ON BEING "WONDERFUL" AT EIGHTY-ONE

MY YOUNGEST BROTHER, MARK, GAVE ME A NEW NICKNAME 

just in time for my 81st birthday today 

APRIL 28, 1944

My brother, Mark, gave me the nickname "Father Wonderful" because he was getting tired of running into people who were always telling him how "wonderful" I was! He even had the sign (over my shoulder in the picture above) made for me as a gift. I am just thankful he hasn't run into any of my enemies! I guess, then, I would be called "Father Knott So Hot!" 

I am reminded of my youngest sister who told me before she died that she was getting tired of people introducing her as "Father Knott's sister" as if she did not have a name and a life herself!  

For this reason, I worry about my three Ray nephews. My youngest sister, Kaye, was married to Father Bob Ray's brother, Richard Ray. That means our three nephews-in-common have two uncles who are priests! Sadly, they "get it" from both directions!  

 

DOUBT HAS ITS PLACE EVEN IN A STRONG FAITH

     

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the

nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

John 20:19-31

One of the things that happens when you read the Bible on a regular basis, like I am required to do, is that even familiar passages are always speaking to you in new ways. It happened again a couple of years ago when I read a text from the gospel (Matthew 28:16-20), that I had read many times. It was the story after the resurrection and right before Jesus' ascension into heaven. That was the first time I noticed the words, “When the eleven remaining disciples saw Jesus after his resurrection, they worshiped even as they doubted.”

“They worshiped Jesus even when they doubted?” That’s pretty much the opposite of what we do. When we doubt, we quit worshiping. We assume that worshiping is only for believers. People, in our experience, who doubt quit worshiping! So why would these disciples worship Jesus, if they had doubts about Him? Why would the writer even include their doubts in the story?

The first thing many people assume about faith is that doubt is the opposite of faith. Not true! Honest doubt is not the opposite of faith. There is faith even in honest doubt.  Honest doubt is actually an integral part of faith. When Matthew tells us that the disciples “worshipped even when they doubted,” he wants us to know this basic principle: honest doubt was part of the faith, even for those who were closest to Jesus.

The Easter stories that we have been reading are a mixture of faith and doubt. The disciples are presented as very skeptical about Mary Magdalen’s report about seeing Jesus alive on that first Easter Sunday. Thomas, flat-out refused to believe until he saw Jesus with his own eyes and touched Jesus with his own hands.  On the road to Emmaus, other disciples were astounded by the report of Jesus being seen alive and did not recognize him walking right beside them on the road. Even after many reports, even after having seen him themselves, they worshipped, even as they doubted. Yes, the message is simple: faith is never black and white, all or nothing, but always mixed with a good measure of healthy doubt.  Doubt does not necessarily mean you don’t have faith. Doubt probably means that you do have faith!

“They worshiped, even as they doubted.”  The bigger question than whether doubt is part of faith, is what do you do when you doubt. Many, when they doubt, think they should absent themselves from prayer and worship until faith returns or becomes strong again. They say to themselves, “It is hypocritical for me to pretend to believe when I really don’t believe. When I start believing again, when my faith is strong again, then it will make sense for me to start praying and worshipping again.” That may sound good, even reasonable, but that’s not how it works! The story of the doubting St. Thomas has a lot to teach us. Thomas says in today's gospel, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Even in his doubt, Thomas did was pretty much the opposite of what we do when we have doubts. He kept going back to the community. When we doubt, we quit joining the community. We assume that joining the faith community is only for those who believe, for those without doubt. People, in our experience, who doubt quit joining the worshiping community! Not St. Thomas! He kept joining them, even when he doubted, until he believed!

As the doubting disciples teach us today, what really works is for us to worship even when we doubt, to worship until we believe.  Like a coal, pulled away from a heap of burning coals, that soon loses its heat, a doubter separated from the community of believers soon loses even more of his faith. A faith community strengthens faith and a doubting community strengthens doubt.

