MOVE ONE SPACE, MOVE ONE SPACE

Has humankind advanced?

 

It depends upon that which you are measuring.

 

Scientifically are we advanced?  By leaps and bounds.  Morally, ethically, civilly have we improved?  There is much to debate.

 

The 19^th and 20^th century are often considered the bloodiest ever.  I remember hearing in grade school the evil Romans used to toss their deformed babies over a cliff.  Today we regularly end the life of our perfectly healthy children in the womb.  But that we still have a strong call for abortions in the first place is a sign that things are terribly wrong. 

 

I used to chuckle superiorly about the silly pioneers who used to throw their trash right out of their windows surrounding themselves in filth.  But we pollute ourselves no less and in fact much more.  Genocide still occurs. One third of the world is dying from hunger while another third dies from over eating.  The Christian Church (a place of unity in Christ) is fractured and we can no longer enter Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north, without a passport and a purpose.  (I went recently just to pop over and see the falls and MAYBE spend the night.  Wrong answer.  I was detained at the boarder for an hour.  Our friendly neighbor is now the grumpy guy with the cane who wants you to stay off of his lawn.)

 

This is not to depress but to point out something important.  Our progress as a species should not be based upon the tricks that we can do.  It should be about where our minds and hearts as a people are.  Until we advance in love, peace, and unity, we haven’t really advanced at all.  We have simply learned new tricks and made ourselves feel better.

 

That is the importance of our faith.  Every week we remind ourselves of this and strive to be better, to fess up when we mess up, and do our best to make amends.  To remind ourselves that it is not enough to be able to do new tricks but to stop and think if the new trick is worth doing.  Medical advances don’t mean much if it is not accompanied by compassion.  We can’t save someone we think “worth it” while tossing those we don’t want over a cliff.  There is no advancement there. 

 

Even more basically: it reminds us that there IS something toward which we may progress.  If this is all an accident of moving particles, then there is no real goal to reach.  But we say that there is an ideal on which to keep our eye.  This is our hope for a better more advanced world.

ITS ALL GOOD

I can’t think of a thing to write about today.

 

That is to say, I can’t think of ONE thing to write about.  There is just so much.  There is an incredible amount of GOOD happening within the Church but that isn’t nearly as fun as talking about the bad.  And even though the bad is miniscule compared to the good, sometimes it seems overwhelming whether it is attacks from without or seemingly rotten undermining from within, intentional or unintentional.

 

If too much time was spent on the negative, one could despair.  The problems could seem so overwhelming that we could feel powerless and just give up.  But history teaches us important lessons against this mentality.

 

Religious orders have died and religious life sprung back and flowered.  The Church has been viciously suppressed by governments and has been the government and back again.  At one point, 70% of the Church was in heresy and then the heresy passed.  We’ve survived “the bad popes” and have, especially recently, been blessed with saints.  Clergy and lay have lost contact and been best friends and back again.  Religious institutions have been rigorously Catholic, lost their way, come back, and lost their way again.  Catholics have been put on pedestals and hung on crosses.  Which all goes to say, no matter how good or bad it may seem to you, God’s Church prevails across the great arc of its journey through time giving further proof that the Church does not exists because we are so clever, but that it is the one true Church inspired by the Holy Spirit.

 

That is not to say we sit back then and let happen what will.  We are not fatalists.  But all things work to the glory of God and we can be used as sons or as tools as the Church moves forward through time and in the end.  And though being Christian in any given situation may be a trial for some, in the end we would rather be sons and daughters.

HHS vs IHS

“Bareness is God’s playground.”

It is too early (Thursday morning) to have anything too intelligent to say on the HHS mandate ruling.  The full understanding is not yet known and conflicting reports keep coming in.  The exact nature of the ruling and the future for Catholics (and, in reality, the future of all people of faith) is not yet known and we wait with our collect breath held.

In any event, there is no cause for despair.  There is only room for hope.  If there is one thing we learn from Scriptures is that good things are about to happen when the worst is happening.  It is when all earthly hope seems lost that God finally steps in.  It must be that way otherwise we would always assume that this is the natural order of things.  But God steps in when time runs out, when usefulness is past, when all is lost, when the end seems to have come.  It is only then we can say as the Psalmist proclaimed, “If God had not been on our side . . .”

If it should turn out that this latest ruling is in conflict with our faith, that government mandates directly interfere with our relationship with God, have we not repeatedly seen even to this day that this is precisely when the Church unifies, rises up, becomes strong, and saint and martyrs are made?  Should this be the case there is only room for hope and sanctity which may require sacrifice.  It is a time to be thankful that we live in a time when we not only give God lip service, but have the opportunity to serve Him in a dramatic way.  Remember the reading of this morning, “Not everyone who cries out to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven but only those who do the will of my Father.”

