The Unanswerable Why

One of my tasks every Monday morning is to compile the Prayer Requests and send it out to all on our parish prayer chain. Dealing with all of the tragedy each week is humbling. Our cancer list keeps growing – just yesterday two parishioners called to report this diagnosis and asked to be placed on the list – one parishioner called to report that her friend lost her 16-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son in an auto accident; others call with an assortment of requests, all placing their faith and trust in our mysterious God. And we ask why…and we ask why…and there is no answer. And others laugh – laugh at this faith that instructs us to “ask, seek, knock…” (Matt 7:7) Experiencing the cross can have 2 effects: it may challenge our faith, or it may strengthen us to depend even more fully on the goodness of God, experienced through prayer, and through the body of Christ – the kindness and generosity of our friends and faith community. May you be one for whom the disruptions of life prove to be fertile ground for an explosion of growth of our most precious and vulnerable faith. And may you be a witness of this for all who need strong friends to carry them when their own faith falters.

It's Hard to Be a Sheep

Last Sunday we heard another of the Gospels which talks about sheep – the sheep knows the shepherd’s voice and follows him. We are the sheep; Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

Try this: open your bible to psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” and measure yourself against that first verse. It’s hard!! If the Lord is my shepherd, I hear only his voice, I follow only him. I don’t crumble under the pressure of office gossip; I don’t avoid answering the phone when my caller ID tells me it’s a needy friend; I don’t grumble at my spouse when s/he has an unwanted suggestion; I don’t turn on the TV to amuse my child instead of giving myself to him or her. I don’t shut out an elderly friend or relative in order to preserve some of my own time. Well, you get the idea. The “I don’ts” could go on forever, but the “I do’s” are a little thin. Still, The Lord is my Shepherd slides off of my tongue.

The challenge: close out one entire day by praying verse one of psalm 23…can you do it with integrity?

May I, and all of us, truly learn to discern the voice of our Shepherd in our own lives, and to have the fortitude to truly follow.

Companionship

One of the questions we get in RCIA all of the time is “Why do Catholics pray to the saints?” It’s a good question, and one indeed that probably many Catholics themselves could not answer. In fact, in the early Church, James Martin tells us, they did not relate to saints by asking for their intercession as we do today, but rather in a “companionship model”, where the saints were their friends, those who had struggled with many of the things with which the early community struggled, and they walked with them in their struggles as companions. We know today that saints were very real people with very real and similar problems to our own. For example, Dorothy Day had an abortion; Thomas Merton fathered a child out of wedlock; Francis of Assisi had a wild and wealthy lifestyle in his youth; Mother Teresa had doubts about her faith. Is there a place for us to befriend these people who overcame their missteps and moved on the path to God? They have shown us their own weaknesses, and in that, have taught us that these weaknesses do not lessen God’s love for us, but may strengthen our resolve to find our own paths to God in spite of this sinfulness. For a good treatment of saints and their power to inspire us today, pick up a copy of James Martin’s bestseller, My Life With the Saints. In this, Fr. Martin not only tells about the lives of these and other saints, but how their lives have had power in his own. It’s a good read, and one that may further your own spiritual life.

Spreadin' the Faith

I was told recently by someone who works at the chancery that whenever the archbishop comes by his office he asks the archbishop "Are you keepin' the faith?" to which the archbishop answers, "No, I'm not keepin' the faith; I'm spreadin' the faith!" -which is exactly what the gospel instructs us to do. It's why we will have our second Invite/Come and See effort in May and June, and why we now have Awakening Faith on Saturday morning. What an experience! People with all kinds of backgrounds have joined us for this, searching for ways to invite God into their lives or into the lives of those they love. Last week our topic was Jesus, and we had a soul-stirring conversation about faithfulness - the example of Jesus which led him to the cross and leads us on occasion to our own crosses.

One thing which has become very clear to me already in the two sessions we have had is that faith, as we were always taught, truly is a gift. And it's a gift which we may not treasure until we talk with someone who does not have it. Receive the gift of faith....receive the gift...receive. If your faith is weak, pray with Mark's gospel (Mk 9:24) "I do believe, help my unbelief!" and receive the pearl of great price: faith.

Still They Are Children

This past Saturday night's Easter Vigil saw eight people baptized in our church, 4 of them adults. As one of the catechists responsible for the formation of the adults, I thrilled as each plunged into the waters and emerged dripping wet and wearing the smiles of children on an amusement ride - totally focussed and not wanting the experience to end. I've been riding that high for the past few days, and thinking now about our responsibility as the particular community which received them into this vast Catholic Church. Where are those who preceded them in years past? Some of course are still on track, but others we don't see. Which is the missing piece in this story, the piece that holds the why of that reality? I don't want that to happen again; I want to hold tightly to these fragile new Catholics. And I realize that it is the responsibility of the community, the entire community, to make that happen. I want to bring these neophytes to meetings and gatherings and parish social events and thrust them in among us to be surrounded by friendship and support and a shared faith in the risen Christ. I want them carried until their wobbly Catholic legs can stand on their own and these precious new ones can extend welcoming smiles to our future neophytes. In other words, I want them present and visible forever! I implore you, Risen Lord, grace this community with the blessing of receiving our neophytes into full social as well as spiritual communion with us!

An Authboigraphy in 5 Chapters

Those of you following the A-cycle readings on this upcoming scrutiny Sunday will hear the story of the man born blind whom Jesus cures. Richard Fragomeni connects this story to a 5-chapter autobiography going around the internet a few yearas ago. It goes like this:
Chapter 1: I walk down the street; there is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I'm lost, helpless. It's not my fault. It takes me forever to find my way out.
Chapter 2: I walk down the street; there is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3: I walk down the same street; there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I fall in anyway; it is a habit but my eyes are opened and I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter 4: I walk down the same street; there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter 5: I walk down a different street.
The good news of this gospel is that we can examine our lives and identify our blindnesses; we can choose to walk down a different street, one well-lit by the blinding light of Jesus.

Dip and Dye

Richard Fragomeni tells a compelling story on one of his videos in regard to the upcoming gospel – The Woman at the Well. You see this Samaritan woman was drawn into conversation with Jesus as she came to draw water at about noon. Jesus engaged her when he asked for a cup of water. The story develops from being about H2O to living water, eternal life, which has the power to change us. He says that a mother had gone to the store and bought a Paas egg coloring kit. When she dissolved the tablets into the cups of boiling water, the colors became vibrant in the cups. Her child then dipped his egg into a bright purple cup and was excited to see the color transferred to the egg when he pulled it out. But as the egg dried, the color faded to a less-than-vibrant shade. That’s when his mother told him to “dip and dye, dip and dye”…that it takes many dips to achieve that vibrancy. As we approach the Easter sacraments, our elect too will be “dipped” into the water of Baptism, and will reflect that glow as they revel in the joy of the sacrament, and wear the white robe for the remainder of the evening. But the glow may fade as they (and we) face the challenges of life, and need to continually be “dipped” into reminders of our baptism – as we come into church and dip our fingers into the font, as we renew our baptismal promises, as we pray for courage to live them out. We could call this process dip and die – as we wrestle to die to ourselves and live for Christ. May the 7 baptisms that we will celebrate this Easter Vigil embolden you to recommit yourselves to, as St. Paul reminds us, “stand firm in the Lord.”