THE DESPERATELY NEEDED VISION OF POPE FRANCIS

THANK YOU POPE FRANCIS! MAY YOU REST IN THE PEACE OF CHRIST! 

 

A BREAKDOWN BEFORE A BREAKTHROUGH

 

They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.

John 20:9

Obviously, none of Jesus’ friends expected him to rise from the dead. In fact, they all assumed the grave had been robbed and the body had been snatched. Once the news gets out that the body was missing, everybody in today’s gospel runs around like chickens with their heads cut off! The word “ran” is used three times in this one story. It sounds like a typical Easter Sunday morning at our small house when I was growing up in a family of eight - chaos as far as the eye could see! If you are here with a bunch of kids you got ready for church today, you know what I mean! 

Mary Magdalen got there first, not because she expected Jesus to rise and wanted to be there when it happened, but because she wanted to do what was traditional to do after the burial of a loved one. It was customary to visit the tomb of loved ones for three days after the body had been laid to rest. It was believed that for three days the spirit of the dead person hovered around the tomb, but then it departed because the body had become unrecognizable through decay in that hot climate. 

Jesus had died on Friday. By religious law, Mary Magdalen would not have been allowed to travel on Saturday, the Sabbath. That meant she had to wait till Sunday morning before she could make her first visit. She couldn’t wait till the sun came up so she got there before dawn. When she arrived at the tomb, she was shocked to find that the stone had been rolled back and the body was missing! She concluded that the grave had been robbed so she ran back to town and got Peter and John out of bed. All three ran back to the tomb together. John, being younger, outran Peter and got there first, with Peter soon following out of breath.  Before Mary Magdalen could catch up with them on her way back to the empty tomb, Peter and John ran past her on their way back to town to tell the others.

One by one, his disciples began to believe that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead, beginning with John and ending with Thomas. From their mouths to others’ ears, from their mouths to others’ ears, from their mouths to others’ ears, this story has been passed down to us some 2,000 years later and here we are gathered today to celebrate what we have just heard in St. John's account of the resurrection!

Yes, this is the Easter story, but what does it mean and what does it have to do with us?

The point of Easter is not simply that life is sometimes troubling and difficult but that, by its very design, it needs to be troubling and difficult. This is because it is not ease but affliction that enables us to develop our very best. Those who grow the most are simply the ones who have weathered the most, endured the most, and struggled the most. Because such trials have been borne in the right spirit, they have been strengthened, enriched, and deepened the most by it. Think about any of the heroes and heroines of the faith, and one will always identify persons for whom hardship, sacrifice, and pain are no strangers. All breakthroughs are usually proceeded by a big breakdown. No pain, no gain! No cross, no crown! 

In short, we must view this death and resurrection not merely as just another historical event from the distant past, but as a life-giving way of living today. We are not here today to celebrate this death and resurrection as an event that just happened once in history, but death and resurrection as a way of living our lives today.

People in recovery programs understand death and resurrection as a way of life. People who have unilaterally forgiven their enemies understand death and resurrection as a way of life. Parents who have had to let go of their children and see them thrive, understand death and resurrection as a way of life. Anybody who has lost a job, only to find a better one understands death and resurrection as a way of life. Anyone who has lost a spouse, only to find another chance at love, understands death and resurrection as a way of life.

This Easter is special to me personally. Several times in the last 55 years of priesthood, I have gone from one of the worst years of priesthood to one of the best. The year I retired, I was in the pits. I knew I was in the pits, but I also knew in my guts that, if I would just hang in there, things would get better – and they did, in spades! It has happened at least three times just since I retired. For me, my breakdowns have always preceded the beginning of yet another amazing breakthrough! I am not that special! Whatever breakdown you are going through right now, with an Easter faith, could be a breakthrough for you as well! You can bet on it!

I always remember that engineer in Switzerland who designed a great tunnel between Switzerland and Austria. I have told the story often because it is so appropriate for today. He proposed they dig from both ends and meet in the middle, a risky method. When the day came when diggers were supposed to meet but didn’t, he killed himself thinking that he had made a great mistake. On the very day of his funeral, the workers broke through and the connection was perfect! He gave up one day too soon! An “Easter faith” means that you don’t give up, no matter how hopeless things seem to be at the moment. 

