ANOTHER POWER OUTAGE?

 

THE VISIBILITY AND VULNERABILITY OF WRITING AS A HOBBY!

 

This coming August 16th, I will have been blogging 3-4 times a week for the last 8 years! How many "posts" have I composed? There have been a total of 1,600 so far! How many times have people looked at them? There have been 326,500 "views" from several different countries so far! 

I wrote 50 columns a year for 15 years for our diocesan weekly paper, The Record. I have published 37 books and written thousands of homilies, retreat talks, pamphlets and class presentations.  I guess that alone qualifies for "a lot of writing!" 

While quite a few people have given me some positive feedback, and several have told me how much my material has helped them, at least one of my brother priests was not so ready to heap praise on me. Most of them never mention my writing efforts, but this one said about me in front of several other brother priests where I could hear it, "Oh, that Knott! He's never had a thought that he hasn't published!" Maybe he's right? After all, I do a lot of writing. I usually write something every day! 

My weekly column in The Record was called "An Encouraging Word." I carried that name over when I started my blog. My books are published under the name of Sophronismos Press. The Greek word "sophronismos" is an almost untranslatable word for "knowing what to do in the face of panic" or "knowing how to keep your cool." 

I chose the name "An Encouraging Word" because I deliberately try to look for goodness to affirm in people as I write, rather than look for their weaknesses and sins to condemn. I have learned that putting one's thoughts "out there" in writing exposes oneself to the world for possible judgement so I decided to publish my books under the name "sophronismos" because you have to be able to "keep your cool" when you expose yourself to people who can evaluate, attack and judge you. As they say, "if you stick your neck out, there is always somebody willing to take a swipe!" 

I keep writing because I enjoy writing and because of the mostly positive feedback I get. I try not to worry about the possible judgment and ridicule behind my back. I know it's "insane" to believe that everybody should like me or like what I do! I also understand that "visibility can lead to vulnerability." Maybe I do write "too much," but maybe the quote below is much truer than "he's never had a thought he hasn't published!" 

Either way, for my own good, I will probably continue to write even if the day comes when no one reads what I write! As Flannery O'Connor said, "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."

 

 

WHAT DID HE SAY? I DIDN'T CATCH THAT!

 

DYING OF THIRST

Whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst.

John 4:14

On the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus invited us to conversion of life by going to the desert. The desert is a place devoid of distractions, a place to gain insight. On the second Sunday of Lent, Jesus invited us to go up the mountain with him. Mountains are places where you can go to gain perspective, to get the big picture. From a mountaintop you can see into the distance – where you’ve been, where you are and where you are headed. On the third Sunday of Lent, Jesus invites us to go to the well, a place one goes to quench one’s thirst. 

In many ways, people today are thirsty, restless and looking for meaning. The Prophet Haggai, about 520 years before Christ, described our culture quite well when he wrote, “You have sown much, but have brought in little; you have eaten, but have not been satisfied; you have drunk, but not been exhilarated; have clothed yourselves, but not been warmed; and you have earned wages for a bag with holes in it.” We “have it all” on one hand and yet we are still not satisfied on the other. We are constantly “craving” for more!

It has been suggested that our consumer culture has spawned a new climate of thirstiness and restlessness. The experts call it ‘churn,’ using the word to describe our short attention span and our ‘what’s next’ attitude. This restlessness is seen in a consuming lust for endless distractions and amusements. This restlessness is being fed, some believe, by the overstimulation and excessive exposure to violent movies, fast-paced videos, computers and cell-phones, loud hard-wired music and over-scheduling. All these together exacerbate agitation, restlessness and hyperactivity.

What the world seems to be craving right now is what Jesus called “rest for one’s soul.” He said on one occasion, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus offers “rest” to those who are “worn out” in their search for “meaning.”

In this gospel, we meet a wonderful woman who is an example of all that! Jesus meets this woman at a well. She is tired - tired to the bone. She is physically tired - tired of being thirsty and having to constantly draw water and carry it long distances. She lived a half mile away and the well was over 100 feet deep. She was emotionally tired - tired of trying to find satisfying relationships in her life. She had been “looking for love in all the wrong places,” as the country song goes. She had been married five times. She was tired of being discriminated against by others. Jews hated Samaritans like her and women in general were considered socially inferior. She was spiritually tired – tired of a burdensome religion that was not really satisfying. At the well, she meets Jesus and pours out her heart to him and he, in turn, gives her “living water” and “rest for her soul” in the form of respect, acceptance and love. 

Fellow seekers, all of us are like this woman in some degree. We all have a void in our lives that we try to fill. Some of us strive frantically our whole lives to fill that void by gaining material things, gaining stature, gaining status, gaining fame, finding the perfect relationship and on and on. The fact of the matter is we will never fill that void with “things or stuff” because that void was put there for a specific purpose. We have a built-in missing piece – a missing piece given to us by God himself.

What is the purpose of that void? What is that missing piece? It is the place where God belongs! Only God can fill that hole. Saint Augustine of Hippo described it best when he said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!” 

