Mice and Men

Last week we noticed that we had a mouse in our house.

I put out the old snap type mousetraps, and within two days we’d caught two mice.

Then nothing the next few nights, so we figured they were all gone.

But the next evening we actually saw one run across the room.

We saw it (or another) again the next night.

Evidently the remaining mouse or mice had learned to stay away from the traps.

We’d need different traps that these clever mice weren’t familiar with.

So I went to the hardware store to see what the options were.

They had an expensive electrocution trap.

A trap that very quickly does them in with a tight elastic noose.

And glue traps that they stick to until they collapse from exhaustion or suffocate.

They also had traps that catch them live so you can release them in the woods.

I’d already tried those for years, but they’d never caught a mouse.

I bought all three of the new types of traps.

When I got home, my wife and daughter both objected to the glue traps.

They’d read that they didn’t humanely dispatch the mouse.

I said if we wanted to be rid of the mouse or mice any time soon we had to try everything.

So I set out the whole new arsenal.

Within a couple hours my daughter was calling for me to come downstairs.

A poor mouse was struggling in a glue trap.

She said, You set it up, now you’ll have to deal with that mouse.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

I’m not a cruel person; I like animals.

But this was a harmful pest, a potential health threat; vermin invading our home.

Even if I could free him from the glue, I couldn’t release him anywhere nearby.

They’re able to find their way back if you release them closer than five miles away.

And if you go five miles, they’re not very likely to survive in the new environment.

So I filled a bucket with comfortably warm water.

Launched him in on his glue trap raft, and watched him sink.

He struggled for four seconds.  The end was pretty quick.

It bothered me—but he was just a mouse.

Far, far below us in the hierarchy of life forms.

When mice pose a threat or a significant inconvenience to us,

They just have to suffer the consequences.

They don’t merit much weight or consideration in balancing our interests against theirs.

What is a mouse that man should be mindful of it?

In power and glory and significance—we rank a lot closer to a mouse than we do to God.

What is man that God should be mindful of him?

And not merely staying mindful of us.

But choosing to be born into this world as one of us.

Tuesday 3rd Week of Advent

Mt 1:18-25                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org    

Rejoice?

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.  Indeed the Lord is near.

The opening words of today’s Gaudete Sunday Mass—Gaudete is Latin for Rejoice.

Today is supposed to be a special day of rejoicing.

In just nine days we’ll celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We’ll commemorate God’s full entry into human existence, into this world of ours.

His entry, as a human person, into that nature and this material world that he created.

Our first reading from Zephaniah picks up the theme.

Shout for joy, the Lord is in your midst!

The Psalm continues the theme.

Cry out with joy and gladness, for among you is the great and Holy One of Israel.

Our reading from the Letter to the Philippians echoes the opening words of the Mass.

Rejoice in the Lord always.  I shall say it again: rejoice!  The Lord is near.

And goes on to add:  Have no anxiety at all …

And then we get to our Gospel and its report on John the Baptist.

It does end on an up note; He preached the Good News to the people.

But what’s all that other stuff?  How does that fit our special day of rejoicing?

The people are really impressed with John and think he might be the Christ.

But John humbly tells them that he’s just preparing the way; someone greater is coming.

That is good news, and in keeping with the theme of rejoicing that the Lord is near.

And John goes on …

When the Christ—the Lord—gets here, he’s going to gather the wheat into his barn.

More good news.  Rejoice!

But John doesn’t stop there; he continues:

While the wheat is carried into the barn, the chaff will be burned with unquenchable fire.

How can we rejoice at that?

Should we rejoice that justice will triumph?

Maybe; but that also leaves a real chance that we could find ourselves among the chaff.

Or that as we’re being carried into the barn, our loved ones are being dragged to the fire.

Why are we hearing that today? Where’s the Good News in that?

This seems more of a mixed message—a good news / bad news—story.

Maybe this is not just a time for rejoicing, but also a time for a reality check.

Good and evil are real.

Friday morning we clearly saw unspeakable acts of evil at work in Connecticut.

And similarly-evil acts of crime and war and neglect happen every day in this world.

But we often see acts of goodness in the midst or the aftermath of that evil.

Heaven and Hell are real too.

Jesus spoke frequently and definitely of Heaven and Hell.

But he never described them in full detail, at least not in terms we can fully understand.

All we really know are the basics.

Heaven is very good; better than we can imagine.

Hell is very bad; somewhere between eternal unhappiness and eternal torture.

Christian theologians don’t debate the existence of Heaven and Hell.

But they do debate their population figures.

Some focus on Jesus’ references to the difficulty of entering Heaven.

And decide that few enter Heaven and many go to Hell.

Others focus on the limitless power of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, and God’s mercy.

And decide that most enter Heaven and few go to Hell.

Maybe even, none go to Hell.

Should there be a special depth of Hell for the most despicable humans?

The torturers; the masterminds of genocide.

Those who massacre defenseless, innocent children.

Are they purely evil humans, or mentally defective humans?

All we can do is leave it to God to deal with them.

Can he deal with them without sending them to Hell?

And what if they sincerely repent?

Does their evil go unpunished?

This is most definitely not a perfect world.

It’s in between Heaven and Hell.

Evil does exist here—along with uncertainty and confusion.

Faced with the hope of Heaven and the threat of Hell,

We might ask the same question the people asked John the Baptist.

What should we do?

We have John’s answers.

Care for others; share your cloaks and your food with the poor.

Treat others fairly.

And Jesus has also given us answers.

Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

We also have Jesus’ assurances.

We have a God who cares so much about humankind that he became one of us.

So that he could suffer for us and die for us; teach us and save us.

A God who remains with us, dwells within us—even when this seems a most evil world.

A God who loves each one of us, pursues us, and calls us by name.

