USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #43

 

GOOD NEWS FROM GOD'S "LOST AND FOUND" DEPARTMENT!

 

THE PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP

Gospel of Luke 

15:1-7

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT IDEA FOR "AN ENCOURAGING WORD" FANS

Hardly a week goes by that I don't run into someone who brings up to me that they were avid readers of my column, AN ENCOURAGING WORD, in our Archdiocesan weekly newspaper THE RECORD. I wrote weekly for fifteen years. 

Many people told me that they clipped, copied, saved, mailed  and taped them onto their refrigerators. In today's blogpost, I am reminding people that all fifteen years of those AN ENCOURAGING WORD columns are available online in three volumes through Amazon books. 

Maybe you would like to order a set to re-read for yourself or a fan you know as a Christmas present. If so, here is all the information you need to order the three-volume set in time for Christmas! Click on the link below to see all three volumes and how to order them.   

http://www.ronknottbooks.com/fortherecord.html

  

SOMETIMES A LITTLE BIT IS MORE THAN A WHOLE LOT!

 

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small                                                             coins worth a few cents.                                                              Mark 12:38-44

The closest thing today to the Temple in Jerusalem of Jesus’ day - at least in my experience - is a downtown cathedral. Just as the Temple in Jerusalem attracted a host of characters at the time of Jesus, most downtown cathedrals today attract a cross-section of humanity: millionaires and street people, tourists and residents, the non-religious, the marginally religious and religious fanatics. Some are possessed and some are merely obsessed. Like bees to honey, an important religious landmark, be it the Temple or a Cathedral, attracts a human circus. They come to p-r-a-y and to p-r-e-y. Some come to make contact with God and some come to make a few bucks by working the charity system.

For 14 years, from 1983-1997, I had the privilege of being the pastor of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville. From confessions that would curl your hair, to mental cases that would work your nerves, it was, by far, the most interesting pastoral assignment I have ever had, bar none! I had to deal with a strange man who had the urge to take off all his clothes to scare old ladies. I had to pull a drunk off the bishop’s throne. I had to wrestle a stalker to the floor who pulled a knife on me over a homily. I mistakenly called the cops on the archbishop. I have had a man drop dead during a wedding, babies pee on me during baptisms and altar servers vomit on me during Mass. I had to drag a screaming woman from the altar steps to the back door through a wide-eyed congregation, too frozen to move. I was panhandled and manhandled.

In my 14 years, I probably met at our Cathedral most of the types that Jesus met in the Jerusalem Temple, including the poor “widow woman” of today’s gospel. This woman taught me a very important lesson about priesthood.

I was running late for the noon mass. I was going to the back of the Cathedral for something when I was confronted by a “bag lady” coming at me, with both arms waving to get my attention. I was used to it, so used to it, that I thought I “had seen it all” when it came to “street people.” As soon as I spotted her, I just assumed that she wanted money. I had been down that road so many, many times. Before I could get my well-rehearsed “come back later” or “go see our social worker” speech out, she asked excitedly, “Father, where is the poor box? I want to make a donation!” At that she opened her dirty hand and there she clutched her gift of a few nickels and pennies for the “poor box.” I had stereotyped and judged her by her appearance. Her generous “widow’s mite” judged me!

This modern-day version of the “widow and her mite” taught this priest several lessons. (1) You never know what is going on inside the people, merely through external observation, so always “take off your shoes” and approach them as you would “holy ground.” There is nothing as dangerous as a judgmental, “know it all” priest, be he a young priest or an old priest. (2) As Jesus taught the Pharisees, some of the people may have the appearance of saints, but inside are like whitewashed tombs, while some of those who appear to you to be terrible sinners may just turn out to be living saints. “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” (3) Generosity has very little to do with the size of the gift. Many big givers give once in a while from their surplus and blow a horn when they make their gifts, but the ones who really keep parishes going are the many consistent little gifts from people who have to sacrifice to give. When I used to go to parishes to ask for funding for the home missions, I soon found out that I came home with more money when I went to “poor” parishes than when I went to the so called “wealthy” parishes.

In our first reading, the widow of Zarephath, who risked being generous when she herself was close to starvation, is also one of my Biblical heroes. The widow-woman, down to her last handful of meal and a few drops of oil, had to choose between feeding herself and her son or offering hospitality to a traveling holy man. Ignoring her own needs, she chose to be generous. She took that handful of meal and those few drops of oil and made a small cake and gave it to a stranger. For her radical generosity, God rewarded her with bread that never ran out the whole next year.

The woman today has an important lesson to teach us and that is: generosity is always rewarded, and often extravagantly! As Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl from Holland who was forced to live for two years in a secret attic by the Nazis, being caught and ending up dying in a prison camp, wrote during World War II, “No one has ever become poor by giving.” That's what she wrote, but that is what many women have taught me over my lifetime!

