YOU ALWAYS SEE WHAT YOU LOOK FOR

Given at Little Sisters of the Poor

9-21-2026

Feast of St. Matthew 

The Pharisees said this about Jesus to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Jesus heard this and said, "Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.

Matthew 9:9-13

As I sat down to reflect on today’s gospel, where Jesus was attacked and condemned for being seen hanging out with the so-called riff-raff and trash of society, I immediately thought of a little hand-written list of New Year’s Resolutions that someone sent me. It was in a child’s handwriting. Here is what it said, “This year I want to be more like Jesus. I want to hang out with sinners. I want to upset religious people. I want to tell stories that make people think. I want to choose unpopular friends. I want to be kind, loving and merciful. I want to take naps on boats!” Evidently, the person who wrote that, adult or child, was very familiar with the Scriptures because that is exactly what Jesus did!

On this Feast of St. Matthew, we read about how Jesus “hung out with sinners.” His critics could not stand the fact that Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them. They wanted him to condemn them! Jesus gave them a perfect response. “Those who are well do not need a doctor, but sick people do!”

Those of you who know me, know that what Jesus did, is my normal practice! As a priest, I have specialized in reaching out especially to fallen away Catholics. For 15 years, I wrote a weekly column in The Record called “An Encouraging Word.” After 500 columns, I started this blog by the same name entitled “An Encouraging Word.” The personal philosophy behind my ministry as a priest has always been to look for goodness to affirm, rather than sins to condemn! I believe with all my heart that “we see what we look for!” If we look for sins to condemn in people, we will find plenty of them to condemn! However, I personally believe that the opposite is also true! If you look for goodness in people to affirm, you will find plenty of goodness and virtue to affirm as well!”

This was certainly true leaving St. Thomas Seminary here in Louisville! That training clearly focused on “sins to condemn.” When I entered St. Meinrad Seminary in the Fall of 1964, I entered into a new form of training that emphasized “goodness to affirm.” It changed my life and gave my ministry a new way to look at myself and to look out at you! Personally, I have never been inspired to change and grow through condemnation, but I have been inspired to change and grow through encouragement! Besides, who wants to come to church if you keep being condemned all the time? My firm belief is that most people are doing the best they can under their circumstances. Sometimes, all they need is a little encouragement from the pulpit!

I know I am right following the example of Jesus in today’s gospel. I have done it all my 56 years of priesthood and it works. In my own defense, I can point to one place in particular – the Cathedral of the Assumption from 1983-1997 when I was pastor. When I arrived, the parish was down to 110 old ladies who lived mostly in the high rise around the corner. When I left, there were 2,100 registered parishioners from 67 zip codes.

How did we do it? For one thing, we simply preached the “good news” of God’s unconditional love, especially for those who felt judged and unloved! In the words of Pope Francis, we became “a hospital for sinners!”

We welcomed sinners and fallen-away Catholics. As the “mother church of the diocese,” we liked to say to them, “Welcome! You can always come home to mother!” They came in droves because they knew they would not have to sit there and be condemned and be “put down” every Sunday, but rather hear about God’s love and mercy! As Jesus knew, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar!” Personally, I was never inspired to change and grow through condemnation, but I was inspired to change and grow through encouragement…and so were they!

JUST TAKE A GOOD HARD LOOK AT IT - DON'T LOOK AWAY!

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

John 3:14-21

If you have ever been in the hospital or flipped through the phone book looking for a physician, you’ve seen the image – two winged serpents wrapped around a staff. It is known as the caduceus. The caduceus has been the symbol of the American medical profession for nearly a hundred years – a decidedly odd symbol for doctors until you begin to investigate where it came from and its underlying meaning.

This ancient symbol of healing, referred to in today’s gospel, is a reference to a story in Chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers – our first reading today.  In their trek across the desert from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land, the People of God underwent all sorts of trials and troubles. The one mentioned today is their plague of biting winged serpents. After praying for delivery from this awful plague, God instructs Moses to make a bronze image of the same serpents, put them on a pole and invite the people to take a good hard look at it. When they looked at it hard and long, they recovered.

