Little Things

Yesterday I took a little trip, driving alone over to the Eastern Shore.

And I used that time to think about today’s Scripture readings.

What point was Jesus making with these stories of the mustard seed and the yeast?

Clearly it had something to do with little things.

Little things being important.

Little things growing into big things.

Little things having great impact.

Our Gospel excerpt itself was just a little thing; four short verses.

Thinking about it started an old song playing in my head—Little Things Mean a Lot.

When I got home, I checked it out on You Tube.

And the version I remembered was by Kitty Kallen back in 1954.

I was only seven then, but it was the #1 hit that year and I probably heard it over and over.

It’s been redone a few times over the years, so maybe even you younger folks have heard it.

The lyrics are nice, but it’s the title and the refrain that sum up the message—

Little things do mean a lot.

Then last night I walked past my seven-year-old grandson’s bedroom.

And he was singing, This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

So little things was definitely the recurring theme for my day.

And it’s the theme for Jesus’ two little parables.

So, what about all these little things?

We sometimes tend to discount little things.

We don’t even bother doing some things because they seem too little.

We say, I only have a little time or talent or treasure to offer.

It’s not enough to make a difference.

There’s no sense even starting.

What good would my little donation do to solve the refugee crisis?

What good would my little volunteer time do to end world hunger?

What good would my little prayer do; who am I that God would listen?

Well, today Jesus assures us that little things are important, they do mean a lot.

He reminds us that little things grow, and they enable other things to grow.

Like that mustard seed and that yeast.

So, let’s not be discouraged because something seems too little.

Let’s not be impatient because we don’t see quick growth.

Let’s just jump in and get started, and keep going.

Our little donations, our little volunteering, our little prayer—have great impact in two ways.

They grow within us, increasing our capacity to give and pray.

And they combine with the little gifts and prayers of others.

Growing in combination to become something truly big and important with world-changing impact.

Each of us has our own little light. 

Let’s let them shine as brightly as they can.

Tuesday, 30th Week Ordinary Time

Lk 13:18-21     Read this Scripture @usccb.org 

Hear Kitty Kallen

Table for Two

Our master has been away at the wedding for an awfully long time.

And yet, he tells us to stay ever ready to open the door immediately upon his return

Even into the 2^nd and 3^rd watch of the night.

The early Christians thought his glorious Second Coming would happen very soon.

But by the time the Gospels were written,

It was already clear that wasn’t the case.

It’s been nearly 2000 years since he went away.

It’s interesting to think and speculate about when that glorious final return might occur.

When he comes to judge the living and the dead.

The Last Judgment.

The General Judgment.

What’s the likelihood that he’ll return within the next 100 years?

One simplistic way to look at it might be to say, 50%.

One’s as likely as the other.

Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. 

A better estimate might be to say,

He has millions of years to choose from.

So the odds of his choosing one of the next 100 years is very low.

Just a tiny fraction of a 1% chance.

Or maybe we see signs that make us think it’s very likely that he’s coming soon.

Concern about the timing for that final return may be interesting.

But it’s not what’s most important for us.

What is urgently important, for each of us, is not the great General Judgement.

But our own Particular Judgement.

That knock is certain to come much sooner than in 100 years.

It could come any minute now.

The early Christians were wrong about the precise event they expected.

But they were right about the urgency.

Are we into that 2^nd watch, or even the 3^rd watch?

Let’s be ever ready to answer when he comes to knock on our particular door.

If we’re ready, today could be the day we dine with the Lord.

Tuesday, 29th Week Ordinary Time

Lk 12:35-38     Read this Scripture @usccb.org 

Now Serving

This week I came across a video clip from a Steve Harvey TV show.

I don’t really know much about him, but I know he’s a TV star.

He started out years ago as a stand-up comedian.

And now he hosts Family Feud and two or three other shows.

He’s a very busy man.

A celebrity; a star; to many a hero of sorts.

In the video I saw, his producers had arranged a surprise for him.

His wife and his seven or eight kids (mostly adults now) came onto the show.

And they each told a little story about why they considered him a great father.

They appeared to be a very close family.

He was clearly moved by what they said.

And then he responded to them.

He said something like:

I don’t work all these shows for myself.

I do it for you.

And I do it because I want you to know—I want to show you—

That there is somebody who cares more about you than they care about themselves.

And someday, I want you to be able to do that for someone else.

I don’t know if Steve Harvey reads the Bible or goes to Church.

I don’t know his background, or anything else about his personal life.

But his words show a pretty good application of Jesus’s message in today’s Gospel.

We are here not to be served, but to serve others.

Starting with our own families, and expanding out to the whole world.

We’re here not to be like James and John, seeking power and glory.

Or like the other ten apostles who were angry that James and John tried to get ahead of them.

We’re here to be like the good disciples they eventually became.

