HOSPITALITY FOR THE LEFT-OUT AND LEFT-BEHIND

    

LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR 11-4-2024

“Radical Hospitality”

Rev. Ronald Knott

"When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.

Luke 14:12-14

Today, I would like to simply give you several examples of how this gospel has been lived out in my experience and those I have ministered to and those with whom I have ministered!

First of all, I had to look no further than right here in this place. A pious French woman, Jeanne Jugan, having felt the need to care for the many impoverished elderly who lined the street of French towns and cities, established this Congregation to care for the elderly in 1839. Now, her Sisters are serving the elderly all over the world, especially those who can never re-pay them. The gospel calls these Sisters and the people who serve with them “Blessed.”    

I have always had a heart for the marginalized and the left out. Let me tell you about how I have personally tried to follow the challenge in today’s gospel.  

When I was pastor of the Cathedral, I received an elderly woman into the Church. She had an estranged son who lived far away and a couple of relatives who lived locally but paid very little attention to her. On Mother’s Day, since my own mother had died a few years earlier, instead of going to one of my sister’s houses down in Meade County, I would cook a delicious meal for her, go pick her up and treat her like she had won a place on the old TV show “Queen for a Day!” I did that for years until she died!  

Before I moved to Louisville as pastor of the Cathedral, I was pastor of Holy Name of Mary Church in the center of the state in the little village of Calvary. For the years I was there, every year on February 14 I would host a Valentine’s Party for Seniors at the rectory rather than accept invitations from other people. I tried to “smother” them with love and appreciation, especially those who were widows and widowers. I even got High School kids to come and dance with them one year. We played BINGO for little prizes to take home and provided the type of food I knew they would enjoy with enough left over to take some home for supper if they lived alone.  

After I left the Cathedral and started working as a staff member at St. Meinrad Seminary, I was especially attentive to the foreign-born seminarians. I bought coats on sale and made them available to the guys who arrived in the US in the summer from hot climates. When the weather turned cold, they had no coats and no extra money to buy them. I would have as many as 15-25 coats of various sizes in my office to give away that I had bought on sale last spring when people quit buying coats.  

Instead of going to my own family and gorging myself on fine food, I invited the foreign-born seminarians without families in this country to come to my condo for a Thanksgiving meal. I went all out. I did the cooking myself for several years, but as the group grew, a nice restaurant here in town helped me out and cooked the food for me. All I had to do is set the table, supply the drinks, go pick it up and meet them at the door. Tongue-in-cheek, I called it my Thanksgiving Dinner for the Left-Behind!

As pastor of the Cathedral that had dwindled down to 110 elderly members, I was appointed by Archbishop Kelly to “revitalize” the congregation. I knew it would be almost impossible to convert enough people to Catholicism to fill the rolls. I knew that it was not kosher to build the roles by stealing Catholics out of other parishes. I decided to go after marginalized Catholics, non-practicing Catholics and Catholics who had been hurt or rejected in other parishes. We gained several nicknames and mottos. We use to say openly. that “We’ll take anybody!” Being the “mother church of the diocese,” we would proudly say, “You can always come home to Mother!” We were called the “Island of Misfit Toys” from the children’s TV special ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” The “Island of Misfit Toys” was that special place where broke toys could go to be repaired so they, too, could be part of Christmas! We welcomed hundreds of “fallen away Catholics” back to church.

When I was one of the Campus Ministry Chaplains at Bellarmine University, I started a special Mass for the grieving every Christmas eve for many years. No one else was doing it.  I called it my annual “Blue Christmas Mass.” It was very popular because it met a very specific need. We always advertised that it was for the grieving only. It was for people who had lost children, spouses and family members from suicide, heart attacks, automobile accidents, murders, old age and whatever. Most people told me that they had always dreaded going to Mass on Christmas because they could not bring themselves to attend a “happy Christmas Mass” that only reminded them of their losses. The homily was always directed at consoling them. Instead of singing JOY TO THE WORLD, we sang softer music like SILENT NIGHT and AWAY IN A MANGER. They left consoled instead of depressed about those they had lost! We always gave them a small gift to help remind them of those special Masses throughout the coming year: a blue star, a pregnant Mary statue, a Sleeping St. Joseph Statue, a Mended Broken Heart artwork.

