CHURCH CHAT #11

 

PLAN IT AND THEN FORGET IT

 

Stay awake! You do not know on which day your Lord will come!

Matthew 24:37-44

 

Have you ever wondered about your own death date? Have you ever let yourself imagine it? Have you made plans for it? I have and I am trying to keep them up-to-date. !  I have a last will and testament and a designated executor. I have a “living will” outlining my wishes about end-of-life issues. Unmarried and childless, I decided against life-insurance. I have a funeral service outlined with readings, music and a priest-homilist (and a back-up) selected.  I have a burial spot ready and a tombstone already erected. Abbey Caskets, over at Saint Meinrad where I used to work, is giving me one of their caskets so I decided against funeral insurance as well. 

 

I have an in-home health care policy that I bought when I turned fifty so I might be spared, for a while at least, going to a nursing home. I have saved all through my ordained life to be able to pay my bills so as not to be a burden to my family, my friends or the archdiocese.  I have gotten annual physicals and monitored my health on a regular basis. Like that old “Ronco Rotisserie Oven” commercial used to put it on TV, I have “set it” and now I want to “forget it.” Having prepared the best that I can for dying, I now want to go on living the best I can, for as long as I can!  

 

Yes, I have my proverbial bags packed. I just don’t know the day or the hour. I have no control over how I will die, but I do have a few hopes about how my life will end. I don’t know if it will be quick and easy or drawn out and painful. I only hope I don't have to suffer. I have never been very good at that! I can’t even handle the flu all that well! Filled with amazement and gratitude, and hopefully free of pain, I pray that I am aware of what is happening so that I can embrace it rather than leave this world kicking and screaming. If it is painful, I pray that I can handle it with dignity and grace, without too much aggravation to those around me.

 

Even though I may have to update these plans every now and then, I plan to go on living with all the passion and energy that I can muster. When I retired, I most certainly did not want to sit in a rocking chair and wait till I died! I did not want to sit around talking about medications, insurance policies, doctor’s appointments and what various nursing homes have to offer. I wanted to “set it and forget it” and have my plans in place so I could forget about them until I needed them! 

I do not want to pamper myself or let myself be pampered! Instead, I want to live simply, recreate myself over and over by doing some things that I have never done. One of those things was to volunteer in the Caribbean Missions where life is hard, where that reality could teach me how good I have it now and how lucky I have been most of my life. After that, I moved on to the missions of east Africa. In retirement, I wanted to keep working so that I could make some extra funds for giving back to others, as I have so generously been given to! So far, so good! I have not pulled out my final plans and looked at them for a couple of years, so now is a good time for a quick review and any needed adjustments if needed. However, a few people do know where those plans are when they will need them! 

 

What about you? Are you brave enough, and have faith enough, to let yourself think about your own death? Are you so in denial that you are willing to stick your family with the burden of what to do with you when you die? Are you wasting the time you have left, just waiting around to die, or are you still reinventing yourself so that you can keep on living a full life as long as you can? Are you doing those things that are necessary to maintain good health or are you still engaged in addictive habits that put your health at risk? Have you talked to your family about end-of- life issues and signed the proper papers that will help them follow your wishes? Are you prepared well enough now to be able to lay your preparations aside and live with passion, intensity and purpose? Are you prepared spiritually to meet your Maker whatever the day or the hour?

 

As we try to live a full and rich life, there are two extremes to be avoided: the failure to think about death on one hand and an obsessive preoccupation with death on the other. Instead of trying to “get ready” at the last minute, or being totally caught off guard, the best approach is to “stay awake,” have "your bags packed" and "keep on living," because you do not know on which day your Lord will come! As Isaiah the Prophet put it to God, "Would that you would meet us doing right and being mindful of your ways!" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO A HAPPY LIFE

DEDICATION TO PERSONAL AND VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE

LOVING YOURSELF AND LOVING WHAT YOU DO

The first ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to personal excellence – to loving who you really are - enough to care about becoming your best self. Really loving oneself does not mean papering oneself, but doing hard things for one’s own good. One of the most critical needs here is the need for a capacity for critical and constructive self-awareness. You must be able to know and understand what makes you tick. You must own your own personal history and heal it if necessary. In short, you must be dedicated to becoming your best as a quality human person first. Let me put that another way. (a) You cannot take a loser and ordain him and expect to have an effective priest! If he is not a quality human being to begin with, all you will end up with is a loser priest who can’t relate to people or inspire them to hunger for holiness. (b) You cannot take two losers and put them through a wedding and expect to end up with a happy marriage and effective parents! If they are not quality human beings to begin with, all you will end with is a miserable marriage and disastrous parents!

The second ingredient in really loving oneself is a passionate commitment to vocational excellence – to what you do. In other words, if you are a parent, commit yourself to being the very best parent you can be! If you are married, commit yourself to being the best husband or wife you can be! If you are a priest, commit yourself to be the best priest you can possibly be! Whatever you do, be good at it! If you strive to be the best at what you do, you will get better at it. If you choose the “good enough to get by” path, you will become known for your mediocrity. Without a passionate commitment to vocational excellence, you will no doubt end up being a half-assed priest, a half-assed marriage partner or half-assed parent! The world is already overcrowded with mediocrity – with “half-assedness” - people with no passion for personal or vocational excellence! My mother used to call them “people who merely go through the motions,” “people whose hearts are not in it.” God says to us in Revelations 3:15-16, “Would that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” May you be spared from half-assedness!”

