REMEMBERING MY YEARS AT BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

All during December of last year, when I was heavily involved in cleaning out the surplus that had built up in my condo since I moved in back in 2005, I came across this copy of a framed poster that now hangs in the Campus Ministry Office of Bellarmine University here in Louisville. 

When I retired from there in 2016, I was the longest serving priest campus minister in it's history. I served most of those years with Ms. Melanie Prejean Sullivan. Our ministry was inter-faith because the student body was inter-faith. 

This poster was hung in my honor in the newly dedicated Campus Ministry Ministry Office August 10, 2016.  As I look back almost eight years later, finding it stored away in a closet, I was reminded once again what an honor it was to preach there most Sunday nights, preach most Baccalaureate Masses and pray at most graduations and many special services throughout those many years. To have some of my words memorialized in the Campus Ministry Office like that was certainly icing on the cake! I am so grateful for that experience.    

THAT UNCOMFORTABLE WORLD OF IN BETWEEN

I'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE SO I KNOW THE FEELING

“It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place 

in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in 

the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.”

Marilyn Ferguson 

I've been here so many times before that I know what is happening - that uncomfortable time when one world ends and another one hasn't started yet, when one dream is completed and another hasn't hatched yet! I call that period the "in betweens" when you know that one era of your life has been completed and you are not sure what the next era will be like. You might say I am in psychological "limbo" again. "Limbo" comes from the Latin word "limbus" meaning "edge" or "boundary."  "Limbo" is "an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition." One of my nieces described it clearly this way when we were sitting on her porch after her young husband's funeral. "I knew who I was yesterday, but today I don't know who I am!" 

For me, the "in betweens" are not as much scary as they are uncomfortable. It's a lot like an extended freeze-frame moment when you jump from one rock to another without be able to see clearly where you are jumping.  Now that I have finished my latest three-year project, the completion of the St. Theresa Family Life Center and Guest House, I feel like I am floating in a vacuum waiting for the the next rock to appear before I can land again. As Marilyn Ferguson puts it, "it's like being between trapezes" or "its Linus when his blanket is in the dryer." 

I find myself sort of bouncing around feeling some mild doubts about whether this time there will ever be another rock to land on, feeling a bit unmotivated, unproductive and directionless. I am feeling a bit like a control freak without his control, a bit like an addict without his drug.  

I've been here so many times before that this time I know in my heart of hearts that there will no doubt be another rock to land on, another trapeze to grab onto and the dryer will once again finish its job. I know that for a time I will be like a workaholic without his work so I just need to rest up, wake up and be ready to step up in God's time, not mine! 

During this "down time," I have counted no less than twenty-five times when I can remember having been in the "in betweens." Three years ago, after it became obvious that my work in the Caribbean Missions and traveling around the world leading priest convocations had come to an end, I found myself in the "in betweens."  It was during that uncomfortable period, when I wondered whether "if I turned the key off whether the car would ever start again," that it occurred to me that I might set out to build the  St. Theresa Family Life Center and Guest House down in Meade County. Now that my latest project is completed, I find myself again in the "in betweens." I know down deep that the next step will be a partnership between me and God. God will offer me a new opportunity, but it will be up to me to see it and seize it so I need to be vigilant and be ready!

It may sound a bit melodramatic, but what all my remembered twenty-five times of being "in between" have in common is that each of them have been comparable to those short periods between classic "quests" in literature. 

A quest in literature is an adventurous journey undergone by the main character or protagonist of a story. The protagonist usually meets with and overcomes a series of obstacles, returning in the end with the benefits of knowledge and experience from his quest. It is clear that a quest also means something that is difficult to achieve but the hero is all set to achieve it through any means and that it means good for the people as well as for the quester. Its real function is to show not only how a quester goes through a test set for him, but it also teaches the readers that such realities could emerge in their cases and that they should also be able to surmount such things with their intellect, perseverance and courage. 

As I said above, a quest is not only good for the quester, but also those who read about his quest. That, my friend, is why I write about my quests - not to be admired, but to be imitated - to invite others to step out on their own quests. 

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

The quote above, to me, says simply that anything can happen and you can go anywhere. Just take that first step without knowing where you might end up. That kind of travel is addictive. You can get ‘swept up’ so just put one foot in front of the other and keep going.

And yes, things might go wrong, something bad may happen, but if you don’t take that risk, how will you ever know? On such a quest, keep your wits and common sense about you -- ‘keep your feet' as Tolkien said. 

I really like the idea of a Road that Tolkien wrote about, and that if you leave the safety of your house and take that Road, it can take you to some amazing places.

FROM THE LEAST, THE LOST AND THE LOSER, HE MAKES A LEADER

 GIVEN TODAY AT BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

Our Lady of the Woods Chapel 

James and John came to Jesus and said to him,"

Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your

right and the other at your left." When the ten

heard this, they became indignant at James and

John. Jesus summoned them and said to them,

"It shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever

wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the

slave of all.

