Daughters And Sons Of The King

Ah-hoy!

There are a series of short oracles or prophesies, which are called the “hoy” oracles, because each one begins with the word “hoy” or “Ah!”. Sometimes translated as “woe”, the “hoy” at the beginning was meant to be an attention grabber.

The prophets, with Isaiah as one of the greats among them, repeatedly try to get the attention of the Kings of Israel. They point out again and again their infidelities and their failure to fulfill their responsibility to defend the weak and maintain justice for all their people.

In today’s reading from Isaiah, the prophet, speaking for God, describes how he is using Assyria to punish the people of Israel. This is common in the Old Testament, to credit or blame God for natural disasters, victory or defeat in war and to blame afflictions on sin.

A fuller definition for oracle is a prophecy which is ambiguous and obscure. That means we have to go digging, there is more to this than what is found on the surface.

The Catechism helps. Divine providence is the “dispositions by which God guides his creation towards perfection”. (CCC 302) God didn’t create the world complete and perfect (remember that perfect doesn’t always mean without flaw, it can also mean complete or whole). The world is on a journey towards its destiny and God is the not only the source of the sojourn but an active guide along the way. Scripture is very clear that divine providence is not some abstract, absent creator, divine providence is clear and immediate, God cares for all, from the least to the greatest events of the world and its history, (CCC 303)

“And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a ‘primitive mode of speech,’ but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and Lordship over history and the world and so of educating his people to trust in him.” (CCC 304)

The Kings of Israel fell out of relationship with God and become satisfied with their own power among men. They were not faithful to God or the people around them. As a result, their kingdom was at risk and other kings take advantage and conquer them.

We too are royalty by virtue of our baptism. We are the sons and daughters of not just a king, but the King. We have a share in the joys of the kingdom and the responsibility of being a member of the king’s family. Just as Isaiah challenged the kings of old, we are asked: how are we fulfilling our responsibility to defend the weak and maintain justice? Do we become so enamored of our own work and success that we fail to value others? Are we guilty of infidelity to God or just as bad, infidelity to our responsibility to our fellow men; especially the vulnerable among us?

Before we start feeling hopeless and like it is all too much, we can’t possibly do it, the Gospel reading gives us our promised guidance for the journey. Jesus says, “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” Jesus isn’t talking about those who are childish, but those who are childlike; those who have a childlike faith; open and humble. He is talking to the poor in spirit who accept and rely on God’s providence.

God transcends all human knowledge and experience. Try as we might, all of our efforts to understand him, fall short of the reality. But the humble believer will see the face of God in Jesus Christ, who is the perfect (complete) image of God, the Father. And as St. Mother Teresa liked to remind us, we see Jesus Christ in the faces of those in need around us.

As daughters and sons of the King, we are royalty, and with that comes a great responsibility to further our Father’s kingdom. But he isn’t asking us for grand gestures or to win dramatic wars, rather he is asking us to be poor in spirit, to rely on him. We are to love and care for one another. “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.” (Mother Teresa)

Today’s Gospel reading ends with: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

Acceptance of our royal role, of our Father as our King depends on the Father’s revelation; and this is granted to those who have childlike humility and are open to receive it.

Ah-hoy! Now, that is worth our attention.

While wearing many hats, Sheryl O’Connor is the wife and study buddy of Thomas O’Connor. Not having received the gift of having their own children, their home is filled with 2 large dogs and their hearts with the teens and youth with whom they work in their parish collaborative. Sheryl is the Director of Strong Families Programs for Holy Family Healthcare which means her job is doing whatever needs to be done to help parents build strong Catholic families. Inspired by the works of mercy, Holy Family Healthcare is a primary healthcare practice in West Michigan which seeks to honor the dignity of every individual as we would Christ. Find out more at https://www.holyfamilyhealthcare.org/

July 10, 2018July 9, 2018

Called To Preach

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St. Augustine calls Matthew the Teaching Gospel. Jesus is our teacher, the Incarnate Word, the Logos. So what are we to learn from today’s Gospel reading? At first glance, it appears more like a poorly constructed transition in a middle school writing assignment. We get demons and Pharisees and sheep and shepherds, a harvest and workers. It feels like St. Matthew was a bit all over the place.

