Back to Nicaragua

It has been an awesome Thanksgiving break, if one should call it a break.  I began by making a visit to some friends in Puerto Rico.  They are an inspiring family that have overcome many difficulties with a tremendous faith.   It was a beautiful visit.  I flew a missionary up from Nicaragua.   Providence brought everyone together.  Next I was back to tbe states for the celebration of a friends entering novitiate.  Now to Nicaragua to celebrate Mass in Managua with papel delegate for the New Evangelization! 

Poverty & Purpose

Homily 23rd Sunday Ordinary Time

Preparing the Field

Praise the Lord!  Sorta embarrassed to use this example because it is from the all-time most tacky Christian movie ever...Facing the Giants!  Father Tom and I watched it way back when and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed it.  Anyway, there is a devout Christian man that had been praying for a struggling Christian school for years.  Their football team is equally struggling to get a win.  God gave him a word for the Coach. It was a good word.  “There are two farmers who desperately needed rain. And both of them prayed for rain but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one do you think trusted God to send the rain?”  Coach replies, “Well the one who prepared his fields for it.”  The Christian man then asks, “Which one are you? God will send the rain when He is ready. It’s your job to prepare your field to receive it.”

This is the difficult part in life.  Usually we are in such anticipation of what we think should come down the pipe that we forget that what God has put in front of us in the immediate circumstance is His way of preparing us.  The readings this weekend are loaded with this concept of waiting on the Lord.  The psalmist says, “Our soul waits for the Lord who is our help and our shield.”  Hebrews says, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  The Book of Wisdom says, “Your people awaited the salvation of the just...”  Jesus says, “Gird your loins, light up your lamps...and be ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.  Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant upon his arrival.”

That is all fine and good, but what gets me is even though I intellectually ascent to the idea that Jesus is preparing me for something, I still fail miserably in the preparation process.  We can easily begin to, “beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk.”  We find ourselves constantly falling over our own feet desperately wanting to be the prudent steward, but blowing it all the time.  Perhaps this is why Peter asks Jesus, “Lord is this parable meant for us or for everyone?”  I’m with Saint Peter on this...I think it is for everyone and not me!  The reality of our situation can seem so hopeless.  We can just say, “I am incapable of being a good servant in preparing for the Lord,” and just leave it at that.  Or we can say, “Yes, I am incapable, but Christ Jesus who is my Lord and Savior is the one who can work through the deficiencies in me to make me capable for his Kingdom.  On top of that I am well aware of my deficiencies and am willing to bring them to you Lord.”

We can very easily know the master’s will but not make preparations.  Here we get beaten severely.  Or we can be ignorant of the master’s will but our beat down will only be “light.”  I don’t know about you, but I would rather claim invincible ignorance at this point.  A light beating sounds better than a severe!  I would like to claim, “I don’t have a clue so the heck with this and I will excuse myself of any responsibility.”  Then the words of the Confiteor at the beginning of Mass come back to haunt us, “In what we have done and in what we have failed to do.”  It is the failure to do is what really scares me.  Sorta like that fear that Joseph Pieper was talking about in his book On Hope.  Fearful of not reaching the potentiality of being.  Not so much the fear of the beating, but the fear of the deficiency of our resolve to be magnanimous.  Jesus’ words hit home at this point, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  Brothers and sisters in Christ, this is where we fall short so very often.  We run away as fast as we can from the fuller responsibilities to prepare ourselves that God is asking us to do!  We do this way more than what we realize.  God is asking of us to do great things for him and we are like, “Not me...I’m incapable of this.”  We feel God asking us to do something magnanimous, to set out on a journey for souls and win glory for Him, but we think it is all on ourselves to make it happen.  This is the short-circuit of the spiritual life that disables us, that self-destructs us and we are no more than chatterboxes talking a good fight, but not actually living the good fight of faith.  

Listen to this lengthy Cantalamessa quotation:  God is provoked by the profane, idle chatter that goes on in his Church.  (“Profane” means having no connection with God’s plan, having nothing to do with the Church’s mission.)  Too many human words, too many useless words, too many speeches, too many papers.  In the age of mass communication the Church is in danger, at least in affluent countries, of burrowing into the straw of useless words, of talking for the sake of talking, of writing because the reviews and the magazines are there to be filled.  It is a new Noah’s Flood, from which few souls are saved today too.  How can the world perceive the energetic Word of God in the hubbub of useless words emanating from the Church?  We offer the world the best excuses for sitting tight in its unbelief and its sins.  If unbelievers could so much hear the authentic Word of God, they would not find it so easy to get away with saying (as they often do after hearing our sermons):  “Words, words, words!”  The human race and the Church, too, are sick with uproar; we need “to declare a fast” from words.  We need someone to shout, as Moses once did: “Be silent, O Israel, and listen!”

Preaching for example is a full-out acknowledgement of one’s complete incompetence.  Just by standing up here, I’ve condemned myself because ill-preparation and lack of faith has already condoned the very words I speak.  The only recourse, then, is an acknowledgment that a splinter of what I say may have some redeeming merit to bear fruit in you the listener!  Do you see what I’m saying!  Even our best intention, however good it might be, will never be the adequate preparation for us to gain the glory of heaven!  Our only hope is Jedi Master and force guru Obi-Wan-Kenobi....no, it is Jesus Christ folks!  He was wrought for us the victory!  The kingdom of God is at hand!  Our preparation should then be nothing more than a desire to please our Lord out of love and Him alone.  No one else, nothing else will prepare us for the master’s return.  No amount of words, no idle chatter, no not doing anything.  We are preparing the field by tending to the acts of love that Jesus is demanding of us in the here and now.  Our frivolous expectation of what could be is only undermined by our self imposes distractions.  The project is not in human hands, but in God’s divine plan.  Let us give to Jesus our incapable capacities.  Let us humble ourselves before Him in authentic hope acknowledging the true Revealer of Redemption.  Let us realize that the greatest obstacle is not someone or something else, but the gargantuan giant of our own ego.  