We’re here to join Jesus in his baptism and his drink—
His service, sacrifice, and even his suffering.

It feels good to get praise, even if we’re a little embarrassed by it.

We generally enjoy having power and authority.

We might even crave fame and glory.

A Pew Research poll found that younger Americans are keenly focused on wealth and fame.

Even more than prior generations.

Polling 18-25 year olds, 81% said wealth was one of their top two goals in life.

And 51% said fame was one of their top two goals.

Jesus repeatedly tells us to work at overcoming that kind of self-centeredness.

And he’s told us how to overcome it—through prayer, fasting, and good works or alms-giving.

We hear that especially at Lent, 
But these are things we have to do continuously throughout the year.

Exercises to build up our service attitude.

We can always make time to pray or fast.

And we can always find opportunities for good works and alms-giving.

Opportunities to serve others with our time, talent and treasure.

Actually, one opportunity will come our way in just a few minutes.

Our Pastor will asks us to increase our financial support of the parish.*

Supporting the Church is a good-work and a form of alms-giving.

It can also be considered a form of fasting and even as a prayer.

And of course, giving that support is one way we put others ahead of ourselves.

No doubt, we’ll each have many more opportunities to serve others today.

And every day.

Let’s keep an eye out for those opportunities and grab them when we see them.

They’re our chance to reshape not only ourselves, but those around us.

Especially our own children and the other young people around us.

Young people who will have to struggle with their society, with their culture.

A culture that’s even more absorbed with wealth and fame than the one that shaped us.

 29th Sunday Ordinary Time

Mk 10:35-45     Read this Scripture @usccb.org      

* This was the case for those listening at Mass.  Those reading might also consider what financial support they give to their Church.  We're familiar with raises and COLAs for workers and retirees, but it seldom occurs to us to give one to our Church.                                                                                                             

Dinner Lessons

One Thanksgiving we were crowded around the dinner table with my wife’s family.

And our hostess—my mother-in-law—asked:

If you could choose anyone from history,

Who would you pick to have over for dinner and conversation.

As we worked our way around the table,

People chose Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, John Kennedy.

When we got to my Jewish sister-in-law, she said, Jesus.

As we look at the bible,

It seems there was no shortage of Jews who wanted to have Jesus over for dinner.

He dined at the home of Martha and Mary and Lazarus.

The homes of Matthew, Zacheus, Peter’s mother-in-law,

The homes of many others including this Pharisee.

And, like today, the dining wasn’t just about the food.

It was about conversation, old or new friendships, sharing ideas.

And for Jesus, an opportunity to teach.

Considering that setting,

When the host showed amazement that Jesus skipped the ritual washing,

What would be the tone of Jesus’ words to his Pharisee host?

Probably not overly harsh and condemning.

More of the teacher pointing out the student’s error.

If you look at the scripture text, there are exclamation points.

Oh you Pharasees!  You fools!

Of course the Gospels weren’t written with punctuation.

That was a later grammatical invention.

But clearly, the translators interpreted those phrases as exclamations.

But that doesn’t mean they had a harsh or condemning edge.

Probably more a tone of loving exasperation.

From the wise teacher who knows the truth and sees the need for correction.

Oh you Pharasees!  You fools!

You’re so concerned about outward things, rituals—appearances!

You’re concerned about the wrong things!

It’s what’s inside that counts!

Like that Pharisee, we too are concerned with ritual

As we gather to dine at this Eucharistic feast.

Much of our Mass is ritual.

But we already have what that Pharisee didn’t have before he sat down with Jesus.

We’ve already heard the wisdom that Jesus has passed down to us through the scriptures.

We know that what really matters is what’s inside us.

So, we use this ritualistic setting as a time of nourishment for the spirit within.

Nourishment from the liturgy of the word.

Listening to and reflecting upon scripture—the word of God.

And nourishment from the liturgy of the Eucharist.

Food for thought.

And food for spiritual growth.

We know all that.

But, like that Pharisee, we still need reminders.

Even more than our religious rituals,

Our daily lives, our culture, our society, persistently draw us to outward things.

If we could have Jesus  over for dinner and conversation.

He’d still have much cause to say

Oh, you people!

Tuesday 28th Week Ordinary Time

Lk 11:37-41     Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Bombarded

We’re being bombarded.
That’s a pretty apt metaphor today.
For the constant, unrelenting, barrage of messages directed at us.
Bombarded with advertisements, with spam and popups on our phones and computers.
Bombarded with insignificant news items that we’re supposed to get excited about.
Bombarded with partisan/ideological messages to draw us or lock us in to one camp or another.

