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Consequences

I have had a great blessing these past few days to be walking in the footsteps of our Lord.  From the Church of the Nativity to the  waters of the Jordan to the wedding feast at Cana,  The young adults on pilgrimage, Bishop Caggiano, and I have had the great privilege of reflecting on Scriptures and then visiting these holy sites.

In our reflections last night, after praying at the Church of the Annunciation, the group discussed the consequences of saying yes. Yes to pilgrimage. Yes God. Yes to Jesus. Yes to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

Each and every day, the choice is made. Each and every moment, we find ourselves challenged to do what is right, what is holy, what is good.  There is indeed a consequence of being a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

As Mary tells the servants in the Gospel story, “Do whatever He tells you.”

Accepting the invitation to discipleship changes everything.

What is Jesus asking of you this week?

-pjd

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Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

I’m sorry…I didn’t mean it
I take it back
Strike it from the record

What is as irreversible as murder, violates its victims more than theft, is as deadly as an epidemic? And is a lot closer to you than you want to think?

Gossip, slander, and thoughtless speech. Gossip is a million-dollar industry in our country today. We tend to think of it as a sport, harmless and fun. After all, it’s only words. We even have shows devoted to it.

As Christians, we are called to see it differently. Which is worse, we must ask, to steal from someone or to speak ill of someone? To defraud a person or to humiliate him? Answer: Property can be restored, but the damage done to another can never be undone. In fact, our Jewish ancestors compared slander and humiliation with murder: the destruction is irreparable and enduring.

You can’t take it back. What we say about each other is terribly powerful: words have a long, long half-life, and they can destroy in unseen, unhealable ways.

Our words are a footprint we leave for the world. What will they reveal about the way we treat our children, our parents, our friends, students, co-workers, employees? How we treat ourselves?

It’s a new year. Perhaps none of us will find a cure for cancer, or feed the world’s hungry, or bring about world peace. But nearly every day we find ourselves with someone’s reputation or sense of worth in our hands.

We can improve our world in a powerful, pervasive way; we can act as though our words had the power of life and death.

They do.

About this reflection

When I was a child, there was an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal with the headline and text above, though I have edited some text. The ad was in celebration of the Jewish New Year, I believe. My mother, wise as she was, cut it out and posted it on the refrigerator. If you said or did something that warranted further reflection, you got to stand in front of the full page of newsprint. In time, I had it memorized. When her children moved out of the house, my mother made sure we each got a copy. Mine hangs on the refrigerator and I can still say it by heart. We learn slowly as children…and sometimes more slowly as adults. Happy New Year Mom. Happy New Year One and All.

 

 

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Word Made Flesh

Merry Christmas.

Today is the day when people, believers and nonbelievers alike, celebrate Christmas far more widely and with far greater joy than any other holiday or holy day.

Is this simply because Christmas is about motherhood, the birth of a child, innocence, and love? After all, these are at the heart of human life. I suppose it’s true that most of us would find it hard to identify with rising from the darkness of the tomb. Maybe that is why Christmas often has broader appeal than Easter. But perhaps there is more, a lot more. Perhaps we are more deeply in touch with an abstract idea we call the Incarnation than we realize. It could be that something deep inside us knows what “the Word made Flesh” really means.

From the moment God breathed God’s life-giving spirit over the darkness of the void and brought creation to life, God spoke to people. Through giants like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Deborah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, the psalmists, God gave us the words of life.

But, on Christmas day, the living Word of God came into the world. Mary gave birth to the Son of God. In this Jesus, God communicated most eloquently with God’s people. In this Jesus, God held children. God met with skeptics and dined with outcasts. In Jesus, God talked, listened. God wept over the dead Lazarus. God touched the leper. God put mud and spittle on the blind man’s eyes and healed him. Through Jesus, God entered the cycle of human life and unswervingly walked its path to the end.

Perhaps Christmas is so touching because God skipped nothing, not the frantic eruption of birth nor the numbing moment of death. God came to be one of us. One of us.

Perhaps the gift-giving of Christmas, the outpouring of love we lavish on one another, echoes the final message this God-Made-Man spoke through human flesh: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Maybe this feast opens the door to some inner cell of our hearts where we imprison the Word that tells us that now we must be the arms of God surrounding the little ones; that we must be God’s voice to speak and God’s ears to listen; that we must weep God’s tears; that we must be God’s healing hands; that we must be Jesus in our times and in our culture. the power of this truth escapes and, at least for a few moments, warms up the coldness of our world.

It is indeed up to the twenty-first century Christians to give birth to Jesus in their own time, their own culture, their own families. This is the heart of faith and life. Each of us is an innkeeper. It is up to us to find room for Jesus.

Deep within us, we know it. We feel it and so we celebrate.