Mark 10: 35-45

If Jesus were to have been born in our day, instead of 2,000 years ago, he might have graduated from Bellarmine University’s W. Fielding Rubel School of Business. As a graduate, Jesus might have used a management consultant to help him get his new ministry off the ground and to help him choose his staff of twelve apostles. If so, he may have submitted the resumes of his would-be apostles to that consultant for feedback. Here is how that feedback might have sounded. (I have referred to this funny consultant report several times over the years and it fits again today.)

To: Jesus, Son of Joseph

% Woodcrafter Carpenter Shop

Nazareth

From: Jerusalem Management Consultants

Dear Jesus:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have recruited for management positions in the new church you want to found. All twelve of them have now taken our battery of tests; we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologists and vocational aptitude consultants.

We regret to inform you that it is the staff’s opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no leadership qualities. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been black-listed by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, son of Alpheus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale.

One of your candidates, however, shows great potential - Judas Iscariot. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind, and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend this man as your controller and right-hand man.

We wish you every success in your new venture.

Sincerely yours,

Hugh Mann, President

Jerusalem Management Consultants

This little fictitious "consultant report," in which Judas is picked as showing the "most potential" as an apostle makes a very important point. One of the most interesting things about God is that "God does not see as we see. We see people's externals, but God sees into their hearts." The more familiar you are with the Scriptures, the more you realize that God is always picking the weak, the incompetent, the unqualified, the least, the lost and the loser - and then making them strong in carrying out his work. These choices are not isolated events. They happen, over and over, again in Scripture. In today's gospel, we have two of these "least likely to succeed personalities" – James and his brother John. There are many, many more!

First, there is Isaiah. One day, while in the Temple of the Lord, Isaiah is overcome by an awareness of God's greatness and his own unworthiness! He is so overcome with his own unworthiness that he cries out, "Woe is me! Not only do I have a foul mouth, I come from a bunch of foul-mouthed people! I am surely doomed!" God's response was to send an angel, with a hot coal, to wash his mouth out and to clean up his lips for the preaching ministry he had in mind for him! What a choice!

Second, there is Paul! For years, Paul had been the lead bounty-hunter in tracking down Christians for execution. Smug with righteousness, he felt as if he was doing God a favor by ridding the world of these heretics who had no respect for the old-time religion. Paul had even held the coats of those who stoned Saint Stephen to death. One day, on his way to round up some more Christians for execution, God knocked Paul off his proverbial "high-horse" and called him to make a complete u-turn in his thinking. Instead of persecuting Christianity, God called Paul to be its biggest promoter! What a choice!

Third, there is Peter! Peter was an uneducated, red-neckish, bumbling blow-hard fisherman with a big heart! He was a thick-headed, hard-headed and empty-headed clod who meant well, but would brag one minute and fall on his face the next! When the chips were down, Peter pretended that he didn't even know Jesus and had never heard of him - not once, not twice, but three times. However, this is the very one that Jesus left in charge of his church after his death. What a choice!

Fourth, there is James and his brother John that we read about today. Like Peter and Andrew, James and John were fisherman. They were men of the sea. In the Gospel of Mark that we read today, James and John ask Jesus for the best seats in his new kingdom. As time went by, the writers of the Gospels could not bring themselves to have such tacky and self-serving words coming out of the mouths of these exalted apostles, so Matthew changes the story and has their misguided request coming out of their mother’s mouth. Blaming women has been a favorite technique of men since Adam blamed Eve!

We see James and John at their worst in today’s gospel. They are climbers, ambitious self-seekers and sneaks. Again, we see in their lives that yet again “God choses the weak and makes them strong.” Jesus evidently saw something in them because they end up in the inner circle. Along with Peter, they witnesses the Transfiguration, some of the miracles including the raising of Jarius’ daughter and the agony in the garden. Beheaded, James was the first the apostles to give his life. His death is the only biblical record we have of the death of one of the Apostles.

The list goes on and on! Moses, who was charged with convincing the Israelites to leave Egypt and making a forty-year desert crossing, actually had some kind of speech impediment. Either he stuttered badly or he had forgotten much of the language of his childhood. They could still be in Egypt if Moses had not gotten Aaron to do his public speaking for him. What a choice!

Mary, when she was chosen by God to be the mother of the world's Savior, was a dirt-poor, unknown teenager from a podunk town called Nazareth! What a choice!

The list goes on and on, throughout Scripture and Church history, to this day! It seems that "God is always choosing the weak and making them strong in bearing witness to him!" My friend and former associate pastor, Father Bill Medley, was consecrated the new bishop of Owensboro several years ago. He was shocked, and many of us were pleasantly surprised at this choice, because, in many ways, he is not the "type" to be selected. He is not a canon lawyer. He is not a career chancery official from Philadelphia or Detroit. He did not study in Rome. He is simply a good pastor from a small rural Kentucky town and yet it was he who was chosen for this important ministry! What a choice!

