Gaudete

Photo by Ed Gregory

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

Words from the opening antiphon of today’s Gaudete Sunday Mass.

Words from St Paul’s letter to the Phillipians.

Rejoice!—a theme echoed throughout today’s Scripture readings.

Rejoice, even though our world is a mess.

And our country seems to be ripping itself apart.

Rejoice, despite personal financial problems, or health problems,

Or relationship problems.

We all have those problems.

We can’t expect God to shield us from them.

He didn’t shield his own son.

But he does give us strength to bear them.

Talents to address them.

And faith and hope to see beyond them

—and that softens them.

Rejoice, not like a fool who’s unaware of those problems.

Or doing nothing to try to fix them.

But like a saint who’s aware of the proper perspective of things.

Who’s aware of what’s truly most important in this life.

...

What would you have done two thousand years ago

If you heard your Savior—the Messiah—was coming?

Would you have rejoiced like that tax collector Zacchaeus?

So excited you’d scramble up a tree to get a better look at him?

Here we are today, more than halfway through Advent.

This special time of preparation.

Preparing ourselves for Christmas

—for our Savior’s coming into the world.

It might be hard to work up the excitement that Zacchaeus felt.

Or that the Three Wise Men felt.

Or that John the Baptist felt.

They lived it.

We’re just retracing it.

The same way we do every year.

As we listen and pray our way through the Scriptures.

As the liturgical calendar leads us through that full recounting.

His conception, birth, life, teaching.

His miracles, passion, death and resurrection.

We already know that whole story.

Ancient history from 2,000 years ago.

We’ve retraced it dozens of times, maybe many dozens.

After all that, can we expect it to stay fresh and present?

Exciting enough to trigger rejoicing?

Why not?

Every day is someone’s first day for experiencing Jesus’ coming.

Every day is a new chance for us to experience his coming in a new way.

With some greater insght and appreciation.

Every day, he’s ready to come more fully to each one of us.

As fully as we’re ready to receive him.

Coming to us in Spirit; coming to us in Holy Communion.

So, the coming is still fresh, it is still present.

And if we feel a little less excitement today than they did 2,000 years ago

That can be offset by our deeper understanding and appreciation and joy.

We can rejoice, because we already know that our Savior has come.

As we heard in Isaiah, he’s come:

To bring glad tidings to the poor,

To heal the brokenhearted,

And to proclaim liberty to the captives.

As we heard in our Psalm:

He has remembered his promise of mercy.

As we’ve heard elsewhere in Scripture:

He has shown us the path through the dessert.

He's boiled down all the rules and laws to just two simple commands.

Love God, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

...

Gaudete Sunday rejoicing has sometimes been called taking a break

From the work of Advent preparation.

But it’s not really a break from the preparation—it’s part of it.

An example to ourselves that we should never forget to rejoice.

No matter how intently we might be focused on problems or work.

Such as now, during our current work, 

Preparing for our Savior’s coming.

Both that retraced coming, and that present coming.

John the Baptist was, and is, the perfect example and guide for preparing:   

... the voice of one crying out in the desert,

“Make straight the way of the Lord.”

Urging us to prepare a path for his coming.

Smooth out the bumps and turns.

Cut off any detours.

Remove any obstacles that could impede our reception of him.

How might we do all that?

Maybe start with a good self-assessment.

What could I do to make myself better?

What could I do to make the world better?

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians gives us one approach.

Test everything; retain what is good.

Refrain from every kind of evil.

Sounds easy, but sometimes it’s not so easy to be certain of what is good.

In those cases, we have that two-pronged test that Jesus gave us.

Does this confirm my love of God?

Does this confirm my love of neighbor?

If we ­­apply that test, we’ll usually see what’s good and what isn’t.

Still, some issues can be so complex that the test leaves us unsure—

Or even wrong.

But if we’ve done our best to honestly and sincerely apply the test.

If we’ve put aside our habitual biases and knee-jerk ideological answers.

God will forgive our uncertainty and even our error.

In fact, he’ll praise us for our sincere effort.

And he’ll go even further than that.

He’ll even forgive our negligent and intentional sins.

So, with some preparation on our part,

With some sincere effort at improvement,

And, especially, with God’s promise of mercy,

We have every reason to trust and hope that it’s all going to work out.

That, in the end, we’ll have what truly matters.

Eternal life in Heaven.

So, Rejoice!