And for you summer staff departing CYE this Thursday, if I may exhort you one last time in a Sunday homily; never believe that a lack of preparedness is a judgment upon your true self, but a condition of sin.  A sin that does not define you, but in a mysterious way enables you to place all trust, all hope, all faith and all love in the person of Jesus Christ.  His love for you.  Be magnanimous in failing miserably for Jesus to allow his victory to pick you up.  As the good archbishop Latour says in Death Comes to the Archbishop, “I shall not die of a cold, my son.  I shall die of having lived.“

You will face some stringent giants of self-doubt and be plagued by the hesitant nature of the condition of sin, but you must not allow that to over-reach it’s bounds.  Do not give the evil one that privilege to deny faith.  Remember that hope is the evidence of things not seen and your preparedness will only be sufficient to the degree that you place your life in the hands of Jesus Christ.  Do not be chitty-chatty but resolved in mission of purpose, silently going about your prayer and duties.  Admit your ignorance, but ask Christ to reveal Himself to you.  Seek out God’s will and you will know God’s will.  He will confirm you in the light of His Truth.  He will prepare your hearts to a perfection through a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters.  We then can receive the inheritance which has been promised and we will then be prepared to reap a generous harvest of souls.  

Treasure in Heaven

When I was in college invariably during exam week there were numerous ways to distract oneself.  Usually I would read a book that had nothing to do with any of the current academic subjects I was supposed to be studying.  Recently, although I have not been taking exams, I have distracted myself with a novel I had read a long time ago in seminary.  It is called Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather.  There is a chapter called,  “The Miser” about an old priest of the newly found Diocese of Santa Fe who would bury treasure underneath the dirt floor of his casa.  Vicar Joseph Viallant is called to anoint the priest who is on his deathbed.  By all appearances, the miser priest is poor, but his last confession is that there are buried treasures underneath the surface of the dirt floor.  After his death, they dig up the treasure finding a whopping $200,000 worth of accumulated goods.  This is a good chunk of change for those times and an impressive stash to say the least.

After reading the chapter my immediate reaction was, “Well at least I’m not like the miser priest.”  But then I thought of it again and concluded that perhaps I can be!  The Gospel reading for today is impressive and demanding.  Jesus tells us to store up treasure in heaven, not treasure for ourselves.  Yet so very often the accumulation of goods within our lives begin to stack up and we become bogged down by the weight of their enslavement.  These “treasures” we store up for ourselves may not necessarily be material possessions like the miserly old priest in the mission territory of Sante Fe.  There are “treasures” we begin to hold onto like independence and false freedom saying that we can do anything we please.  Or we hoard our time embracing it covetously and shoving people to the wayside because they are too inconvenient.  We often are plagued by our own internal thoughts and moods that hoard our attention and ability to serve others.  So the parable is not just about filling this barn with physical stuff, but filling our souls with other stuff other than God.  Saint Paul exhorts us, “Seek what is above where Christ is seated...not of what is on earth.”  Yet how so ever slowly these earthen treasures load us down and bog down the true freedom of a detached soul.

I’ve been driving the bus for sometime now.  I am tired of driving the bus to be honest with you.  But there is one dimension I like about it!  Let’s just picture ourselves rumbling and a bumbling down the highway on our way to Kangaroo Lake.  We are 5400 lbs of metal and raw diesel crushing the asphalt on the way to our goal--this chapel!  The bus itself is a bit of a cumbersome and crude piece of machinery, but it is holding something very precious!  YOU!  I got to thinking that you are the treasure of which we speak about because each of you have an immortal soul that is yearning to be fashioned and molded into something much greater than what it is now.  This cargo of souls is searching for a treasure which is not of this world.  The treasure is saying to the world, “Vanity of vanities....I’m going on a CYE!  I am going to make retreat and be with Jesus to pray!”  I see all the rich and fancy cars up here in the Door County baby boom playland and all of them are so empty.  But our bus was stuffed today!  That is the real treasure!

Back in one of our first summers of CYE, I obtained a monstrance from Holy Spirit Parish.  Later I was accused of stealing the monstrance, but that is of little consequence.  I wanted to bury it.  What do I mean you might ask?  Bury a monstrance?  But why?  My thought was to make an activity out of it all.  I had a treasure chest made and we buried it on expedition and the summer staff and expeditioners did a geo-cache hunt for it.  Once discovered, we took the monstrance out and, of course, placed it on the altar.  We took Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and exposed him in adoration for us to encounter the living person of Jesus.  It would be easy to believe that the gold monstrance was the treasure and the parish I “borrowed” it from certainly got that!  But the real hidden mysterious treasure was the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist that we adored and consumed and became more and more like.  This is the transcendent treasure of which Jesus speaks of in today’s gospel reading, “Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven!”

When we come to receive Jesus, we need to make an inventory analysis of our souls.  We need to examine our conscious and see where we have become miserly in our thoughts and actions.  It is easy to say, “Well at least I don’t have a barn and stash all this stuff in it!  Not me!”  But these are words of pride.  We have done this.  We have accumulated some baggage that we need to empty ourselves of.  We don’t want to be like the miser in the story of a distraction of life.  We want to become like the one who really doesn’t have anything.  The one who thinks of heavenly realities and the becoming of which will be fulfilled within ourselves in the Beatific Vision.  Jesus wants us to empty ourselves because He did it himself.  He emptied himself on the Cross...quit literally!  The treasury gushed forth as blood and water; the complete self-emptying was one of extreme love for souls.  We may miss the mark in this regard, but by receiving Jesus once again, we are emptied of false and worldly harvests.  Instead we are filled up with the treasure of love and new life.  A treasure of redemption and mercy.  A barn full of robust golden grain truly ready to be taken up in the harvest of the end time.  “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”  We will not fill ourselves up with remorse and bitterness and a prideful resolve to keep God’s earthly treasure within and the heavenly treasure at bay.  Let us not be miserly!  Let us be empty.  Let us receive.  Let us pour out this new found treasure to others.