I am sure you have similar experiences of times you have ignored your own needs to meet the needs of the “poor, crippled, lame and blind” as the gospel puts it today! If you have, you know what it’s like to have that feeling of being “blessed indeed!”

LOVING ONESELF DOES NOT MEAN SELFISHNESS

          

THE PATH TO PERSONAL EXCELLENCE

Loving Yourself And Loving What You Do

Rev. Ronald Knott

 

The first ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to personal excellence – to loving who you really are - enough to care about becoming your best self. Really loving oneself does not mean papering oneself, but doing hard things for one’s own good. One of the most critical needs here is the need for a capacity for critical and constructive self-awareness. You must be able to know and understand what makes you tick. You must own your own personal history and heal it if necessary. In short, you must be dedicated first of all to becoming your best as a quality human person. Let me put that another way. (a) You cannot take a loser and ordain him and expect to have an effective priest! If he is not a quality human being to begin with, all you will end up with is a loser priest who can’t relate to people or inspire them to hunger for holiness. (b) You cannot take two losers and put them through a wedding and expect to end up with a happy marriage and effective parents! If they are not quality human beings to begin with, all you will end with is a miserable marriage and disastrous parents!

The second ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to vocational excellence – to what you do. In other words, if you are a parent, commit yourself to being the very best parent you can be! If you are married, commit yourself to being the best husband or wife you can be! If you are a priest, commit yourself to be the best priest you can possibly be! Whatever you do, be good at it! If you strive to be the best at what you do, you will get better at it. If you choose the “good enough to get by” path, you will become known for your mediocrity. Without a passionate commitment to vocational excellence, you will no doubt end up being a half-assed priest, a half-assed marriage partner or half-assed parent! The world is already overcrowded with mediocrity – with “half-assedness” - people with no passion for personal or vocational excellence! My mother used to call them “people who merely go through the motions,” “people whose hearts are not in it.” God says to us in Revelations 3:15-16, “Would that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” May you be spared from half-assedness!”

May you be the very best version of yourself, a person passionately committed to your own personal and vocational excellence, a person committed to becoming your best self and committed to excellence at what you do!

I KNOW WHAT IT SAYS, BUT WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY MEAN?

Jesus said to his disciples: "In those days after that tribulation

the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,

and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the

heavens will be shaken.” “But of that day or hour, no one knows,

neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

Mark 13:24-32

Every year, when another calendar year begins to wind down in November, we begin to hear readings about “the end of the world” at our weekend Masses ending with the Feast of Christ the King. The very next Sunday after that, we start all over again looking forward to the coming birth of Jesus.

This is also that time of year when fundamentalist Christians come out of the woodwork searching the Scriptures, on their own, looking for clues as to the coming “doom and gloom” as a way to scare people into “shaping up before it’s too late.” 

In spite of Jesus’ admonition that “no one knows” when and how the end of the world will happen, these “fundamentalists” proceed with a conviction of the validity of their own private and literal interpretations of these “end times” texts and preach their conclusions with fervor and furor!

Just the other day, the man who came to my condo to conduct the annual inspection of my furnace, saw an opening in the conversation to talk about his interpretation of texts dealing with “the end times,” “the rapture” and cited how “only 144,000 people will be saved.” He even told me that he had translated the Bible into some native African language! He touted his trust in his own ability to translate the Bible correctly from one language to another – something even many learned Scripture scholars would find too hard to do! I find these “private and literal interpreters of Scripture people” annoying, but when they start announcing to the world that the Bible actually predicts, in their rock-solid certain private interpretation, that one political candidate was predicted to be a “savior of the world” while his opposing political candidate is “the Anti-Christ,” I want to scream to high heavens!

