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The Generosity of God

At times, the hurried pace of our lives may at times obscure even the most dramatic reality — for example, the gift-giving presence of our God. Sunday’s readings speak of God’s nearness in our daily lives. The Scriptures capture moments when people were challenged to react to God’s presence. First, however, they had to become aware of God’s gifts, then they had to respond.
Around 540 B.C., Second Isaiah, the anonymous prophet of the exile, spoke to his despairing community. His opening words of comfort and tenderness reveal a God who, forgetting the past, offers the grace of the present moment. There had to be a march through the desert to the land of Israel; this trek would manifest God’s presence, to the utter amazement of the people. Even then, the people had to become aware of the moment!
In Psalm 85, the community asks for God’s presence. Putting aside all hesitation the psalmist announces that God proclaims peace to the people. To enjoy God’s gift of peace, however, the community must keep its covenant with Yahweh. It is just such a response, culminating in kindness, truth, and justice, that ushers in the blessing of the harvest.
Mark begins his gospel with the image of the desert. He quotes Second Isaiah to tell us that John the Baptist announces God’s unexpected gift of salvation in the desert. Like the ninth-century prophet Elijah, John wears a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt (see 2 Kings 1:8). God’s presence in the Baptist demands a response of radical conversion and of repentance.
God’s gifts appear not only in extraordinary events such as a return from exile or the coming of Jesus but also in ordinary day-to-day occurrences. The grace of friendship, the devotion of a spouse, the comfort of co-workers — all of these manifest God’s gifts. Our awareness of giftedness moves us to a personal response where love, support, and consolation are given as well as received.
Where will we find the generosity of God this week?
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The Season of Hope

This week we celebrate hope. We light the prophecy candle on our Advent Wreath and focus on the hope of the coming of the child that will save us all.

St. Paul tells us that there are three lasting things: faith, hope, and love. I find it hard to separate hope and faith. When I see one, I see the other. But hope has a character of its own. Hope is not simply an emotion or virtue, it is a way of life.

I had a professor once who told me that hope is an unsatisfactory view of the present, a satisfactory view of the future, and a commitment to change. Absent the commitment, it’s not hope.

It’s whining.

We whine well. We have perfected complaining. We blame. We rationalize. We pout.

But do we hope? Are we committed to making a change in our hearts, our homes, our lives? Do we desire that which we do not have and are we committed to letting God work through us to achieve it? Are we willing to place our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit?

Are we willing to allow hope to stand beside us like a friend, no matter how desperate we might feel, knowing that with the help of the Spirit, life can be better?

Or are we okay with whining?

Have a good week.

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Peter’s Confession

The reading from Matthew’s Gospel we shared yesterday is one of my favorites.

Remember: Jesus asks the apostles that great, defining question, “Who do people say that I am?” It’s the 2,000-year-old version of, “Hey, what are you hearing about me out there?” except that it doesn’t sound paranoid or conceited coming from Jesus.

Some apostles give answers and then Peter jumps in and shuts down the conversation. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Boom. There it is. The naked truth. The confession.

I use the word confession on purpose. Peter believed it to be true. It was – and is – a statement setting out essential religious doctrine. It was not and could not be a profession of some religious truth because that truth was not yet fully established. For this group of itinerant preachers, getting to the reality that Jesus was the Messiah was a process. Peter, who I imagine as very impatient, sought to make the truth known now.

And therein lies the challenge for us. Do we let others define who Jesus is for ourselves, our families, our coworkers, and partners in ministry or are we, like Peter, willing to make the statement others only say in the silence of their hearts?

To make Peter’s confession our own, we have to remember that it’s all faith. Peter’s statement is important because he did not know it to be true. He believed it to be true. Ultimately, we go to the grave believing, not knowing.

But we read the Bible, listen to the Gospels, and think about Jesus as people who have read the end of the book and seen the end of the movie. We know that if Jesus is not the Christ, our sins are not forgiven and Jesus did not rise, so, as St. Paul says, “Pack your bags” because we are all a bunch of fools.

But Peter did not know the end of the story. He only knew Jesus. He knew his own lived experiences and his lived experiences were the Jesus experiences. He knew the Jesus of history. We know the Christ of faith. We know that only if you walk with Jesus can you get to know Jesus and really come to see him. Peter didn’t know that – but he was figuring it out. (Which is, by the way, the reason Jesus tells the boys not to tell anyone – it’s a process for everyone.)

This is why I love this passage, whether it’s in Matthew 16 or Mark 8. It reveals the truth and joy that comes from understanding that only those who walk with Jesus and repent can sit down with Jesus (though the repenting may come later for some).