Keep Asking for the Sugar

“Knock and the door will be open?”  It seems such an archaic concept.  This dawned on me recently when I went to visit someone’s home.  Instead of knocking at their door, I texted them on the cell phone to let them know that I was there.  Is knocking becoming obsolete?  Or again, if we really think about it, how often do we knock on our neighbor’s door?  I remember as a kid my mother would send me up the block to Old Lady Lucy’s house.  That’s what we called her anyway.  I would run up the rickety stairs of her old white house on the corner and ask for a cup of sugar. Old Lady Lucy, well, she was as sweet as the sugar.  Then there was also Grampa Wolf who lived across the street, the chain smoker he was, we would often head across Lansing Street to have him when we were in need of cleaning a school of rock bass and perch that we had just hauled in.  We always knew we could knock on the back door.  I remember knocking on the Sewernce’s door once with my nieghborhood friend Seth.  We were selling day old news papers so we could make $1.25 to purchase nachos and cheese at the Hole ‘n One gasoline station.  That was before they were called convenience stores.

The point being that perhaps in the past we may have knocked more often.  Now it is much different.  It is the pre-arranged pick-up point, the multiple text back and forth hammering down a time and a place.  A voice message telling so and so to meet us here or there at a determined time.  The spontaneity of the knock has been lost in our culture.  So much as changed in so little of a time that it seems difficult to really relate with Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading, “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  To ask, to seek and to knock all entail a vulnerability that we would no sooner avoid both in our daily lives of interaction with others and in our own spiritual lives.

Asking, seeking and knocking carry within them an antiquated form of living that we have rather left alone and it is called humility.  Asking for something opens us up to the possibility of making others aware that we are in need of something.  Seeking is an admittance that we don’t have all the answers to something.  Knocking is the awareness that in order to receive what I don’t have, I must do something about it.  But how often in life do we allow the opportunities that behold us slip away from the fear of asking for the help we need.  And on the flip side of that, in today’s world how sad it is that when asked for help, when we indeed knock, seek or ask we are rejected and turned down by the other because it is all but and inconvenience.  We have battened down the hatches, we have retreated into our hobbit-life existence in order to preserve a perverse and distorted sense of security.  At the heart of it all lies a deep seated fear of the unknown and the inability to make ourselves vulnerable and open to the lavish gifts that God would like to pour out upon us if only we would ask.  

It would be good here to quote again from Francis, “...we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn't concern us, it’s none of our business.”  We have indeed become indifferent because we have lost the vulnerability of the cross.  Our fear as vanquished the love it takes to reach out to our neighbor and we no longer go out to seek, to ask and to knock.  

Vulnerability means placing ourselves in harms way.  It means continually taking the risk to love someone because that is what Jesus Christ has done for us.  Certainly, we can not do this if we ourselves do not comprehend the wonderous love of God that he has come first to knock on our own hearts.   That Jesus Christ, himself has come to seek out our lost, abandoned and forlorn souls that we don’t even care to admit are those things in the first place!  That Jesus is asking of us today to make ourselves vulnerable like himself on the cross.  Yet our neighbor, our brother and sister in need is alone because we have not knocked on the door of their hearts, we have not sought them out to console or help them.  We have not taken the risk to ask them how they are doing and really mean it.  Our pitiable state has isolated ourselves from one another and fear is running rampant.

Why would we think that if we ask for a bit of sugar that we’ll get a slap in the face from Old Lady Lucy or if we ask Grampa Wolff to help us clean fish that he’ll stamp out his cigarette on the ground in front of us and slam the door on us?  What makes us think that if we make ourselves vulnerable by asking for help that it makes us any less of a man or a woman?  Asking for something is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of one’s understanding of vulnerability and solidarity with Christ.  As Christ himself says, “What father among you would hand his son  a snake when he asks for a fish?  Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?”  No, our retreat into our own selfish lives and calculated “risks” have spiraled us into this vanity of indifference.  Even those brothers and sisters in our midst who are in need of something, we are completely unaware of because of our self-engrossed life-styles of comfortable control and complacency.

“Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.”  Sure he did.  Many times it is easy to begin to think that God is not answering our prayers.  That he is silent and still not heeding our distress calls for help.  When we are in this vein of living, we are living in the field of self-pity.  We are falling into the temptation of the mentality that, “woe is me.  Poor old me.”  There is an old adage that one must sometime pull themselves up by their own boot-straps and while this verifiably has some merit, the truth is that that only one to pick us up is Jesus Christ.  Abraham petitioned God several times before God finally gave him the answer.  We usually stop at one or don’t even get to one.  Our perseverance in prayer is continually undermined by the fear that God is going to hold back from us, that he is not a lavish giver and lover, abundant in his generous outpouring of mercy and love.  We then in turn, pull back from relationships and others in order to secure what we in fact don’t have and it becomes a black-hole of self-remorse and isolationism.  Jesus says, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.”  Let’s not pass the blame on someone else or some external situation.  We are are not the victims, Christ is!  He became like a lamb led to the slaughter for our own sins.  He is the one who continues to knock, to seek and to ask.  He is the one going door-to-door of our souls not with the phone in his hand in a psuedo secure digital world, but the one who has made himself vulnerable for us.  He is rapping on the doors seeking to see if anyone indeed is willing to be open and become vulnerable to him.  We miss Jesus because we somehow inherently know that if we acknowledge him that life will be messy and complicated and we don’t want that because that means the cross for us.  Listen again to Pope Francis and what he just proclaimed at WYD on the 25th, “I would like us to make noise, I would like those inside the Dioceses to go out into the open; I want the Church to be in the streets; I want us to defend ourselves against all that is worldliness, comfort, being closed and turned within – Parishes, colleges and institutions must get out otherwise they risk becoming NGOs, and the Church is not a Non-Governmental Organization”.

It comes down to Saint Paul exhortation to us in the second reading, “We were buried with him in baptism.  We were raised with him through faith in the power of God.  Even when we were dead in our transgressions, he brought us to life.  He has forgiven us all our transgressions.  He has obliterated the bond against us.  Jesus has nailed the legal claims opposed to us to the cross.  If we truly believe what we do, then we will not allow the darkness that keeps us locked inside from going out to our neighbor once again.  We will begin to realize that the God who has sought us, who daily knocks at the door of our own hearts.  The Christ who delivers us asks us to become vulnerable with him once again.  And we respond with a resounding AMEN.  Yes Lord, I will take the chance again because you have for me.  And mind you, this is the sweetest, the whitest and purest sugar we can ask for.

Martha Martha Martha!

