DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT

To one he gave five talents, to another two; to

a third, one – to each according to his ability.

Then he went away.                

 Matthew 25: 15

I spent 12 years of my life in two seminaries. We were sent there to be “trained.” (Sounds like something you do to dogs doesn’t it?) Seminary is not just a matter of passing courses in theology and going to chapel several times a day, it was also about changing for the better in four areas. There was intellectual formation, of course, but there is also spiritual formation, human formation and pastoral formation. Each seminary had completely different tacks on how to accomplish those goals. 

During the first six years, they approached us with the assumption that we had faults, sins and defects that needed to be identified and eradicated. I learned a lot about myself, but I did not grow at my potential under that philosophy. It left me with self-doubt and low self-esteem. During my last six years, thanks to Vatican II, they approached us with the assumption that we had gifts and talents that needed to be identified and encouraged. It was a time of great personal and spiritual growth and creative possibilities. I thrived under this philosophy. My confidence level and ability rose significantly during those years.

Parenting went through a similar transformation. Some of you were no doubt raised in an environment where your every flaw was consistently pointed out to you and focused on, while some of you were raised in an environment where your gifts and talents were identified and celebrated!    For some of you, your glass was always half empty, while for some of you, your glass was always half full!

Now you need to know what God thinks!  In the story of creation, on the very first page of the bible, we are told that when God had finished creating human beings, he stood back and declared that what he had created was “very good.” Over the centuries, even when human kind turned against God, God has never given up on our basic goodness. In the Old Testament, God is sometimes pictured as a punishing God, but even more pointedly he is often pictured as a love-sick husband, always forgiving his beloved wife who is constantly unfaithful to him, even a love-sick teenage boy lusting for his beloved teenage girlfriend.  They say love is blind, that it doesn’t see limitations and failings, but only the good stuff.  That is so true of God! He chooses to overlook our sins and focus on our basic goodness. “Even while we were sinners, he died for us!” The lost sheep is joyfully carried home. The prodigal son is welcomed with robes and rings and receptions. All the workers are paid a full day’s wages. All are entrusted with some of the master’s gifts and talents.

The message of Jesus is simple, but seldom heard clearly. It is often hidden under layers and layers of “ifs” and “yes, buts.” The reason so many young people avoid organized religion is that it tends to focus on their sins and failings, rather than their talents, potential and possibilities. The fact of the matter is, Jesus focused on the basic goodness of the rejects of organized religion and society, while the religious authorities of his day focused on their sins. While Jesus encouraged and forgave, they condemned and withheld forgiveness.

Jesus came with “good news” and the “good news” is this: we are loved without condition, no matter what we have done or failed to do. From there, we are called to grow ourselves, to invest our talents and to become all that we can be!  Understanding that we have a basic goodness that we can built on is essential to personal and spiritual growth. People who believe they are worthless, talentless and bad, see no point in trying. As Marriane Williamson said, “It is our light, not our darkness, that most scares us.”

God allows for mistakes, and because of that, he wants us to take some risks and be pro-active with the gifts we have, as the parable tells us. The man who buried his talents, did not really know his master. He was scared of life. He was a coward when it came to taking risks. He is called a “lazy lout” in most translations. A “lout” is a stupid person, an oaf, a dunce, a fool, an airhead, a dumb-ass. A “lazy lout” blows every chance he or she gets to “make something” of himself or herself even when he or she is given every chance to do so.

You, my friends, are gifted and talented or you would not have come as far as you have! God has brought you this far in life so that you can keep “investing” those talents and see what you can do with them. Don’t blow the stake God has in you! Talents are meant to be developed and used, not hoarded away where they wither and die!   Calvin Coolidge once said, “Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.” 

I had the good fortune to start working for Bellarmine University after I left here as your pastor in 1997. I never thought about it, much less planned on it, even though Doctor McGowen, Bellarmine’s President at the time, said to me on the front steps of this very Cathedral after Mass one Sunday, “You will be working at Bellarmine one day!” I just laughed because it sounded out of my talent range. As God would have it, not to mention Doctor McGowen, I just retired last year after 17 years of being their weekend chaplain. 

What is even stranger, when I was there Father Michael was a student at Bellarmine in my early days of being their chaplain on the weekend. He tells me that I once said to him, “You will be taking my job someday!” He wasn’t even a seminarian at the time! Guess what? He now has, not one, but two of my jobs! He is pastor of this Cathedral and he is the Vocation Director, one of my other jobs! Doctor McGowen is not the only one to recognize talents when he sees it! I know talent when I see it too!

