Sunday, February 2, 2025

THE POWER OF PREDICTIONS

 

The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him.

Luke 2:22-40

In the gospel today, Jesus is brought to the Temple, by Mary and Joseph, for his Jewish circumcision and to be consecrated to the Lord. While they were there, they ran into two old people, Simeon and Anna, who made predictions about Jesus. 

Predictions, those made about us, and those we make about ourselves, are very powerful. In Egypt, a new ruler was given five names, each of which described a virtue expected of him. In the Isaiah reading at Christmas, we see that the future king of God’s people would bear four names: Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-forever, Prince of Peace.  

We tend to believe what is said about us, and what is said to us! We tend to rise to meet the high expectations or sink to meet the low expectations voiced about us! If people say we are smart, we tend to act as if we are smart! If people say we are losers, we tend to act like losers.

Growing up, I was not aware of what the therapeutic community knows today - how damaging or helpful comments from others can be to our self-worth. Children tend to believe negative and positive assessments of themselves from teachers and parents, developing a compromised self-concept when criticized on a regular basis or an enhanced self-concept when praised on a regular basis.

I was barraged, growing up, with powerful negative messages and predictions – things like: “You can’t do anything right! and “You will never amount to a hill of beans!” Even when I left for the seminary, most of the adults around me predicted that I would never make it! Even Father Johnson refused to fill out the papers for me to go to the seminary until I cried right in front of him. He finally agreed to do it, but told me before I left the old rectory, “You’ll be home before Christmas!

Father White, the head priest at St. Thomas Seminary, called me into his office in my second year of high school because I was struggling. His words still hurt. He told me I was a “hopeless case” and he was sending me home in the morning. I cried for another chance. In Greek class, in my final year at St. Thomas, he told the whole class that I had been “a ball and chain around his leg for six years!”

It wasn’t till I got to St. Meinrad Seminary that I could finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. They told us, the very first night, that they we going to help us find our gifts and talents and then help us develop them!

It wasn't till those years that I understood that I had joined my critics in criticizing myself. With the help of the monks at St. Meinrad, I can remember making the decision to stop my own self-defeating self-talk and start replacing it with positive and encouraging self-talk. It happened on a fire-escape at St. Meinrad when the dam broke and I blurted out to a good friend, “Pat, I am so tired of being backwards, bashful and scared of life that I am going to do something about it even if it kills me!”

The next few years were a long hard road because they say positive-to-negative comments need to be at least five to one for success in overcoming the damage. For years, I woke up to an affirmation tape that went through nearly a hundred of self-encouraging affirmations.  

I have made great progress. I have come a long way.  I have had many great experiences. However, the naysayers have always been there trying to trip me up and entice me into giving up! When I went to the Cathedral, the former pastor told me not to get my hopes up because “nothing can be done downtown because no Catholics lived there anymore. 

I still have a long way to go. I still say things to myself like "I am not good at figuring out electronics," but if I stop, take my time and tell myself that "I can," I usually can!  Negative self-talk increases my stress and it stops me from searching for solutions.       

I have fought negative talk throughout my priesthood - both in myself and others. In almost every assignment I have had, some priest has told me how impossible the situation was going to be! I found that the parishioners in almost every one of those assignments believed it themselves. My job, from the pulpit, was to get them to change what they thought about themselves and magic happened in every situation. I have spent years practicing and teaching the power of positive self-talk!

For fifteen years, I wrote a column in The Record called “An Encouraging Word.”  Instead of looking around for sin to condemn and highlight, I decided to look for goodness to affirm and spotlight! John Lubbock was so right when he said, “What we see depends mainly on what we look for!  Others wrote about what’s wrong with the world and the people in it! I looked for goodness, found what I was looking for and wrote about it every week for fifteen years! I still run into people who were moved by what I wrote and have told me how positively it has affected them.  I ran into a man a few weeks ago who still carries one of my columns in his billfold that I wrote fifteen years ago!

My friends! What others say to you and about you is powerful, but you need not be a victim if it is negative. You can choose what to believe about yourself and you can override negative messages by positive self-talk!    As W. C. Fields said, “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to!”

Be a Simeon and be an Anna from the gospel today who predicted “amazing things” about Jesus. Shower your kids, your grandkids, your neighbors, your fellow parishioners  and your friends with affirming, helpful and encouraging messages. Believe me, they get enough judgment and criticism already!

 

 

 

 

 


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