In a nutshell, we are here to celebrate a way-of-living, not just an historical event! By embracing difficulty, we can overcome it. After a lifetime of embracing difficulties and overcoming them, we can finally embrace our own deaths knowing that there is eternal life on the other side of that!  Just as Jesus was raised, we who believe in him will also be raised - to live with him and each other forever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #16

 

FATHER WHO? FATHER WHAT? FATHER WHEN? FATHER WHY? FATHER HOW? 

This year is the 55th anniversary of my First Mass at St. Theresa Church down in Rhodelia, Kentucky. I thought it might be a good opportunity to recall some of my favorite situations where my priesthood was called into question. Almost all of them took place in my first 10 years when I was stationed down along the Tennessee border where Catholics make it one-tenth of one percent of the population. 

Disapproval for what I had become came very soon after my ordination. At one of the receptions, either after my ordination or after my First Mass, I was confronted by a young woman who asked how many years I had gone to school to be a priest. When I answered, "Counting  eight years of grade school, four years of high school, four years of college and four years of theology studies, I guess you could say twenty years altogether!"  She took a step back and responded, "My God, you could have been something!" Obviously, she was thinking "doctor" or "lawyer" or "scientist" - the professions that really "count?"

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Not too long after I arrived in the southern part of the state, I went to a barbershop to get a haircut. It was my day off and I was dressed "down" as they say. Like most people in that area, he was curious about this stranger sitting in his barber chair. It didn't take him long to ask the "big" question, "What do you do? I took a deep breath and answered "Catholic priest." He was obviously taking his time thinking about how to respond. Then he asked his second question which surprised me. Instead of questioning me about why I was Catholic, he asked, "Was your father a priest too?" Obviously, he knew very little about "priests" so I decided to give him my short answer. I simply said, "Oh, I hope not!" He didn't "get it" so we moved on to other topics, leaving him still trying to understand what I just said!  

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Not too long after I settled in the the southern part of the state, I took 12-15 young adults from the parish to one of the Lake Cumberland's local beaches. As we got in and out of the water and interacted with each other, the young adults were calling "Father this" and Father that!" Not being used to having priests in that area, this caused a woman not far away to come over and ask about the young adults who were calling me "Father," "Excuse me sir, but you look very young! Just how many kids do you have, anyway?" 

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In a few years down there, I volunteered to do some campus ministry at Somerset Community College. I was probably reaching more non-Catholic students than Catholic students. Once in a while, they would come by the rectory and ring the doorbell looking for me. One day, one of them came by and rang the doorbell. Instead of me, answering the door, the other associate pastor answered. This caused the young man who came looking for me to panic. He had a momentary lapse of memory and in his panic, he could not recall my name "Father Knott." Instead, he asked to see "Father Bump!" 

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So many of the students down there had grown up with Protestant warnings about Matthew 23:9 that said you should "call no one your father."  They were comfortable calling their male parents "father," but they were reluctant to call a Catholic priest "Father." As I result, I was given the nickname "Pad," which is short for "Padre!" To this day, over 55 years later, some of the people down in that area of the state still address me in their Christmas cards and texts "Pad."  Others addressed me as "Reverend," "Brother" or "Preacher." 

COMING SOON

A COLLECTION OF SATURDAY BLOG POSTS FOR 2025

DEDICATION

To Fergal Redmond, my good friend from Ireland and fellow-missionary volunteer in the Caribbean country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with whom I have enjoyed many good laughs, several memorable successes, a few mishaps and lots of gin and tonics.

A Companion To My 2018 Humor Collection 

I JUST HAD TO LAUGH: available already from Amazon Books

use this link 

ronknottbooks.com 

EXTRAVAGANT LOVE

 

Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil

made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed

the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair.

John 12:1-11

Jesus had a large circle of friends, both men and women. On the fifth Sunday of Lent, we got an inside glimpse at three of those friends: Martha, her sister Mary and their brother Lazarus from the little town of Bethany, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It was that special place in the life of Jesus where he and his disciples could stop in, get some rest, enjoy a good meal and then go on their way!

If you pay attention to the details of John’s gospel story about Martha, Mary and Lazarus, you soon realize just how close Jesus was to these people. Martha was the famous extrovert who complained from her kitchen about getting some help. Mary was that famous introvert who would rather sit in the living room with the men and listen to Jesus talking. It was this Mary, in today’s gospel, who kissed Jesus’ feet in public, rubbing them with perfumed oil and drying them with her hair. You must be pretty close to do that, not to mention a woman doing that in public!