 Father Michael and I are both formed in Bellarmine’s mission statement. Bellamine’s mission is to “provide an educational environment of academic excellence and respect for the intrinsic value and dignity of each person.  Bellarmine seeks to be a place where talented, diverse persons of all faith and many ages, nations and cultures develop the intellectual, moral and professional competencies for lifelong learning, leadership, service to others, careers, and responsible, values-based, caring lives.”

In other words, Bellarmine begins by accepting one’s basic goodness and dignity as a talented person and then gives them an environment to work from there in creating a happy and effective life.  Bellarmine helps you take what God gave you and encourages you to see how far you can take it. But, do you know what? This has also been the mission statement of this parish dating back to 1983 when I came here. That’s what I, and subsequent pastors, have tried to do –  accept your basic goodness and dignity as a talented person and give you the encouragement and environment to become the best spiritual person you can be and challenge you to use your talents for the betterment of yourself, your families and the community - at home and afar.

One of the things I was adamant about when I retired was that I was not going to spend the rest of my life taking care of myself, pampering myself and looking out for number one! I still have talents and I want to continue to invest them. As a single person, I have a lot of personal freedom. I am an entrepreneur by nature. (One of you once told me that if I had gone into business, I would have been a millionaire! Now you tell me!) I like to design needed programs and execute them. I can do retreats, parish missions and priest convocations. I have done way over 100 in the nine countries. What I have decided to do is try to live simply on my social security and my priest pension and use my talents to do those things to make money for the Caribbean missions and pull other talented people in to join me. I have some involvement in four countries down there already, but mainly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines off the coast of Venezuela. I want to help them strengthen the institutions that strengthen their communities rather than help one family at a time. I will make my 8^th trip December 11-19. I will attend the blessing of the new St. James Chapel in the newly renovated Diocesan Pastoral Center that my organization built and renovated -  and hand out the toys we have collected for two of the orphanages. I will begin trip #8 by visiting my third island in the chain, so as to prepare for our kid’s computer camp that we had to postpone last June because our 15 computers did not arrive in time and our volunteer “kid’s computer teacher” from here in Louisville had to have foot surgery. God expects us to “invest” our talents and I hope to keep investing mine in new and creative ways till I can no longer physically do it! I hope to give others interesting opportunities to invest their talents as well to build up the church in a struggling part of the world, ether by supporting my program, by letting me go in both our names, or maybe even going down themselves someday if the niche is right for them. 

On this first annual Day of the Poor, this is my challenge to you! In your own way, in your own state of life, be that “good and faithful servant" who doubled God’s investment in him, not the idiot who buried it because he was stupid, lazy and scared. That type of investment pays huge dividends! I know, personally, that to be the case! 

LETTING GO AS PART OF LIFE

SOMETIMES IT CAN BE A GOOD THING

One of the hardest parts of retirement is the beginning of a series of letting go experiences.

As one who regularly visits nursing homes, I am keenly aware of how painful letting go can be for some people.

It includes letting go of one's professional identity, letting go of one's partner, letting go of one's drivers license, letting go of one's friends, letting go of one's privacy and independence, letting go of decision making, letting go of one's appearance, letting go of one's wardrobe, letting go of one's home and letting go of vacations.  It all seems like a rehearsal for the biggest letting go of all - letting go of one's very life.

I am always inspired by those who are "handling it" with grace and dignity. As Victor Frankl said, "The last of the human freedoms is the ability to choose one's response to any given situation." I believe that choosing to let go when one has to is a sign of an advanced spiritual life. 

As I write this , I got yet another notice that another of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth has died. It seems like there are one or two per week these days. I am thinking about the affect this has on all those Sisters down in Nazareth who have to go to so many funerals a month. I salute them for their ability to "let go" of so much. 

Parents have to let go of their children, married people have to let go of being single, adults have to let go of acting like children, sometimes people have to let go of their health and accept a debilitating disease and adults have to let go of their parents. 

Letting go of a fixed idea or opinion is very hard for many people, as if inflexibility is a virtue. "I have always thought that such and such is true."  "I would never do such and such." 

Failing to let go of old hurts, failed relationships and past unfairness is toxic to a healthy, enjoyable life today, yet so many cling to them as if not liking it enough will make things different.  

Letting go of the need to control those around them is a problem for many, especially parents of adult children and marriage partners. It is such a self-defeating, even abusive, behavior.  

Letting go of material possessions is not just a problem for full-blown hoarders. Many of us waste so much of our time sorting, stacking, storing and protecting the stuff that we will never use and never need. 

"Letting go" is hard sometimes, but other times I have found it to be very freeing. Still other times it opens the door to something much better than I could have imagined. 

