"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! 2025 #7

Last year, every Saturday I featured a post called "Wisdom for 2024"

This year, every Saturday, I will post a series of unusual personal experiences

from the past under the title "You Can't Make This Stuff Up."

Sometimes, names or locations will be changed or disguised to protect the guilty!

Besides, I am retired! What can they do, fire me?

IN A PINCH, YOU JUST HAVE TO MAKE-DO

One of the requirements for working in "the missions" is to be quick-thinking on your feet in a crisis combined with the ability to keep your mouth shut so no one will know! 

When I was working in the "home missions" of our diocese, down along the Tennessee border and miles away from a "church goods store," I found myself facing a minor shortage. I forgot to get ashes for "Ash Wednesday." I didn't realize it until a half-hour before the service was scheduled to start. This required using my imagination and my ability to keep a secret at the same time. 

I was smoking cheap King Edward cigars at the time and the only alternative I could come up with on the spot was to use the ashes I found in one of the ashtrays from the day before. The ashes were supposed to be the ashes coming from the burnt palm from last year's Palm Sunday service, but palm was nowhere to be found!  

In my panic, I remembered that Canon Law 144.1 says "ecclesia supplet" ("the church supplies") for occasions like this. Since both palm ashes and tobacco ashes come from plants, and neither involved the validity of any of the Sacraments and this being a minor emergency, I concluded that I could proceed. 

Nobody knew about the source of the ashes, but me! That Ash Wednesday went off with neither a hitch nor a suspicion, but in the years that followed, I was definitely prepared!  

A LITTLE VALENTINE HUMOR FOR THE HOLIDAY

“If love is a journey, I’m still at the airport waiting for my flight to board.”

THE DAMAGE OF NEGATIVE TALK

    

Encourage one another.

II Corinthians 13:11

With more poor schizophrenics left to roam the streets and more and more self-absorbed people with those "cell phone ear pieces" dangling from their lobes, it seems to me that  I am hearing more and more people talking, louder and louder, to thin air! While I'm at it, would someone please tell me what drives people to need to share their obnoxious car music with whole neighborhoods, their intimate phone conversations with everybody in the grocery store and every thought that crosses their minds in a text message? I will pay good money to the first company that comes up with a "portable jamming device" that I can carry around on my belt to protect myself from their total lack of civility! 

I am not against one talking to oneself - in private! I must confess that I am always talking to myself, but hopefully I do it in my own mind or behind the closed doors of my home!  If not, please, somebody go get me some help!

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

It wasn't till I got older that I understood that I had joined them in criticizing myself.  I can remembering making the decision to stop my own self-defeating self-talk and start replacing it with positive and encouraging self-talk. It has been 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.

Following the advice of Henry Ford who said, "Those who think they can and those who think they can't are both right," I have been able to talk myself into doing things I never thought possible. I woke up every morning to a positive self-talk tape in my own voice for about five years. One of the many things on it that have come true is "I am a published spiritual writer."  I now have fifteen books in print. 

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 the way they thought about themselves and magic happened in every situation.

"Yes, you really can!"

ANOTHER WONDERFUL PRAYER

Let me share here a little something an elderly friend of mine gave me before she died that she had written down in her own hand. Maybe she composed it herself, but I suspect she copied it from elsewhere. Either way, it was written in her own hand. It really describes her deep faith best. I came across it again recently and I thought some of you might appreciate it as well. 

I do not understand all mystery.

I do not know why goodness goes unrewarded,

 love is crucified or righteousness is defeated.

I do not understand the mystery of pain or the destruction

of fair spirits by hideous afflictions.

I do not understand all of the Bible or always see the will of God.

But I do see Jesus and trust him for what I cannot see.

I do not know where this journey of life will end for me

Or what will happen to those I love.

I do not know what lies ahead for the world.

Sometimes I cannot see around the next turn.

I walk by faith, not by sight.

In Christ I see a guide for the next step.

And in him I see the everlasting arms of a Father’s love,

 a Savior’s forgiveness, and a home at the end of the road. 

  

GOOD OLD ST. PETER, HE COULD NEVER SEEM TO GET IT RIGHT

        

Jesus said to Simon, who had quit for the day and was washing his nets. “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but if you insist, I will lower the nets again. They caught such a great number of fish that their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners to come and help them. They filled both boats to the point that they were in danger of sinking.

Luke 5:1-11

Every time I read a passage about good old Saint Peter, the Apostle, I chuckle to myself!  I have read and preached on them many, many times since I was pastor of Saint Peter Mission Church in Monticello, down along the Tennessee border, south of Lake Cumberland.  Good old Saint Peter has to be one of the worst “people pleasers” in all of scripture. He is always kissing up to Jesus and then proceeding to fall on his face. You have to love this bumbling old fisherman, who had an almost insatiable desire to please Jesus whom he obviously loved so much. 