There are those certain saints that get the bad wrap.  There’s Saint Thomas, also known as ‘doubting Thomas’ who doesn’t believe in Jesus resurrection until he places his fingers in the hands and side of Jesus.  There’s Mary Magdalene who is accused of being Jesus’ girlfriend and hopelessly lost in the sin of promiscuity.  Then there is good ‘ol Saint Peter who denies Jesus three times.  St. Peter who consistently blunders and fumbles in word and deed.  Last but not least, we have Martha, who in today’s Gospel, obviously missed the point of being at Jesus’ feet.  All these saints get the bum rap at some time or another, but upon further review, let’s give Martha a little bit of credit in her apparent snafu.

“Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.”  We have to give Martha credit.  She ran out to welcome Jesus while Mary stayed back.  St. Ephrem the Syrian said, “Martha’s love was more fervent than Mary’s, for before Jesus had arrived there, she was ready to serve him.”  

In the first reading, Abraham is sitting in his tent.  Three men, symbolizing the Holy Trinity and God himself are standing outside his tent.  Abraham “looked up” and “he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them.”  Not only that, but he bowed down on the ground.  So Abraham and Martha have a lot in common.  They are two peas in a pod.  Both rushing out to greet God.  Both eager to serve and do the loving.  

Pope Francis says this, “Jesus speaks about in the parable of the Good Samaritan: We look upon the brother half dead by the roadside, perhaps we think “poor guy,” and we continue on our way, it’s none of our business; and we feel fine with this. We feel at peace with this, we feel fine! The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn't concern us, it’s none of our business.

We’ve become indifferent to the need of greeting Christ.  Martha exemplifies the ability to zealously go out and meet Jesus.  But somewhere along the way she sorta gets it wrong.  What happened?  It is obvious that Martha’s heart is in the right place, but she misfires, she goes down the wrong path.  Instead of staying focused on doing what she was doing for Christ and Christ doing through her, she begins to put the burden of service upon herself.  What’s the remedy?  How can we not run into the same problem of bringing the burden of service upon ourselves?

Saint Paul gives us the vaccine in the second reading.  He says, “IT IS CHRIST IN YOU!”  It is Christ within us doing the work through us.  We are the instrument, not the player.  We are the messengers not the message.  He is God and we are not.  More often than not we make the drastic mistake of taking it all upon ourselves.  Then we actually command Jesus like Martha, “Tell her to help me!”  As Father Barron observes:  There is no greater indication that we are off our rocker than when we tell God what to do!

So lets not count Martha out.  Her heart is in the right place.  She isn’t indifferent, but wants to make a difference.  She isn’t complacent, but active.  At times, however, like Martha, we can begin to lose sight of how Christ is at work within us.  We need help to not be indifferent to the needs of others.  We need God’s help to lead us to his Son’s feet, like Mary so that we may chose the better part and receive from the font of life to be poured out for others--to welcome others, to greet other with the love of Christ found within.

Resolute to Jerusalem

Praise the Lord!  Freedom.  What does freedom mean to you?  I say freedom, you think... (fill in the blank)  When I think of freedom, I think of my childhood.  I grew up in Sturgeon Bay, twenty minutes south of here.  My experience of childhood was perhaps very different than yours and now I am the one who is old.  Freedom is summer in Door County.  Freedom is being in the water down by Otomba Park making drip castles on the beach.  Freedom is being set loose all day long on a hot July day floating on an innertube playing rock with friends, fishing for crayfish and fishing for perch.  Freedom is sailing and putting together an old catamaran with a friend to float far away from all the noise.  It is riding my Chip’s big wheel and Huffy dirt bike and my Trek road bike everywhere all the time.  Freedom was being on the water with friends in high school and skiing all day long and camping in our backyard with the next door neighbors, the Robertsons making smores.  The end of the freedom itself was freedom, my mother calling us in for dinner from the back porch of our house.  My mom had the wisdom and wherewithal to set us loose and trust that the adventures of uncontrolled environment would set us free to be imaginative, creative and dangerous.  Hate to really admit this, but I remember really enjoying a song on the radio in middle school that was being played a lot from Enya called Sail Away.  Freedom was the ability to follow fancies and wims in the large backyard of Sturgeon Bay.

Listen to what the Catachism of says of the threats to freedom:

Threats to freedom. The exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything. It is false to maintain that man, “the subject of this freedom,” is “an individual who is fully self-sufficient and whose finality is the satisfaction of his own interests in the enjoyment of earthly goods.”33 Moreover, the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions that are needed for a just exercise of freedom are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity. By deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth. (2108, 1887)

The freedom of being on the run and set loose at home was followed up by the parameters set by neighbors, friends, a parish community and of course mom.  There were controls to that freedom.  For instance, I once paddled across the bay on a small air mattress to see a friend.  His mom was so shocked and alarmed by the “dangerous feat” that she sent me home on the sidewalk carrying the small air mattress under my arm.  The Church in many ways is this neighbor, this mother guiding us at times in a direction that guards freedom’s ideal law.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and he was floating aimlessly in his mission.  He was resolute in the destination to calvary and his surrendering his freedom to the mission at hand.  Door were closed constantly being closed on Jesus journey.  Remember, door may open in life but more often than not they close and this is the way God works.  He may may close ten for us to become open to the one that leads to life.  The Samaritan village would not welcome Jesus.  Why wouldn’t they welcome him?  The scriptures say because his destination was Jerusalem.  Jesus’ mission was not in step with the Samaritans.  There were sharply divided and did not associate with one another because a break in the kingdom.  Jerusalem was the city of the Israelites, not the Samaritans.  Instead of getting all in a huff about it, Jesus rebukes his disciples for their desire to smit the rude Samaritan village.  James and John ask Jesus, “Lord do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”  Jesus simply decides to move on to another village.

When a door closes on us in life, we can very easy keep rapping on it over and over again.  We become like the disciples and want to retaliate on the infringement of freedom.  Instead of embracing the situation for what it is, we dig our heels in and can even become vindictive.  This is bad spiritual place to be and when it comes to recognizing the authority of the Church’s discernment in the matter we will have nothing to do with it.  Our response must be more like Jesus in this regard.  He accepts the will of God and submits personal freedom to do what he may want and does rather what he ought.  Remember, Jesus has an affinity to the Samaritans.  He probably wanted to hang out with them for a while.  He really enjoyed that woman at the well and she seemed pretty nice and all so why not now?  Jesus knew his mission.  Jesus was focused.  He was resolute.  Our use of freedom is so often tainted by personal ambitions and agendas that we fail to access freedoms ultimate purpose to link us to the Cross, to Christ to Calvery.

