"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" #27

 

MEANING WELL IS NOT ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH

For my 25th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood, the Cathedral of the Assumption parish gave me the trip I had always dreamed of - a cruise through the Greek islands. It was so educational, so relaxing and so memorable. I took a friend with me. We both enjoy history and we both studied Greek in the seminary. Almost every day, we woke up to a different island which we could tour, have lunch and still get back to the ship for drinks and dinner. 

At the end of the trip, we experienced our first near-miss. We realized, after watching the departure notices, that our flight had never come up and the departure time was approaching. Since we had first-class tickets, the pressure was even more intense. We certainly did not want to lose those seats and have to settled for middle seats in the back of the plane. 

As the clock was getting uncomfortably close to our departure time and the flight had still not been listed, we knew something was wrong. We finally asked at one of the information desks. We were told that we were at the wrong airport! Thinking you are at the right airport is one thing. Being at the wrong airport is another! 

Panicking, we went outside to get a taxi to "the other airport." There was a long line of waiting taxis, but an even longer line of people waiting to get in them! We grew desperate at this point. We noticed a line of stretch-limousines behind the taxis with a much shorter line. We dragged our carry-on luggage to the limousines,  negotiated a trip to "the other airport" and got there just in time. We literally got out of our limousine and walked onto the plane. Relieved, we took our seats and had two celebratory drinks even before take-off!  As the old saying goes, "All is well that ends well!"    

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Wednesday night at Holy Name of Mary Church in Calvary, Kentucky, was CCD night. All the classes and age groups started by attending Mass. To make it more interesting and to get the kids to pay attention to the readings, I had the practice of asking them questions about the readings that were just read. If they were stumped, I would give hints until someone had the right answer. It was a successful effort because even the parents were amazed at what their kids would remember about the readings or something I had said about the seasons of the year. 

I remember one night, the reading was about the children of Adam and Eve - Cain and Abel. Well, there just happen to be a few families in the parish with the last name of Abell. After the reading, I asked the kids, "What are the names of Adam and Eve's children?" There was silence until one little girl waved her hand enthusiastically. When I called on her, she answered enthusiastically, "Kris and Kathy!" Puzzled, I did not know how to respond until I remembered that we had to of the Abell family in the parish with the names of Kris and Kathy Abell. It took everything in me to keep from laughing!

On another occasion, the gospel was the story of the angel Gabriel's annunciation to Mary that she was to give birth to Jesus. When I asked who appeared to Mary, there was complete silence. After trying to get the right answer,  finally had to give a hint. I said, "He had wings!" Still there was no answer. Finally, one of the kids threw up their hand and shouted confidently "A chicken?" This time I had to get behind the altar and hide so I could laugh out loud without embarrassing her in front of the others! She meant well, but her answer missed the target!

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On one of my trips through Germany, after a retreat week at the monastery in Taize, we were trying to follow a folded map. It was the time before GPS devices. The students in the car with me were not great at reading highway signs in German or even at how to read a map. We were in the middle of Germany at the time and were trying to head due north to a small town where we had friends. Someone else was driving at the time and I fell asleep. After three or four hours of driving, I woke up because we "should have been there by now." The signs seemed to be unrecognizable. We pulled over to re-study the map. After a few minutes of studying the map I realized that the driver had driven three to four hours south instead of north. We had to turn around and head in the opposite direction realizing that we had just wasted some very expensive gasoline and we would not be able to meet our friends for lunch. It was also a time before cell phones so we had no way to reach them. When we got to their house, we had to wake them up and they warmed the meal they had prepared hours ago before we could all go to bed. Meaning well, was not good enough that day - for us our our hosts! 

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One Sunday, down on the island of St. Vincent, Fergal Redmond (a fellow volunteer from Ireland) was driving us to a church up in the northern part of the island. The roads do not have street signs and they wind and curve around and around so it's easy to lose your way unless you were born there. Sunday, being the least traffic on the roads, is the day when the government does road repairs. 

That Sunday, we had been winding around a very narrow road when all of a sudden we were confronted with a huge DETOUR sign with an arrow pointing the alternate way. A few hundred feet more, we came upon another detour sign with an arrow pointing to what we supposed was the alternate way. This went on over the next hour - around and around, up and down, zig and zag! Finally, I said to Fergal who was driving, "You know, I think we have passed that same bar three times already! I think we are going in circles!" Realizing the signs made no sense, we followed out own intuition and finally found our way to where we wanted to go! I learned an important lesson that day: when it comes to living on an island, following the rules may not be good enough to get you where you need to go! 