Centuries ago, before the invention of the printing press and before the average person could read or write, there was often only one hand-copied Bible in a Cathedral Church, but no one but the educated could read it. So, “private interpretation” was not a big problem. Many of our pious devotions come from those days when illiteracy was common. (1) The 150 psalms were being sung by literate monks and read by literate clergy, while the illiterate laity were given the full Rosary, with its 150 beads. They could pray mostly repetitious memorized “Hail Marys” while reflecting quietly on the “mysteries” of Christ’s life from memory. (2) Instead of reading the Bible to children, illiterate parents would take their children to church and show them the Bible stories in the sculptures, paintings and stained-glass windows of their churches! Now you know why we have so many statues, paintings and stain glass windows in our churches! 

With the invention of the printing press and its many translations into the evolving national languages, private interpretation with the spin-off of multiple new break-away churches, the Catholic Church resisted the idea of Bible reading in general and the idea of competing private interpretations as a way to stem heresies and the accompanying discord they caused. Instead, they gave us a little book with its approved interpretations of major Scripture texts and their meanings. That little book was what we knew as the “Catechism.” When I attended our parish Catholic School, none of us owned Bibles, we owned a small Baltimore Catechism that told us what the Bible said and more importantly what its major passages meant! Even the priest did not usually preach on the Sunday Bible Readings, but preached on one of the themes in the Baltimore Catechism. One was not encouraged to “read the Bible,” out of fear that “private interpretation” might lead to heresy. One was given the “approved answers to Biblical research” in the Catechism. The message to the faithful was “trust the Church,” but “don’t trust yourself” to understand the Bible! History has proven that there was lot of truth in that!

Take the scary passage in today’s gospel. It talks about “cosmic upheaval:” a darkened sun and moon, falling stars and the heavens being shaken. There are at least three possibilities about the interpretation of that passage. (1) It could be talking about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple which did come about in 70 AD! (2) It could be talking about the passion and death of Jesus when “darkness came over the whole land” that the Gospel of Mark describes, which did come about around 32 AD! (3) It could be talking about some future “cosmic chaos” that would accompany some unknown day or hour as a result of the arrival of the end of time. Private interpretation could lead to at least three or more conflicting possibilities. If I believe a passage means one thing and you believe a contradictory meaning, one of us, or both of us, could be wrong!

“Private interpretation,” apart from the help of the church’s teaching authority, can lead to some dangerous, if not strange, conclusions. I know from experience. I kept a newspaper clipping about an incident down in Russell County, Kentucky, when I was working in that area that explains the danger of “private interpretation” of the Bible. A man read in the Bible (Matthew 15:30) that “if your right hand is an occasion of sin to you, cut it off and throw it away” so he took a chainsaw and cut off his right hand! Is that passage to be taken literally or was Jesus using dramatic language of the time about getting to the source of the sin? Committing sin, of course is a decision of the mind apart from the hand itself! The cure is not in the hand, but in the mind and heart where the decision to sin resides!

On the other hand, Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This is my Body and this is my Blood!” Catholics take “is” literally, while Protestants take it to mean, “this is only symbolic of my Body and Blood!” Both can’t be right! Catholics have relied on history, tradition and scholarship to inform us as to what it really means! “Private interpretation” enthusiasts have relied on “private interpretation” as to its “only symbolic” meaning!

There is an old saying that I think applies here. It says, “You always find what you look for!” In Scripture, you can find justification for both compassion and cruelty, judgement and mercy! It depends on what you look for and why one interpretation would be so important to you! Does it justify your already arrived at conclusion or is it what the writer originally meant? The question then is why would you apply such scary literalism to today’s Scripture passage and not another passage that says: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the wonderful things God has is store for those who love him.” and "God is love."?  Is God a God of mercy and compassion or a God of judgment and condemnation, a God of love or a God of hate, a God of unity or a God of division? You can find both in Scripture, so it can end up depending on what the looker is looking for and needs to believe at the time! 

Even today, now that most people are literate in this country, the Catholic Church encourages Bible reading with the guidance of its many good interpretation resources. It is important to remember that the Bible didn’t fall out of the sky nor did Jesus pass out Bibles as instruction books at the Ascension! The Bible is not one book, but a library of smaller books, written over 1,000 years by different people. The Bible as we know it took many years to assemble after the death of Jesus. Like a modern newspaper, which has facts, opinions, humor and advice, one who reads the Bible needs help interpreting which is which! To read it without the help and advice of biblical scholars is to invite all kinds of heresy and chaos into the church! In that case, it is probably better not to go it alone and run the risk of twisting the Word of God to make it mean whatever you want! Help is required and help is available!