Now two more times in scripture, the use of personal freedom is put to the test.  Someone says, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  Maybe Jesus is put off from the previous rejection and is in a bad mood, but I’m willing to bet that’s not it.  He doesn’t say, great come on along with me to Jerusalem.  Instead he says, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”  He is saying to us directly that we may have an inkling of what it means to journey to Jerusalem, but it is far too tainted with our own agendas.  Recognizing this Jesus challenges us to not be grounded in a nest of our own comfortable surroundings for burrow ourselves in a den of stagnant self-will, but to have the freedom of a fox traversing the forest or a bird flying in freedom in the air.  Locked into the will of God and the resolute determination of his mission, Jesus teaches us that attachment to the world is the greatest distortion of freedom’s ideal law.  The paradox of course, is the strapping down the nailing down of his will to that of the Father’s in the seemingly dead end of the cross.  Remember, Jesus’ hands were open on the cross, not a closed fist of a self-imposed will scared of what God’s will may be in life.

Lastly, Jesus challenges someone to, “Follow me.”  And they reply that they can’t because they have to bury their father.  Jesus rebukes a third time, “Let the dead bury the dead.”  For the family-centered culture of the time, this is a seemingly impossible responsibility to tear away from, but Jesus’ resolute determination of the passion, death and resurrection overshadows even the most seemingly ‘important’ objection we throw his way.  This is where we get tripped up the most.  Jesus is asking us to follow him continually but we have a myriad of excuses centered around our own worldly pursuits and pleasures.

Our notion of freedom is challenged three times by Jesus.  His resolute determination to follow the Father’s will to the Cross is what keeps him clear on the objective of human freedom.  Recently, the folly of the worlds freedom was on display for us at the Supreme Court whereby they deemed marriage to be defined by their own limited focus of freedom.  However, this grose distortion could not be further from the truth of freedom’s ideal law--LOVE.  Justice Kennedy stated this in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992:

“At the heart of liberty, is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Nothing could be further from the truth of freedom.  It is ultimate hubris for us to begin to believe that we define our own concept of existence.  There are other names for this and they are called anarchy, culture of death, and totalitarianism.   Ruses and guises of freedom are abundant in the world and we know of them all to well, but what we must first recognize is the chaos of our own soul’s inability to submit ourselves to the authority of Christ through the Church.  She as bride of Christ is the means by which freedom will be preserved for eternity because she respects the free will of men and knows of its powerful contingency on our very relationship to God.

Like Jesus, we are called to submit to the guiding authority of God’s paradox of freedom.  To relinquish the control of our life and place our lives at the disposal of the missions mandate to journey with Christ to the cross.  We won’t stop in the village of secularism, we won’t make nests and dens of our own musings, we won’t consider worldly tasks to trump divine will.  We, like Christ will be “sub-missio,” submissive instruments of grace cooperators with the Church and confidently trusting in her lead as bride to the grooms heroic salvific act of love.

Bishop Ricken shares a prayer with us.  “Lord, help me to do your will nothing more and nothing less.  Help me to do your will not a moment sooner or a moment later than you will it.”  Freedom then becomes a grand adventure for us in the spiritual life.  It becomes the memories of a child-like faith and a mother-like trust in the free-will of a rambunctious child clammering for adventure.  Authentic freedom is Christ’s journey to Jerusalem and our encounters with him along the way.  You Lord are my inheritance.  Only you.  We will serve one another through love, not serve ourselves through the negation of freedom’s ideal law of love.  We will allow Elijah to throw his cloak over us as well burning our history of past mistakes and blunders.  We are confident of God’s will and his purpose.  We will float across that water not on the fears of failure, but on the feelings and inspirations of faith.  We will remain resolutely determined to journey with our Lord to Jerusalem.  God alone has given us our freedom, we in turn must use it responsibly and this is gaged only by one test--are with with Jesus and His Church or are we not.

A Real Conversation with Jesus

We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone who remembers us, but we don’t remember them.  At least, I know that I have.  As a priest you are continually meeting new people... constantly.  It takes a bit getting used to.  Even if you met them for one minute two years ago, they’ll say, “Remember me?”  Ummm...no.  At least that’s what you want to say, but out of some uncomfortable congeniality, you do the next best thing--you lie.  You say something like this, “O sure, its good to see you again.”  I’ve learned that saying ‘good to see you’ is a relatively neutral response that allows you to avoid implicating yourself for not remembering that person.  But we all do it.  We entertain conversations awkwardly with someone and it reaches the point where we can’t possibly admit that we don’t know them.  Suddenly trapped, we look for a polite escape out of the conversation that really isn’t a conversation in its purest form.  

Unfortunately for many of us, this may actually be where we are with the Lord Jesus Christ.  We entertain a conversation with him, but our eyes are furiously looking for an exit; a way out.  We are uncomfortable with Him--the One who knows us intimately.  We, however, don’t really remember Him, we don’t know Him, we don’t truly love Him.  Knowing who Christ is makes all the difference.  Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter got it right...for once, he gets it right.  “The Christ of God.”  Peter knows who he is talking to!  He has not yet forgotten and denied the One who had accepted him.  Do we know who we are talking with?  Are we entertaining a conversation with Jesus or are we truly entering into a dialogue with Him--the Son of God.

Jesus accepted Peter’s profession of faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man.  He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man “who came down from heaven,” and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.  (CCC 440)

I must reiterate this point--the fact that you are here serving Christ as summer staff, the fact that I’m a priest and serving Christ in Holy Orders is not a guarantee of truly knowing who it is that we are talking to!  We must admit to ourselves that the abiding love with which Jesus extends to us through his passion, death and resurrection is a reality we can very easy disassociate ourselves with through sin.  It can be precarious.  There can be a blindness within our own souls that is inhibiting us from knowing Jesus Christ.  What are these roadblocks that disguise the identity of Christ within our lives?  We’ve domesticated Jesus, we’ve defined who is according to our own musings and we’ve excused ourselves from suffering.