May that wonder and joy of that first Christmas be yours today and always.

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Morning Routine

There are some mornings when the children rise, speak pleasantly to each other, arrive to the kitchen with teeth brushed and uniforms on, eat their breakfast, and are waiting at the door when the bus arrives.

Today was not one of those mornings.

It was probably my fault because I prayed last night for the sleet and snow to delay the arrival of the day by a few hours. Mentally, I was prepared for that. Like most predictors of the future, the weather people were wrong and the wintry mix will not arrive until the morning commute. So the children rose and the yelling commenced. Child number four was making a noise that irritated child number three. Child number one was taking her time and child number two lives in her own time zone.

There were a few minutes when the cinnamon raisin toast was distributed and the stillness of the snow outside took over, but to be honest, that lasted about a minute and a half. Coincidentally, that is the time it takes for three children to chew two pieces of toast apiece.

The bus arrives five minutes early, as it does on days like today, and so the toast for child number one goes with her to the bus. Child number two has decided that now would be a good time to brush her teeth and I scream for the bus to wait as the mailman pulls up to deliver packages from the Santa that lives at Amazon. Neither sleet nor snow nor waiting buses will deter the mailman as he inches closer to the driveway blocked by the honking bus. Down the stairs bounds child number two, irritated at nothing and everything all at once.

Then, suddenly, the mayhem is over. As quick as the morning stillness was broken, there is peace in the house once again. We have passed the chaos off to the bus driver who will, in turn, pass it off to the teachers.

It is quiet. It is still. There is peace.

I sit in the living room, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock, preparing for the day. Like every morning, I pray for the safety of the children and the sanity of the teachers.

And there, in the stillness of the morning, when all is calm, I find myself longing for the chaos.

It is an odd feeling to be irritated by something while you are in its midst and yet missing it once it has passed. In the stillness, I realize something I hadn’t before.

In the chaos, I find my joy.

May your week be filled will joyful chaos.

~pjd

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The Card In My Wallet

There is a card in my wallet that tells a story. It started, as all good stories do, with a teacher who made a difference.

It was my junior year in high school and Sr. Judy Eby, RSM asked us to reflect on this morning’s Gospel reading from Luke. Then, after we read it, we watched a scene of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 masterpiece, Jesus of Nazareth. The story unfolds just like it does in Luke’s Gospel: the crowds have gathered and there is no room for the men to bring their friend to Jesus. He cannot walk, you see, so they carry him over the wall, through the thatched roof, and place him before the Teacher.

You know what happens next. The movie takes some editorial license, but after a brief conversation, the man is told his sins are forgiven. The movie version, while riveting, fails to follow Luke’s account. Jesus forgives the man’s sins because he is moved by the actions of the friends. But more on that later.

In both versions, the crowd goes nuts. “Only God can forgive sins,” they reproach Jesus. Putting yourself on the same plane as God is only going to cause trouble. To this, we get a classic Jesus response: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”

Think about it. Surely forgiving sins is easier. But to show the crowd what he’s really capable of, he tells the man to get up, pick up his mat, and go home. The man obliges. The crowd goes nuts for an entirely different reason and everyone learns an important lesson.

But back to the card in my wallet.

We wrap up the reading, the watching, and the discussion about the friends who carried the stretcher, and Sr. Judy hands us all an index card. “Now,” she tells us, “write down the names of those who carry you to Christ.”

Wait. What? This just got real.

I have repeated that exercise with youth and adults alike for years. Like Sr. Judy, I challenge people to think of those who, when we are paralyzed with fear, sinfulness, and selfishness, carry us to Christ. When you cannot move, who lifts you up? When you are sick or alone or unhappy or in serious need of a friend, who do you call?

I have edited my list throughout the years. Friends come and go. People die. But my list has been there since that spring day in 1987. I have moved it from wallet to wallet. It’s a thirty-year-old ratty piece of paper that I carry with me everywhere.  On more than one occasion, the list has saved my life, my soul, my sanity.

Yes, there is a card in my wallet that tells a story. It tells a story of salvation.

Who is on your list?

~pjd

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Prayers for Fr. John

When I first moved to Fairfield, people asked if I had found a parish. Everyone who asked, recommended St. Anthony of Padua. The pastor, they said, was the best homilist in the diocese. They were right. Like you, I have heard my fair share of good homilies and, like you, there have been many Sundays where I sat and wondered, “Where in the world is he going (and how long will it take to get there)?” Every Sunday, Fr. John accomplishes in a few short minutes what some clergy take a lifetime to do – they share something worth remembering.

I asked once how he learned to connect the readings to the lives of the faithful so well and he laughed and told the story of his homiletics professor in seminary who encouraged the class, “Never preach longer than you are interesting.” Then, after a long pause, she added, “And remember, guys, you are not that interesting.”