 

 

 

 

   

                                                                          

USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #43

 

GOOD NEWS FROM GOD'S "LOST AND FOUND" DEPARTMENT!

 

THE PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP

Gospel of Luke 

15:1-7

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FOR "AN ENCOURAGING WORD" FANS

Hardly a week goes by that I don't run into someone who brings up to me that they were avid readers of my column, AN ENCOURAGING WORD, in our Archdiocesan weekly newspaper THE RECORD. I wrote weekly for fifteen years. 

Many people told me that they clipped, copied, saved, mailed  and taped them onto their refrigerators. In today's blogpost, I am reminding people that all fifteen years of those AN ENCOURAGING WORD columns are available online in three volumes through Amazon books. 

Maybe you would like to order a set to re-read for yourself or a fan you know as a Christmas present. If so, here is all the information you need to order the three-volume set in time for Christmas! Click on the link below to see all three volumes and how to order them.   

http://www.ronknottbooks.com/fortherecord.html

  

SOMETIMES A LITTLE BIT IS MORE THAN A WHOLE LOT!

 

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small                                                             coins worth a few cents.                                                              Mark 12:38-44

The closest thing today to the Temple in Jerusalem of Jesus’ day - at least in my experience - is a downtown cathedral. Just as the Temple in Jerusalem attracted a host of characters at the time of Jesus, most downtown cathedrals today attract a cross-section of humanity: millionaires and street people, tourists and residents, the non-religious, the marginally religious and religious fanatics. Some are possessed and some are merely obsessed. Like bees to honey, an important religious landmark, be it the Temple or a Cathedral, attracts a human circus. They come to p-r-a-y and to p-r-e-y. Some come to make contact with God and some come to make a few bucks by working the charity system.

For 14 years, from 1983-1997, I had the privilege of being the pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville. From confessions that would curl your hair, to mental cases that would work your nerves, it was, by far, the most interesting pastoral assignment I have ever had, bar none! I had to deal with a strange man who had the urge to take off all his clothes to scare old ladies. I had to pull a drunk off the bishop’s throne. I had to wrestle a stalker to the floor who pulled a knife on me over a homily. I mistakenly called the cops on the archbishop. I have had a man drop dead during a wedding, babies pee on me during baptisms and altar servers vomit on me during Mass. I had to drag a screaming woman from the altar steps to the back door through a wide-eyed congregation, too frozen to move. I was panhandled and manhandled.

In my 14 years, I probably met at our Cathedral most of the types that Jesus met in the Jerusalem Temple, including the poor “widow woman” of today’s gospel. This woman taught me a very important lesson about priesthood.

I was running late for the noon mass. I was going to the back of the Cathedral for something when I was confronted by a “bag lady” coming at me, with both arms waving to get my attention. I was used to it, so used to it, that I thought I “had seen it all” when it came to “street people.” As soon as I spotted her, I just assumed that she wanted money. I had been down that road so many, many times. Before I could get my well-rehearsed “come back later” or “go see our social worker” speech out, she asked excitedly, “Father, where is the poor box? I want to make a donation!” At that she opened her dirty hand and there she clutched her gift of a few nickels and pennies for the “poor box.” I had stereotyped and judged her by her appearance. Her generous “widow’s mite” judged me!

This modern-day version of the “widow and her mite” taught this priest several lessons. (1) You never know what is going on inside the people, merely through external observation, so always “take off your shoes” and approach them as you would “holy ground.” There is nothing as dangerous as a judgmental, “know it all” priest, be he a young priest or an old priest. (2) As Jesus taught the Pharisees, some of the people may have the appearance of saints, but inside are like whitewashed tombs, while some of those who appear to you to be terrible sinners may just turn out to be living saints. “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” (3) Generosity has very little to do with the size of the gift. Many big givers give once in a while from their surplus and blow a horn when they make their gifts, but the ones who really keep parishes going are the many consistent little gifts from people who have to sacrifice to give. When I used to go to parishes to ask for funding for the home missions, I soon found out that I came home with more money when I went to “poor” parishes than when I went to the so called “wealthy” parishes.

