THE BENEFITS OF PRIEST RETIRMENT - NUMBER TWELVE

YOU HAVE LEARNED ENOUGH PATIENCE TO WAIT 

LOVING GOD BACK WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART

IN HONOR OF THE FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART

"Love one another as I have loved you!" 

John 13:34

GIVEN TO THE SEMINARIANS AT

ST. AUGUSTINE SEMINARY

Toronto, Canada

October 26, 2014

Rev. Ronald Knott

You shall love God with all your heart, all your soul,

all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. The

whole law depends on these.

Matthew 22:34-40 

We have been reading about the battle between Jesus and the religious teachers of his day. Since Jesus was very popular among the ordinary people on the streets, these religious leaders could not attack him directly so they resorted to trying to trap him in his speech so that they could have something to accuse him of should there be a heresy or sedition trial.

Last week, they thought that they had Jesus cornered. First, they schmoozed him with false flattery to get him to open up. “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.” They then asked him whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not. They thought they had boxed in with a clever “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” dilemma. If he said “yes it is lawful” he would offend and lose his followers who hated Caesar and his taxes, but if he said “no it is not lawful” then the Roman government would come after him for sedition.   Jesus outsmarted their trickery by answering, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s!”  

Today they are back for another try. The trick question today is “what is the greatest commandment?” They knew that scripture scholars could not agree on this so they thought they could discredit him with somebody no matter what answer he gave. Again, Jesus outsmarted them by placing the love of God and love of neighboring on the same plane - making them equal - rather than prioritizing them as they requested.     

Love God with all my heart, soul mind and strength? Love my neighbor as myself? You mean I am supposed to make God and others the most important considerations in my life, even more than myself? Most of us, to be honest, can’t say that God is that important to us, much less those around us!

I would love to be able to say that God is always at the center my life, and that I love all people all the time but sadly I quite often put myself and other things ahead of God and the needs of others. Some days I do better than others but, thankfully, God is very patient with me and loves me anyway.  I have always taken comfort in knowing that my best is good enough for God.

Today, I want to say a few more words about taking these two commandments seriously. None of us will ever measure up completely to the Great Commandment – the one that summarizes all other commandments - but this is the brass ring for which we all reach. To take God seriously, to seek to love him and others with all we have, there are things we must do. 

1.     We must want what God wants. To be able to even want what God wants, means we have to understand the Scriptures, listen to the Spirit within us and stay consciously connected to God through prayer.

2.     We must remember who we are. We are holy. We are holy, not because of what we have done, but because we are “created in the image and likeness of God” and, through our baptism, we are adopted children of God. We must accept our holiness, neither exaggerating who we are nor denying who we really are!

3.     We must want to live by the same values Jesus lived by: having a loving kindness toward all, especially the most weak and vulnerable, even our enemies; striving to do God’s will no matter the consequences; using Jesus’ own life as a pattern for our own.

4.     We must be in command of ourselves, have a handle on our addictions and our passions, so that we can go in the way that God wants us to go. We must constantly question our own motives, making sure that we not only do the right thing, but also do it for the right reason.

5.     We must never give into hopelessness, whether it is about the future or about other people because we know that the war against evil has been already been won, even though we may continue to lose many painful battles. God’s kingdom will come and nothing we do, not even the gates of hell, can stop it.

6.     Regardless of our failures, loving God and each other with our whole heart, soul, and mind is something we should strive for, even though it is something we will never accomplish completely. God wants a relationship with us, even if it is rocky and imperfect. 

Today, we are challenged to get serious about God, not in some loud, noisy and superficial way, but in a long haul and to the core-of-one’s-being kind of way. Loving God and one’s neighbors with all our hearts, souls and minds does not translate into noisy religious fanaticism, but into a subtle way of living that draws people attention away from ourselves and places it on God and those around us. That is the spirit of these two commandments and that is what the spirit of the whole law is all about!   How can we possible do all this? With God’s help! Let us now go to this table to be fed and strengthened on the Body and Blood of Christ! With God’s help all things are possible!