In Father Robert Barron’s series, The Catholicism Project, he begins the ten part DVD with the question of who Jesus is.  This is the premise of everything for us in faith.  Who in fact is this person of Jesus Christ?  Jesus in Hebrew means, “God Saves.”  Christ is the Greek derivative of the Hebrew, Messiah which means, “anointed.”  This means that Jesus is the one consecrated by God to fulfill the mission of salvation; to save humanity from their sins.  He is the priest, the prophet and the king fulfilling all of what the Israelites we patiently expecting.  How he went about it was drastically different, however.  He is lifted high on the cross suffering the death of a criminal to atone for our sins.  Barron goes on to articulate that when someone met Jesus, they were amazed and afraid.  There is something arresting about Jesus’ presence.  It commands not just a respect, but an awe and majesty that dices through our complacent and apathetic hearts.  To know Christ is to be in awe of his majesty and glory.  It is to be amazed and afraid of his presence that makes us uncomfortable and shocks us out of our stupor.  Meeting Jesus and knowing him is not entertaining a conversation at a reception of cordial and superficial conversation.  If silence and solitude are intimidating to us it is because we want to keep this challenging conversation of Christ at bay.  We want to remain an arm length apart.  We are uncomfortable with the love of Him coming too close to our woundedness.  But as Isaiah says, “It is by his wounds that we are healed.”  

After leaving the solitude of prayer, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  The disciples then go on to say a litany of who He isn’t!  They reply, “John the Baptist, Elijah, an ancient prophet that has arisen.”  Interesting that they begin defining Jesus by what he is not.  Appropriate as well because that is the Catholic approach to knowing God.  Defining what He is not!  And boy have we had enough of this!  Jesus is not a guru.  Jesus is not a self-help book.  Jesus is not a tacky youtube song, a quaint friend of mine!  Jesus is not an 8lb 6oz baby Jesus.  Jesus is not just a prophet among other prophets.  He isn’t in the categories of what the History channel would like to relegate him to.  He isn’t a pocket sized Jesus who we from to be into who we think he should be to fit our lifestyles.

The via negativa is the systematic theology of the Church that attempts to describe God by negation.  St. Thomas Aquinas used this approach to help us better understand God by knowing what he is not.  It makes all the difference for us as Catholics because it helps us not fall into the trap of making God into something that fits our mold and our perceptions.  The Gospel reading first helps us understand what God is not.  Then Peter in an epiphany of faith exclaims, “You are the Christ of God!”  You are the anointed one sent by God to save us from our sinfulness.  We must be careful not to project ourselves into our conception of who God is.  He is otherly other, not confined to our opinions, but an objective truth.  He is the one and the only one to save humanity from our sinful and inerrant ways.  There is no other who can make this truth claim.  Jesus is the son of God who suffered, died and rose for the salvation of man.  

Right after the truth claim of Peter, Jesus rebuked them.  Immediately after the claim of Christ’s Messianic mission by Peter, Jesus points toward the meaning of His presence in our lives.  He says, “The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  He goes on, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  This is where we get tripped up all the time in identify Jesus in our daily lives.  As soon as the implication of being a follower of Christ becomes too real, we shy away.  We bolt, we run, we hid.  We say, “NO WAY!”  Saint Paul says, “You are all children of God in Jesus Christ.  For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”  Do we really understand what St. Paul is saying?  He is telling us that identification of Christ, a real relationship with him, an authentic on-going conversation with Him means a participation within the life of Him.  This means that what Jesus says will happen to Him will happen to us.  Me no like this.  “If you wish to save your life, you will lose it, but if you lose it, you will save it.”  Get lost!  Subsume your life into his!  Hold fast to the conversation of Christ even if it implicates you into this suffering servants melody of salvation.  Embrace it, do not run from it.  This is the only way we can truly get to know the Jesus who is personal.

The Lord says to the inhabitants of Saint Josephs and Jerusalem, “I will pour out a spirit of grace and petition and they shall look on him whom they have pierced.”  Realizing that our lives are parched, lifeless and without water we can make the decision to allow our souls to cling fast to you, Jesus.  With exaltant lips my mouth shall praise you.  I will get to you know you these next days of silence and solitude.  I will enter into your pentecost.  I am amazed and afraid of you, Jesus because I know who you truly are.  I know that you are not what I make you out to be sometimes.  I will not run from the cross, but embrace it as you did.  I will remember what you did for me and continue to do for me; that your love is so powerful that it put to death my sin and gave me life in you.  Amen.

Sunday Homily 11th Week Ordinary Time--To See or not to See

“Do you see this woman?”  I love that line from Jesus!  Of course I see her!  She’s right in front of me!  You would be a fool to think I can’t see her!  Do you think that I’m blind?  Give me a break, Jesus.  Don’t mistake me as being a dunce, I’m Father Quinn, I’m a pharisee.  You see I have all the answers and am in right standing with God!  Jesus’ question posed to Simon is a question posed to us, “Do you see this woman, this man, this friend, this family member, this staff member, this expeditioner before you?”  I mean do you really see them?  Chances are we are not because we can’t see ourselves in light of Christ’s love for us.  Our ability to see others as they really are most often comes down to our own inability to see ourselves as God’s precious adopted sons and daughters.  What you see is not what you always get.  We compare and contrast one another to a standard we personally see ourselves fall short of.  I know that I do this this all the time.  For the past three weeks, we have been very busy being pharisees, passing our internal judgments upon one another.  We have sized one another up in that internal gauge of criteria only known to our own human hearts.  We’ve determined what we like and what we don’t like about one another with a clipboard heart checking off what we will accept and not accept.  We've concluded by comparison that one is more deserving than another and given them our attention.  “Do you see this woman?”