In my own experience, all throughout the years that led up to my priesthood, I always felt like the "least likely to succeed." Looking back, I am amazed as I have seen this scrawny little boy from the tiny country town of Rhodelia, painfully bashful, labeled a "hopeless case" by seminary officials, being led over the years by the hand of God through a wide variety of ministry experiences in ten countries that I never could have imagined being involved in when I first started this journey in the fall of 1958! I can still remember an experience I had in Chicago when I was about to deliver a lengthy address to close to 900 priests, a Cardinal and six bishops. As I was mounting the high platform with several TV cameras pointed at me, I was trying to talk myself out of a panic attack by repeating, "They don't know I am from Rhodelia! They don't know I am from Rhodelia!" What a choice!

In 2016, at the December graduation, Bellarmine University awarded me an honorary Doctorate and I was invited to address the graduates, their families, the faculty and the staff that day. The title of my commencement address was "A Hopeless Case." I spoke directly to the graduates who struggled to get there that day. Yes, I admired the winners of awards and scholarships and I congratulated them, but those who really struggled were my kind of graduates and I wanted to share a bit of what I had learned, especially with them!

Let me speak directly to those of you who struggle with your self-image, with feelings of unworthiness, with thoughts of never being good enough and with being labeled, rejected or discriminated against. The world may be dealing you a bad hand today, you may have been passed over and put upon in the past, you may feel that you will never be good enough or can never measure up, but also know this: God may have his eye on you right now, he may have a mission for you that he is about to reveal! He may be ready to take you to places you cannot even imagine. Your pain and suffering could be part of some grand plan! You may have been learning what you need to know for the amazing job that God has always had in store for you.

When you leave here today, remember James and John. Think how God took them, in their weakness, and tuned them into powerful witnesses. Just as God took them, fragile clay pots as they were and filled them with his great treasure, God can do the same with you. When God calls you, don’t be afraid of your weaknesses, just be ready to answer with Isaiah, "Here I am, Lord, send me!" Last of all, don't forget this! God has a reputation for choosing the weak and then making them strong!

PAIN BEFORE GAIN

                                     GIVEN AT OUR LADY OF THE WOODS CHAPEL                                        BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

6:00 pm

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the

ground  and  dies, it  remains just a

grain  of  wheat;  but  if  it  dies,  it

produces much fruit.

John 12

As some of you know, I grew up in the country. (Maybe you can tell?) I have helped plant wheat, corn, barley, soy beans and gardens of all sizes and varieties. In fact, I used to have a “retreat house” down in Meade County that some of our Bellarmine students stayed at during one of their “alternative spring breaks” a few years back. It sat in the midst of some fields that would soon be planted with soy beans, wheat, barley or corn. One year it was corn. The next year it would probably be wheat. (Farmers do that so as not to wear out their soil by repeating one crop continuously.) It is always amazing to me that the farmers came in with one truck full of seeds in the spring and come back in the fall and harvest several truckloads of grain. It was always a sight to behold!

In a way, those farmers came in with their precious little grains, dug little “graves” for those small seeds, covered them over with dirt and then came back months later and “boom” each little grain has turned into 30 to 60 new grains. In a way, one little grain gave its life so that 30 to 60 new grains could be born!

Jesus must have watched this process many times. In fact, the gospel has several references to the planting of seeds and the walking though standing grain. We know that Jesus’ disciples got into trouble in one place in the gospels for walking through a grain field and pulling off heads of wheat and eating the grains. The legalistic Pharisees saw what they did and labeled their simple acts of pulling off the heads of wheat, rubbing them in their hands and putting the grains in their mouths as eating them as “working on the Sabbath.” It amounted. in their eyes, to harvesting winnowing and preparing a meal - all of which was forbidden on the Sabbath. Jesus dismissed their concerns as silly and accused them of “straining out gnats while swallowing camels.”

Like he did many times, Jesus used his everyday experiences as tools for teaching. Just as one grain of wheat must die so that the wheat species can continue to have life, Jesus said that he himself must die so that all of us can have life. In the image he used today, Jesus refers to himself as that grain of wheat which must die so that all of us may have eternal life.

When Jesus used the image of the grain “dying” in reference to us, he was not just speaking of our dying at the end of our lives. Sure, the Church teaches us that when this body is placed in the ground like a small grain of wheat, we will someday rise to a new and better life like a stalk of wheat adored with many grains of wheat. What Jesus wants us to know is that this happens, not only at the end, but all throughout our lives here on earth. It is not just a future event, it can happen each and every day while we live here on earth. Let me offer a couple of example.

A sperm and an egg, planted in our mother’s womb had to also “die,” in a way, so that we could come into being. Even after it is born, that baby had to “die” in a way so that it could grow into an adolescent. That adolescent had to “die” in a way so that it could grow into a young adult - on and on until we “die” into eternal life.