In our first reading, the widow of Zarephath, who risked being generous when she herself was close to starvation, is also one of my Biblical heroes. The widow-woman, down to her last handful of meal and a few drops of oil, had to choose between feeding herself and her son or offering hospitality to a traveling holy man. Ignoring her own needs, she chose to be generous. She took that handful of meal and those few drops of oil and made a small cake and gave it to a stranger. For her radical generosity, God rewarded her with bread that never ran out the whole next year.

The woman today has an important lesson to teach us and that is: generosity is always rewarded, and often extravagantly! As Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Holland who was forced to live for two years in a secret attic by the Nazis, being caught and ending up dying in a prison camp, wrote during World War II, “No one has ever become poor by giving.” That's what she wrote, but that is what many women have taught me over my lifetime!

 

 

 

 

 

 

USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #42

 THIS SONG HAS HELPED ME DURING TIMES OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FEAR FOR 54 YEARS

 

 

 

THE 50TH JUBILEES OF SISTER MICHAEL AND SISTER GRACE

GIVEN AT ST. JOSEPH HOME FOR THE ELDERLY IN LOUISVILLE

October 30, 202

Sister Michael Anthony of Mary l.s.p. 

Sister Grace Mary of St. Paul l.s.p. 

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,

which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Matthew 13:44-52

Today, Jesus compares discovering the kingdom of God to stumbling onto a buried treasure. When I was 33 years old, six years ordained a priest, I had an experience of stumbling onto such a buried treasure - not money, gold nuggets or jewels, but a new understanding of what God is really like! I had an experience that opened my mind to a new way of understanding the Scriptures. Until then, I had listened to Scripture readings in school and every Sunday at church throughout my childhood. In seminary, I had heard Scripture being read many times a day, had listened to hundreds of homilies and had taken several Scripture classes. After seminary, I had been preaching for seven years as a deacon and priest at the time I had my mind-blowing spiritual experience. Until then, I thought I was beginning to understand the scriptures pretty well. I knew I had learned some things about Jesus, but the day of the experience that I want to share with you, I came to realize that I had learned a lot of facts about Jesus, but I really did not know Jesus all that well!

My mind was opened to understanding the scriptures in a new way during a vivid life-changing dream forty-seven years ago – a dream that I have mentioned several times in my preaching. In that dream I was on top of a small mountain. It had no trees or bushes or rocks. It had only very short green grass - very much like a golf green. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair and God was sitting in another one next to me. We were sitting side-by-side, in silence, facing the setting sun. Oddly enough. we were both smoking cheap King Edward cigars! I knew it was God, but I was afraid to look over. We just silently puffed on our cigars and watched the sun go down on the horizon. Finally, God leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Ron, isn’t this wonderful!”

I woke from the dream at that point with my world looking forever different to me. After that dream, the spiritual and psychological chains that had been holding me back melted away. I began to feel a lightness in my heart that I had never felt before. I realized the truth of that old saying, “you always find what you look for!” In Scripture, you can find justification for both compassion and cruelty, judgement and mercy! It depends on what you look for! After that dream, for the first time, I began to feel that it was OK to be me - just as I was! I began to fully understand what it meant to be “created in the image and likeness of God.” After that dream, instead of always obsessing about all those “sin" messages in the Bible, I started noticing all the “unconditional love" messages. I started to feel that I was that lost sheep that Jesus embraced and carried on his shoulders and that I was that prodigal son who made it home to an unexpected warm welcome. For the first time in my life, I started feeling that I was good enough for God just the way I was! From that day forward, I quit beating myself up spiritually for not being better than I am!