Peter would have made a great clown for kids. I sure children back then loved him because you can’t help laughing at his antics. Nowhere are those antics more obvious than in the gospel stories about him.

First, his name was originally “Simon.” It was Jesus who gave him the nickname “Peter,” meaning “Rock.” I am sure the other apostles might have thought that “Mr. McGoo” or “Marshmallow Man” would have been more like it. He was always rushing into delicate situations, bragging and making a scene, then falling on his face at the end.

He and the other apostles, in one gospel, are out on a lake in a storm. They are struggling at the oars against the huge waves trying to get to shore, when all of a sudden, they look up and see Jesus walking on the water toward them. Peter, as always, sticks his foot in his mouth.  “Lord, if it is really you, let me walk on the water toward you!” Jesus invites him to get out of the boat and walk toward him. Peter, out of the boat, out into deep water and in high winds, begins to sink. “Lord, help me! I’m going to drown!” Jesus had to rescue him at the last minute.

Today, Jesus is teaching people along the shore from one of Peter’s boats. When Jesus finished teaching, he told Peter to put out into deep water and lower his nets for a catch. Peter had just quit for the day and was washing his nets in preparation for putting them away. A little irritated that a carpenter would tell him, a professional fisherman, how to fish, Peter speaks up. “Lord, we have worked hard all night and caught nothing. We are just now putting the nets away! However, if you insist, we will do what you say.”  Peter started out by “humoring” Jesus and ended up with having to eat his words. When Peter raised the nets, they held so many fish that the nets were tearing – enough to fill two boats.

At the transfiguration, after having been through a powerful religious experience, Peter does not know how to handle it except to open his big mouth and make the outrageous suggestion that the experience be made permanent. “Wow, Jesus, this is so cool! Let’s set up tents and just stay up here forever!”  Jesus is forced to explain to Peter the whole purpose of their peak experience was to strengthen them for the tough days ahead, not something that could be frozen in time!

At the Last Supper when Jesus approached Peter to wash his feet, overcome with humility, Peter begins to protest that he would never allow such a thing! When Jesus explains to him that if he would not allow it, then he could never be a part of him, Peter throws it in reverse! “Well, if that is the case, then wash my hands and head as well! Wash me all over!”  With Peter, it is always an “all or nothing” proposition.

When Jesus predicts that he will be betrayed by one of his disciples, Peter jumps into the discussion to brag. “Even if everyone else abandons you, I will never abandon you!” Not too much later, after Jesus is arrested and the heat is on, Peter denies Jesus - not once, not twice, but three times! “Jesus who?  Certainly, not me! Please, woman, I don’t know who you are talking about!” 

Then there is the story of Peter out fishing again after the resurrection. It is so typical of Peter. First, it tells us that Peter was stripped to the waist so that he could haul the wet nets back into his fishing boat. When he recognizes Jesus on the shore, he gets so flustered that it says he puts on his clothes, jumps into the water and then swims toward Jesus standing on the shore. You can just imagine Peter dragging himself out of the water with soggy clothes, dripping wet, and gushing with enthusiasm.

Second, it tells us that when Jesus asked Peter for some of the fish to put on the grill he had fired up on the beach, Peter runs back to the boat and drags the net to Jesus, dumping 153 large fish at his feet.  You can almost hear him say breathlessly, “There! How’s that? Is that enough? If not, I’ll be happy to go get some more!” Jesus, knee-deep in fish, probably shook his head in laughter at Peter’s impulsive need to please. Jesus, no doubt, sees the big heart inside his clumsy klutz of an apostle, Peter!

Peter should give us all hope. He always teaches me a lot about our relationship to God. Reading about him, I have come to believe that God is more interested in our goodhearted attempts to be good than our mistakes, that God wants a relationship with us, not matter how rocky it might be!

I believe this is precisely why so many people resonate with the famous prayer of Thomas Merton.           

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not

see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where

it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that

I think I am following your will does not mean that I am

actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please you

does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all

I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from 

that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by 

the right road though I may know nothing about it. 

Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be 

lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are 

ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my 

perils alone.

My friends!  God wants a relationship with you, not after you settle down, not when you can get things right, but now, just as you are, no matter how clumsy and rocky it might be! If you give your heart to God, “the desire to please him will in fact please him.”  If St. Peter can fall on his face, over and over again, and still be loved by Jesus, so can we!

That’s why I resonate with Saint Peter more than Saint Paul. Saint Paul was a religious perfectionist. Saint Peter was full of human weaknesses.  But whether you are more like Saint Peter or Saint Paul, know that God loves you, just as the father in the parable of the prodigal son loved both of his sons – the one who stayed home and got it right all the time and the son who got down with the pigs and had to come crawling back home.