As Jesus said, "Fear is useless. What is needed is trust."

                     

  

A FEW VIVID CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

  

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

Mary Hopkin

Remember how we laughed away the hours

And think of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend

We thought they'd never end

We'd sing and dance forever and a day

We'd live the life we choose

We'd fight and never lose

For we were young and sure to have our way

La la la la la la 

La la la la la la 

La la la la La la la la la la

  

THE WORLD WAS ALL OURS

That's me, maybe nine years old, on the left, eating a roasted marshmallow, with a bunch of boys who regularly played together on Sunday afternoons after church from the various small towns that made up St. Theresa Church. (Father Bob Ray is in that photo somewhere.) Our playground was the woods, farm ponds, barns and fields that went for miles in all directions.  Fences were not barriers, just something to be climbed over. We built fires, damned up streams and built forts without having to ask the owners of the land we occupied. About the only rules were you were not allowed to chase the cows, build fires in barns or bother the chicken house. You could pick their blackberries, pick up their fallen walnuts and hickory nuts, snare their wild rabbits or even cut one of their cedar trees down out of a fence row and drag it home for a Christmas tree. It was like we owned the world. We were "free range" kids in the real sense of the word. No one worried about us, no one checked on us and no one came looking for us, most of the time, till the sun was going down or it was time for dinner. 

It was not uncommon for us to swim in nasty farm ponds with green scum growing at one end and cowing standing in the water at the other end doing their business in the same water. I don't remember anyone getting a water-borne illness. 

During the summer at least, we went barefoot most of the time, walking over gravel, around broken bottles and over nails.  It seldom happened, less often than it should, but there were episodes of cut feet and nail punctures that were treated with home remedies - a touch or two from the iodine bottle and ripped white rag bandages. Even at that, we usually got up, carried on and limped around on our heels until it stopped hurting. 

EATING UP THE PROFIT

Picking blackberries was an August tradition for several reasons. That was when they were ready to pick. Our mother made most of her jelly from blackberries because few people had enough concord grape vines to share their produce. Blackberries, on the other hand were plentiful because they grew wild in ditches and ravines and fence rows - anywhere birds roosted to deposit the seeds. My mother demanded an annual quota for making jelly. After that quota was met, we could pick them and sell them to our neighbors for cash. It was about the only way to earn money to spend at the annual  St. Theresa Church picnic in August. It seemed what we earned in a couple of weeks of black berry picking could be spent in a couple of minutes at the picnic.

I remember one tragedy in particular. I have never really gotten over it to this day. I can still feel the disappointment I felt that day in my body. I had found a huge patch with an abundance of larger than usual blackberries. You could pick them by the hands full, rather one at a time as we did usually. In a few hours, I had a five gallon bucket, worth in those days about $3.00 at $.60 a gallon. It was a fortune for a few hours of work. I was picking more to round it off, only to turn around to see a huge cow with its head in the bucket wolfing them down almost to the bottom in seconds, leaving only a small trace of crush blackberries covered in cow slobber. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my early childhood. 

LITERALLY SPEAKING 

The worst spanking I ever got when I was a child growing up in Rhodelia was over a bunch of apples. I might have been 5 or 6 years old. Junius Greenwell, our neighbor, had a big apple tree in the field next to his house. When they were ripe, we asked him if we could have some of them. He said, “Yes, of course, take all you want!”  As children, we unfortunately took him literally. We rolled a fifty-five gallons drum up to the tree and stripped it of its apples, without the faintest idea of how we would get it home or what we would do with all those apples.

The short of it was, Junius Greenwell was extremely upset and told my Dad when he got home from work.  Probably overly tired, my Dad went into a rage and spanked all of us kids. His words were similar to these, “Since I don’t know who is guilty and who is not, you’re all going to get it.” And so we did! As far as I know, that was my first experience of seeing the innocent punished for guilt by association.

MY FIRST CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE

About 1953, an old broken votive stand from one of the side altars was thrown into the dump behind the church. I guess it was too far gone to repair. The dump was a great place for my brother, Gary, and I to go "treasure hunting." I was 9 years old and he was 8. One day we came across this discarded votive candle stand. I had a big stick in my hand so I gave it a big whack. All of a sudden, coins started flowing out of it like some kind of heavenly slot machine. There was so many coins in it that it didn't rattle when it was thrown out, so nobody bothered to check its contents.

When we regained our composure, we gathered it all up a bag or box, took it home and hid it till we could process this moral dilemma.