It’s like a collective old western pistol duel of grand proportions.  There’s Clint Eastwood and McClintock sizing one another up as they stand as opposing forces ready to destroy one another’s reputation, dignity and in the end their very lives.  On this deserted dirt  main street , others are hiding behind tainted windows of self-doubt and fear waiting for it to be over.  Squinting with a grimace and hand on the trigger we stand shoulder to shoulder facing one another ready to fire the first shots with our tongues of slander ready for the first kill.  Why?  Because we are disgusted with ourselves.  We are unhappy with what we see in our own lives.  We are submerged in self-hate.  This picture of competing duelers is non-other than our fiery reaction to any transgression upon our autonomy and freedom.  It is the duel between the faction of the pharisees and Jesus.  We’re in defense mood, standing and bracing ourselves ready and our trigger finger is itching to put one another down.  “Do you see this woman?”

On Wednesday of last week, while we were doing lectio, someone mentioned the ease at which it is to exclude ourselves from the pharisees stance in today’s Gospel reading.  Spot on!  We are the pharisee with our pride of place compensating for our lack of deep heart understanding of God’s love for us.  The pharisee was, by the way, the one who made the invitation to Jesus.  He was, by the way, offering his house to Jesus.  He was, by the way, even putting his reputation at stake by entertaining a blasphemer and rabble-rouser friends.  Jesus this man who claims to be the Son of God was with a son of the law and its rigid adhesion to the disbelief of God’s unconditional love.  Meanwhile there the humble site of the woman who no one sees let alone no one understands.  By all appearances, the pharisee seems to being doing it all right.  So too have we the appearance of doing all things right but we are deficient and lacking.

By appearance we may be polished and have an inviting appearance, but inside our disposition of heart is far from true Christian hospitality.  We are immobilized from service because we haven’t allowed the service of Christ enter our hearts.  It reminds us of  Jesus’ words in Matthew 23  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.  Our bodies may be doing what we are supposed to be doing by sheer force of a perfunctory obligation, but our minds and hearts are someplace entirely different.  And Jesus said, “Do you see this woman?  Do you really see her for who she is?  Do we truly see one another as the gift we are to one another?  

The question of really seeing one another is what the psalmist is driving at when he sings:  They have mouths but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see; They have ears but do not hear; nor is there breath in their mouths. (135)  Christians, we must take note of one another around us and stop being passing ships in the fog or dueling guns ready to mow one another down.  We must invest in one another truly by learning our stories and sharing our stories.  We are so often scared to become vulnerable because we know that if we do out there in the cruel world of judgement we will be whittled down and reduced to tears.  However, those tears are the remorse of our sin need to wipe the feet of our Lord.  To truly see someone for who they are is to know the possibility of what they can become.  All of us, ever single one of us has tremendous possibilities and potential to do the remarkable for and through the Lord Jesus Christ.  And the most insignificant outcast and rejected one is the magnanimous soul that sways the sadducitical mentality of judging.

Yesterday, I pray, was a day we began to see one another as Christ as all here FOR Christ and to see one another through the periscope of Christ.  The pharisee did not see CHRIST, but a curiosity.  Christ was an enigma to him, a question mark of love rather than an exclamation point of love.  Christ did not make sense to him as Christ doesn't make sense us because the love of Christ is so dramatically different than anything we've encountered.  Christ challenges our perceptions and pre-conceived notions.  The excessive adulation of Christ in the Gospel reading is the overcoming humility of the one who is in touch with her sinfulness.  She is not concerned with the appearance of the way things seem to be as she is dialed into the way things really are!  The first step in being a Christian is knowing that we are sinners!  Do we really know our sin!?  The blind cannot lead the blind!  

Our souls ability to accept another is our ability to accept our unacceptability before God first and foremost.  Today’s office of readying says, “She prayed with faith and obtained what she sought.  Scripture makes this clear in the words; She was speaking in her heart; her lips were moving but her voice could not be heard; and the Lord heard her prayer.  When we pray, our words should be calm, modest and disciplined.  It is characteristic of the vulgar to shout and make noise, not those who are modest.  On the contrary, they should employ a quiet tone in their prayer.”  This woman was beyond shame and she crossed the city to overcome horrendous back-biting  to exalt the one who exalted her beyond the shame of sin.  

Our sizing up of one another is nothing less than our comfortableness  before the Lord.  Like the pharisee, we’ll put on the good show, but we fail to see the reign of Christ’s love within our souls.  

David says in our first reading, “I have sinned against the Lord.”  This is the spiritual step the Lord simply asks of us.  Mea Culpa.  Mea culpa.  Mea culpa.  As our response is today, “Lord, forgive the wrong that I have done.”  Before we go our twisted way of sizing up one another, we need to size up to Christ and learn our insignificance before the love that defines our very being.  We are sinners, he is the Savior.  We are pitiable, he is perfect.  We are a mess, he is the Messiah.  Let us not nullify the grace of God by determining our own laws of engagement.  Let us reconcile ourselves to God and one another.  Remember what we see is not always what we get.  Let us bring the ointment of healing.  Let us stand behind him rather than charging ahead of him.  Let us be at his feet rather than pretend to be somewhere we’re not.  Let us weep instead of weaseling away from God’s abundant outpouring of love upon us.  Let us wipe these feet of our Savior and kiss the place of the future wounds that healed us of our sin.  “Do you see this woman?”  Yes Lord, we see her because we are beginning to see interiorly that she is us--poor sinners in need of mercy.

Homily--Young Man I tell you Arise! The Center Line Between Life & Death

The only thing dividing us and on-coming traffic on a two-lane highway is a usually a yellow line. Our trust in others to remain where they are on the road is actually remarkable if we think about it.  Other drivers are precariously close to us and a couple feet can mean life and death.  The only thing between stopping a bus and rolling through a stop light off an interstate highway is a quarter inch breakpad on the front driver’s side rotor!  Direction moving in an opposite direction at a high velocity when not channeled properly can have a damaging effect.  Just ask Nathaniel Binversie who unfortunately was injured water skiing yesterday.  However, if we are traveling parallel with one another like a group of bikers, runners or hikers, moving together in tandem with a common goal there can be a forceful change for the good.  The gospel reading for today is saturated with verbs for direction.  Journeyed, drew, carried out, moved with pity, stepped forward, halted, arise, seized, arisen and visited.  These dynamics of direction play an important role in St. Luke’s gospel accounts of Jesus’ healings.  The ultimate healing is the reversal of the direction of death to life.  Jesus brings the son of a widow, the only son of his mother to life and declares, “Young man, I tell you arise!”