GRACE: GOD'S MANY LOVING GESTURES RANDOMLY SENT TO US

 

"Grace!" We use that word a lot in the Catholic Christian faith, but what does it mean? Some have defined it as "Unmerited divine assistance granted to humans for their regeneration." I define it as God's loving gestures of help randomly sent to us for our growth.

In my 150 priest retreats in 10 countries, I always used an image from the old cowboy movies of my childhood. The good guys were often pictured holding up in a "hide out" surrounded by the bad guys when all of a sudden a rock comes crashing through the little window of their hideout with a note attached. I used it to talk about our relationship, not with an enemy, but with a loving God. When we are "stuck and surrounded," with no obvious "way out,"  God throws a rock through our windows with a message attached that says, "Here is the plan for your escape!" It is what I call a "moment of grace." It comes at crucial and unexpected moments offering a "way out" or a "way forward."   

I have experienced many of those "moments of grace" and I have documented many of them in my writing. No, God did not speak to me in a clear voice telling me what to do next or where to turn, but I have been amazed at how often in the last fifty years, a chance meeting, an unexpected event or even something as simple as a book new to me will cross my path and invite me into a new world or a new way of thinking. Without sounding overly pious, I feel that God was behind it each time. After all, the very meaning of the word "grace" means "a spontaneous free gift from God." I have also learned that for a "moment of grace" to be life-changing, God's invitation to change had to be accepted by me to be realized. I had to say "yes!" 

When one of those "moments of grace" involved a book, I have kept most of those old books and look through them and realize once again how much they had changed the direction of my life. When it has involved an unexpected event, I try to remember this tidbit of wisdom: "Breakdown is a sure sign of a breakthrough!" When it has involved a person, I try to thank them over and over again if they are alive or pray for them if they have died! 

I have come to realize as well that I am not special. Other people have had such "moments of grace." Some have responded, but many did not recognize them as such and therefore "threw the rock back out the window without reading the message attached" making me wonder how many such invitations to change I have missed along the way!  Yes, for a "moment of grace" to be life-changing, God's invitation to change has to be accepted to be realized. One has to say "yes" to those invitations for needed change to come about! 

 

WHY NOT STOP JUDGING THEM AND START BLESSING THEM?

 

"Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will

you be judged, and the measure with which you measure others will be

measured out to you.”

Matthew 7:1-5

I live on a busy street. You can see the world from my front porch. It walks by, drives by and shuffles by like a marvelous circus parade. It is some of the cheapest entertainment available.

Some passers-by are regulars. Some pass by only once. There is the scruffy drunk carrying a beat-up, old guitar who likes to aggravate cars with a few in-your-face chords from an old Elvis tune. There is the screaming married couple, with windows rolled down, who decide to have it out with each other while waiting for the traffic light to change. There is the elderly couple, shuffling hand in hand, savoring every squirrel, baby and flower they pass.

There are the U of L athletes, tanned, lean and rippled with muscle, strutting their stuff, proud as peacocks. There is the African-American nurse’s aide from the local nursing home with grocery bags in each hand, waiting in the rain for a bus to take her to another day’s work at home. Too tired to stand, she sits on the wet steps. There is the overweight, well-intentioned, if not short-lived, jogger who huffs and puffs his way to that leaner and trimmer waistline in his mind’s eye.

What do you see when you see people like these? Do you judge them or bless them? I am embarrassed to admit that I found myself judging some of these people one day as I sat and watched them go by. I was reminded of a line from the movie “On Golden Pond.” Katherine Hepburn says to Jane Fonda when she was terribly frustrated with her aggravating, old father, “If you look closely enough, you will realize that he is doing the best he can.” Remembering that line, I decided to bless those who walked by my house and pray for them. Who knows how lonely, scared, abused or stressed-out they are? Who knows the troubles they have seen?  Who knows what health crisis they are going through or abuse that awaits them when they get home? “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Prayer has the power to help those who don’t even know you are praying for them. Why break the “bruised reed?” Why quench the “smoldering candle?” Jesus says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged.” St. Paul says, “The member who hurts the most needs the most attention.”

Judging others, especially those we do not know, is a bad habit that says as much about us as the people we judge. This bad habit can be replaced with the good habit of blessing others. All we have to do is monitor our own thinking, check it and replace it with new thinking. A new world is often only a changed thought away.