If we look to the prophet Hosea for some help, he seems to have his hands full with Ephraim and the Israelites with their idols. Hosea was sent by God to help bring the Israelites back into covenant, into relationship with God. Israel’s prayers are no longer being answered; because prayer presupposes a docility to the will of God. Their altars were no longer places of sacrifice to God because they have become places of self-serving worship.

“Their idols are silver and gold, the handiwork of men…they have hands but feel not; they have feet but walk not. Their makers shall be like them”.

Hosea’s primary message is of God’s love and fidelity, despite people’s sins. Hosea had been sent to gather God’s people back together and to lead them back to God. However, the Israelites were so intent on their self-serving worship, their idols they can control, that they ignored Hosea. Hosea was a type for Christ; he was sent by God to the Israelites but was rejected and abused by God’s own people.

If we then turn to the Gospel, as Jesus was going out, a demoniac who could not speak was brought to Jesus and the demon is driven out. Jesus drives out the demon and the man’s speech returns. We can see God’s fidelity in bringing healing even though this man was brought to Jesus “as he was going out” presumably for a different purpose. We see the two different reactions to God’s love; awe and amazement by the people and dismissal and slander by those who seemingly should have known better.

“Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds his heart was moved with pity because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”

This passage was especially used in Vatican II to demonstrate the universality of our call to evangelize; to spread the Christian charity that is at the heart of our mission as the living body of Christ, the Church. Jesus went around, he went out. He didn’t sit and wait for people to come to him on Sunday mornings. He went from town to village and proclaimed the kingdom. Like Hosea, he calls people to relationship this time by both proclamation and by healing them where they are hurting the most.

“Christian charity is extended to all without distinction of race, social condition or religion, and seeks neither gain nor gratitude. Just as God loves us with a gratuitous love, so too the faithful, in their charity, should be concerned for mankind, loving it with the same love with which God sought man. As Christ went about all the towns and villages healing every sickness and infirmity, as a sign that the Kingdom of God had come, so the Church through her children, joins itself with men of every condition, but especially with the poor and afflicted, and willingly spends herself for them.” (Ad gentes, 12)

As Jesus is so deeply moved in seeing the crowds, he uses the metaphor of the harvest to express his urgency. Just as farmers must harvest when the crop is ready, not a week early and not a week later because it is more convenient for the farmer’s schedule. Jesus sees the people as ready to receive the effects of Redemption. They are poised and ready to receive the Word. How can He get to them all?

We hear this today and we lament the shortage of priests and religious, but Pope Paul VI reminds us, “the responsibility for spreading the Gospel belongs to everyone-to all those who have received it! The missionary duty concerns the whole body of the Church; in different ways and in different degrees, it is true, but we must all of us be united in carrying out this duty.” (Angelus Address, 23 October 1977)

Each of us, by virtue of our baptism is called to work alongside Christ in proclaiming the kingdom. It isn’t that there is a shortage of baptized, the question we need to ask ourselves is what message are we proclaiming? Do our words and lives proclaim God’s kingdom? Is it possible, like the people of Hosea’s time, we have not disposed our wills to God’s so that our prayers may not be heard? Has our worship become self-seeking and self-gratifying? Have other idols replaced our Creator as our god?

What on the surface appears to be a jumble of mixed metaphors turns out to be a strong call to reexamine our lives, our idols, and most of all, our call to proclaim the kingdom. There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, over 70 million in the U.S. We are the workers. Let us unite in gratuitous love and spread the kingdom.