In a similar way, each Fall we watch the trees and flowers “die” only to come to life again in the spring, bringing with them even more life. The tree grows taller. The bush gets bigger and bigger. All this happens in the world of nature, automatically, but as human beings we can actually choose to “die” in a parallel way, so that we can increase life within ourselves as we go from one day to the next.

If we seek to always avoid these little “deaths” from one phase to the next, we actually choose stagnation and a stunted life. For example, parents who protect their children too closely, holding them back and holding onto them too long, can actually retard the growth of their children into full human beings. If they really love their children, they will put them on the school bus when the time comes, in spite of their tears and protests, so that they can learn to relate to other children and learn necessary life skills. That process is like a small “death” for parents and children, but without it there is no new life for those children. Trying to cling to what was, is perhaps the surest way to sabotage any advanced growth as they grow older.

Those same parents come to a day when their children go off to college, fall in love, marry, leave home and start their own families. No matter how much parents would like to hang onto to their children and keep them at home, they know this “death” is necessary, no matter how much crying goes on when they walk down the aisle and they kiss them “goodbye” at the altar. It is like Jesus said: “Whoever loses his life will keep it and whoever hangs onto his life too much will end up losing it.” Like Lennie, in Steinbach’s novel Of Mice and Men, who squeezes his precious bunny so tight that he kills it, holding onto life as it is for too long can actually lead to the destruction of the very life we love so much. Every famer knows, no matter how hungry you are, unless you save some “seed corn” to plant in the spring, you will starve to death, but if you resist eating it now, so as to plant it later, you will live!

This “wisdom” makes very little sense to the world, but it is so true. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and control. Choose too much ease and you will slowly die – whether it is exercise or food – but in choosing the difficult path you will surely have even more life. Give into your appetites and laziness and you will slowly turn into a big slob of an unhealthy disease-ridden couch potato. Eat selectively and push your body to its limits with regular exercise and you will enjoy a lean, trim, vigorous, disease-free body that can serve you well for years to come. Indeed, “no pain, no gain.” Anyone who has ever been successful in a recovery program knows this life-giving principle of death and resurrection: the old, addicted person must die a slow and painful death before a new and healthy person can be brought to life.

Students! All of us are given a choice each day: the easy way that leads to death and the hard way that leads to life. A well-adjusted adult understands this life principle and freely embraces its necessary pain. A childish adult resists such pain, choosing ease at every turn. Such an adult will certainly come to know that with each lazy choice, his life gradually withers away. As the old song from the 60s puts it, “If we are not busy being born, we are busy dying.”

Jesus’ mystery of “dying and rising” is actually part of a healthy life. These little everyday “deaths” simply prepare us for our big death at the end. We believe that if we choose to die with Christ here, we are also choosing to live with him for all eternity.

Here is the great mystery! Pain before gain! Cross before crown! Death before resurrection! Then, as St. Paul puts it, we will understand the words: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, not has it even dawned on human beings the great things that God has in store for those who love him.”

NO NEED TO BE ANXIOUS

Have no anxiety at all. 

Let the peace that God gives guard your hearts and minds.

Philippians 4

Saint Paul must be kidding! No anxiety at all? With an international pandemic, street demonstrations, toxic political unrest, rampant unemployment, a worrisome national debt, election intrusions, cancer and the funerals of fellow citizens, relatives and friends, how can Saint Paul’s words possibly fit those of us living in today’s Church and world? How can we possibly remain anxiety-free in the middle of all these situations? 

“Anxiety” is a state of intense, often disabling apprehension, uncertainty, and fear caused by the anticipation of something threatening. It is often not so much about what is happening or even what has happened, but about what might happen next.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and mind.

My dear mother comes to mind when I think of anxiety. It seems that she always had a thin stream of anxiety trickling through her veins. Even though she has been dead for forty-five years now, I can still see her in my mind’s eye picking at her lower lip, a nervous habit that always accompanied intense moments of anxiety. I can still remember one time when we laughed at her for being so anxious. She snapped back, “Well, somebody around here needs to worry!” Looking back, she had a lot to be anxious about: seven kids, a demanding husband and breast cancer, to name a few! 

When I was about to be ordained, anxiety was very much on my mind. The church was undergoing a great upheaval and priests were beginning to leave in significant numbers, Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy had been killed a couple of years earlier, the Vietnam War was raging along with street riots. I asked myself many times, in that year leading up to ordination, “How am I going to keep my cool in a fast-changing church and in a world coming unglued? How will I be able to stay focused when one problem after another is going to be hurled into my face from both inside and outside the church? How will I be able to calm others when I seem to be torn up all the time myself?”

I have spent my life as a priest searching for an inmost calm that no storm can shake. When I discovered and admitted to myself that I cannot control what happens “out there,” I knew I had to find a way to control my reaction to what happens “out there.” As one spiritual teacher said, “It is easier to put on slippers than it is to carpet the world.” I knew I was going to need, and certainly wanted to have, the peace that only a close relationship with Jesus could give me, that peace that Saint Paul invites us to embrace in our second reading today.