These words from the gospels are very scary words indeed!

“The measure with which you measure others will be

used to measure you!”

 

"QUICK AND DRAMATIC" OR "SLOW AND EASY"

 CONVERSION EXPERIENCES 

FEAST OF STS. PETER AND PAUL

You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not 

prevail against it.

Matthew 16

The Lord stood by me, Paul, and gave me strength so that

through me all the Gentiles might hear the gospel.

II Timothy 4

If you really want to make a Catholic squirm and sweat and doubt their religious upbringing, just corner one and rattle off this set of questions! “Are you saved? Have you been “born again?’ Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? 

When I worked in the Bible Belt, down in the southern part of the state, Catholics, including myself, were often bombarded with those questions. More than one Catholic was left confused and bewildered. Their counterparts could date the precise hour they were “saved,” while Catholics stood there puzzled and confused.

Today’s feast in honor of Sts. Peter and Paul gives us a perfect opportunity to talk about these questions. Does one have to have dramatic, certain and dated experience or can one grow toward God in an extended process, sometimes without a clear beginning and end? Today we see both types of conversion experiences: Paul with his definite and certain experience of conversion at a particular moment and Peter with his long and extended process of conversion over time.

Many of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters look to the Apostle Paul as their hero and ideal. His conversion experience was dramatic and decisive. It was a shattering, clearly memorable confrontation with the person of Christ on the road to Damascus when he was on his way to hunt down Christians and kill them. After this dramatic “u-turn” in his life, he fanatically embraced and defended what he had recently persecuted and attacked. His conversion experience was so dramatic that the story is retold three times in the Acts of the Apostles and referred to three more times in various New Testament Letters.  When it came to his conversion, Paul could remember the spot, the day, even the hour it happened.

Paul’s emphasis on personal-individual faith, his emphasis on dramatic decision and change, and his evangelistic zeal have become the prototype and model of Christian conversion, especially for fundamentalist groups. Many of these groups attach a certain spiritual superiority to this type of conversion, leaving many people who have not has such an experience feeling inferior and second rate.

Roman Catholics, while respecting Paul’s experience, look to the Apostle Peter as their hero and model. Peter’s experience was very different. In today’s gospel, Peter does in fact make his profession of faith, but, like many of us, it is the climax of a long and gradual insight into who Jesus is. Later in the same gospel, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus and abandoned him on the cross, only to come back later with a zeal and courage he had never experienced before.  

Even though some would like to suggest that everybody has to have a definite conversion experience that can be dated, the New Testament does not suggest a single stereotype for an authentic Christian conversion experience. Nicodemus, for example, who triggered the discussion with Jesus about what it means to be “born again” is an ambiguous illustration of conversion. We do not know whether Jesus persuaded Nicodemus or not. The only thing we know for sure is that Nicodemus turned up to help out at the burial of Jesus. The fact is the New Testament balances the dramatic conversion of Paul with the gentle and more subtle changes in people like Peter, Zaccheus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Lydia, Timothy and a whole list of saints, martyrs and converts.

Roman Catholics have often dismissed as silly emotionalism the dramatic and decisive conversions of fundamentalists, while fundamentalists have often dismissed the long and gradual conversions of other believers. But the fact is, the church has always welcomed both kinds of conversion experiences. God calls us in a variety of ways. If you have never been “knocked off your horse,” you need not feel inferior or apologetic. We all answer God’s call in our own way and in the way we are called, be it like Paul or Peter! So, it’s not one way or the other, but both and more! Conversion, turning toward God, is a mystery and the variety of conversion experiences testify to the fact that God uses a variety of ways to call his children. Peter and Paul, missionaries for the same Lord, were called in different ways and responded to their calls differently. Both are part of the same church, share the same baptism and serve the same Lord!

With all that said, the fact remains that all of us, sooner or later must choose or reject Jesus and the path he invites us to walk. We cannot let ourselves off the hook simply because others, even highly placed religious leaders, have failed to live up to that call. Jesus calls each of us by name and each of us must respond to that invitation, no matter what others may do or not do! As Jesus told Peter in the gospel today, regardless of what others say about him, the question still comes to us individually, “And, you, who do you say that I am?” And in the words of St. Paul in our second reading, “when we have competed well in the race, when we have finished and kept the faith, God will rescue us from every evil threat and lead us safe to his heavenly kingdom.”