 

 

               

WHY DO I DO WHAT I DO?

In my retirement, when I think of all the projects I have worked on, I often ask myself "Why do you do what you do?" I have no children. I am retired. I don't need all the hassle and bother. The simple answer is one of two things. Either I am (a)  just a pathetic obsessive-compulsive personality that is driven to accomplish things or (b) I am trying to leave a legacy for the generation that follows me so that they can share in some of the things that brought me such richness of life. As I ponder these things, the following words from the Book of Deuteronomy (4:9) stand out for me.

Take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things

which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children's children.

This passage from the Second book of Maccabees (6:28) also comes to mind when I think about leaving a legacy for those who follow me. People like me are hopefully "prophets of a future not our own." 

I will prove myself worthy of my old age, and I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.

 

The late Bishop Kenneth Untener was a significant presence in the U.S. Church. This late Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, wrote the following prayer in 1979, following the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot while celebrating Mass for his prophetic stand for the rights of the poor and powerless in El Salvador

“Prophets of a Future Not Our Own”

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and to do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

MIRACLES OF SHARING

GIVEN AT 

St. Leonard Church and St. Frances of Rome Church

Louisville, KY

The Twelve approached Jesus and said, "Dismiss the crowd

so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms

and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place

here." Jesus said to them, "Give them some food yourselves."

They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have,

unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.

Now the men there numbered about five thousand."

Luke 9:11b-17

What really happened that afternoon a long time ago when five loaves and two fish were shared with more than five thousand people and all went home fed, with plenty left over? Something so wonderful happened that day that the story of it has come down to us in all four gospels. It is one of our most regular readings throughout the year, but what really happened?

Maybe it was a literal miracle of multiplication. Maybe those five loaves and two fish were miraculously and instantly turned into hundreds of loaves and hundreds of fish by Jesus by simply waving his hands over them. That’s how many of us have always understood it. That's how many still explain it. However, I want to point our that the word multiplication is not mentioned in this story. 

Maybe it was just a spiritual miracle like we do every Sunday when we celebrate the Eucharist. Maybe everybody came forward to receive a pinch from the five loaves and two fish from those in charge of its distribution (much like you do from our Eucharistic ministers) and everybody went home spiritually fed that day. 

However, there is still another explanation, one that is a little less mysterious, another explanation that is a little more ordinary, but miraculous nonetheless. Let’s lay aside our traditional understanding and prejudices for a moment and take a closer look at the details of this story for a possible new understanding of what actually happened.

It is highly doubtful that a crowd of Jews that big would have left on a nine-mile hike without making preparation – a few maybe, but certainly not more than five thousand people.  There are two reasons I can think of that would have prevented them from not being prepared. (1) There were no big stores and restaurants lining the roads back then like we have today. (2) Jews were very particular about their food. It had to be kosher. No Jew would think of leaving home for such a long hike without his bottle-shaped basket with its kosher food for eating. 

Probably what happened was that people were hiding what they had brought from such a hungry crowd, lest there not be enough for themselves. It was only when Jesus took the five barley loaves and two sardines from the Twelve, blessed them, broke them and began passing them around that a willingness to share was triggered in the crowd. When this example of sharing spread through the crowd, people pulled out what they had and began to share it. Remember, the word multiplication is not mentioned in this story. As a result of this sharing, everybody had their fill and there was a lot left over. You can believe it was a literal multiplication if you like, but I personally favor this explanation for several reasons. 

First, we need to remember that one of the things that Jesus rejected when it was offered to him by the devil when he was in the desert discerning the direction of his ministry was magically producing bread to feed hungry people. The devil suggested that Jesus turn rocks into bread. Jesus could, not doubt, have done that but he rejected that solution to hunger. Rather, he knew that if people would just change their minds about shortages and share the resources of the world, there would be no need for such “rocks into bread” magic.