Have no anxiety at all. Let the peace that God gives, guard your hearts and minds.

I spent most of my young adult life looking for an inmost calm that no storm could shake, an inner peace that would remain rock solid no matter what! I am happy to say that I have found it, but now I have to work to keep it. Sometimes I panic and forget, but I always come back to it sooner or later. Once I discovered that a peaceful center is always available to me, even in the midst of storms, I know I can always come back to it.

How can one have that peace? It comes from a close relationship with Jesus. If you truly believe that you are loved without condition, that God is on your side and holds no grudges, that in the end things are going to turn out OK because God has promised us so, then a great peace will come over you. With that knowledge, you will know that no matter how bad things get sometimes, no matter how much you have to handle, no matter how great your losses, you will know in your heart of hearts that you are in good hands because you are in God’s hands. When you know these things to be true, a great peace begins to stand guard over your heart and mind! That is what St. Paul is talking about today when he tells us to “let the peace that God gives stand guard over your hearts and minds.”

Once I begin to live in the knowledge that, in spite of it all, things will ultimately be OK, I begin to realize that many of my life’s greatest blessings have come out of what long ago seemed like an unbearable disaster.  Looking back at the times in my life when God seemed absent, at the times when I was overwhelmed with anxiety, worry and panic, in hindsight I can see that the hand of God was actually bringing me to where I needed to go and teaching me what I needed to learn. Most of the things I have most worried about never happened! Most of my imagined tragedies have actually contained great blessings! For me, it has happened too many times to dismiss as a fluke. 

Peace, however, is not a time when there are no problems. Peace is a calm state of mind in the midst of problems and in spite of problems. Peace is a trusting state of mind that comes from a close relationship with Jesus whose name is Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us. 

My fellow believers, we cannot control most of what is going to happen, so let us finish each day and be done with it. Let us do our best and let go of it. Let us not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen.  Our fretting anxiety has no power to affect tomorrow, but it can certainly ruin today.  Let us thank God for how far we have come and trust God with how far we can go.  This peace of mind is Jesus’ last gift to us. No matter what we are going through, let us lean on His everlasting arm, accepting his gift of peace and learning to live out of it. “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.” (Tyron Edwards) As soon as true trust in God begins, our anxiety begins to fade. We will never be problem free, but we can be free of anxiety and needless worry! 

On this Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, it is appropriate to end with his famous prayer!

 

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

 

 

ANOTHER CHRISTMAS SADNESS

ONE OF OUR ORPHANS HAS DIED

Sister Nyra Anne sent me a text to tell me that Shanique, one of orphans at Saint Benedict Home down in Saint Vincent, died in the hospital on December 23. 

We were able to send her little Christmas presents and special food over that last few years. Your gifts made a real difference in her life, as they do in the lives of the other "special needs" children. Thank you again this year.

Shanique was born on 11th December, 1989 and has been at St Benedict’s Home for Children since 1990. Confined to a wheelchair, she was entirely dependent upon the caring staff at St Benedict’s for her basic care. Shanique’s smile could light up a room, and her bubbling laughter was infectious! She loved to go out for a spin through the beautiful banana fields near the Home.

I am sure the other children at the Home are in a state of sadness and maybe confusion. God bless Sister Nyra Anne and her staff for caring for Shanique these many years when others would not or could not!

Shanique in wheelchair on the right.

Jesus said, "Let the children come to me and do not prevent them, 

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
  Matthew 19:13-14

With the seventh Blue Christmas Mass for the Grieving here at home behind me, with the news of this death and the personal knowledge of the heroic work of the Sisters and Lay Ministers down in the islands, I can't think of anything better to do with my time and energy during the holidays than to try to do what I can to support those who struggle every day to deal with their sometimes grinding hardships. 

Was I able to "fix" all this loss, suffering and disappointment that I saw and heard about? No! However, I have the satisfaction that comes with knowing that together we did what we could - that at least we did something! 

DOCTOR WHO? KNOTT AGAIN!

HONORED FOR SURE

The Bellarmine University Board of Trustees  voted unanimously on September 6, 2016 to award me an honorary doctorate degree. 

  

It was awarded last night at the December 21, 2016 graduation ceremonies.  

Bellarmine University Board of Trustees



Dr. Doris Tegart, Interim President, places the Doctoral hood over my shoulders. Dr. Melanie Prejean Sullivan, Director of Campus Ministry, assisted in adjusting the hood.



Dr. Tegart handed me the diploma.

BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

December 21, 2016

Commencement Address

‘A Hopeless Case?”