June 21, 2018June 20, 2018

Our Father

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The Catechism of the Catholic Church ends with a study of the Lord’s Prayer and the final paragraph of that last section is:

“By the final ‘Amen,’ we express our ‘fiat’ concerning the seven petitions: ‘So be it.'” –2865 Catechism of the Catholic Church

St. Augustine concluded that you could go through all the prayers of the Bible and not find anything that is not completely contained in the Lord’s Prayer. (CCC 2762) Tertullian stated that the Lord’s Prayer “is truly the summary of the whole gospel.” (CCC 2761)

Let’s be completely honest, when heavy hitters like St. Augustine and Tertullian have weighed in on the Lord’s Prayer, what is someone like me to add? I find the whole section on the Lord’s Prayer some of the best reflection on prayer and living a faith-filled life that I have ever read. (If you haven’t read it yet, run don’t walk to grab your Catechism. It starts at paragraph 2759.)

And in that final 2865^th paragraph, after 2864 paragraphs defining and describing what we believe as a community of faith, it seems appropriate that whole of the Catechism ends with our assent, our fiat to all that Jesus handed to us in this prayer.

We pray to Our Father, because through Jesus’s becoming man, we have a share in his family.

We pray for His kingdom to come because we are poor in spirit and long for that day, “as the deer longs for streams for water. (Psalm 42:1)

We pray for His will to be done because left on our own, we mourn and are in need of comfort.

We pray for our daily bread because we are poor, hungry, thirsty.

We pray for forgiveness of our debts, because we are called to be the merciful; to have already forgiven those who are in debt to us. Despite our limitations, we want to love with the heart of God.

We pray to avoid temptation because we want to be pure in heart.

We pray for deliverance from evil because we are persecuted and we desire peace.

Our infinite God’s entry into finite time and space, which began with Mary’s fiat, now continues each time we repeat Our Lord’s Prayer, with our own fiat. Our “So be it,” to God’s will, God’s plan.

No wonder the early Christians prayed it three times each day.

Amen.

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018

How Did You Know You Were Naked?

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God created us with a desire to be like Him. We have a tendency to confuse that innate wanting to be like God with a desire to be God. In the first reading, Adam and Eve disobeyed God. God created them, set the parameters and gave them dominion over all creation. They decided that instead of being like God and operating within the order He created, they wanted to be God and determine what is good and evil for themselves. This crossing over from desiring to be like God to acting as God is what resulted in the break in the relationship with God and as a result of the break in Adam and Eve’s relationship with God, they experience shame in their bodies and tell God they have hid because they are naked.

God doesn’t yell. He doesn’t chastise. He doesn’t lecture. He simply asks them how they knew they were naked.

How often do we not feel shame when we should? Someone wiser than me once explained that drawing closer to God is like turning and driving into the sunrise. The dead bugs, smears, and flotsam on our windshield doesn’t really bother us, until we drive into the sunlight. The sins and wrong choices in our life aren’t always obvious, until we start to align our lives with what God calls us to be. Sinning is not so much choosing evil over good as it is wanting to choose for ourselves what is good and what is evil. As we stop deciding for ourselves what is good and evil and trust God, just like our windshield in the morning light, all the little things that separate us from God start to stand out.

In the Gospel, Jesus says that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Our culture tells us over and over that there are so many other things that we should put first. But just like Adam and Eve, when we put the created (including ourselves) before the Creator, we are that divided house and we will not be able to stand.

I love how all these readings go together. Our hope is found in the words of the Psalms, “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.” I think of the disciples choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot, they put first being a witness to the Jesus’s resurrection, once that was in place, they could leave everything to chance and know they were oriented in the right direction.

We can do that too. As we discern right and wrong, as we prioritize our time, talent, and treasure, we can ask ourselves which decision will help us to be the best witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Once that is in place, we have oriented ourselves to the Light and will be able to recognize when we have confused being God with desiring to be like God.

And, as I recognize my own shame, my own nakedness, I can rest in, “With the Lord there is mercy, and the fullness of redemption.”

May 23, 2018May 22, 2018

Words Matter

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I have decided to start a campaign to reclaim the meaning of words.

Adorable does not mean cute (I’ll get to that word later) and scandal does not mean worthy of a newspaper headline.

The Catechism defines scandal as:

“Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged.”

