We are reading Mark’s Gospel this year. To better understand the message of his Gospel, it is important to recall that his original audience was a community of persecuted Christians who were losing hope. If you ever get the feeling that the whole blooming world, including our church and our country, isn't working all that well anymore and nobody seems to have the foggiest notion of how to really fix it, you can understand some of what the writer of the Gospel of Mark is trying to say to the discouraged community of his day! By using the two parables today, about tiny seeds slowly sprouting and quietly growing, he reminds his audience that God too is quietly working and his kingdom will finally come to fullness – not matter what!
It seems to me that we too are communities that need a message of encouragement at a time when many are losing hope. I have heard this from you and I have felt it myself for a long time now! The Rudyard Kipling poem “If” puts words to my feelings.
I spent twelve long years in the seminary preparing for ordination to the priesthood, only to see the bottom appear to drop out about the time I got there. When I was ordained in 1970, priests and nuns were leaving in a steady stream, many life-long Catholics were no longer going to church and young people, even the graduates of our expensive Catholic School system, were not even bothering to receive the Sacraments. It has steadily gotten worse year after year!
In 1970, I was worried about my future, but not discouraged enough to quit. That’s why I chose the hymn with the refrain, “No Storm Can Shake My Inmost Calm,” for my First Mass and have had it sung at every one of my 54 anniversaries since! With my eyes wide open, I made the deliberate decision to stand my ground and stay put, realizing that I would be serving the Church in one of the most tumultuous periods in recent Church history. I knew in my heart of hearts that my years as a priest would be more like shooting the rapids of the Colorado River than lounging peacefully in a canoe on a serene mountain lake. I had a pretty good hunch as to what I was getting myself into! At least I knew enough that it was not going to be easy! I knew it was going to be a rough ride! I chose to do it anyway, even though I might not have realized just how chaotic it would become.
For instance, I could not foresee that I would be sent, right after ordination, to the home missions to live by myself for five years in a church basement with no windows, to pastor two tiny parishes of less than 25 members total, and without enough income to even pay my monthly salary – which was about $200 a month back then! I did not foresee being thrown own of my first ministerial meeting down there simply because I was a Catholic. I did not foresee being terrorized by the thought of the Ku Klux Klan blocking the road while driving a dark mountain road at night because we had started the first Catholic Church in one of those counties and because we welcomed some African Americans young men from the local Job Corps Center!
I could not foresee that I would be stalked by a schizophrenic and have a knife pulled on me when I was pastor of our Cathedral for welcoming marginal Catholics back to church. I could not foresee an anonymously written “white paper” being circulated throughout Louisville condemning me and Archbishop Kelly, calling us about every name in the book for our efforts to bring the Cathedral back to life.
I could not foresee a damnable sexual abuse scandal coming to light that would drive me, for the first time, nearly to the point of quitting. I may have gone through with leaving the priesthood if I had not taken a three month “leave” to pull myself back together. I spent one of those months by myself, walking almost all day every day on a cold deserted Florida beach, praying and thinking about what to do next. I left there resolved yet again to tough it out.
I am still angry at the sick priests who have hurt children, hurt my church and brought shame on the 95% of our priests who have done good work and given themselves to the service of others for many, many years.
I am amazed that we priests let you lay people, in your goodness, put us on pedestals and treat us with respect without us ever having to earn it. We have sometimes taken your goodness for granted and created a climate of clericalism. Pope Francis said recently, “Clericalism leads us to believe that we belong to a group that has all the answers and no longer needs to listen or learn anything.”
I am even angrier than ever at those within the Church who engage in all sorts of meanness, character assassination and anonymous personal attacks in the name of “orthodoxy,” deciding who God loves and who God doesn’t! Blaise Paschal was right. “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” William Penn was right when he said, “Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.”
Regardless of all that, I have made this decision: nobody is going to take my church away from me no matter what they do or don’t do! I am so determined, like the French Scientist priest Teilhard de Chardin, to “stay to the end, with a smile, if possible,” that a couple of years ago I had my tombstone installed down in Saint Theresa Cemetery with my name carved in stone - FATHER James Ronald Knott! I’ll be damned if I go back at this point in my life and have “Father” chisel off that tombstone!
From here on, I
will not bury my head in the sand, but I have decided that I am going to place
most of my focus on positive things - the things I have the power to change,
instead of wallowing in sadness and giving into discouragement. I will do what
I can to effect such positive changes, but I am going to ignore what I cannot
change – and if I can’t ignore it at least I will try not to allow it to drag
me down.
Like me, all of you have heard the hundreds of “good” reasons to give up on the church, to blame others for its problems, to withhold financial support, to punish those who are not guilty and to drop out in self-righteous disgust. Like you, I have been tempted to respond that way to the problems in today’s church, but just as I refuse to give up my United States citizenship because of the stupidity and moral weaknesses of our politicians and many of our citizens, I will not leave my church because of its cowardly leadership, because of a few perverted clergy or because of its often sinful members. It may not be easy to stay and fight evil, but I know I can be a whole lot more effective from the inside than standing outside the church and barking at it from a distance.
Whether your kids have quit going to church after all your investment in religious education, whether your spouse has been unfaithful to you after years of marriage, whether the bank foreclosed on your business after slaving for years to keep it going, whether you have lost your job or been diagnosed with a terminal illness after trying your best to stay healthy, I want to help you discover your solid center from where you can weather this storm or any storm life throws at you! I want to inspire you to become one of those trees growing along a river bank that the Prophet Jeremiah talked about when he said: “Those who trust and hope in the Lord, are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.”
What
is the solution? Rebel? Reform? Resign? Give up? Give in? Drop out? Is it time
for another American Revolution? Another Reformation? Should we start another
country? Start another church? Move to another planet? The only problem with
those” solutions” is that we will end up taking our problems with us. We can
run, but we cannot hide. We must build ourselves
up – from the inside out – so that “no storm can shake our inmost calm It’s
easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world. It’s easier for us to
change ourselves than change everybody else! We must give up our juvenile
search for magic programs, savior politicians and charismatic clergymen to make
it all better for us. We must change!
Friends!
No matter what! Don’t lose hope and don’t get distracted! Keep your eyes on the
prize! In the midst of all the chaos we are experiencing, we need to remember
that God is at work and the kingdom is coming into reality ever so quietly like
tiny seeds sprouting and growing of their own accord.
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