 

 

 

 

 

 

USEFUL WISDOM FOR 2024 #42

 THIS SONG HAS HELPED ME DURING TIMES OF DISAPPOINTMENT AND FEAR FOR 54 YEARS

 

 

 

THE 50TH JUBILEES OF SISTER MICHAEL AND SISTER GRACE

GIVEN AT ST. JOSEPH HOME FOR THE ELDERLY IN LOUISVILLE

October 30, 202

Sister Michael Anthony of Mary l.s.p. 

Sister Grace Mary of St. Paul l.s.p. 

"The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,

which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Matthew 13:44-52

Today, Jesus compares discovering the kingdom of God to stumbling onto a buried treasure. When I was 33 years old, six years ordained a priest, I had an experience of stumbling onto such a buried treasure - not money, gold nuggets or jewels, but a new understanding of what God is really like! I had an experience that opened my mind to a new way of understanding the Scriptures. Until then, I had listened to Scripture readings in school and every Sunday at church throughout my childhood. In seminary, I had heard Scripture being read many times a day, had listened to hundreds of homilies and had taken several Scripture classes. After seminary, I had been preaching for seven years as a deacon and priest at the time I had my mind-blowing spiritual experience. Until then, I thought I was beginning to understand the scriptures pretty well. I knew I had learned some things about Jesus, but the day of the experience that I want to share with you, I came to realize that I had learned a lot of facts about Jesus, but I really did not know Jesus all that well!

My mind was opened to understanding the scriptures in a new way during a vivid life-changing dream forty-seven years ago – a dream that I have mentioned several times in my preaching. In that dream I was on top of a small mountain. It had no trees or bushes or rocks. It had only very short green grass - very much like a golf green. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair and God was sitting in another one next to me. We were sitting side-by-side, in silence, facing the setting sun. Oddly enough. we were both smoking cheap King Edward cigars! I knew it was God, but I was afraid to look over. We just silently puffed on our cigars and watched the sun go down on the horizon. Finally, God leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Ron, isn’t this wonderful!”

I woke from the dream at that point with my world looking forever different to me. After that dream, the spiritual and psychological chains that had been holding me back melted away. I began to feel a lightness in my heart that I had never felt before. I realized the truth of that old saying, “you always find what you look for!” In Scripture, you can find justification for both compassion and cruelty, judgement and mercy! It depends on what you look for! After that dream, for the first time, I began to feel that it was OK to be me - just as I was! I began to fully understand what it meant to be “created in the image and likeness of God.” After that dream, instead of always obsessing about all those “sin" messages in the Bible, I started noticing all the “unconditional love" messages. I started to feel that I was that lost sheep that Jesus embraced and carried on his shoulders and that I was that prodigal son who made it home to an unexpected warm welcome. For the first time in my life, I started feeling that I was good enough for God just the way I was! From that day forward, I quit beating myself up spiritually for not being better than I am!

That experience was also the beginning of a new way of preaching. I began to preach about the “unconditional love” that God has for every one of us! Instead of always looking for sins to condemn in myself and others, I started looking for goodness to affirm in myself and others. I believe that the years following that dream prepared me to offer a clear message of “God’s unconditional love” that appealed to so many alienated Catholics which led to the rapid and consistent growth of the Cathedral parish when I was its pastor during the 1980s and 90s’s. That’s why my old column in The Record and my present blog have both been called “An Encouraging Word.”

Today we celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Perpetual Vows of Sister Grace and Sister Michael. I don’t know their whole vocation stories, but I did find out that that each one of them had their own “moments of grace” that led them to answering God’s call to become a Little Sister of the Poor. Sister Michael told me that she felt called to religious life as a nurse, but knew she was not called to a community of school teachers! She discovered her “pearl of great price” simply by being introduced to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Sister Grace told me she was a volunteer at a Little Sisters of the Poor Home in grade school and continued into High School where she felt a call to religious life, but also did not feel called to the teaching orders of her grade school and high school teachers. She too felt a call to nursing, but instead entered the Little Sisters of the Poor where she has helped manage the food service in several LSP Homes in France and the US.

Sister Michael and Sister Grace both experienced their own “moments of grace” when “God broke through” by being exposed to other Little Sisters and their mission. All three of us found our “buried treasures” and “pearls of great price,” our vocations, when we were young. They found theirs by being exposed to other Little Sisters. I found mine by trying on a Roman Collar, while waiting to get a haircut, when I was six years old. God’s ways are certainly mysterious!

I am sure they both have had many other “moments of grace” over the last 50 years when they have found “buried treasures” and “pearls of great price” in religious life. 50 years ago, 4 years into priesthood, I found another major “buried treasure,” a new awareness of the gospels that started with a dream about me and God smoking cheap cigars, sitting in folding lawn chairs, on a mountaintop, watching the sun set!

Sister Grace and Sister Michael, congratulations on your fidelity to your calls. Thank you for your many years of loving service. Prayers for your good health and peaceful happiness going forward! I hope that both of you will stay in Louisville for a while. I am just getting to know you!