When I first met Fr. John, he welcomed me with tea and cake in his rectory. We shared stories of favorite authors, prayers that moved us, and I learned then what a great gift he is to our Church. In time, I came to experience first-hand what a great gift Fr. John is to our family. My children can quote his stories and go to Mass as much to see Fr. John as they do to worship. I can quote his homily following the shootings in Orlando last year – almost verbatim – and it marks the first time in my life that a homily was followed by spontaneous and sustained applause. But it was not the only time that has happened since I have lived here.

Diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy some time ago, Fr. John sometimes struggles to manage the steps to the altar or the walk to the rectory, but I doubt anyone has ever heard him complain.

But today I ask you to join me in a praying for Father John as he faces a new challenge, this time against metastatic melanoma. The surgery on his head, where cancer originated, is healing well and immunotherapy begins this week in hopes of convincing his body to help in this latest battle.

Once or twice in your lifetime, you meet someone who moves you, challenges you, changes you, or improves you. That is what Fr. John has done for the Donovan clan as they began their new adventure in Connecticut.

Join me, please, in a novena for my friend.

St. Peregrine Novena Prayers

Dear holy servant of God, St. Peregrine, we pray today for healing.

Intercede for us! God healed you of cancer and others were healed by your prayers. Please pray for the physical healing of Fr. John Baran.

These intentions bring us to our knees seeking your intercession for healing.

We are humbled by our physical limitations and ailments. We are so weak and so powerless. We are completely dependent upon God. And so, we ask that you pray for us…

Today (12/4) – Pray for us, that we will not let sickness bring us to despair
Tuesday (12/5)  – Pray for us, that we may persevere in hope
Wednesday (12/6) – Pray for us, that we will have the courage to offer up our suffering in union with the Cross
Thursday (12/7) – Pray for us, that the loneliness of our suffering will be consoled
Friday (12/8) – Pray for us, that the fear of death will be replaced with the hope of everlasting life
Saturday (12/9) – Pray for us, that our suffering will not rob us of joy
Sunday (12/10) – Pray for us, that in our pain we will not become selfish but ever more selfless
Monday (12/11) – Pray for us, that this sickness will teach me to depend more and more on God
Tuesday (12/12) – Pray for us, that our lives will glorify God alone

We know, St. Peregrine, that you are a powerful intercessor because your life was completely given to God. We know that in as much as you pray for our healing, you are praying even more for our salvation.

A life of holiness like yours is more important that a life free of suffering and disease. Pray for our healing, but pray even more that we might come as close to Our Lord as you are.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

May your week be blessed.

~pjd

 

 

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Anticipation

The children are planning for Christmas. They are making lists and comparing them with each other, making sure that they do not overwhelm Santa or Mom and Dad. I think they also want to make sure they do not repeat on one list what is asked on another.

When we moved to Connecticut, we started a new tradition. The children’s list can include only four items:

One thing you want.
One thing you need.
One thing you wear.
One thing you read.

For the sake of tradition, we also allowed one thing from Santa. The practice requires thought, planning, and maybe a little scheming. In the end, however, it has been a great move. Gone are the days of the endless list of toys that will litter the basement – we already have plenty of Legos for that. Gone, too, are the days of trying to count to make sure every child receives the same amount. The lists are simple and direct. Needs are identified and answered. There are still “family gifts” like the Nintendo Wii that appeared a few years ago and still haunt us, or the Lego Millennium Falcon, which did not actually get put together until just a few months ago, so it is not as if anyone is cheated by the new tradition.

The youngest has been asking for a few days when we can start decorating, but until the leaves are out of the yard, it just seems too soon. The liturgical calendar requires we “do” Advent first, but I think the tree may appear this weekend. After a whirlwind few weeks of attending the National Catholic Youth Conference and celebrating Thanksgiving on the road, visiting family and friends, and going to the movies (you really should see Coco), the school bus arrived on time this morning and the family is settling back into our routine.

I am taking a few days off this week, making use of the vacation days I will lose if they go unused. There are plenty of chores to do around the house, but my guess is that I will work from home while I pretend to get some reading and writing finished for school.

As we head towards the season of waiting, may your week be filled with the hope and anticipation that can always be found this time of year in a house filled with children.

~pjd

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Losing Gratitude

I do not like to wait. If I buy a gift for someone, I usually deliver it long before it’s time. We tend to shop for Christmas all year long, looking for sales and trying to help Santa finish early. At some point, we forget where we hide things or forget what we have purchased, all of which makes for a fascinating Christmas Eve.

And each year, I swear I will “do” Advent better. Then it sneaks up on me and pretty soon we are halfway through the season and I still haven’t gotten the candles out.