Rev. J. Ronald Knott

  

I was completely shocked and honored when I got the call that I was going to be awarded an honorary doctorate by this University. After seventeen years of relishing being a campus minister here, I had retired from Bellarmine University back in the spring, retired from St. Meinrad Seminary the year before that, retired from the Archdiocese of Louisville a little before that and I have been collecting Social Security for about a year before that. After all that retiring and collecting, I thought I was finished.  I thought that all I had left to do was to find a place to die – hopefully in a socially acceptable situation!

I am not the type to get awards like this. Oh, I have won a couple of awards in the last few years, but not enough to invest in a trophy case just yet. I am not a million-dollar donor. I am not a successful businessman or well-known politician. I didn’t graduate in the top of my class and I didn’t invent anything. There are no buildings or streets named after me. I was the MC at a Crater Lake National Park beauty pageant once, but I have never won one personally. Even Don Knotts had an “s” at the end of his name and I don’t. I am not a Monsignor like Father Horrigan who started this place. I am simply a priest from a humble background who has ended up amazed to be where he is today -  all because of God’s amazing grace, my own unrelenting determination, the help of a whole lot of good people and a dab of luck. 

If I were to list my greatest accomplishment, it would not be any of the things listed in my introduction, it would be overcoming crippling bashfulness to become an international speaker, in eight countries on well over one hundred occasions! From stages like this, I have looked into the eyes of more Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops and priests than is healthy for one person! Yes, I have stood and talked in front of all those clerics, without batting an eye, usually a week at a time, and lived to talk about it!  I have preached in front of thousands and thousands of Catholics, people from other faiths and people of no faith at all.  From the feedback, the thing I am consistently known for is my simple, direct and straightforward speaking style.  I may not be the best speaker in the world, but I do know how to do “short and sweet,” so here goes!

All of you can listen in, and hopefully get something out of this, but tonight I want to speak directly to you graduates who struggled to get here today. Yes, I admire the winners of awards and scholarships and I congratulate them, but those of you who really struggled are my kind of people and I want to share a bit of what I have learned, especially with you! Yes, I do hope it will also be helpful to everyone here, in one way or another. 

I grew up in a Walton’s Mountain kind of town down in Meade County. I am John Boy, the first in my family to graduate from college. I was told almost every day as a child that I would never amount to a hill of beans. When I flunked the altar boy test in the second grade, sweet Sister Mary Ancilla told me that I was a good kid, but predicted that I would, in her words, “never be any good around the altar.” When I wanted to come up here to Louisville, out of the eighth grade, to the now-closed St. Thomas Seminary on Old Brownsboro Road, my pastor reluctantly filled out the papers, but predicted that I would not last till Christmas! After limping through my first year of seminary, the head priest called me into his office to tell me that he was sending me home, calling me, to my face, a “hopeless case.”  I had to beg for another opportunity. (To get through the seminary, you need to get good at groveling! My groveling career was launched that very day!) His last words to me were to call me “a ball and chain around his leg for six years!”

 Even when I completed four years of high school seminary, four years of college seminary and four years of graduate school seminary, on the day of my ordination, a woman cornered me at the reception and asked how long I had gone to school. When I answered “twenty, counting grade school,” she stepped back, gasped, and said, “My God, you could have been something!”  Graduates, I feel like I have been swimming against the stream all my life!

Friends, here is my point! In the words of W. C Fields, “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to!”  As a graduate of the “School of Hard Knocks,” from which I have three earned Doctorates, I have learned that if you want to get on in life, you have to do two things. First, you need to shut out those negative discounting voices of the people around you. Second, and even harder, you need to shut out that negative discounting voice in your own head. Henry Ford said, “Those who believe they can and those who believe they can’t are both right.” Marianne Williamson said, “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us!”

The 12 years it took for me to get to priesthood was a piece of cake compared to the 47 years of staying in the priesthood! In almost every assignment I have had as a priest, I have been told by those who were there before me “not to expect any results” because “nothing can be done” because of “this or that” reason. I deliberately chose not to believe any of them and I have seen both small and large miracles in most of those places, not because I am some kind of miracle worker, but simply because I refused to believe their negative predictions, as well as those my own mind tried to invent. I have learned that people declare certain situations, other people and themselves “hopeless” because it is easier that way. If you declare situations, other people or yourself “hopeless,” you don’t have to do anything!  Nobody expects you to do anything about “hopelessness!” Here is another quote from George Bernard Shaw that has guided me over the years. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.”