After a day obsessing over it, and knowing we would get caught if people saw us spending a lot of suspicious cash in that small town, we decided that we would take our chances and take it to Father Johnson in hopes that he would let us keep it. Bad idea! He gave us a quarter each and sent us home! Childhood lesson learned! Crime may not pay, but sometimes honesty doesn't pay much either! 

As much as it hurt, Father Johnson was right, the money did not belong to him or us, but to the parish!

 A SUMMER TRAGEDY

In the summer of 1959, I was barely 15 years old. It was my second summer home from high school seminary. In a town of 27 people, there wasn’t much to do on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, except go swimming in a pond on one of my father’s farms. That day, there were four of us boys about the same age: me, my brother Gary, John Paul Manning and his brother Joe-Joe. We walked about three miles to the pond. None of us knew how to swim all that well, so we had agreed just to play together a few feet from the shore. 

For some unknown reason, Joe-Joe decided to swim across the pond alone. Distracted by each other, the rest of us didn’t even realize that he had done this, until we heard his cries for help from across the pond. We tried our best to get to him, but the short of it was, he drowned right in front of our eyes. I can still feel the tiredness in my arms, the struggle to keep from drowning myself, his panic stricken eyes staring right at me and our inability to reach him before he went down for the last time. 

He was thrashing about, wildly, trying to keep from drowning. The sad thing was, if he had done the opposite, if he had only relaxed and let himself float, we could have grabbed him and pulled him, or he could have floated, to safety. The more he tried to save his life by thrashing about wildly, the closer to death he came. If he had just quit trying to save his life, he might have saved it. 

PRACTICING FOR THE MOOLEYVILLE DERBY?

One of my lazy Sunday afternoons on one of Father Bob Ray's horses.  He lived on a farm near Mooleyville, while I lived a few mile bicycle ride away in Rhodelia.  Father Ray and I share three common nephews. His brother Bob is married to my sister Kaye. Their son Todd and his wife Amy built their house on the very spot where the horse is standing. They are raising their family on the old Joe Ray Place.  

I WAS DESTINED TO BE OUTSTANDING IN MY FIELD. 

My very favorite childhood photo outstanding in my field. 

FALLING LEAVES REMIND US THAT DEATH IS PART OF LIFE

The "great mystery" unfolding in front of my porch, looking out at Eastern Parkway.



SUMMER



FALL




WINTER


 





There is summer, fall and winter. Then after winter comes spring!
New life again!

LOOKS LIKE SANTA WILL BE DELAYED

IF THINGS CHANGE, WE WILL LET YOU KNOW!

My very close friend and fellow volunteer in the islands, Fergal Redmond,  is home in Ireland for a scheduled visit before Christmas. He was scheduled to return to the islands December 1, in plenty of time to be Santa again when we distribute the toys we shipped down a couple of weeks ago. 

Unfortunately, he is dealing with an unforeseen health situation requiring some tests and certainly a change of schedule at the very least. 

He has become a dear friend and my closest partner in the island mission work in which I have become involved. Please pray for a speedy recovery. They need him. I need him. He needs to continue his ministry. 

He is extremely dedicated! In the picture above, he is actually doing island business on his ipad in the hospital canteen in Ireland. He was doing island related business in the airports on his way home as well. He, like me, is hooked on his retirement ministry. We never quit thinking about SVG. 

IN LIGHT OF THIS PROBABLE DELAY
THE SHOW MUST GO ON

If Fergal is delayed in Ireland, as is probable, I know he would not want to disappoint the kids in the islands. Therefore, I have been thinking of a PLAN B just in case, while still praying for his speedy return. 

No one can take Santa's place. I would not dare put on Santa's uniform in his absence. Therefore, I will still go down on schedule, and if Santa cannot be there, I will hand out the toys in his name at the St. Benedict Home and the Bread of Life Home, serving as as his pathetic elf assistant.
Santa made it clear. He plans to be there next Christmas for sure.  God help us if the elf were to get sick too!




I know he reads my blog, so I hope this post brings him a chuckle in this unforseen situation.  

ON BEING PREPARED

Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Matthew 25:1-13

Every year or two, I get a letter from the Priest Personnel Office telling me to update my funeral plans. They want to know, among other things, where my will is, where I want to be buried, what readings I want read, what music I want sung and who I wanted to preach and preside at my funeral Mass.

Many years I start to fill it out, but finally lay it aside. Often. I just can’t get into it. Since not doing it could put both the diocese and my family in a bind someday, they usually send a reminder insisting that I fill it out and send it in. I usually get it done, but I guess I’m a little like Woody Allen who once said, “I know everybody dies, but I’m still hoping an exception will be made in my case.”