Conversely, if people of faith do not have their religious freedom violated, we may be in a more difficult situation.  We may relax and think all is well.  It is not and it would be dangerous to think we may take a collective sigh and not worry and pray any longer.  The Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus said recently that “We can see clearly . . . an attempt to redefine religion in American society.”  At every turn there is pressure to minimize religion in society, to narrow the definition of a religious institution, to narrow what it means to be a minister, to narrow religious freedom to freedom of worship.  There have been many attempts to narrow the rights of churches such as when it pitted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the Lutheran Church.  The Catholic Church has had Government reduce, fully defund, and/or no longer make referrals to Catholic adoption centers and human trafficking ministries because of our religious nature even though we have repeatedly had far better (and less expensive) success rates.  Because of this we cannot afford to be satiated in a victory.

This may be the dawn of a new day.  And as we know, dawn only follows after the darkest hour.

TOO GREEN GRAVES

If you want to be able to lift heavy objects the wrong way to prepare for it is to wait until you know that you will need the muscle (such as helping a pal move) and then, a day in advance, start working out hard in order to have the muscle to lift couches and refrigerators – silly – right?

I used to play the trumpet for the University of Akron. I haven’t picked up my trumpet in any serious way since the seminary where we had a brass quartet. The alumni game is coming up and I was toying with the idea of joining a few parishioners and marching. If I were at all serious about this I would have picked up the trumpet about three months ago to build up my lips. But I didn’t – and it would be ridiculous to think that I could play for longer than a few measures and certainly below D before my lips said, “Well, that was enough for the next 20 years.”

Faith is not much different. Faith is not a thing, it is a relationship. It is a relationship like any relationship save this one is with a Divine Person. So we work on faith – on that relationship - when we don’t necessarily need it so that when we do need it – it is there.

Today we will have a funeral service for an infant here at Saint Sebastian. It is a day for faith. It will be difficult, of course, for everyone. But, for those with strong faith, that sadness is tempered by hope and an understanding that while we do not necessarily understand, God can take even the most stupid and seemingly pointless things that happen in this life and fill them with meaning and light. We may not see it now – or ever in this life. But having faith – if you have this relationship – you have come to trust the Father you have come to know, to trust, to love, and Whose love has enveloped you.

MONDAY DIARY - UNTIL WE HAVE FACES

Last night Fr. Pf and I went to the Blossom Music Festival to hear the Cleveland Orchestra play Bolero otherwise known as the fifteen minute snare drum solo and crescendo – known to most people over 40 as the piece used in the movie "Ten." It was cold and threatening rain so we were able to get seats pretty close to the orchestra. “Wow,” Father said closely mimicking the C. S. Lewis book, “They have faces. I usually only see them as white jackets from a great distance.”

We were close enough that we could hear page turns and people taking breathes – even the soloists who were playing string instruments. It was if they were part of the instrument and they needed to breathe for it. It was neat to see so closely some of the world’s greatest musicians playing some of my favorite pieces. Our seats were eye level with their shoes and I was thinking that being the world’s best they could at least do with better socks.

They also performed selections from Carmen. Even if you are unfamiliar with opera in general you know at least some of this piece – especially the Song of the Toreador. According to the program notes when George Bizet premiered this piece it was an absolute flop. But that was due more to the audience not receiving what they expected than it not being a good piece. To put it mildly they went expecting Bugs Bunny but they got Henry V – a far better piece for which they were wholly unprepared. Three months later Bizet died thinking Carmen one of the worst operatic disasters in history instead of what it is: one of the most widely known and loved pieces of opera ever.

He was not alone. This happened quite a bit throughout history. Swan Lake was an unmitigated disaster when it was first produced. Not till after the death of the composer did it become the icon of ballet that it is today. And so it goes with art, books, and ideas, discoveries, and efforts of all kinds.

I think about parents teaching the faith to their children. Teach and desire it as they might some kids wander astray. That does not mean that what you give them will not bear fruit. I think of my Dad. He wanted nothing of Church or God his whole life. How that must break a mother’s heart. In fact, it was not until he was not far from his death bed that he took to prayer and sacraments. But that might not have been the case had his parents not laid some sort of groundwork. Would I have had the environment to become a priest had he not been baptized and confirmed as a youngster – marrying a Catholic woman and being married in the Church? Two generations later those efforts resulted in a vocation. Whoda thunk it?

Do not despair your efforts at bringing God into the world. Martyrs never experience their influence on the world in this life. Keep true to the calling, stay true to the course, your single life may influence more people than you can imagine in your lifetime.