One of the most useful things I learned from my tough childhood is that “there has never been a rescue party out looking for me” so I have needed to practice self-rescue. To do that I have learned to be imaginative and creative and look for alternatives, rather than look for someone to blame or someone to fix it for me. Another of my very favorite quotes, one I used regularly in Bellarmine Baccalaureate homilies, is also by George Bernard Shaw.  “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” 

All you, “barely made its,” listen up! One of my very favorite things to do is to walk down the hall way at my old seminary, where they hang the class pictures. I like to stop at the year 1970, the year I graduated and was finally ordained a priest. Some of the biggest brains and jocks, the ones that most of us could never measure up to, the ones everybody “made over,” bombed out a long time ago and some of us ugly ducklings, in a classic “tortoise and hare” scenario, are now swimming with swans! Maybe you have the heard the joke about what they call the person who graduated at the bottom of the class in medical school? They call him or her “Doctor!” As Yogo Berra said, “|It ain’t over till it’s over!”  So I say to you, it ain’t over till it’s over, so be forces of nature, not feverish selfish little clods of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to make you happy! Claim you power! Take the road less traveled! Believe in yourself! Dare to dream! Work hard! Be determined! Remain focused! If you do that, then good luck will find you.

Remember! “It’s not what they call you, it’s what you answer to!” “Those who believe they can, and those who believe they can’t, are both right! Maybe someday in the distant future, Bellarmine University will give another really nice award like this to yet another former “hopeless case” who “could have been something.” Maybe that “someone” will be you!

To close, let me quote a few lines from the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical WICKED.

I'm through accepting limits
    'Cause someone says they're so.
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know.

To those who ground me,
Take a message back from me!

Tell them how I am defying gravity -
I'm flying high, defying gravity.

And soon I'll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz -
No wizard that there is, or was,
Is ever gonna bring me down!

Remember graduates, they don’t call this a “commencement” for nothing!  

PRE-COMMENCEMENT PHOTO 

LEFT TO RIGHT

Dr. Melanie Prejean Sullivan, Director of Campus Ministry, with whom I worked for seventeen years.

Dr. Doris Tegart, Interim President of Bellarmine University

____________________________________________________________

DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
in 
PARISH REVITALIZATION
1981

 McCORMICK (PRESBYTERIAN) SEMINARY

Chicago, Illinois

I was much younger (thirty-six with a beard and long hair) when I got my Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Presbyterian Seminary in the Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago. Scarlet (outside of the hood) is the color for ministry degrees. McCormick Seminary's school colors are blue and white (inside of the hood). Three stripes on the sleeves signify doctorate degrees. 

I attended, and prayed at, over thirty Bellarmine graduations from 1999-2017. I watched thousands of graduates accept their degrees. Every year, I watched the graduation classes grow, finally growing so big that spring graduations had to be moved out of Knights Hall and be held outdoors on the athletic field. I am so honored to be part of the Bellarmine University as the longest serving campus ministry in its history. Receiving an honorary doctorate is just the icing on one big delicious cake. 

The spring 2016 graduates are shown on the left side of this photo. This was what I thought was my last graduation ceremony.

Towering above the graduates (top right, just out of camera range) is my beloved Our Lady of the Woods Chapel where I had Mass every Sunday from the time it was opened till I retired last July. Before that we were in the small St. Robert's Chapel across from the theater in Wyatt Hall.

A LONG FAREWELL'S FINE ENDING

BELLARMINE FAREWELL DINNER

August 26, 2016

At VOLARE, a Louisville restaurant to die for!

Friday night, some of the Bellarmine University staff hosted a small dinner party for me at Volare on Frankfort Avenue. I have had a couple of farewell events, but this was the icing on the cake. It was so good to be with so many long-time friends from my seventeen years as chaplain.



A table of very special friends.



Doris and Joe Tegert



Jim Patterson II and Elaine Winebrenner



Melanie and Kevin Sullivan



Gale and Fred Rhodes



Patrick and Helen Grace Ryan 

THE END OF AN ERA

MY SEVENTEEN YEAR RUN
Today, I finally ended my time as the longest serving campus minister in the history of Bellarmine University. It is quite interesting that I would end with a Convocation Mass for those just beginning.




The final Mass, the Fall Convocation Mass, was held in Knight's Hall at 11:30 am today.





MY REPLACEMENTS - FRANCISCAN FRIARS FROM INDIA
Father Antony, Father George, (myself) and Father John

We would have been lucky to find one young priest, but we found three!




Our capable musicians for Mass.



Some of the University staff and Mass attendees.



In the center is a  Methodist family from Somerset, where I started out as a priest! We know some of the same people.



Thanks for the memories. I am going to miss this place.
Don't turn the lights off yet. Maybe I will get a chance to return once in a while!


THE LAST HOMILY
#731

BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

CONVOCATION MASS 

"All Are Welcome" 

Students! This is a very special day for both of us! It is the day you officially begin your time here as students of Bellarmine University. After seventeen years, it is the day that I officially end my duties as Director of Catholic Worship at Bellarmine University. We both begin something new in our lives: you as college students and me as a retired college chaplain. Let us pray that we both have a bright and prosperous future ahead of us!

When priests and deacons preach, they do not get to pick the readings for Sunday Masses. Passages are simply handed to us and that, I believe, is a good thing! Why? Well if we got to pick the readings ourselves, most of us, out of laziness, would avoid the hard ones, the one’s that take a lot of work to figure out, the ones which address difficult subjects, the ones that challenge us personally.