That experience was also the beginning of a new way of preaching. I began to preach about the “unconditional love” that God has for every one of us! Instead of always looking for sins to condemn in myself and others, I started looking for goodness to affirm in myself and others. I believe that the years following that dream prepared me to offer a clear message of “God’s unconditional love” that appealed to so many alienated Catholics which led to the rapid and consistent growth of the Cathedral parish when I was its pastor during the 1980s and 90s’s. That’s why my old column in The Record and my present blog have both been called “An Encouraging Word.”

Today we celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Perpetual Vows of Sister Grace and Sister Michael. I don’t know their whole vocation stories, but I did find out that that each one of them had their own “moments of grace” that led them to answering God’s call to become a Little Sister of the Poor. Sister Michael told me that she felt called to religious life as a nurse, but knew she was not called to a community of school teachers! She discovered her “pearl of great price” simply by being introduced to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Sister Grace told me she was a volunteer at a Little Sisters of the Poor Home in grade school and continued into High School where she felt a call to religious life, but also did not feel called to the teaching orders of her grade school and high school teachers. She too felt a call to nursing, but instead entered the Little Sisters of the Poor where she has helped manage the food service in several LSP Homes in France and the US.

Sister Michael and Sister Grace both experienced their own “moments of grace” when “God broke through” by being exposed to other Little Sisters and their mission. All three of us found our “buried treasures” and “pearls of great price,” our vocations, when we were young. They found theirs by being exposed to other Little Sisters. I found mine by trying on a Roman Collar, while waiting to get a haircut, when I was six years old. God’s ways are certainly mysterious!

I am sure they both have had many other “moments of grace” over the last 50 years when they have found “buried treasures” and “pearls of great price” in religious life. 50 years ago, 4 years into priesthood, I found another major “buried treasure,” a new awareness of the gospels that started with a dream about me and God smoking cheap cigars, sitting in folding lawn chairs, on a mountaintop, watching the sun set!

Sister Grace and Sister Michael, congratulations on your fidelity to your calls. Thank you for your many years of loving service. Prayers for your good health and peaceful happiness going forward! I hope that both of you will stay in Louisville for a while. I am just getting to know you!

SAD NEWS FROM A FELLOW VOLUNTEER MISSIONARY

 

Father John Judie, a retired priest from Louisville, has been volunteering in the east African country of Tanzania. Last week, he fell and wounded both knees. Since I have been trying to assist him in his ministry in Tanzania, while continuing in my own ministry in the Caribbean country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I sent him an e-mail as soon as I heard about his fall and his wounds. Here is the response and update I got:

"Thanks, Ron. Both knees injured have been repaired. Three days of post surgery, then two weeks of lying still. Will discuss with the doctor today about the rehab program. Many thanks for the prayers."

John

If you know Father John, or would just like to send him an encouraging word, you can e-mail him at:

johnjudie48@gmail.com

If you would like to know more about his ministry in east Africa, you can access his organization's webpage at the web-address below. Who knows? Maybe you will be inspired to send a Thanksgiving or Christmas donation to his organization's Louisville address to help him out in his mission ministry in east Africa. It's conveniently tax-deductible!  

frjohnjudieministriesinc.org

 

A PASSION FOR PERSONAL AND VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE

 

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

with all your mind and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor 

as yourself. There are no other commandments greater than these.

Mark 12:28-34

I have grown to love the 2007 movie, “The Bucket List,” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It’s about two terminally ill old men on a road trip with a list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.” 

In one of my very favorite scenes, they are both sitting on one of the pyramids in Egypt. Morgan Freeman’s character says to Jack Nicholson’s character, “You know the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven…the gods asked them two questions. Their answer determined whether they were admitted or not. “Have you found joy in your life?” “Has your life brought joy to others?” 

Because I was about to retire nine years ago, it was serendipitous that I should stumble onto it. It occurred to me that it raises a ton of questions for reflection on my retirement. These two questions may have been two of the most important questions facing me as I sought to create a second life with the experiences I had accumulated. “Have you found joy in your life?” “Has your life brought joy to others?”  