As we wind down another liturgical year, the church asks us to think about death and entering the kingdom of God. We will be hearing some parables over the next three weekends that will challenge us to make plans for “the end of what we know here” and “the beginning of what we can’t even imagine there,” even though we don’t know the day or the hour.

Today we have the first of three such parables. In today’s parable, Jesus tells a colorful little story about ten virgins waiting for a bridegroom to arrive for his wedding. It has some important things to teach us how to wait for his return at the end of time and the beginning of the wedding feast of heaven.

This little story is very much based on everyday reality. Things like this really happened at weddings back then and they happen even to this day in the middle-east. Weddings receptions were nothing like our cake and punch receptions, they were week-long blow-outs. To be invited was a great honor and a good time would have been had by all! Remember the marriage feast at Cana when Jesus turned the water into wine?  The wedding party ran out of wine probably on the fourth or fifth day – and it was at that point that Jesus created 150 more gallons of wine!

When a wedding was announced, no precise date or time of day was given, only that it was about to happen. Couples did not go away for “honeymoons,” they stayed at home and kept “open house” for a week of partying. People had to be prepared to join the wedding procession whenever the bridegroom chose to show up for the wedding. It could be anytime, day or night; that day, the next day and in a week or two. Once he started toward his house, all the invited guests fell into line and followed him to his house where the ceremony took place. If he decided to begin the wedding procession at night, you had to be ready because it was illegal to be in the streets without a lighted lamp. Once the bridegroom and his guests came through the streets and entered his house, the door was shut and late-comers were not admitted.

In this story, five virgins brought extra oil for their lamps in case the groom were to be delayed, while five were not prepared for such an eventuality. The bridegroom took his time in coming and the five foolish virgins were “caught off guard,” so to speak. Having run out of oil, they had to wait till morning to go for more. In the meantime, the wedding party reached the house and the door was barred. As a result of their procrastination, they missed one hell of a party! What’s the message? If you snooze, you lose!

The first thing this parable teaches us is that the end is going to be wonderful for those who are ready for it. Even though we claim every Sunday in the prayer after the Our Father that we “wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ,” most of us still believe that the end will be about sadness and loss, doom and gloom. Not so! “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it even dawned on us the great things God has in store for those who love him.”

The second thing this parable teaches us is that when it comes to the great “wedding feast of heaven,” living in readiness, waiting in joyful hope, makes a lot more sense than running around and trying to get ready at the last minute, with the risk of missing out altogether.

The more I read these parables, the more I believe that “hell” is the realization that we have missed out of the greatest opportunity in the universe and it was all our own fault.  It may not be a matter of God punishing us or getting even with us for a wasted life, but a matter of us snoozing and losing!  Just as the whole town was invited to first century weddings, we are all invited to the great wedding feast of heaven. It’s up to us to miss the boat. If we were to put in today’s language, everyone of us has been given a free, winning Powerball ticket for the zillion dollar drawing and some of us will misplace it out of carelessness and inattention. Can you imagine what it would be like to know the rest of your life that you threw away a $100,000,000 lottery ticket because you were careless and weren’t paying attention? Can you imagine missing something, even more wonderful, so wonderful that human beings can’t even begin to imagine it? That “something wonderful” is the “eternal life” that Jesus offers each one of us! 

The third thing this parable tells us, just as the others like it, is that we do not know, nor can we predict, the day or the hour. I get so tired of those TV evangelists who claim to be able to de-code the so-called “prophecies” about the “end time.”  Jesus said, “Do not listen to them and do not follow them.” Jesus is clear: we must live in readiness, not look for signs and portents so that we can predict the end and “get ready.”  The only reason to try to predict the end, is to live anyway we want and then try to get ready right before the bell sounds. Forget it! You can’t predict it. The only thing you can do is live in readiness with your lamps lit, your belt around your waist and your feet shod, as the scriptures so poetically puts it.  Like a pregnant woman with a bag packed ready for the trip to the hospital, no matter what time of the day the labor pains hit, we Christians are called to live with our bags packed. 

We all like to think that we will all die after a long illness when we are old, but that may not happen. We may die today, tomorrow, next month or years and years from now. We don’t know, so we must live in readiness so that we will not miss out on the most incredible party known to mankind. Living in readiness does not mean that we are morbidly preoccupied with death, it means to live life to the full every day, to be the very best human being we can be, to love God with all our minds, hearts and souls and our neighbors as ourselves. If we live that way, then it doesn’t matter when the end will come, we will be prepared! Yes, we might be asked to prepare our funerals, but that is not nearly as important as planning our life!