Apparently, the rest of the world is afraid they will miss this important time of preparation too. Everyone seems to be in a rush to get to the manger. Christmas lights and decorations were up at Home Depot long before all the pumpkins were sold. Black Friday, which was annoyingly creeping into Thanksgiving day, has suddenly, and for no apparent reason (save the obvious greed), developed into a season all its own. You can now shop Black Friday sales pretty much all through November. Small Business Saturday gives way to Cyber Monday and soon we are two weeks into Advent and I can’t find the wreath.

And in the midst of this mess, we have lost sight of my favorite national holiday.

Prayers of Thanksgiving have long been a part of our religious heritage and prayers of thanksgiving at harvest time have been around for centuries. Rooted in this country in the practices of Puritans and stories of Pilgrims, Thanksgiving was first celebrated by all the states in the Union in 1863 as Abraham Lincoln sought to hold a country together. Later proclaimed a national holiday by a joint resolution in Congress and signed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, Thanksgiving has been a part of our nation’s fabric for generations.

Though the timing was changed along the way, in part for economic reasons, the simple message remained the same: take one day of the year to give thanks for all that we have.

So before we decorate. Before we light candles and open little paper doors. Before making our list and check it twice. Before all the waiting begins, let us just stop for one day. No shopping. No surfing. No texting. No posting.

Just be with the people you love and say “thank you” for the blessings they are in your life. Thank them for the way they challenge you, move you, and improve you.

It’s one day. My favorite day. Family day. Lazy day. Baking day. Cooking day. Going to Mass because we want to day. Pie day. Turkey day. Thanksgiving Day.

Thanks be to God for the blessing we have, the blessings we are, and the blessings we are called to share

~pjd

 

This post originally appeared in 2013 but the Donovan clan returned home late last night from the National Catholic Youth Conference and are exhausted, so please forgive the repost.

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Increase Our Faith

In this morning’s Gospel reading, we hear:

And the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

The consummate teachers, Jesus never really answers the question. Then again, the Apostles never really ask. No, they complain about not being able to do all the really cool things Jesus can do. (I imagine that water into wine thing turned some heads). They want faith and they do not ask, “Lord, how can we become more faithful.” They just command, “Increase our faith.”

It is not unlike what I hear at home sometimes. “When will we have dinner?” instead of “Is there anything I can do to help?” or “Why don’t I have any clean clothes?” instead of “Do you need me to switch washer and dryer?”

We have all been there. Demanding children or coworkers, chores that will not complete themselves, emails that just keep coming.

“Lord,” we cry. “Give me more time in the day. Take all these distractions from me.”

But, like Jesus, the distractions, the commands, the complaining, the whining – they are the work. Jesus answers the Apostle’s command to increase their faith by telling them that faith is not something that can be given, like a fish or a piece of bread. We do not give other’s faith. We show them our own. We teach by example. We accompany others so that they might understand that the joy we have comes from a relationship with a God who never lets go.

“Increase our faith.” Indeed.

“Watch what I do,” Jesus says. “Love like I do. Forgive like I do. Heal like I do. Speak of love and compassion and mercy and justice like I do.”

Then the trees and the bushes and the mountains and yes, even the people, will come to understand the power of your faith because that faith is not rooted in self, but in God.

~pjd

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Children Will Watch

Ace Number One came home with an infraction the other day. It’s essentially a piece of paper that outlines what she did wrong and one of her parents have to sign it. By the time I got home, the infraction was signed and the letter of apology to the teacher to whom the disrespect was aimed was written and ready for delivery.

What did she do? Well, she repeated bad behavior. Walking her charges down the hall, the first-grade teacher told her students, “Be careful, children, the seventh graders have no respect for first graders.” Child number one took issue with this and, upon turning the corner, muttered to a friend, “It sounds like she doesn’t have a lot of respect for seventh graders.”

She would have gotten away with the remark had the first-grade teacher not been standing right behind her.

The infraction was well-deserved and the child was well rebuked. She knows better than to talk about another person like that. But, still, the whole event got me thinking. It reminded me of a conversation with my dad when I joked that no one listened to me at home. “Children don’t listen,” he said. “They watch.”

My children yell because I yell. They eat ice cream and chocolate and read books and love electronics because their mother and I enjoy all these things. They are short with each other and mean to each other and leave their clothes on the floor because, well, you get the idea.

But they also sing and share and pray because we do. They know I love the Rosary and have an affinity for Our Lady and they know that Maureen and I bless them each night not out of habit, but out of a commitment to love them and do our best to be their “first teachers in the ways of faith.” They know that the religious symbols in our home are not for show. They are silent homilies that give witness to all that our lives are rooted upon.

The teacher in the hall was inappropriate. So was the child in front of her. Children listen. Children watch.

Lord, give my children good witnesses. And let the witnessing begin with me.

~pjd