Many people nearing my age, especially those going into retirement, speak of retirement as a time to pamper oneself and finally being able to do whatever they want to do! Our culture teaches us that retirement is a time for self-indulgence. Move to Florida! Sleep in! Putter around the garden or workshop! Play golf every day! Hang out at McDonald’s and drink coffee till noon with other old men! God spare me! Thomas Merton was right when he said, “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

My main goal going into retirement was first of all to challenge the temptation, from my own mind and from the mouths of others, to think too small. I knew didn’t want to quit being a priest, but I wanted to be a priest in a new way. I certainly knew that I wanted to do more than just keep doing what I have always done, but less of it. Neither did I want a permanent vacation. I have spent my whole life as a priest dreaming bigger than what was considered wise. Some of those dreams did not materialize, but more than I could have imagined, have materialized! I wanted to keep "dreaming big" in a way that was age appropriate, so I nixed taking up "inline skating," but I still wanted my retirement to be a springboard to adventure, not a hammock for my lazy side to lie in.

The ancient Egyptians may have asked people on their entry into heaven: “Have you found joy in your life?” “Has your life brought joy to others?” Jesus taught us today that we will be asked a similar question on our entry into heaven:

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

with all your mind and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There are no other commandments greater than these. 

“Have I found joy in my life?” “Has my life brought joy to others?” I can't answer for you, but I can speak for myself. Maybe how I answer these two questions will help you answer them for yourselves. 

"Have I found joy in my life?" I can answer that question with a resounding "yes!" I am convinced that my life as a priest has brought me so much joy that I have even summarized it officially: "Simply Amazed - Forever Grateful" I have not only been "called" to the priesthood, but I have been blessed with meeting so many wonderful people who have made priesthood a real honor and has brought me great joy! As I look back over my life, coming from a rural town of 27 people, and think about the all people I have met, the places I have been and the things I have gotten to do, I am "simply amazed" and I will be "forever grateful." The joy that I have found in my life has come from preaching the love of God in word and deed as a home missionary, a country pastor, a cathedral pastor, a vocation director, a seminary staff member, a fifteen-year weekly columnist, a traveling parish mission preacher, a volunteer foreign missionary and a priest convocation presenter in 10 countries and author of several related books. Most of that time, I have specialized in preaching the love of God to the poor, the marginalized, the left-out and those who have not yet realized it!   

"Has my life brought joy to others?" I can answer that question with a resounding "yes" as well! It's either true are a whole lot of people have been lying to me for a very long time! I have not been perfect and not everyone has expressed appreciation for my work, but I can say with confidence that I have been very happy and I know I have brought happiness to a whole lot of others! 

In my retirement, I have not slowed down all that much, but I have have adjusted my focus. I no longer travel to far-off places, but I do a lot of ministry here at home and other places from a distance. I help-out in several parishes. I help-out weekly at the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home and monthly at the Ursuline Sisters Retirement Community at the Twinbrook Nursing Home. I am finishing up a few more small projects in my home parish in Meade County. I am still helping with small projects in the Caribbean Missions and I have added a couple of small projects in the African Missions. I still publish a few books, maintain a blog and celebrate a few funerals. 

I no longer spend a whole lot of energy trying to fix the institutional structures of the church. I am leaving that to younger priests and bishops. My focus and passion now is on ministry to individuals - helping them with their happiness and helping them bring happiness to others!   

USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #41

 

 

 

 

ON THAT GREAT "ALL SAINTS DAY" - LET'S BE THERE WITH THEM!

  

 

We are all trav'ling in the footsteps

Of those that've gone before

We'll all be reunited

On that new and sunlit shore.

When the saints go marching in

When the saints go marching in

Lord, how I want be in that number

When the saints go marching in

And when the sun refuses to shine

When the sun refuses to shine

Lord, how I want to be in that number

When the saints go marching in

Oh when the saints go marching in

Oh when the saints go marching in

Lord, how I want to be in that number

Oh when the saints go marching in

And when the trumpet sounds its call

When the trumpet sounds its call

Lord, how I want to be in that number

When the trumpet sounds its call

When the saints marching in

When the saints go marching in

Lord, how I want to be in that number

When the saints go marching in

And some say that this world of trouble

Is the only one we'll ever see

But I'm waiting for that morning

When the new world is revealed

Oh when the new world is revealed

Oh when the new world is revealed

Lord, how I want to be in that number

When the new world is revealed. 