3rd Sunday of Advent
Guadete Sunday

Jn 1:6~28   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Talent

What is a talent?

At the time Jesus told his parable,

A talent was a unit of weight—about 75 pounds.

And the term had also come to mean a unit of value.

A value equal to a talent of gold—75 pounds of gold­­­­_­­.

It was also described as 15-years wages.

That’s quite a bit of value.

About $1 Million per talent.

In fact, back then, the term talent was used the same way

We today use the phrase, a million dollars.

Not meaning precisely $1 Million, but meaning, a lot of money.

But Jesus was telling a story, a parable, an allegory.

The story made sense with the idea of a talent as a large lump of gold.

But the listeners recognized that it also carried a deeper meaning.

Talent was a metaphor, standing for something else of enormous value.

Not a material substance, but a human or spiritual quality.

Our passage from Proverbs also compares 
Human qualities to materialistic value.

Not a talent of gold, but a set of pearls.

It says a worthy wife’s value is far beyond that of pearls.

She brings good, and love, and support.

She reaches out, and helps the poor and the needy.

Maybe Jesus’ listeners were already familiar with his usage of the term.

But his use of talent as a metaphor was so striking, so strong,

That it came to be the primary meaning of the word.

When someone says talent today,

Our minds don’t flash an image of that heavy bar of gold.

Or of $1 Million.

We immediately think of the human, spiritual quality.

We might think of America’s Got Talent.

If we’ve been around long enough we might remember

Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.

We might think of extraordinary talent in arts or sports.

But those are actually narrow images of talent.

Narrower than the way Jesus was using the term.

Every one of us has many talents.

More than the one or two, or even the five, that were given in the parable.

These talents are our natural abilities.

Our special aptitudes.

The abilities that we were born with.

We may need to work with these abilities to more fully develop them.

But we didn’t have to do anything to obtain them.

We might refer to someone who is talented as being gifted.

A gifted musician, a gifted writer, a gifted student.

That’s a very appropriate description, because talents are gifts.

Unearned gifts, given to us by God.

In the broader sense, talents include

All the qualities and abilities we’ve been given:

Intelligence, physical strength, endurance, emotional strength.

Even virtues, which we may have worked to develop,

But for which the initial seeds were freely gifted to us:

Nurturing ability, empathy, wisdom, perseverance—even faith.

Jesus’ parable makes another crucial point regarding these talents.

They are gifts to us individually,

In that each of us benefits from our own talents.

But they’re not given to us solely for our own benefit.

They’re entrusted to us, to use for the Master’s benefit.

We’re expected to recognize that our talents are gifts.

Therefore, there’s no need to deny or hide them in mistaken humility.

We can put them to their fullest use.

To earn dividends for the Master.

So, what then is a talent?

It’s a human or spiritual quality. 

An unearned gift, entrusted to us by God.

To be used for the benefit of ourselves, our neighbors and our Master.

Each of us should be aware of our many talents.

List them; humbly marvel at their number.

Hone them; fully employ them.

So that we can enjoy helping to make this world a better place.

And so that, when the time comes for our accounting,

We’ll hear that glorious invitation—
Come, share your Master’s joy.

33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 25:14-30   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Tune In WWJD

In yesterday’s Gospel we heard Jesus say he came to bring division.

Well, we certainly have division today.

We’re divided into polarized camps.

There was a recent editorial in the New York Times

From a liberal writer who was under attack from fellow liberals.

Because she didn’t rigidly echo their thoughts on one particular issue.

She was strongly liberal in almost all her beliefs.

But she was a little more conservative on that one issue.

So the pack savagely turned on her in social media.

This happened to be a fight among liberals.

But the conservatives are just as rigid—maybe more so.

Today, ideology, opinion and spin, trump thought, fact and truth.

We have to guard against becoming the hypocrites Jesus condemned.

Those who know what is right or wrong.

But act according to what is right or left.

We have to resist that polarization.

Again today, in our Scripture, we hear about division.

Paul speaks of division within ourselves.

Our individual, internal struggle with right and wrong.

The misery of doing evil despite our desire to do good.

But in today’s Scripture, we also hear about reconciliation.

About settling with our opponents.

And Jesus tells us we’ve got the tools to figure all this out.

Just like our ability to sense the weather.

We also have the ability to sense the truth.

At least the major truths.

The Father has revealed to [us] little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.

The Lord [has taught us] his statutes.

So it’s reasonable for Jesus to ask us,

Why do you not judge for yourself what is right?