We too must walk the Jesus way so that we can break bread together and see Jesus for who and what he really is: the Lord. If we walk the Jesus way, then we too can sit with everyone – saints and sinners alike – and break bread together. But not without doubt and skepticism – it is a process, a journey.

It always reminds me of the end of Godspell. Jesus is dead and they take him off the cross. But in a really great production – where the audience is really into the play – they don’t just take Jesus down, they carry him around and sing those haunting words, “Long live God…long live God.” They cannot accept that this ends with death. God is victorious even in this death. Even the audience, who sings right along, cannot accept that this is the end. In time, they realize that it isn’t the end, but they don’t know that as they are singing. That’s why its so powerful.

That is why I love this passage. It reminds me to walk with Jesus, as did the first followers. It reminds me to experience Jesus. It tells me that if I do, I too will see precisely who and what this man is: God’s definitive act, word, salvation, and presence in history.

Then I too can say with Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” But now it will no longer be Peter’s confession, but my own.

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The Poor In Spirit

St. Matthew gave us all the Beatitudes on Sunday morning, but the Bishop focused on only one at Mass: the first one. He called it the doorway to all the others, the requirement for the rest. Live the first one, the others become easier to understand and emulate.

It reminded me of my friend, Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine nun who died in 2020 of a brain tumor. She has a reflection on all the Beatitudes, but this one danced around in my head as the Bishop spoke.

I turned to the empty ones,
What does it mean to be poor in spirit? I asked
Is there anything good about being that poor?
 
The poor in spirit replied:
Can God fill anyone who is full?
And how sad if you should suddenly discover
That you are full of illusions
Instead of filled with truth.
 
Being poor in spirit means
Having nothing to call your own
Except your poverty
It is a joyful awareness of your emptiness
It is the soil of opportunity
For God has space to work
In emptiness that is owned.
 
Being poor in spirit means
Knowing that you are so small
And dependent
Needy and powerless
That you live with open hands
And an open heart
Waiting to be blessed.
For only then can you be blessed
If you know
That you need blessing.
 
Being poor in spirit
Means that you have time
You are not oppressed by deadlines
There is always time for waiting
For the one who is poor.
Being poor in this way
Frees you from the prison
Of having to have everything
planned and structured
As though there were no tomorrow.
 
And finally, being poor in spirit
Means being able to say
Without embarrassment
Humbly, and yet with passion:
“I need you.”

This week, may we have the courage to be empty, to be poor, to seek the assistance of others as we journey together.

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Amazing Song. Amazing Grace.

The song, Amazing Grace, turned 250 on New Year’s Day.

I know that because I saw it on the news, read it in the paper, and heard it on the radio – all sources of information that, growing up, we took as gospel. Today, many of us listen and watch with suspicious eyes and ears, confident that the announcer has an agenda, a sponsor, and puppet strings he or she cannot even see.

I miss a world without the constant barrage of news. But that is another story.

When I was a child, my mother would have CBS Sunday Morning on in the kitchen. From the time I was nine years old, Charles Kuralt told stories, interviewed guests, and took us places we would never go on our own. After spending nearly a quarter century on the road, Kuralt joined Sunday Morning and had a way to tell a story that drew the viewer into learning something new  – something they never would have bothered with – were it not for his southern gentility and distinct, deep voice. He was convinced that people were generally good, that our country was an idea worthy of the messiness, and that everyone had a story to tell.

On a particular Sunday morning decades ago, I was in the kitchen with my mom and Kuralt was telling the story of Amazing Grace. Not its history, but how it had inspired people through the years. I don’t remember much of it, except that the singing was mesmerizing. We stood transfixed, my mother and I, staring at this tiny television we occasionally had to smack to get to work, listening to the words, the music, the lyrics. I wish I could remember who was singing. It was towards the end of the show and when the music faded, Kuralt came on with his signature, “I’ll see you again…next Sunday morning,”

Today, I enjoy CBS Sunday Morning via YouTube. Jane Pauley replaced Charles Osgood, who replaced Kuralt back in 1994. Mom is gone, so is Charles Kuralt. We do not have a television in the kitchen and we no longer are tied to cable or a schedule. Progress, I suppose.

So a few weeks ago, I saw the YouTube entry about Amazing Grace and quickly clicked it. Jane Pauley introduced a story about Amazing Grace and its big birthday. As reporter Ramy Inocencio told it:

Sung an estimated 10 million times each year, “Amazing Grace” marks its 250th anniversary this New Year’s Day. It was born not of American Black spirituals as some believe, but across the Atlantic, in the tiny English market town of Olney, some 60 miles north of London, with lyrics older than the Declaration of Independence.  

I suppose the song has always held a special place in my heart because of that Sunday morning so long ago. But its simple lyrics are ones that everyone can understand and appreciate. I was lost and now am found, blind and now I see. We can all relate. It can give us all hope.