“They worshipped, even as they doubted.”  This may be yet another version of the great truth: “fake it till you make it.” Even though Alcoholics Anonymous made that idea famous, it actually goes back to the ancient Roman poet, Ovid who said, “Pretend to what is not, and then you’ll become in truth, what you are pretending to be.”  The great philosopher William James put it this way, “Act as if and the mind will produce your desire.” The idea is, if you take something that feels impossible, or at least completely unnatural, and pretend that it is the easiest, most natural things on the world for you to be doing, eventually, it will become as easy as you have been pretending it to be!

I practice this often in my own life. (1) As many of you know from me talking about my history, I grew up pretty much crippled by bashfulness. Bashful people find it painful to be in public situations. To cope, they are driven to avoid public situations as much as possible. This is a sure way to keep bashfulness going. The solution is to get out in public as much as possible, faking confidence, until one day you wake up and find out that you are no longer bashful.  The only way out of the fear of public speaking is to “fake it till you make it,” to do public speaking until you are no longer afraid to speak in front of crowds.  You cannot think your way out of bashfulness, you have to act your way out of bashfulness. (2) When I was sent against my will to southeastern Kentucky as a newly ordained priest, somehow I was able to open my mind to “faking it till I made it.” I decided, since I did not get what I wanted, I would act as if I wanted what I got until I was able to really want what I got. It worked. Those ten years were wonderful years in many, many ways. I “acted as if” it was a great assignment until it actually became a great assignment.        

"They worshiped, even as they doubted.”  My friends, all of us have a good measure of doubt, even as we believe. The secret to making sure that the scales do not tip too far to the doubt side, is to keep joining the community like St. Thomas, to act as if we believe until we believe, to pray our way out of doubt, to worship until we “feel like worshiping.” So, when you are tempted to drop out because “I don’t get anything out of it” or “I’m not into it today,” that is when you really need to get into it, that is when you really need to act as if you are getting something out of it until you do get something out of it.  Yes, even believers sometimes have to “fake it till they make it.”   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #17

 

 MY YEARS AS A "WALTON" IN THE LATE 1940s AND EARLY 1950s

For years growing up, especially when I came to Louisville at age 14 to start my seminary training to be a priest, I was embarrassed about my humble beginnings. Even though the TV series didn't start till 1972 when I was 28 years old and already ordained 2 years, watching it was like reliving my childhood years. 

I grew up in an environment almost like the Walton Family. My father and grandfather owned a sawmill. We lived across the road from my grandparents and went in and out of both houses like we lived together. I had 6 siblings (later 7). We lived next door to the country store with its Post Office inside and one gas pump outside. We rode to church in a truck (in good weather on the back of the truck). A school bus picked us up, as well as a bunch of other kids, in front of our house next to the store.  My mother hand-made my sisters' dresses and sometimes the boys' shorts in the summer. I remember my mother making me a pair of shorts out of one one leg of my father's pants and my brother Gary a pair out of the other leg of his pants. Otherwise, we boys wore overalls and went shoeless in the summer. We got clothes at Christmas, Easter and when school started. Otherwise, we wore hand-me-downs clothes from our relatives and neighbors. 

At the country store, people tended to assemble around the pot-bellied stove to wait for the mail man. Besides mail, people would catch rides with him, he would bring crates of live chicks and deliver a little gossip in the process. The store carried everything from groceries to shoes, feed for livestock and even a few gift items inside a glass case. You could get gas for your tractor, truck or car (ethel or regular) or kerosene for your lamps. They would even fix you a sandwich to go with your chips (cheddar cheese, bologna, liver cheese, pimento loaf, pickled bologna  or ham. As far as fruit, they would regularly have oranges and bananas. You could sell your eggs there or get 2 cents return for you empty pop bottles. 

We used an outhouse all year round like the rest of our neighbors. We carried water to the house from a well outback and took baths in metal laundry tubs. Bath water was heated, meals were prepared and food was canned on kitchen woodstoves. In the summer, wash tubs were filled with water in the morning to heat up in the sun and 1-2 kids at a time took a bath outdoors. 

In the third grade, I remember being rushed to St. Joseph Infirmary in Louisville because I was passing blood though my kidneys caused by swollen tonsils, followed by a trip to Brandenburg for a tonsillectomy in "surgery room" of the doctor's office. There, I was sedated with "ether."