The gates of Heaven are now opened, we’re about to commemorate that opening.

There is eternal life and a far better place than this world.

We know that innocent children are taken there.

We can hope that we’ll all be taken there.

The Lord is near.

The sorrows and anxieties of this world will pass away.

So, indeed—Rejoice!

3rd Sunday of Advent

Lk 3:10-18                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org    

Comfort

Comfort, give comfort to my people says your God.

From our first reading today.

God’s command to Isaiah.

And to me.

And to you.

So, I’ll give it a try.

My job is much easier than Isaiah’s.

All I have to do is point to today’s Gospel.

Surely this is one of the most comforting passages we can find in all of Scripture.

Jesus—God himself—telling us that God will work at rescuing his lost sheep.

He’ll go to great lengths.

In this Advent Season we especially note just how far he’ll go.

So far as to come and be one of us.

To walk among us.

To dwell within us.

He’ll focus his attention on recovering each stray sheep.

And he’ll rejoice greatly when he brings it back.

Today’s Gospel passage is like the story of the prodigal son, in a hundred words or less.

We’ve all been that stray sheep, that prodigal son or daughter, at one time or another.

Maybe more than once.

And we may well be again.

We all have loved ones who are lost sheep.

We could find some comfort in knowing

that God might grudgingly allow us back into his fold.

But we’re given far greater comfort than that.

Jesus tells us God will actively seek us out and rejoice at our return.

And the good news just keeps getting better—

He does not want even one of us to be lost.

Today’s short passage alone is enough to earn the title Good News for Matthew’s book.

We’d be hard-pressed to find better, more comforting news.

Tuesday 2nd Week of Advent

Mt 18:12-14                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org    

Blessed Browsers

The calf and the young lion shall browse together,

With a little child to guide them.

This Old Testament passage is truly amazing.

Nearly three thousand years ago, Isaiah could envision browsing.

And not only that; he saw that children would be the experts!

Okay, maybe that’s too modern an interpretation.

We’re in our first week of Advent.

Preparing to celebrate the coming of the Messiah.

We’re looking back two thousand years.

Isaiah was looking forward—he didn’t know how far.

But it turned out to be seven hundred years.

Then, our Gospel jumps to that very time when Jesus walked the earth.

God visiting his people.

And Jesus too points to the expertise of children.

[Father] you have hidden these things from the wise and learned,

[But] revealed them to the childlike.

What things?  The truths of faith.

Children are experts at faith.

Until they’ve seen enough of this world to have that faith shaken or destroyed.

Until they’ve questioned why bad things happen, and not found a satisfactory answer.

Until they’ve become too distracted by the material world.

Or too wise and learned—too sophisticated—to admit to spiritual truths.

Last night I watched the movie Polar Express with my four-year-old grandson.

It’s a story about holding on to our belief in Santa Claus.

A cute story, but it makes you wonder if our Big Myths might damage a child’s faith.

Well Billie, we were all just playing along with that fantastic story.

But this fantastic Gospel story really is true.

I guess most of us are able to sort that out as we grow up.

Today’s Gospel passage always makes me appreciate our position in world history.

Poor Isaiah was among those who were too early to see what Jesus’ disciples saw.

Those blessed disciples got to see and hear him in the flesh.

But still, despite what they saw, many of them couldn’t hold onto their faith.

The rich young man might have left him.

Many left him when he spoke of giving them his body and blood to eat.

One of the Twelve, Judas, left him.

We don’t get to see Jesus in that same physical presence those disciples did.

But, browsing through history, we see things they couldn’t see.

We see that his Church still survives after two thousand years.

We see the witness of saints and billions of believers who have come before us.

We see the work of truly wise and learned and spiritually inspired scholars.

We see the lives of everyday people who show us the transforming power of childlike faith.

Blessed are the eyes that see what [we] see.

Tuesday 1st Week of Advent

Lk 10:21-24                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org    

Kings and Queens

Each liturgical year we track the course of Jesus’ life.

We start the year with Advent Season, where we prepare for his coming.

Then we have Christmas Season where we celebrate his arrival.

That’s followed by a few months of Ordinary Time.

Until the Lenten Season where we prepare for his passion and death.

Then Holy Week with observation of that passion and death.

And Easter Season with the resurrection.

Then we finish the year with a longer period of Ordinary Time.

This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King.

That feast marks the last Sunday of our liturgical year.

Next Sunday we move on to repeat the cycle again with Advent.

In these final days of the liturgical year our scripture readings focus on the end times.

Jesus’ second coming.

Today’s Gospel speaks of the ultimate destruction of this world.

Nothing of this world lasts forever.

That includes our own earthly existence.

Hard as it may be to imagine our own absence, none of us will be here, as is, forever.

So as our scripture contemplates the world’s end times, we also contemplate our own.

How can we prepare for our end?

One important way is to strive to imitate Jesus—as best we can.

We were told at our baptism to live like Jesus; as priest, prophet and king.

So as we focus this week on Christ the King coming in glory and power and judgment—

We might wonder, How can I imitate that!

We don’t have to.

That’s not the aspect of kingship or queenship that we were called to at baptism.

There’s a flip side to the glory and power and authority of kings and queens.

Even the medieval doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings recognized the flip side.

Along with power and glory and authority over people,

Comes responsibility for the welfare of those people.

And that was what Christ the King was all about.

He gave everything for the welfare of his people.

He gave even more than the poor widow in yesterday’s Gospel who gave her last coins.

He went to the extreme of suffering a bloody passion and death for his people.

So, as the dead leaves cover our paths, and the winter cold closes in on us,

And our scriptures draw us toward the end times,

We can recommit ourselves to giving all we can for our people.

If we can do that, we’ll be moving toward a very happy ending.

Tuesday 34th Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 21:5-11                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org