Ouch! I don’t need to be a big public figure to cause a scandal. Anytime anyone who knows I am Catholic sees or hears me do something unworthy of Jesus Christ, I am causing a scandal by my poor example.

Today’s readings reminded me of how often I am guilty of doing just that and the Catechism reminds me of just how serious it is.

I was raised in a culture of back-handed compliments. “She is so pretty, if only she’d do something with that hair.” “He is so smart, if only he would channel it properly.” The habit around these comments is to agree with something like, “She is so, so pretty. Just think how pretty she’d be if she wore her hair down once and awhile.” “He is smart as a whip. It’s too bad all he does is play video games.”

Couched in these seemingly innocuous comments are some pretty treacherous undercurrents. After all, I said she was pretty. I acknowledged he was smart. I see their gifts therefore, I tell myself, I am a positive uplifting person.

But, I am not seeing people as God sees them. I want to make them over in my image rather than seeing His image already in them.

That sounds pretty ridiculous when laid out in black and white, doesn’t it?

Yet, how often do we do just that? “He is so dedicated and puts in so much time on the finance council, but if he really wanted more people to come to Church, he’d make sure they just….” “Our DRE is such as sweet lady and works so hard, but if she really cared about kids, she’d make them memorize the …” “I just love our pastor, but if he really wanted families to come to Mass, he’d make his homilies more…”

Today’s readings speak right to this very human tendency. In James we hear, “You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.” Ouch again. My ego doesn’t like that one. “But now you are boasting in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So for one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin.”

In the Gospel, John is so bold to approach Jesus and tell him about how someone else was working in Jesus’s name, (and I am paraphrasing here) “but don’t worry, we took care of it. We told him to knock it off, because he is not one of us.” But rather than Jesus saying, “Thanks, Dude, we gotta make sure we keep this in house.” Jesus tells him, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.”

“Whoever is not against us is for us.”

I think we forget that, especially as leaders in our faith. Sometimes we feel like we are in competition. We have to compete for room in the budget, for numbers of volunteers, for having our ministry talked about, for meeting the unlimited needs which pull on our limited resources. It becomes easy to forget that those who are not against us are for us. In other words, we are on the same team. And every time we use the word “but” when talking about others, we are tearing down, not building up.

At a leadership conference recently, we were reminded that ‘What we tolerate, we endorse.” When we listen to others talk this way, we are causing a scandal by indirectly encouraging the tearing down of our brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter how nicely it is couched. When we, out of tiredness or frustration or whatever, make these kinds of comments ourselves, we are directly guilty of scandal by encouraging those around us, by our example, to commit the same sin.

How do I know this? I have had to take my own tendency to give back handed compliments to confession time and again. Today’s readings have challenged me once again to examine my own behavior.

As a matter of fact, I wonder what Father is doing this afternoon. It might be time to confess and start again. I am so grateful that both Father in the confessional and Our Father in Heaven are so patient with me.

May 16, 2018May 13, 2018

Consecrate Them in Truth

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Consecrate-from the latin, consecrare; to render sacred

Render-cause to be or become; make

Sacred: dedicated to a religious purpose, sanctified, holy

Today’s Gospel is part of what is known as “The Last Discourse” of Jesus. It is Jesus’ high priestly prayer. In it, he begins to speak of his earthly ministry as already a thing of the past. He is interceding to the Father on the behalf of the apostles and the apostles are standing in for all the disciples who will follow; including you and me.

Jesus asks the Father to consecrate the disciples in truth. Jesus desires the apostles (and all those disciples who were yet to come) to be made holy. But not just holy in an abstract sense. Not just holy for use in a Church setting. Jesus asks very specifically for all his disciples to be rendered holy in truth.

All of the major world religions deal with truth. From defining truth as simply the opposite of false to being something to be sought, truth is something to be pointed at. It exists “out there” and religion is often seen as a “search to find truth”.