Sunday before last, we read down the text and saw how John underlined, again and again, just how intimate these friends were with Jesus. Here’s what it says: “Lord, the one you love is sick.” “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus very much.” “See how much he loved him!” They are even so close that both of these women can “chew him out” and get away with it: “Lord, if you had been here, (meaning if you had not dilly-dallied around so long) my brother would never have died!” Remember the text told us that Jesus had delayed two days after he heard that Lazarus was sick!  And finally, seeing Mary weep, we are told that “Jesus began to weep,” too.  What we have here is a continuation of that story of intense love colliding with intense stinginess.

Mary may not have been a good cook or a hopeless extrovert like her sister Martha. Mary may not have been the head of the household or the subject of a great miracle like her brother Lazarus, but her dramatic all-in gestures of love for Jesus were breath-taking! Let’s compare her full-throated gestures of love with the narrow minded and self-serving reactions of Judas and the religious authorities. 

First, we see Mary’s extravagant love. She gave the most precious thing she owned – a vial of very expensive ointment. Second, we see her humility. It would have been a great honor to anoint the head of Jesus, but out of humility, she anointed his feet. Third, we see a total lack of self-consciousness. After anointing them with perfumed oil, she dries them with her own hair. At the time of Jesus, no respectable woman would appear in public with her hair unbound. It was the sign of being an immoral woman. Mary loved Jesus so much that she did not care, or even notice, what others thought about it.

Then we have Judas. Judas ungraciously questioned her action as sheer waste and then hiding his flawed self-serving nature behind the excuse that it “could have been given to the poor” while he himself was guilty of regularly stealing from the poor. Jesus probably knew at this point that his days were numbered. He accepted Mary’s lovely other-focused gesture of generous love. He exposed the hypocrisy of Judas who turned this loving gesture into a story about his own greediness!

Finally, for the religious leaders who were there, it was a chance to “check out both Jesus and Lazarus.” From there they plotted not only to kill Lazarus, but also Jesus, because they were drawing followers from their ranks. Like Judas, they were filled with self-serving stinginess, while Mary was filled with other-serving love. 

 

 

 

 

 

PALM SUNDAY

 

Picture it! Jerusalem 32AD! Things were crowded and tense in Jerusalem when Jesus arrived for the Passover. It was worse than Derby Day in Louisville the year cruising was outlawed on Broadway! Jesus; popularity with the masses had reached fever pitch. The jealousy of religious leaders had reached the boiling point! The government’s worry bordered on paranoid.  The whole city was on edge that year! 

Everyone in authority, as well as Jesus himself, knew that his arrival in the city under these circumstances smacked of a showdown. Everybody seemed to know that the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem during the Passover could set off a riot!

When the great crowd that had come to the feast

heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they

took palm branches and went out to meet him,

throwing their coats on the road.

Palm waving and the throwing of coats on the road was not just some spontaneous gesture of welcome. These two actions had serious political overtones. People threw their coats on the road when a new king arrived to ascend his throne and palm waving was a symbol of Jewish nationalism akin to a rebel flag.  Even though the people had tried to make Jesus a king, in hopes that he would be the one to throw the hated Romans out of their land, Jesus had said “no” on more than one occasion to being the political revolutionary they wanted.  This was one of the temptations presented to Jesus in the desert even before he began his ministry. With the crowds in that frame of mind, no wonder the Roman authorities were nervous about the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem that day!

In response to the people’s misguided reception as some kind of political revolutionary, Jesus deliberately came into the city, not in a chariot pulled by white horses, but on the back of a jackass. By choosing that kind of animal, the animal of the poor, Jesus made the statement that he did not come with political power, but with spiritual power! The people just didn’t want to hear it. They wanted a powerful Jewish king and so this symbol of humility simply went over their heads!

Palm Sunday has a lot to teach the Church, even today! My friends, our power is not to be found in political power, no matter how many preachers still try to snuggle up to politicians even today. Our power is even more powerful than political power. Empires and kingdoms have come and gone, but Christianity is still around. We have spiritual power – the power of Jesus himself! Now we only need to own it and unleash it for the good of the world!  We have Pope Francis leading us there! The less worldly power he claims, the more powerful he becomes!