DO YOU BELIEVE IN GOING ON A SERIOUS SPIRITUAL SEARCH?

Behold, magi from the east arrived!

Matthew 2

Just when you thought Christmas was over, we are today presented with these strange out-of-town stragglers called "magi!" Just as the party is about over, this mysterious band of foreign visitors show up asking for a peak at the new baby, completing Matthew’s picture of Jesus’ birth in which the poor and the rich, the simple and the smart, the Jew and the Gentile are all part of welcoming the savior of the world.

I never seem to focus on the gifts they brought, but on the ones who brought them! I really admire these guys, these driven spiritual seekers from the east, these men on a mission! On top of it all, they were from present-day Iraq of all places! They were part of a tribe of priest-teachers to the ancient kings of Persia. They were men with an eye out for God. Their job was to watch the heavens for any unusual activity. Unusual activity among the stars was a sign to them that God was up to something. An unusually bright star, combined with a feverish search for God, meant they had to check it out. The star they followed even had a name. It was called “the birth of a prince.” Astronomers today believe there actually was a dramatic star-event about this time in history.  These guys left everything that was comfortable and familiar to them and set out for new lands, for new insights and for new understanding. Their search led them to Jesus.

These brave souls stand in contrast to that woman in eastern Kentucky that I saw interviewed on KET a few years back. She had never been more than two miles from the mountain cabin she was born in! When asked why, she answered the reporter, “I just don’t believe in goin’ places!” These brave souls, these strange magi, did believe in going places, in having new insights, in expanding their understanding. They are my kind of people.

My friends, these Magi, these ancient spiritual seekers have a lot to teach us about the spiritual life.  In a world of people obsessed with working on their outsides, these men teach us about passionately working on our insides: pursuing the truth, stretching ourselves and our potential, being people in charge of their own passions, hungering and thirsting for holiness. They also teach us that spiritual growth is always a risk, always dangerous, always requiring great personal courage, but always worth it. As one of my favorite writers puts it, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." 

As I have written about so many times before - maybe too many times - my life as a Magi started on a fire escape at St. Meinrad in the Spring of 1966 when I was in college. I was extremely bashful.  I avoided meeting new people or getting myself into unfamiliar situations.  My favorite word was "no!" I was scared of life.  I was what George Bernard Shaw called “a feverish little clod of grievances and ailments, complaining that the world would not dedicate itself to making me happy.” 

That day, I was standing on a fire escape outside my room at St. Meinrad Seminary with a fellow seminarian, Pat Murphy.  In what had to be one great moment of grace, an impulse gift from God, I suddenly blurted out, “Pat, I am so sick and tired of being bashful and scared of life that I’m going to do something about it even if it kills me!”

I was shocked by the words that came out of my own mouth! But from that moment on, I have been standing up to the coward in me.  I have been deliberately “slaying dragons” and “confronting demons,” in my head and on my path, ever since!  I decided that day not to indulge my resistance to personal and spiritual growth anymore. That day, on that fire escape, I made my first conscious decision to enter the world of intentional personal growth and deliberate living! I finally learned to say "yes!" How appropriate and symbolic that my decision was made on a “fire escape!” 

I basically decided that day to quit being a coward and become a "magi." I decided to put myself in new and challenging situations so I could grow as a person! I decided to quit being "safe" all the time and, as a result, quit being "stuck" all the time! As a result, I have moved from being too bashful to lector at Masses to preaching over 70 parish missions all over the United States. That experience pushed me to preach priest retreats in England, Ireland, Wales, from one side of Canada to the next, the Bahamas, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and most of the states in the United States. 

I allowed myself to be open to being a home missionary, a pastor, a seminary staff person, a campus minister, a weekly columnist or The Record for 15 years, a foreign missionary and a nursing home chaplain. I have been given opportunities to preach and do ministry not only in the Catholic Church, but also in the United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church, the Disciples of Christ Church, the Baptist Church  and the Presbyterian Church. It even drove me to get a Doctorate in Parish Revitalization from a Presbyterian Seminary in Chicago. It all happened because of that fire-escape decision I made back in 1966 as a college seminarian.

In my retirement, I made twelve trips to the Caribbean Missions and completed over a million dollars in projects until I had to stop because of a volcano explosion and COVID. After that, I finished a major renovation project in my home parish of St. Theresa down in Meade County. I led a project that turned my old closed grade school into an up-to-date Family Life Center and the old parish rectory into a Guest House. 

After that was finished and dedicated, I prepared myself for my next project by first of all standing up to the temptation to say "no," just because “people in their 80s don't do stuff like that!" which led me to get involved in the missions in Kenya and Tanzania. As Henry Ford put it, "Those who believe they can and those who believe they can't are both right!" Last year alone, I organized the building of a new 500 seat church in Kenya and the building of a new house for a single mother of two children on Tanzania. I raised the money to pay off the seminary debt of six seminarians in Tanzania so they could continue their studies. At noon on Christmas Eve last, I reached my ambitious goal of raising enough funds to help Bishop Mhasi re-start and finish his new half-finished grade school. I called him on Christmas Day to tell him the good news! He was shocked and ecstatic!  

Maybe this is your year, the year to begin that serious spiritual journey you have been thinking about, but putting off for years. Be brave! Take a risk! Get started! Reinvent yourself! Don't be a coward! Get out there! Be a magi! 

Without the purposeful determination of a magi, we are destined to live a life of distraction, flitting from one thing to the next, but never really committing. Lack of focus leads to a lack of commitment. Commitment, consecration if you will, changes all of that! It challenges us to name what matters most and to quit letting ourselves off the hook by telling ourselves we are "too old for that" or "this old dog can't learn new tricks!"  

As a favorite author, Anais Nin, put it,

 "It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before....to test your limits...to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."