MONDAY DIARY - AWESOME!

I want to apologize to everyone right now. I just spent the weekend with our youth at a youth conference down at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and I find myself suddenly using the word “awesome” a bit too much. It was another one of those guilty pleasures of being a priest. The keys to the parish (and all the parish work) were handed over to the new parochial vicar and the ever vigilant deacon I was afforded the time to spend three days with younger members of our parish on retreat.

Because we are in Cleveland the youth retreats there are fairly well known. But in case you are not so familiar, the university puts on, among other retreats, four high school retreats that are deeply Catholic, orthodox, and charismatic. If you are a youth leader, besides those points, another great one is that it is EXTREMELY well organized. We were never without a clue as to where we were to be or having someone nearby to answer questions. It was – well - awesome, but not nearly as awesome as being with about 1,500 youth (one of the smaller conferences) that are absolutely on fire for the faith. Even those who came along with a cautious heart were, by the end, proud of their love for Christ, the Eucharist, the faith – boldly professing it and praying and cheering for this great gift of Jesus to us. Over the few days we heard hundreds of confessions (my brain was mush by the end of the day), were moved by great speakers, and had lots of LOUD and ruckus – but VERY Catholic – music. I will admit to you that after two days of the loudness and hearing numerous confessions I had reached my limit and needed some quiet time away. The conference on Saturday night was about half way through and they were preparing for adoration in the evening and I quietly slipped out – feeling a bit poorly for doing so – but needing to none-the-less. I bought a snack out of a machine and lay down on a bench outside looking up at the sky and processing everything that had been happening as it was quite intense when I noticed the clouds were tinged in bright orange. I climbed up a hill not far from where the conference was taking place and saw a beautiful sunset. I could hear the music revving up and looked at my watch and figured that adoration was beginning when I saw the cloud below right over the building. Fortunately I was carrying my camera with me the whole weekend and was able to capture it. Now, I don’t place a value on it. I know it seemed pretty cool to me (for reasons I won’t mention - you may draw your own conclusion or just think that it’s a bunch of pretty clouds at sunset) but it was as if this is why I was drawn outdoors and then back in to join the group.

Inside there was a Eucharistic procession going on. Can you imagine what it is like seeing all those young people who we are told do not believe in the Eucharist anymore – who don’t get it – who we are told think the adoration too old school – who we are told would never go to adoration because it is not relevant (how can the Eucharist not be relevant? . . .another post) kneeling! Singing! Reaching out to Jesus! Worshipping! Crying! Giving thanks and praise to Him! I tell you – Catholicism is awesome and still attractive when presented boldly, fully, and well. But wait – there’s more! At the end of conference they had an altar call for those considering religious or priestly vocations. Scores of high school students came forward. They were willing to say, “I am willing to consider it.” The funny part was that the priest was beginning a talk about how hard it may to come forward but if there were some brave souls that would consider being the first. But even before he began the sentence both men and women jumped out of their seats and marched forward. The priest sitting next to me in the sanctuary leaned over and said, “They’re already coming forward! He doesn’t even need to prod them!”

Oh yes – there is more. But this is already dangerously close to becoming a two or three parter and Wednesday and Thursday is already a long running series so I will end here with this one last parting statement.

THERE IS HOPE!

HENCE THERE ARE MARTYRS

Having a strong belief in God and being a good person does not mean everything is going to be Okay. At least in this life. Sometimes it is very not Okay. Very bad (or at least very annoying) things happen to very good people. It is not a sign of being abandoned by God nor is it a signal for us to abandon God. No matter how rough life might get, it’s better to get through it with God than without Him.

But whatever life may throw at you, no matter how incapacitated you are, how late you are, how disconnected you are there is always some way to please God. Even in our pain and anger there is some way to please God. There is always hope. There is always healing of some type. There is always the possibility salvation “where every tear will be wiped away. On that day we shall see You, our God, as You are. We shall become like You, and praise you forever in heaven.”

Hence even for those facing execution there us a way to please God and there is hope. We can please God by not becoming what we hate and praying for our persecutors. And we know that there is nothing that they can do to destroy us. Earthly death will simply hasten our immortality.

So even when things are not Okay and our hearts are weary, we can still have the flame of joy deep in our hearts and live on knowing that despite the fact that everything is not Okay, yes, they will be. Forever.

THE VINYL CONFESSION

I for one am glad that CDs and Ipods etc. have taken over from records for personal music entertainment. There are songs that to this day when I hear them I tense up waiting for that part of the song that has been seared into my mind as having a skip that used to plague the records I had when I was very small.