When the saints (oh when the saints) go marching in (go marching in)

When the saints go marching in (go marching in)

Lord, how I want (Lord, how I want) to be in that number (be in that number) 

When the saints go marching in.

HALLOWEEN HUMOR

                                                                                    

EVEN POPE FRANCIS CAN APPRECIATE A GOOD JOKE

 

“Remember this,” Pope Francis told 100 comedians in a special audience, “When you manage to bring intelligent smiles to the lips of even a single spectator, you also make God smile.”

June 14, 2024

The Pope Arrives in New York

Pope Francis arrives in New York and is picked up at the airport by a limousine. Being used to public transportation during his years in Buenos Aires, he looks at the limo and says to the driver, “You know, I hardly ever get to drive. Would you please allow me to?”

The driver hesitates and replies, “I’m really sorry, Your Holiness, but I really don’t think I’m supposed to let you do that.”

But Pope Francis won’t give up that easily, so he persists until the driver finally gives up. “All right, all right. I guess one can’t really say no to the pope.”

So the pope takes the wheel and hits the gas, making it around 80 mph in a 40-mph zone. It doesn’t take long until he gets pulled over on Interstate 278.

The young officer walks to the car and as the pope rolls down the window, he really doesn’t know what to do. Surprised, he asks the pope to wait for a bit as he goes back to his patrol car and radios the chief.

Cop: Chief … I think I have a problem.

Chief: What kind of a problem is that?

Cop: Well … I pulled over this guy for driving over the speed limit but … I mean, he’s like really important.

Chief: Whaddaya mean important? Important like … the mayor?

Cop: Oh, no … way more important than the mayor.

Chief: Wha … the governor?

Cop: Wayyyyyy more.

Chief: The president?

Cop: No. I’m talking way more than that.

Chief: Who could be any more important than the president?

Cop: I mean, I really don’t know, Chief, but he’s got the pope driving for him!

_____________________

The Queen Takes the Pope on a Carriage Ride Around London

Suddenly one of the horses farts very loudly.

“Oh my goodness, I am so terribly sorry!” apologizes the embarrassed Queen.

“Oh don't worry about it" the Pope replied "If you hadn't said anything, I would have just thought it was one of the horses!"

                                            ____________________________________



President Biden invites the Pope to lunch on a boat. 

The Pope accepted and during lunch, a puff of wind blew the pontiff's hat off, right into the water. It floated off about 50 feet, then the wind died down and it just floated in place.

The crew and the Secret Service were scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Biden waved them off, saying, "Never mind boys, I'll get it."

Then Biden climbed over the side of the yacht, walked on the water to the hat and picked it up, walked back on the water, climbed into the yacht, and handed the Pope his hat.

The crew was speechless. The security team and the Pope's entourage were speechless. No one knew what to say, not even the Pope.

But that afternoon, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN reported:

"BIDEN CAN'T SWIM"

                                   _________________________________________



So the Pope goes down into a deep vault below the Vatican, where they keep the most ancient sacred texts.

Scholarly priests spend decades examining these handwritten scrolls for translation errors. The Pope finds one of them hard at work and asks if he has found anything.

"Why yes, your Excellency. Look here, where we have always thought it said 'smite', but there's an 'R' there, it clearly says 'smart'". "Fantastic! How long did it take you to find that?" asks the Pope.
"Ten years."

The Pontiff finds another scholar at work, and asks how it is going.
"Here, Excellency, you see we always thought it said 'bead', but there's an 'R', it clearly says 'bread."
"Wonderful! And how long did you take to find that?" "20 years." answered the Priest.

The Pope comes across another guy. The fellow is tearing out his hair, ripping up his robes, and beating himself over the head with one of the fragile tomes. "There's an 'R'! There's an 'R'!" he exclaims. "30 years, I've been down here, and there's an 'R'!"  The Pope grabs the guy by the shoulders and tries to calm him down. "My son! I can see you are upset by what you've found but it can't be all that bad. What is it?"
"All this time we thought it said 'celibate'!"