Young people, I tell you arise!  We have been steadily declining in the direction of what I like to term, “relational entropy.”  Like the young man, we have fallen away from concord with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.  We have steadily began to break down in our ability to sustain relationships with others without the ability to make a commitment to anything worthy of remaining faithful to.  Entropy is a scientific phenomenon described as lack of order and a gradual decline.  You see, we have fallen to discord and disorder by allowing ourselves the false freedom of retracting and retreating from human relationships.  Unbeknownst to ourselves, we have allowed a culture that cherishes death to become death within us.  We are the young man in the large crowd in the city of Nain lying at the city gate dead.  Jesus is moved with pity as his directional thrust reverses the breakdown of human relationships.  Jesus Christ restores us to a healthy sense of life.

A couple of you mentioned after immediately stepping off the bus last night how Father Peter spoke of really trying to get to know one another.  Asking questions about one another.  One of the most beautiful parts of of being entrusted with the authority of Christ as His priest is the ability to move the momentum of life’s movements to death to that of life.  One of the most frustrating is knowing so many stories of all of you out there, but no one taking the time to ask each other about one another!  You would be surprised at what you learn about the lives of one another.  There is a treasury of beautiful sanctity within this sanctuary.  Our own egos and self-engrossment have deadened us to the gifts of one another.  Like Jesus, as participators in the drama of humanity’s condition of original sin, the priest walks with Jesus and journeys into a city of nain, or a community of Saint John and draws near, steps forward and raises the dead to new life.  These visitations of clarity within the clarion call of the Word’s piercing effectiveness is a participation within the Trinity.  Father Peter humbly said afterward that he was just a mercenary bus driver for CYE, but his insightful perception of this community’s relational entropy or breakdown was diagnosed quit quickly and he said something, “Young man, I tell you arise!”  And many of you noticed a shift in direction on the way home...and you noticed the bus was now breaking too!

I imagine Simeon’s prophecy of Jesus explosive power to reverse the direction of death proclaiming to Mary and Joseph and those present in the temple some thirty years earlier.  His gift of prophesy of Jesus’ future priestly ministry is perhaps a forgotten gift of the Spirit in this day and age, but his words may have been as such:

“You are a herald of this mighty storm of grace.  The word of the Lord will come upon you as fire.  The graces of heaven shall increase upon you beyond your ability to fathom, heaven's Kingdom will arise in you to a point that speech will give way to fire, and words will give way to incarnation. Thy Kingdom come thy will be done!”  And Jesus said, “Young man I tell you arise!”  Sons and daughters of God, stop your downward descent into the netherworld of deaths frozen abyss of darkness.  Allow the fire of God’s love to envelope you and disband the crowds of doubt.  

Elijah was moving into a different town--Zarephath and was with another widow.  A widow is one who has tasted the impact of death to a considerable degree.  One whom she had given to herself is now dead and gone.  Now in Nain, her son dead and gone.  The pain of loss in the wake of death for a widow is an archetype of the crumbled devastation of our soul’s condition of death and separation.  It is the directional dysfunction of this perverse and crooked generation failing to see the one way sign as we avoid the oncoming traffic of God’s kingdom among us.  Elijah, as prefigurement, carries the widow’s son to the upper room where he was staying and pleads to the Lord God, “Let the life breath return to the body of this child.”  The life breath returned in the upper room again some centuries later for the followers of Jesus and now some centuries later, here, in this sanctuary --this upper nornthern room.  God’s direction of life points in a linear time-line shooting through the ages and expanses of time in the Eucharist, but we remain as fish swimming against the streams of living water.  The woman replied to Elijah, “The word of the Lord comes truly from your mouth.”  And Jesus says, “Young man I tell you arise!”  Now the word enfleshed shatters death’s trap of destruction through the living presence of the WORD incarnate.  The Word has traveled to Nain through Calvary, into the cave and up into heaven!  It has moved  from Illinois, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Louisiana, California and Puerto Rico to this place, Saint Joseph’s Formation Center in Baileys Harbor, Door County WI!  It is enfleshed and alive!

Even Saint Paul’s direction was pointed out of himself and into others, beckoning those in darkness to the same life-breath we claim today.  Saint Paul preaches a Gospel not of human origin.  Participator in the life of Christ, Saint Paul had been set apart through grace.  Jesus revealed His love through Paul as He plumbed the depths of his deadened soul.  Paul, knocked off his horse (or so they say) reversing his direction from persecuted death of innocence to praising the victory of life over death and darkness.  He even decided to really move in the direction away from the in-house dysfunction of Judaism into the territory of the Gentiles in Arabia and Damascus.  We, unfortunately, remain within the confines and restrictions or our own houses of Israel with back-biting, competition and breaking down one another.  This community will have to turn a corner to establish the reign of God if it is to last for three months.  Stop thinking of yourselves so much!  Move away from this direction of sin and death.  We are dead at the gate!  We lie helpless in the arms of distress with the crowds of disbelief.  Jesus says,

“I tell you young man arise!”

When a priest distributes holy communion, he steps forward from the altar of life into the fray of humanity’s discord and you move toward the bread of life and divinity meets humanity in a rare exchange of paradoxical disunity.  This antithetical direction of spirit is none other than a re-enactment of Jesus encounter with the dead young man in the city of Nain.  Two opposing forces clashing.  Life and death.  Joy and sadness.  Healing and pain.  Light and dark.  Replicated here in this place, we move in varying directions but so very often we allow the center-line of life to get the better of us.  Thomas Merton has a beautiful prayer on a young man’s direction and it seems to be written for young adults.  Let’s bow our heads to pray it.  Let’s change direction as a community and begin working together knowing we are all in the same boat or bus.

“O Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going,

I do not see the road ahead of me,

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And that fact that I think

I am following Your will

Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe

That the desire to please You

Does in fact please You.

And I hope I have that desire

In all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything

Apart from that desire to please You.

And I know that if I do this

You will lead me by the right road,

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always

Though I may seem to be lost

And in the shadow of death.

I will not fear,

For You are ever with me,

And You will never leave me

To make my journey alone.