“Does your chewing gum lose its flavor
on the bedpost over night?
And you mother says, “Don’t chew it,”
Do swallow it, (click) Do you swallow it, (click) Do you swallow it”
(Vwwwwwwip.)
“in spite.”

Sometimes people come into the confessional and say, “Father, it’s the same old stuff. I sound like a broken record. Can I just say ditto?” The dejection they express is almost palpable. But I encourage them to keep up the effort, to come back as often as necessary, to not be embarrassed and most of all to not lose hope.

Someone asked why more people do not come to confession. There are a lot of theories. Here is one more. Homiletic and Pastoral Review had an excellent article on sin called, “Pornography, Electronic Media and Priestly Formation” by Marysia Weber. As you might suppose it centered on those addicted to porn on the Internet but I wonder if it does not speak to sin in general and furhter point to a reason why some people do not go to confession.

The article listed 5 “successive and interdependent stages through which individuals progress into an addiction into Internet pornography. These include, 1. Discovery, 2. Experimentation, 3. Habituation, 4. Compulsivity, and 5. Hopelessness.” Could we not as a culture be headed into this last stage of hopelessness in the area of sin in general? We are saturated with enticements to sin not the least reason being is that sin sells everything from cars to toothpaste. (See how dazzling my smile is and how attractive I now am to the opposite sex?) Hopelessness says, “What is the point? I’m just going to do it again and there is very little support not to do so. Why even think about it then? God is just going to have to take me for who I am and forgive me.”

But the point is not that God chooses or does not choose us for He already has chosen us. The point is do we or do we not choose God? Do we follow what He clearly laid out for us to do? Do we not lose hope? Do we rely on His mercy and power rather than trying to white knuckle our way into heaven? Are we humble enough to sound repetitive in the confessional? Do we have the courage to at least try again to get up and walk after falling?

I used to go the chiropractor only after some activity that would mess up my back. I wanted his adjustment to last longer. That was until he slapped me upside the head and said, “Father, you have an adjustment so that you can do the activity better in the first place!” In like manner don’t wait to be perfect to get to confession. Use confession, as often as you need to, to work toward perfection.

SPE SALVE AT THE MOVIES

WARNING: If you have not seen the movie “Atonement” and plan on seeing it, you may want to skip this post.

So, as you might have guessed, I did see the movie. It left me feeling sad. Not boo-hoo sad, just dispirited sad. (I tend not to get too boo-hooy) None-the-less I had a hard time shaking it. Those of you who have seen it know that the main love interests are never granted their happy ending of “ever after.” With his dying thoughts the young soldier clings to the words, “come back to me,” and the idea of the house by the sea with the woman he loved. But as it was (this is your LAST chance to stop reading) they both died during the tragedies of war. Heavy hearted I walked away from the theater. That night I ruminated on the sadness and “utter destruction” of any redeeming shred of hope that might pervade. But in the end, the only hope came from a made-up story. Hardly satisfying. One had only to remember that it was a fiction of a fiction.

Surprisingly it was not until Monday that I was released from this spell. It was during a funeral of all things. I was preaching on hope and the Pope’s encyclical, “Spe Salve” when it dawned on me that the movie was exactly what this encyclical fights against. It perfectly exemplifies the horror of life without “the great hope that cannot be destroyed even by small-scale failures or by a breakdown in matters of historic importance.” These two particular characters never show a jot of a greater understanding of hope other than what they had in each other (and one of them aptly notes that he is not sure that the whole thing, held together with spit and promise, could stand based on one stunted, amorous night in the library.) In this, their only (shaky at best) hope for life is a total loss and “their passing away thought an affliction and their going forth from us utter destruction.” (Wisdom 3:1-6,9)

In an odd turn of events, the only ones that had any eternal hope are two of the worst of the antagonists! They are the only ones that presented even a jot of faith (in that they were married in a church and one of them seemed to give an expression that we might interpret as remorse) and thus are at least presented with the possibility of the Great Hope and chance of repentance.

In some book on hope somewhere upstairs in our library was written that even for the Christians that knew the smokestacks of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, there was still hope. One’s body could even be destroyed, but not Christian hope as it promised that life continues. As the rite for Christian burial states, “Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended!” But without God and that solid hope we have a glimpse of the meaninglessness of death (and subsequently life) where hope becomes only about fulfilling personal desires. “Let me put this very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope.” (para 23)

Consider the story of St. Josephine Bakhita from paragraph 3, “The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father's right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.”

Without God her story would have been a stark and dismal as the above movie. Who would want it? “I have seen that all perfection has an end, but your command is boundless.” Psalm 119.