Second, if it were just about Jesus’ power to miraculously produce bread and fish from thin air, then we might be amazed at the power that Jesus had, but we could not pull off such an event ourselves. No, this is a miracle alright, but I personally believe that it is a miracle of sharing, not some miraculous multiplication. I believe that what happened is something that we, working together, can do even today. It's a miracle we, working together, can perform. The most obvious example I can think of is a church pot luck dinner. I have seen this miracle take place hundreds of times at such pot luck dinners. Families arrive, each with their bowl of beans or their basket of fried chicken or their carton of potato salad or their bag of buns or their lemon pie or their pot of green beans --- on and on! They put all those little bowls and baskets of food on a long table. The pastor says a blessing over all of it. People line up and fill their plates. When it is all over, everybody is stuffed and there is usually plenty left over to take to the shut-ins.

We are used to calling this miracle the “multiplication of the loaves” even though the texts never mentions the word “multiplication.” That word has merely been assigned to the text. I believe it should more accurately be called the “miracle of sharing.” If we call it that, we don’t have to stop at admiring it as a historical event that Jesus performed many years ago, we can repeat it today! Let me share a couple of other ways we can, together, repeat what happened. 

As many of you know, before COVID and a volcanic eruption, I had been volunteering down in the Caribbean missions in my retirement. While working down there, I saw this miracle repeat itself right in front of my eyes. I witnessed how much good can come from the experience of people sharing versions of “just five loaves and two fish.”

Three times, we sent down a 40’ shipping container of surplus medical supplies collected by a local organization of volunteers called S.O. S. – Supplies Over Seas. These left-overs come from out of our regional hospitals – items that would have gone into the landfill because of our laws and rules about expiration dates and cross contamination.  S.O.S. has tons of it in their warehouse over on Arlington Avenue not far from Saint Francis of Rome. They give it away for free, while charging only processing costs and shipping by truck, train and ship to poor areas of the world. Typically, poor countries get close to a half-million dollars worth of perfectly usable medical supplies for a pittance.

I made 12 trips down there altogether. When I was down there on my tenth trip, I toured their new hospital in the very north end of the main island. It was built by an international charity. As we went from room to room, there they were, the medical supplies that we had loaded into one of those 40’ shipping container here in Louisville the year before! They considered it a miracle and so did I. It made me proud, but I was also blown away by the fact there is so much waste in our country and so much need in others. The volunteers at S.O.S. are working miracles every month, right here is Louisville, by sharing our unused medical supplies with those who are more than overjoyed to use it. 

One of the needs I discovered was a need for school supplies – even down to pencils and pens. Businesses down there do not give away free pens like they do up here, so to own a pen or two they would need to spend a couple of Caribbean dollars. Even the Bishop’s Pastoral Centre always had a pen shortage when I was down there. Back home, one day I noticed that I had used pens in almost every drawer in my house. I had also noticed that hundreds of them were being left on the tables after the priest retreats I had been leading across the US and Canada. I decided to clear out my desk draw, my kitchen drawers and my night stands. I even started gathering them up from the tables after my priest retreats - hundreds of them that the hotels could no re-use. As time went by, I got the bright idea that I would announce a “used ball point pen drive” on my blog. The first responder was a woman in Elizabethtown who found 32 laying around her house. I got a box of used pens from North Carolina. A big box of them with business logos came from Florida. I got over 200 of them from a former Cathedral parishioner. I ended up in the middle of a “used ball point pen miracle.” I gathered several thousand used pens. To us, used pens pile up in our “junk drawers,” but to the poor school kids down in the islands, they became  “miraculous school supplies” simply because a bunch of good people came forward and offered their version of “just five loaves and two small fish.”

I have moved on to a more local ministry down in my home parish in Meade County after COVID and the volcano eruption so I no longer volunteer in the Caribbean missions or collect stuff to send down there, but as I read and re-read the story in today’s gospel, I hope and pray that this gospel comes alive for you so that you can have your own experience of the “miracle” that comes from sharing “even a little bit.”