Because I was little and my father drove a truck and helped his father with the sawmill, we were free to play in the woods all day without supervision as long as we came home "for dinner." One summer day, my sister and I got the bright idea to paint the steps going upstairs with melting lard and huge brushes. I can still remember seeing my mother slipping and sliding trying to get to us for a spanking! 

On another occasion, some of us kids rolled an empty 50 gallon barrel to our neighbors house after asking if we could have "some apples." "Of course, take all you want," he said not seeing that we came with a 50 gallon barrel. We stripped his tree of apples and then realized we had no way to get it home. As my father prepared to give us the worst spanking of our lives, I can still remember us pleading, "He said we could take all we wanted!

Because my aunt won a gift certificate for $100.00 off the cost of a TV set, we were the first in our little town to get a TV. It had a tiny screen, a black and white picture that came in and went out constantly. It was not the "wonder of wonders" we expected. There were two stations to choose from, some pretty crude productions and we had little time to watch it. I still remember the first program I saw on TV. It was a comedy and a woman was ironing some angel costume wings. 

When I was in the 6th grade, we moved to our "new," but "much smaller house" on the edge of Rhodelia. My father gave up the sawmill business and started Knott's Supply, a building material business, and bought a farm. Our days of playing ended and endless days of loading concrete blocks, dry wall, lumber, feeding pigs and chasing cattle began. 

Even then, I knew I was destined for "something different" because I had already started growing into becoming a "John Boy Walton," the first in the family to go to college and to become a writer! At 14 years old, I made my move. I begged my pastor and my family to "let me" go to the seminary in Louisville.  I am convinced that they "let me go" because they thought it was just a phase that I would soon outgrow. As hard as it was to survive those year's of "culture shock," I did manage to survive with God's help. What they should have known is the truth that the worst thing you can do is to tell a Knott that he can't do something! He'll be more determined than ever to prove you wrong! 

 

DOING YOURSELF A FAVOR

   

A wound can be bandaged and an insult forgiven.

Sirach 27:21 

I read that Amazon.com lists more that 165,000 books on the topic of forgiveness. That’s more than 32,000 more than on sexuality. What does that tell us about the human heart and what it hungers for most?

You haven’t experienced freedom unless you have experienced the freedom that comes when you let go of resentments that sear your soul, preoccupy your thoughts and drain your strength. Yet, there are so many people who hug their hurts and nurse their wounds in an all-consuming preoccupation because they cannot “let go.”

When they refuse to forgive, they choose to be “right” over being free. Catherine Ponder said it best when she said, “When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to forgiveness is to believe that it is a favor one does for the one who has wronged them. It was Suzanne Somers who said it best when she said, “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”

Lewis B. Smedes said it this way: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” Alan Paton pointed out, “When deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.”

Another mistake people make when it comes to forgiveness is to believe that forgiveness is a sign of weakness and spinelessness if you don’t “stand up for yourself.” Actually, as Mohandas Gandhi pointed out, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

 The refusal to forgive keeps one imprisoned in the past. Paul Boese put it this way: “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said, “Without forgiveness, there is no future.” Forgiveness is basically a choice to have a future over a past.

The biggest obstacle of all to forgiveness is the belief that the one who wrongs you needs to apologize, make amends and show evidence of change. While that is certainly part of justice, it is not essential.

Forgiveness is most powerful when it is unilateral and unconditional. Unilateral and unconditional forgiveness is a sign of ultimate strength, because when you forgive unilaterally, you take charge of your situation and refuse to be someone else’s victim any longer.

I have been a priest for 55 years. I can honestly say that the most spiritual experience of my life was not the day I was ordained, not the day I said my first Mass, baptized my first baby, married my first couple, anointed my own mother before she died or presided at my first funeral. The most spiritual experience of my life was the day I decided consciously to forgive someone who had wronged me over the years. I finally realized that taking offense is just as toxic as giving offense.

THE DESPERATELY NEEDED VISION OF POPE FRANCIS

THANK YOU POPE FRANCIS! MAY YOU REST IN THE PEACE OF CHRIST! 

 

A BREAKDOWN BEFORE A BREAKTHROUGH

 

They have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don’t know where they put him.