Just after Charles Kuralt left Sunday Morning back in 1994, country singer Kenny Chesney sang the song at the funeral of my big brother, Jim. Years later, I got to hear the Irish Tenors sing it live. The same with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Josh Groban. Every time I hear it, it takes me back to that Sunday morning in the kitchen, fills my eyes with tears, and warms the depths of my heart, filling an emptiness I forget is there.

Yes, it has been recorded hundreds of times by hundreds of people. But for my money, no recording tops Judy Collins.

This week, find a quiet spot. Click the link below and close your eyes. Let the words written by a slave-trader turned abolitionist and the music added decades later by a Baptist minister, fill the room and warm your heart and soul.

Though many dangers, toils and snares... let the echos of the grace that is all around you each day, carry you away.

Let that grace fill you with hope and lead you home.

Ready?

Let us pray.

Click here.

 

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Skipping Nothing

Some theologians tell us that Easter is the most important feast of the Church year. In some ways that is true. However, people, believers and nonbelievers alike, celebrate Christmas far more widely and with far greater joy.

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. Yet most of us would find it hard to identify with rising from the darkness of the tomb. Maybe that is the difference. 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.

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. And deep within us, we know it.

We feel it and so we celebrate.

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Waiting

Amid the chaos, God is there.

When we realize the length of our lists and the clutter in our mind and souls, God is there.

When we miss those who are not here and hold the hands of those who are, God is there.

When we laugh and cry and improve and grow, God is there.

When we feel empty and lonely and wonder if anyone else feels the same, God is there.

When we hurt for our children and our families and care for one another, God is there.

When we look at the world and shake our heads in despair, God is there…

Waiting for us to be people of peace.

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Seeing People

A friend of mine died last week. She was a Sister of Mercy for 73 years and, aside from my mother, was probably the most influential woman in my life when it came to ministry. At her funeral, the priest told a story I had heard before but long forgotten.

A family goes to a restaurant for dinner and mom and dad order steak. The child orders a hot dog. “No, no,” Mom says, “Bring him a steak, potatoes, and carrots.”

Ignoring the mom, the waitress asks, “Would you like ketchup and mustard on your hot dog?” The child answers and the waitress departs.

Stunned, the mom and dad stare at the child. “See,” the child says, “She sees me.”

That’s what Sister did for everyone she met. She saw them. Each person was real to her and when you spoke to Sister, you were the only person in the room.

So that is my challenge this week: to see people. Put the phone down, resist the temptation to look at the watch, ignore the email, focus. See people in a way that gives them dignity.

Sister would appreciate that.

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Purgatorial Departments

Two of the children and I were talking about the afterlife on our way to faith formation Sunday morning. I’m not sure how the topic came up, but we started to imagine what it would be like if you got to heaven, and you were faced with the number of times you missed an opportunity.

I suggested that it sounded a little bit more like purgatory and then the ideas started flowing.

What if there was a department that told you all the times you actually had a lottery ticket that was a winner?

What if there was a department that kept track of all the times you have been unkind to someone?

What about a department where they kept track of all the money you wasted throughout your lifetime?

What about a guy at the counter who had tracked all the times you missed a chance to be kind (and his assistant that indicated which of those times was intentional)?

Then, down the hallway, there was a department that let you review the footage of all the times you were faced with a choice for good and evil and you had to reflect upon the choice you made.

It was a fun conversation, though some of those departments sound like they belong in hell, and it got me thinking about that voice in our head we call a conscience. I couldn’t help but think about the example I set for others, the missed opportunities, the wasted time, and the chances lost to selfishness.

Perhaps this week, I can keep those fictional purgatorial departments in mind and strive to be a better role model and friend.

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The List

There is a card in my wallet that tells a story. Many of you have heard the story and some may even have lists of your own. The list, the card, battered and torn, 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 the reading from Mark’s Gospel that we will proclaim at Mass on Friday morning this week. You’ve heard the story before: there are crowds gathered around Jesus and so some guys carry a paralytic, drop him through the roof, and in front of Jesus.

After we read the story in Sr. Judy’s class, she wheeled in that big glorious television that promised a break from the text and we all move our seats so we could see it. It was a scene of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 masterpiece, Jesus of Nazareth. The story unfolds sort of like like it does in Mark’s (and Luke’s) Gospel: the crowds have gathered and there is no room for the men to bring their friend to Jesus. He cannot walk so they carry him over the wall, through the thatched roof, and place him before the Teacher.

You know what happens next. The man is told his sins are forgiven. 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 how can someone who is not harmed be the one to forgive sins? 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 a new 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.”

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, guilt, 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.

Go ahead, take out a piece of paper.

Who is on your list?