We don’t usually experience bombardment as a good thing—but it can be.
Like when we’re bombarded with messages from God.
Not just when we hear or read the Scriptures.
God’s messages are always coming at us, always there for us to hear.
In nature, in the world and the people and the happenings around us.
We can hear them in other ways than just with our ears and our minds.
All of our senses constantly confirm the presence of God and His messages.
A message might come to us through a sight or a smell or a taste or a thought or a feeling.
But it would still be fair to say we heard the message.

All four of our Scripture readings today relate to these messages between the Lord and us.

Jonah heard the Lord command him to go to Nineveh.
And finally, with this second call, he listened, he acted, he went.
When he got there, he heard another message from the Lord.
The warning message he was to relay to the people of Nineveh.

Again he acted on what he heard.
He delivered that message from the Lord.
The Ninevites didn’t hear the warning message directly from the voice of the Lord.
But some voice within them did convince them to accept Jonah as a true messenger.
And they heard, and listened, and acted—they repented.

Our Psalm takes communication in the other direction, asking the Lord to listen to our voice.

The Alleluia verse says,
Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.
And in our Gospel passage we hear that:
Mary … sat beside the Lord at his feet, listening to him speak.
And that in listening,
Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.

Maybe those four readings taken together give us a good formula for communicating with God.
Three parts listening and one part talking.

Today, let’s tune in to that bombardment of messages from God.
What are they saying?
They’re not all commands and warnings.
Most are messages sent to comfort us, guide us, and assure us of His love and presence.
Let’s really listen throughout this day, and see how many of those message we can hear.

Tuesday 27th Week Ordinary Time

Lk 10:38-42     Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Intervention

Intervention

Does God intervene in the happenings of the world?

Does He intervene in the happenings of our own individual lives?

Our Christian faith tells us that, Yes, He does.

So we make our prayers of petition.

Sometimes we’re amazed that, against extreme odds, we do get the outcome we prayed for.

Other times it seems that God doesn’t even listen.

No matter how hard how many of us pray, we don’t get what we asked for.

Even something that seems to be universally good, like peace in the world.

The disappointment, the feeling that we’re not being heard, can be enough to shake our faith.

We can be tempted to join with the Deists.

They see God as the Great Creator, or the Prime Mover, or the First Cause.

But they believe He has no continuing interaction with His creation.

He set everything in motion, and let it go.

Today we have widespread secularism and a disturbing level of anti-religion rhetoric.

Yet some people say that Christianity should be recognized as the religion of America.

They say that’s what our country was founded upon.

But in fact, Deism was the hot philosophy/theology among some of the leading thinkers of the time.

There’s evidence that many founders, including Jefferson and Franklin and Washington were Deists.

Or at least strongly influenced by Deism.

I think a lot of Americans today would still identify with some aspects of Deism.

They see, by reason, that there must have been a Prime Mover, a Creator, a First Cause.

They’re a step ahead of the atheists who somehow reject even the idea of a First Cause.

But, unlike the Christians, the Deists want to operate by reason alone.

So, while reason tells them that there must have been a Creator—by whatever name,

Reason can’t tell them much more about that Creator.

And so, they feel distant from Him.

We Christians get our more detailed knowledge of God from Revelation.

Revelations from Sacred Scripture, and particularly those from Jesus himself.

Revelation that we have a God who loves us and wants to interact with us.

A God who wants us to love him in return.

A God who does intervene in our world and our lives.

The most dramatic intervention being his sending his Son and his Spirit to us.

His coming to dwell among us and within us.

Todays, Scripture passages reveal a lot about our God and His interventions.

If you remember your Holy Days of Obligation,

We had the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8^th.

That conception where we say God intervened in the usual course of things.

And at that instant when He created that new soul, at that instant of new life,

God exempted that special child from the taint of original sin.

From that universally human imperfection; from that human tendency to sin.

Of course God could do that.

And, with the aid of scriptural revelation, we reason that God would, and in fact did, do that.

To prepare a pure, perfect host for his own entry into the human world, in Jesus.

A host that had never been subject to sin, not even inherited sin.

Here we are on September 8^th, exactly nine months after that Immaculate Conception.

So today, we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans shows God’s personal involvement with each of us.

We are called according to a purpose that God has for each of us.

God foreknew each of us before we came to be—that’s how we came to be.

And his ultimate purpose is that we be conformed to his Son, and justified and glorified.

Our Gospel passage reveals God again intervening in our world.

And in individual lives—in this case, the lives of Mary and Joseph.

Sending the Holy Spirit and Jesus to her, and an angel to him.

Deists reject revelation, because it can’t be confirmed by reason alone.

It gets into the messier area of faith.

Can what’s been revealed be proven through human reason alone?—No.

Can what’s been revealed be disproven through human reason?—No.

And so we Christians carry on by reason and by faith.

And with the personal help of God’s interventions.

Tuesday 23rd Week Ordinary Time

Mt 1:1-23     Read this Scripture @usccb.org