John 20:9

Obviously, none of Jesus’ friends expected him to rise from the dead. In fact, they all assumed the grave had been robbed and the body had been snatched. Once the news gets out that the body was missing, everybody in today’s gospel runs around like chickens with their heads cut off! The word “ran” is used three times in this one story. It sounds like a typical Easter Sunday morning at our small house when I was growing up in a family of eight - chaos as far as the eye could see! If you are here with a bunch of kids you got ready for church today, you know what I mean! 

Mary Magdalen got there first, not because she expected Jesus to rise and wanted to be there when it happened, but because she wanted to do what was traditional to do after the burial of a loved one. It was customary to visit the tomb of loved ones for three days after the body had been laid to rest. It was believed that for three days the spirit of the dead person hovered around the tomb, but then it departed because the body had become unrecognizable through decay in that hot climate. 

Jesus had died on Friday. By religious law, Mary Magdalen would not have been allowed to travel on Saturday, the Sabbath. That meant she had to wait till Sunday morning before she could make her first visit. She couldn’t wait till the sun came up so she got there before dawn. When she arrived at the tomb, she was shocked to find that the stone had been rolled back and the body was missing! She concluded that the grave had been robbed so she ran back to town and got Peter and John out of bed. All three ran back to the tomb together. John, being younger, outran Peter and got there first, with Peter soon following out of breath.  Before Mary Magdalen could catch up with them on her way back to the empty tomb, Peter and John ran past her on their way back to town to tell the others.

One by one, his disciples began to believe that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead, beginning with John and ending with Thomas. From their mouths to others’ ears, from their mouths to others’ ears, from their mouths to others’ ears, this story has been passed down to us some 2,000 years later and here we are gathered today to celebrate what we have just heard in St. John's account of the resurrection!

Yes, this is the Easter story, but what does it mean and what does it have to do with us?

The point of Easter is not simply that life is sometimes troubling and difficult but that, by its very design, it needs to be troubling and difficult. This is because it is not ease but affliction that enables us to develop our very best. Those who grow the most are simply the ones who have weathered the most, endured the most, and struggled the most. Because such trials have been borne in the right spirit, they have been strengthened, enriched, and deepened the most by it. Think about any of the heroes and heroines of the faith, and one will always identify persons for whom hardship, sacrifice, and pain are no strangers. All breakthroughs are usually proceeded by a big breakdown. No pain, no gain! No cross, no crown! 

In short, we must view this death and resurrection not merely as just another historical event from the distant past, but as a life-giving way of living today. We are not here today to celebrate this death and resurrection as an event that just happened once in history, but death and resurrection as a way of living our lives today.

People in recovery programs understand death and resurrection as a way of life. People who have unilaterally forgiven their enemies understand death and resurrection as a way of life. Parents who have had to let go of their children and see them thrive, understand death and resurrection as a way of life. Anybody who has lost a job, only to find a better one understands death and resurrection as a way of life. Anyone who has lost a spouse, only to find another chance at love, understands death and resurrection as a way of life.

This Easter is special to me personally. Several times in the last 55 years of priesthood, I have gone from one of the worst years of priesthood to one of the best. The year I retired, I was in the pits. I knew I was in the pits, but I also knew in my guts that, if I would just hang in there, things would get better – and they did, in spades! It has happened at least three times just since I retired. For me, my breakdowns have always preceded the beginning of yet another amazing breakthrough! I am not that special! Whatever breakdown you are going through right now, with an Easter faith, could be a breakthrough for you as well! You can bet on it!

I always remember that engineer in Switzerland who designed a great tunnel between Switzerland and Austria. I have told the story often because it is so appropriate for today. He proposed they dig from both ends and meet in the middle, a risky method. When the day came when diggers were supposed to meet but didn’t, he killed himself thinking that he had made a great mistake. On the very day of his funeral, the workers broke through and the connection was perfect! He gave up one day too soon! An “Easter faith” means that you don’t give up, no matter how hopeless things seem to be at the moment. 

In a nutshell, we are here to celebrate a way-of-living, not just an historical event! By embracing difficulty, we can overcome it. After a lifetime of embracing difficulties and overcoming them, we can finally embrace our own deaths knowing that there is eternal life on the other side of that!  Just as Jesus was raised, we who believe in him will also be raised - to live with him and each other forever!