30