It’s as if we are all running around with a hole in our souls that we are desperately trying to fill. The truth of the matter is that only God can fill it, and yet we try our best to fill it with unsatisfying distractions, amusements, relationships and material things. Lent is a time to stop by the “well” for “living waters” and find “rest” in God.

The best meditation for this gospel could be Francis Thompson’s famous poem “The Hound of Heaven” where God is pictured as a hound pursuing us throughout our lives that we are trying to run away from! “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him…”

I have always loved the words of Celie in the movie “The Color Purple.” Celie feels that there is a great big a hole in her life. She is more than a bit aggravated by the feeling of God’s absence in her life – what she refers to as God “just sitting up there glorifying in being deef.” She speaks for many people today when she says, “It ain’t easy trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there trying to do without him is a strain.” Those who experience the strain of trying to “do without God” will no doubt feel a hole in their souls, a hunger and thirst that nothing seems to satisfy. Yes! Lent is good time to re-connect with God after "trying to do without him.”

So far this Lent, Jesus has taken us to the desert, to the mountain and to the well so that he might lead us to conversion of life, a life that is full and satisfying, a life that includes him!

 

 

WHY DO I THINK THIS IS OUTRAGEOUSLY FUNNY?

 I just can't quit laughing when I look at this cartoon! 

THE BRICK WALL OF A SETTLED POINT OF VIEW

The whole audience in the synagogue was filled with

indignation. They rose up and expelled Jesus from the

town, leading him to the brow of the hill, intending

to hurl him over the edge.

Luke 4:24-30

 

Talking about a homily gone bad! As a preacher, this story puts the fear of God into me every time I read it. The moral of this story might be: preaching can be hazardous to your health!   

 

What we have here is the last half of a longer story. To get the full impact you need to know what goes before.  Jesus is home in the Nazareth synagogue. It is the Sabbath. He is asked to read a passage from Isaiah and give the homily.   

 

Things go well at first. He had their undivided attention. They seem to be expecting something out of the ordinary. It says “their eyes were fixed on him.”  Things were going very well - at least as long as he said things they wanted to hear, at least as long as he said things they agreed with. “All present” it says, “spoke favorably of him; they marveled at the discourse which came from his lips.”  

 

Here is where it starts turning ugly. Jesus starts saying things they didn’t want to hear, things they didn’t agree with. He begins to challenge their religious boundaries by giving two examples of God’s generous love for Gentiles. For his audience, this was heresy, pure and simple. “What do you mean by saying God loves Gentile scum? We are God’s chosen people and we have been taught all our lives that his love is restricted to us! Gentiles are destined for the fires of hell! We all know that and so should you!” 

  

At this point in Jesus’ homily, the whole audience, were are told, was filled with indignation. His own home town synagogue rose up, dragged him out of the pulpit, ran him out of town and even tried to throw him over a cliff. Now, that is a homilist worst nightmare!   

 

This message and this indignation would be repeated throughout Jesus’ ministry. The people of Nazareth, and the people who thought like them, were the all-day vineyard workers who resented the full day’s pay that the vineyard owner gave to those who arrived right before quitting time. They were the older son, who resented the fathers fawning over his prodigal brother. They were the self-righteous who condemned Jesus to death for being so generous with God’s love. “This man welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” This last crowd didn’t just drag him out of a pulpit and try to throw him over a cliff, they flogged and crucified him for his “outrageous liberal theology.”  

 

This text is very personal to me.  As pastor of our cathedral, I specialized in reaching out to marginalized and disaffected Catholics. Like Jesus, I had the honor of being accused of “welcoming sinners and eating with them.” Because of that, I was often the target of a small group of right-wing Catholics. I had a knife pulled on me over a homily that welcomed fallen away Catholics back to the church and I was featured prominently in their hate-filled and anonymous white paper that circulated around the city of Louisville.  I was loved by many and hated by some.

 

The gospel is powerful stuff and serious business. Preaching the gospel can bring you great blessings or get you killed. As Father Polycarp Sherwood, one of my St. Meinrad professors, used to tell us: “The gospel is a two-edged sword. It settles the unsettled and unsettles the settled.” In other words, he wanted to remind us that those whose lives are a mess, those who are on the margins of the church, those with nothing more to lose will find comfort in the words of the gospel. On the other hand, he wanted to remind us that those who have the world and the church by the tail, those who have a lot to lose, will be threatened by it. If they love the message of the gospel, they will love the messenger. If they are threatened by the gospel message, they will attack, or even try to kill, the messenger. On many Sundays as a pastor, I was met at the door by two basic groups: those who would marvel at the words that came from my lips and those who wanted to rip my lips off!  Besides Jesus, remember Jeremiah suffered the same rejection! They threw him into an empty, muddy cistern and left him there to die! 

 

Preaching can be hazardous to your health, but in the end, you can believe this: those who tell you what you want to hear are not necessarily your friends and those who tell you what you don’t want to hear are not necessarily your enemies. Sometimes medicine soothes and sometimes it stings. 

 

As a preacher, I have always tried to remember that if I get rejected, I hope I get rejected for preaching the gospel, not just get rejected for my own ignorance, stupidity and foolhardiness.