May you be the very best version of yourself, a person passionately committed to your own personal and vocational excellence, a person committed to becoming your best self and committed to excellence at what you do!

"YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED TO MINISTRY! YES, YOU!"

 

I, the Lord, have called you. I have grasped you by the hand. I formed you and set you as a covenant for the nations to open their eyes, release them from confinement and bring them out of darkness.

Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7

  

On this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I am always reminded of the extraordinary circumstances of my own birth and baptism on April 28, 1944. 

I was delivered at home by my country midwife paternal grandmother "Lillie" as she was known. Both my mother and I almost died during the birthing process. My grandmother, with years of experience as a midwife, knew what to do. She baptized me right there is the bed in which I was born and had someone go get a doctor for my mother and me!  

She lived across the road from us so I was close to her as a child and spent a lot of time with her. I helped her grind sausage, churn butter and work with her in her vegetable garden. I can't remember her talking a lot. She was like the servant in the Isaiah reading who was not big on “making her voice heard.” She just invited me to do new things and then showed me how to do them without a whole lot of talking. She always wore her hair pulled-back and rolled-up in a bun on the back of her head. To me, it was a living symbol of her wise, practical and hard-working nature. 

I did not know that she had baptized me until I sent for a baptismal record before ordination. No one had bothered to tell me. She was able to attend my first Mass and follow me during my first year as a priest. 

It was this grandmother who "birthed" me into this world and this grandmother who "birthed" me into the family of God!  I still remember her every year on my birthday and every year on today's Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord.

Her birthday is tomorrow, January 12. She would have been 135 years old this year.  I will remember her tomorrow as well. I hope all of you can spend a little time today reflecting on your own baptisms which is more important that our ordinations, our marriages or our religious professions.  I remember our former Auxiliary Bishop, Charles Maloney, who Confirmed me in 1957. He always said that his Baptism was more important than his ordination as a priest or his consecration as a bishop!

Just a Jesus was baptized not for his own good, so have we! We are baptized for mission – for going out to take the good news to others! Even though each of us have a “vocation,” a “call,” the clarity of that call was not obvious to most of us right away. Some of us may have spent years “discerning” our call, with starts and stops, until it became clear enough to act– whether it was to marriage, the single life, religious profession or ordained ministry. Even though the lifestyle is very different among our various “vocations,” we are all called to “go out” and “take Christ’s message of unconditional love to the world” in some specific way! However, we don’t go out alone, we go out as a “tag team,” all doing something different, but all for the same purpose – to make Christ known and his lifestyle lived in some practical way!

It seems that I have been doing ministry in one way or another all my life. 82 years ago, this coming April 28, I was commissioned for lay ministry at my baptism by my paternal grandmother.  57 years ago, I was ordained to do the ministry of a Deacon by the Archbishop of Indianapolis.  A year later, 56 years ago this coming May 16, I was ordained for the ministry of a priest. After my retirement, I have continued my ministry as a priest, helping out here and there in this diocese, but I have added foreign mission ministry to my list, first in the Caribbean missions and now in the African missions of Kenya and Tanzania. I hope to continue doing ministry till the end, not simply because I am a priest, but more so because I am first of all a baptized Christian, commissioned to be an ambassador for Christ!

Some of us may think that our particular “call” at baptism is not flashy, news-worthy or even obvious to others.  Like the “chosen servant” mentioned in Isaiah today who went out “not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street” our “vocation” may be understated, low-keyed, muted and subdued, but effective none the less! Many people respond better and respond more enthusiastically to a quiet presence more than a loud in-your-faced presence. As St. Gregory Nazianzus once said about preaching, “One and the same exhortation does not fit all. According to the quality of the hearer ought the discourse of the teachers to be fashioned.” A simple quiet gesture of kindness can sometimes be more effective in leading people to Jesus than an eloquent homily! In a way, maybe my grandmother taught me more about the way of Jesus than all of the Bishop Sheen tapes I have listened to combined!

Here is a parting thought for you to consider! Find out what day you were baptized! As Bishop Maloney reminded people, “It is more important than your wedding anniversary or my ordination!” If you don’t know when you were baptized, contact the parish where it took place and ask for a copy of your Baptismal Record. Put that date on your calendar and find a way to celebrate it every year. It, too, is one of your birthdays! It is not a day for you to receive presents just because you were born, but a day to give service because you have been baptized! It was the day you were commissioned for ministry. Maybe you can celebrate your baptism every year by volunteering for some kind of service – either in your community, in your family, in your neighborhood or in your parish! Call your godparents if they are alive! Treat them to lunch if possible! Pull out your baptism pictures if you have them! Do something every year to help you remember that you have been commissioned for ministry! In the words of our second reading, “You have been sent to do good and heal those oppressed, for God is with you!”