Lord, will only a few people be saved?

Luke 13:22

Today’s gospel is one of those readings that I did not want to deal with when I first read it. However, in light of something that happened last week, I think it just might be a perfect passage to preach on. Why do I say that? Last week the University had a farewell brunch for me in the new campus ministry office. The food was fabulous. The crowd was good. They even gave me a beautiful chair with the University seal and my name on it. At the beginning of the brunch, I was invited to bless the new office. The moment that really impressed me was when they unveiled a poster with my picture in the background with a quote of mine in the foreground. This is my quote. “We welcome all, not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic.”

Below that quote were these words, “From his earliest days on campus Fr. Knott suggested, "Let us be consciously Christian, deliberately Catholic and unapologetically ecumenical and interfaith in our approach to ministry.” “He invited us to join him in reflecting upon the unconditional love, limitless mercy, and faithful patience of God who seems to delight in diversity.” That describes my philosophy perfectly and I was so proud that someone “got it” and “memorialized it.”

Lord, will only a few people be saved?

Luke 13:22

The temptation to exclude, rather than include has been, and continues to be, a problem in religion, even in some denominations of Christianity. That has been true all the way back to the beginning. We see it in today’s gospel. Jesus was making his way through some towns and villages on his way to Jerusalem, when someone along the way asked him this question: “Will only a few be saved?” From the tone of the question, I am sure the questioner was implying, “Besides me and you, of course, will only a few be saved?” I am reminded of a bumper sticker I once saw. "I'm saved! Sorry about you!"

As he often does, Jesus answers the questioner in a round about way, but he seems to be saying four things (1) everyone is invited to accept salvation (2) not everybody will accept the invitation (3) not everybody who says they accept, will be strong enough to follow through on the invitation and (4) when all is said and done, some people will be absolutely shocked by who will be saved and who won’t.

Are you saved? If you died tonight, would you get into heaven? If so, why? If not, why not? Is it up to God or is it up to you? Do you even know?

These are some of the questions I have wrestled with while writing this homily. I will try to summarize, in simple everyday English, what I think this gospel means for you and me, today, in our own time.

1. God wants everybody to be saved – everybody! Regardless of how many religions like to claim that they are God’s favorites, the fact remains that God loves all of us. He willed that all of us should be saved.

2. God not only wants us to respond to his invitation to be in a love relationship with him, now and for all eternity, he has also bent over backwards to reach out to us and show us his love. Time and time again we have let God down, but God has never quit loving us, even when we killed his only Son. As the old Second Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation put it, “Time and time again we broke your covenant, but you did not abandon us. Instead you bound yourself even more closely to the human family by a bond that cannot be broken. When we were lost and could not find our way to you. You loved us more than ever. Jesus, your Son, innocent and without sin, gave himself into our hands and was nailed to a cross.”

3. We don’t have to do anything to earn an invitation to salvation. These invitations are free for the taking. All we have to do is accept our free invitation and live as a child of God!

4. If we do accept his invitation to salvation, then what we do for God will not be done to earn his salvation, but will be a grateful response to his free salvation.

5. The “narrow gate” that Jesus talks about is that moment when we “get it,” when we understand what is being offered to us and what we are being invited to! That “squeezing through” is that point in the spiritual life when we are strong enough to say “yes” rather than “no” to that invitation.

6. We don’t have all day. God is patient, but there does come a time when we have to “lay the egg or get off the nest,” we have to accept or reject God’s invitation.

7. Last of all, there are going to be some huge surprises when we get to heaven. The first will be last and the last will be first.” Some of those we would least expect will be there, while some of those we most expect may be missing. Some who appeared to have said “no” by their external behaviors may actually be the ones who said “yes” in their hearts; while some who appeared to have said “yes” by external behaviors, may actually be the ones who said “no” in their hearts. “People look at externals, but only God can see into people’s hearts.”

Will only a few people be saved? Well, that does not depend on God, at this point, as much as it depends on us! God wills that all of us be saved, that all of us have a love affair with him for all eternity. His Son has made it possible and invites us to accept this salvation, but he also leaves us free to turn it down. Will only a few people be saved? In a sense, that depends on us, now, doesn’t it?

As we leave this pulpit and approach the altar, let us remember that we have not come here to ask God to love us. We come here to give thanks because God already loves us. Christ has done his part. He has made salvation available to us free of charge. Now all we have to do is accept it and say thanks and live in its light. If that acceptance and thanks and living is sincere, our behaviors will change to be more aligned with God’s will. Let us pray today that the Holy Spirit will give us the ability to accept, give thanks and change!

We opened this Mass with the hymn All Are Welcome. As I stated in that wall poster in the Campus Ministry Office, on this campus, in the Spirit of Pope Francis, “we welcome all, not because they are Catholic, but because we are Catholic.” Jesus Christ is our Savior and Savior of the world!