Now this may sound like some kind of voodoo magic, but it isn’t! It’s primitive psychology! All you nurses, doctors, psychologists and mental health professionals, listen up now to this truth! What Moses did here is still good practice! What he is saying here is that the road to healing is always through facing the problem and looking at it squarely. Failing to look at problems squarely is the best way to keep them going!

The worst thing you can do, if you have a mysterious lump on your body, is to pretend it isn’t there! You need to pay close attention to it and have a professional examine it carefully and as soon as possible. The worst thing to do is to look the other way and pretend that it isn’t there! Healing begins with noticing.  

The worst thing you can do, if you or one of your friends or relatives has a drinking or drug problem, is to look away and pretend that it isn’t there! Reality must be faced squarely and help must be sought as soon as possible. The worst thing to do is to look away and pretend the problem does not exist! Recovery begins with facing facts squarely! That’s why people in AA must first of all say to themselves and others, “I am an alcoholic!” before their healing can begin!

Moses didn’t put it this way, but this is what he meant – all of us need to “wake up and smell the coffee” in several areas of our lives! As a culture, we are addicted to our denials. Whatever it is, we need to open our eyes and take a good hard look at reality and quit going to sleep just because it is comfortable and feels good for the moment!

And, yes, on a spiritual level, looking at Jesus dying on the cross – looking intently at it and understanding what it means – not looking away and not avoiding our responsibility in considering its implications - is the path to our eternal life as well! Looking at Jesus on his cross will help us understand that Jesus did not come to condemn us, but to save us! All we have to do is look at him on the cross, believe in him and his love for us and we will be saved. Just as the people of Moses’ time looked at an image on a pole of the serpents that were killing them and recovered, we can look at Jesus on the cross and recover from what’s killing us - our sins!

 

My sisters and brothers, today’s readings are about facing ourselves, facing our addictions and owning them, facing our shabby treatment of others and owning it and, yes, facing our sins and owning them. It is about taking a long, hard look at reality as a path to healing and forgiveness! As Jesus himself said, “The truth will set you free!”   

 

 

YOU, TOO, ARE CALLED TO BE A MISSIONARY!

 

We, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, give thanks to God for all of you in the church in Thessalonica. We remember you in our prayers, calling to mind your work of faith, 

labor of love and endurance.

First Thessalonians 1:1-5

This missionary trio, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, writes this tender note to a mission community struggling to retain hope in their weariness and discouragement and to remind them of their intimate relationship with God in Christ.

This being World Mission Sunday, I was reminded again just recently, that I had come to a conclusion about myself: "Once a missionary, always a missionary!" It made we realize that my mission activities as a young boy had actually prepared me for my many mission activities as a priest, especially in retirement.

In my first grade at St. Theresa School (1950), down in Meade County, I remember helping "adopt pagan babies." It was a popular program for Catholic school children, whereby we brought our pennies to school to "adopt" poor children in mission areas to help prepare them for baptism. The program was a bit simplistic, but well-intentioned!

In high school seminary, I made rosaries to send to "the missions." I remember making hundreds of them at St. Thomas Seminary, out on old Brownsboro Road, here in Louisville.

In the last two years of St. Meinrad College Seminary, I was a member and even an officer in an organization called the Catholic Students Mission Crusade. I even have a picture of myself in the seminary chape with my CSMC badge around my neck!

As a theology level seminarian, I considered joining the Glenmary Home Missioners - an order of priests, brothers and sisters who work in the "home missions" of the US - mainly in the south where Catholics are rare. I later decided against it, but as a newly ordained priest, I actually ended up being sent to the "home missions" of our archdiocese for my first ten years. In my life, God always seems to "get his way" in situations like those!

As a retired priest, I decided to volunteer in the "foreign missions" of the Caribbean especially in the countries of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Trinidad. I supported a Catholic orphanage, a Catholic school, a community hospital, renovated the diocesan Pastoral Center, a couple of churches on the outer islands, renovated a retreat house and sent some youth to World Youth Day in Portugal among other things! All in all, I made 12 trips down there before the volcano erupted on St. Vincent and COVID caused me to back off in-person mission work down there.