Only in Christianity, does the God for whom infinity is an attribute, enter into time and space and say, “I am the truth.” When Jesus Christ stepped out of infinity and became a part of creation, a part of finite, sequential time, He sanctified all of creation. The latin term is ‘suspendu’. What was finite and ordinary from the time of Creation, when it exists alongside the person of Jesus Christ, becomes elevated, sanctified, holy.

At the beginning of the Gospel of John, we hear, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Jesus Christ is the Word of God. What does that mean?

God spoke and creation happened. God’s word is powerful enough to make all the world exist, where it didn’t the moment before. This is the stuff that stretches our brains and our hearts.

In Jesus Christ, the words God spoke were made present in the time and space of creation. Because he is God’s own word, Jesus is truth. That means truth is no longer just an idea. Truth is a person, the person of Jesus.

Think about that a minute. This is heady stuff. This is where we become acutely aware that we see through a glass darkly and we long and ache for clarity. Truth is not simply the opposite of false. Truth is not an object to found. Truth is not an abstraction that can be manipulated at will. Truth is a person. A real person who lived and breathed and is accounted for in history. Truth is a man who lived, breathed, died and, as we celebrate in this Easter season, returned from the dead and ascended into heaven.

For us as Catholic Christians, religion isn’t so much a search for truth, religion is an encounter with the person who is truth and in that encounter our hearts are converted, our lives are changed. In the Eucharist, in Sacred Scripture, in each other, we encounter the one whose very thought causes us to exist, that encounter causes us to become, to be rendered sacred.

St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Our restless human hearts can search widely for truth, but is it only when we encounter it in the person of Jesus Christ, we will come to understand that we are dedicated to a higher purpose. It is in encountering Jesus Christ; we are made holy. In Him, we are truly consecrated in truth and that changes everything.

May 8, 2018May 7, 2018

A Light in the Darkness

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“When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped.”

Being a prison guard was a tough and dirty job. Paul and Silas were placed in an inner prison with their ankles shackled. You can close your eyes and picture the dark and dirty place, where the prisoners considered the worst of the worst were kept. No sanitation, no light, no food, the stench alone would have been enough to scramble our modern sensitivities.

The reason the guards went to such lengths? Because if the prisoners escaped, the guards were likely to receive a severe punishment; perhaps even paying with a public death of their own. Rather than endure the embarrassment and humiliation, this guard quickly considers suicide the moment he thinks he failed at his assigned task.

We can image him, standing in the dark following the earthquake, wondering what happened, what cost he would have to pay.

Yet, when Paul calls to him, the guard immediately calls for light and falls at Paul’s feet asking, “What must I do to be saved?”

How many people do we know who are standing in the dark, wondering what is happening and ready to draw their own swords rather than face the humiliation they think is ahead? How many are facing their own earthquake in the dark and are waiting for a voice to call out?

Paul simply calls out to the jailer, “We are all here.” The jailer drops his sword, calls for a light and looks for his salvation. So many times we want to be the light to someone else. Our intentions are good but the minute we try to be the light in the dark, our ego gets all involved and we decide we know exactly what help someone else needs. We get frustrated when our solution doesn’t fit their problem.

Sometimes, like Paul, we just need to call out that we are here. We just need to let others know that we are waiting for them in the darkness, whatever their darkness may be. Sometimes we don’t need to do, we just need to be, be present in the dark. Once they know they are not alone, they find the voice to call for The Light that shines even in the darkest darkness.

This is part of the joy of being in a community of believers. We can encourage one another to listen, really listen. We can practice being present to one another and then use those skills to be present with others. We can pray together and ask for the grace to simply accompany those we meet on the journey. If there is help we can provide, the Holy Spirit will guide us. If not, at least for that amount of time, whoever we are ministering to is able to experience being heard.

The bonus is we get to experience the joy that comes with listening, with just letting people know that we are here, ready to help when they need it. It is amazing how often that is enough! We may get left feeling like, “But I didn’t do anything!” Yet, we did, we did what Jesus did, we met another person and were present to them, honoring their inherent dignity and reflecting the light on how they are made in the image and likeness of God. The first step is to be like St. Paul and say in the darkness, “We are all here.”

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