Year before last, I got involved in the east African countries of Kenya and Tanzania through the Father John Judie Ministries, an organization started by Father John Judie, one of our local black priests, who is spending his retirement serving in east Africa. So far, with the help of a few generous people, I have raised enough money to build a new church in Kenya, to construct a new house for a single mother of a seminarian I am sponsoring, to finish a new half-built Catholic grade school and to pay off the outstanding seminary debts of 15 impoverished seminarians in Tanzania.

Pope Paul VI, who presided over the finish and implementation of Vatican II, wrote extensively about our universal call to be missionaries. Following him, Pope John Paul II explained even further that all baptized Christians are challenged to become missionaries in their everyday lives. In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, he stressed yet again that, ‘by virtue of Baptism, all lay people are missionaries.'

Listening to Pope John Paul II does not mean, however, that everyone needs to travel to a faraway land, or stand on street corners sharing the Gospel with strangers. The Church believes that being a missionary can take multiple forms, always in accord with a person’s state in life. For example, a person can be a missionary through their marriage, showing others how a faithful, committed marriage is possible in today’s world. Another example is an elderly person confined to their home being a missionary simply by praying for missionaries around the world.

Pope Francis, in his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, said this: "All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The “new evangelization” calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus."

Yes, you can carry out your duty to be a missionary in your own way. Some personally go to foreign lands. Others support those who do go. Still others follow the news about missionaries and pray for them. Personally, I got involved because I have always seemed to have had “the heart of a missionary." Lately, it has occurred to me that we owe it to mission countries to do what we can to help, especially in those countries who are now sending missionary priests to us because of our own priest shortage. Rather than starting my own mission organization, I decided to partner with Father John Judie Ministries, Inc. working in east Africa.

If you too want to follow my own mission work, each in your own way and even in your old age, access my blog at: fatherknott.com. Along with weekly homilies, including this one, there are many other homilies and spiritual reflections, prayers and even bits of church humor on Saturdays. A few of my every-other-day blogposts contain informative stories and photos of what Father John Judie, my fellow Louisville priest, and I are doing these days in the missions of east Africa.

The greatest part of doing missionary work is what it does for those of us who get involved in it, not just the people we happen to help! As the Book of Proverbs (11:24) puts it, “Those who water others will themselves be watered!” In my own case, I absolutely know for sure that that proverb is true! I have been blessed more times than I can count!

"CHURCH CHAT" #50

 LEAVING YOUR LEGACY

A FRIEND IN NEED IS A FRIEND INDEED

 

Four men came to Jesus came carrying a paralytic. Because the door was blocked by a crowd of people, the four men hoisted him up onto the roof, made a hole and lowered him right in front of Jesus.

Mark 2:1-12

There are many wonderful messages in the gospel story we just read, but the one detail that jumped out at me this year is not the paralyzed man himself nor the healing power of Jesus, but the role of his four friends in this miracle. Talk about determined! These guys must think a lot of their paralyzed friend because it seems there is nothing they won't do to help him! Actually, these guys are pretty funny! Let's take a closer look! 

By the time this story took place, Jesus' popularity had grown tremendously. Last week's gospel about the healing of a leper ended with these words, "It had become impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places. Even at that, people kept coming to him from everywhere."

After a little time had passed, Jesus tried to slip into his home in Capernaum, but word got out quickly that he was back home and they gathered around the house where he was staying in such numbers that the door was completely blocked.

Most people carrying a paralytic through a crowd like that would have given up and told their friend that it was impossible - maybe next time - but not these guys! These guys believe in the old maxim, "where there is a will, there is a way!" So these guys drag their poor crippled friend up, on his mat, upon the roof of the house! Then they rip a hole in the roof and lower their friend, by ropes tied to his mat, until he was dangling right there in front of Jesus!

Notice the exact words the writer uses when Jesus realizes what is happening. It says that Jesus was so impressed by the faith of his four friends that he heals this paralytic.

It occurred to me, as I was reflecting on this story, just how much  friends play a role in creating miracles in our lives.  I know they have in my life!

Friendship is not just about the warm feelings we have toward certain people. If that were so, the four guys in this story would have just felt sorry for their friend. Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people.  Because of their friendship, these four guys were driven to do something, whatever it took, to help their friend. In this sense, friendship connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, affection and respect, along with a degree of rendering service in times of need or crisis. Friends engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. Some of the qualities of real friendship include the tendency to desire what is best for the other, sympathy and empathy, real honesty and mutual understanding.  Jesus may have defined friendship best when he said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." Jesus would agree that real friendship is more than just having warm feelings for another.

Real friendship involves positive action like the positive action displayed by the four guys in today's gospel. Such positive action is enshrined in the saying, "Real friends do not let friends drive drunk."  A real friend will intervene in times of crisis regardless of how badly an impaired friend might react under the situation. It's not about feelings in that moment. It's about what is actually good for the person at the time. As the Book of Proverbs (24:26) puts it, "An honest answer is the sign of true friendship." As Martin Luther King, Jr. said it this way, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." One of the surest evidences of friendship is the ability to tell a friend a fault and having him listen with gratitude and correct the error. As one of my favorite quotes puts it, “We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.” In other words, people who tell us what we want to hear are not necessarily our friends and those who tell us what we don’t want to hear are not necessarily our enemies. The spiritual masters traditionally call this “fraternal correction.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

NEWS ALERT, AMERICA!

WATCHING OTHERS PLAY SPORTS AND SCREAMING IN FRONT OF A TV DOES NOT QUALIFY AS A WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM!

HOWEVER, PLAYING SPORTS YOURSELF OFTEN DOES!

Over the last couple of years, I have gradually lost over 35 pounds and kept it off!  Losing it was hard, but keeping it off is much harder, especially when you grew up associating being "rewarded" with pastries, junk food and candy. I have maintained my ideal weight for well over a year by (a) watching what I eat and (b) watching TV! (The "secret" of my amazing weight-loss program will be revealed below.) I have been so successful with this program that more than a few people have asked me "Are you sick?" as if weight loss is usually equated with sickness rather than health! 

I am aware that there are a whole lot more over-weight Americans watching other people play sports than playing sports themselves! Along with that is the habit of loading up the living room with fattening snacks so as to have plenty to "reward" oneself during "scores" in the the "big game!" Instead of getting one's own fat-ass out there on a basketball court, football field, tennis court, soccer field or jogging path, they sit in front of a TV with fists full of snacks being entertained by watching other people exercise while they load on the pounds! Along with the growth of TV sports on multiple channels and the proliferation of sports bars in this country (not to mention the vast numbers of "fast food" TV commercials), there is a constant up-tick in obesity numbers! I have actually come to believe that more and more people are convinced that watching other people play sports is a sure-fire way to lose weight personally! It's a case of saying, "I like sports," as if it's the same as saying, "I like watching sports being played by other people!"

 

OK! Read no further to get the secret of my weight loss program by watching TV! I have a treadmill parked in front of my TV and I will not allow myself to turn on the TV and watch it until I am on my treadmill! I normally fast-walk two-hours every other day and one-hour on the days in between. The only short breaks I take are during snack food commercials to go to the bathroom. I weigh myself every morning and keep a tally, do not keep sweets and fatty snacks in the house and watch what I eat (and how much), especially when I am invited out for dinner. Even then, 95% of the time I say "no" to desserts, bread, pasta and fried foods. That's leaves 5% of the time for "special holidays and celebrations" when I try to skip a meal in advance and make choices of what I do eat and how much of it! The secret here is to stop before you feel "full!" It takes your stomach a little time to register "fullness." 

Instead of parking yourself on a couch in front of a TV or hanging out at a sports bar, surrounded by beer and snack food, to watch the "big game," why not go to the gym and watch it there, with your buddies, using weight-lifting benches or full-body weight-stack machines?

The last thing I did when I got to my ideal weight was to get rid of all of my pants that were 2, 4, 6 inches larger in the waist. I figured that I needed to get rid of this one last temptation to "go back" to my old ways! It motivates you to "count the cost" of buying more pants if you do not have a ready supply of the old sizes at your finger tips! 

 

OK, to be fair, I know that this is a whole lot easier when you are retired and live alone than when you live in a house full of people with whom you have to negotiate your food situation, but I still believe "where there's a will, there's a way! Unless you are "force-fed" like a goose to make foie gras, you can always say "no" to food! It just takes lots of discipline and self-control! The question is always, "How badly do you want to lose weight?" From past experiences, I know that "motivation" has to be there in great supply before I can even start the first day!