It is up to us to figure it out.

Not with blind, lock step, allegiance to any party.

Or to any faction.

But with what we know is right and good.

What, deep down within ourselves, we know is true.

Because of the revelations and the statutes we’ve received.

We’ve received many statutes.

But Jesus has boiled them all down into two simple commandments.

Love God with all your heart, soul and mind.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

Loving our neighbor includes working to reconcile with one another.

Because deep down we know of God’s mercy.

And we know he wants us to follow his example of mercy.

Jesus knows full well the difficulties of this world’s divisions.  
But he has given us the tools to overcome them.

Not only revelations and statutes, but also his own example.

So if we run into a really tough problem.

And we really can’t see a clear answer as to what is right.

We can always tune in and ask WWJD.

And I don’t mean ask some radical radio talk-show host,

Who’ll blast us with ranting group-think.

I mean ask that question that leads us to the ultimate example.

And the ultimate answer.

I mean literally asking, WWJD.

What Would Jesus Do?

Friday 29th Week of Ordinary Time

Lk 12:54-59   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Hors d'oeuvres

I hope everyone is enjoying their fair share of hors d’oeuvres.

We've all been invited to the Great Feast.

We’re not quite there yet, but we've all made it this far.

We're in the outer hall milling about.

Preparing to enter the Great Hall.

Out here, bad things sometimes happen to us.

We sometimes even do bad things ourselves.

But there’s a lot of good out here too.

And there are rewards—treats.

A table full of them, free for the taking.

And trays full of them that servers carry right up to us.

They whet our appetite, they keep drawing us toward our goal.

They give us a foretaste of the Feast to come.

...

Maybe this food/feast metaphor isn’t a perfect analogy.

But it’s been around for a very long time.

And we’re all pretty familiar with it.

In today’s Scripture, Paul speaks to the Philippians of being well fed.

Our psalm speaks of God spreading the table before us.

Isaiah tells us that the Lord will provide all peoples with a feast

Of juicy, rich foods and pure choice wine.

And then in the Gospel, Jesus speaks of the great wedding feast.

He says straight out what we already know.

His parable of the Feast is actually an allusion to Heaven.

We've all been invited to the Feast.

All of us here have RSVP'd saying we plan to come, we want to come.

But many others have not responded.

We don't want them to lose their invitation, like some in our Gospel.

And we especially don't want to lose our own invitation.

The feast has already begun.

Jesus came and started the Kingdom of Heaven right here on Earth.

We've already entered to some degree.

That's why we can sample the hors d’oeuvres—
The true joys and wonders and good things of this world.

But we haven’t yet entered the main hall of the Feast.

We’re still dealing with the distractions of our worldly business.

And they're not all idle distractions, there are many necessary things.

But the parable shows us we need proper balance, we need prioritization.

We can see reflections of ourselves in the characters of that parable.

We unfortunately have a lot in common with those initial invitees.

We too, sometimes ignore the King and his generous gifts—

We’re unworthy.

And we're also like the guests gathered in from the highways.

Each of us a mix of good and bad—also unworthy.

But present nevertheless; admitted on totally unearned invitations.

Welcomed through the King’s abundant generosity and mercy.

And let’s hope we have a lot in common with those servants.

Those who set out to help gather others into the Feast.

We had a baptism before Mass this morning.

A young child, brought by parents 

To become a new member of the Church.

Clothed in a white gown 

Symbolizing the robes of the wedding feast guests.

Most of us too, first entered the Church that way.

Set off toward the Feast that way—with our invitation.

Unearned by us, given before we could even understand or appreciate it.

No matter how or when we received our unearned invitation, 
We now continue toward our ultimate goal, that Great Feast—Heaven.

What will that be like?

We have some clues.

But no one knows precisely.

We've seen the Renaissance artists’ imaginings.

Books and movies have shown us what some others imagine.

We even have these Feast stories and parables in the Bible.

But what is Heaven really like?

We should try to build our own image.

We don't have a lot of concrete detail to work with.

But we do know that, at the end of time, 

We'll have body and soul reunited.

We won't just be vague spirits floating around.

Or absorbed as some unidentifiable parts of one great spirit.

We'll have bodies—not these damaged bodies—but glorified bodies.

That's an important fact to start the imagination on the right track.

We also know that we'll have the Beatific Vision.

We'll see God.

We'll understand things that were total mystery in this life.

We'll know everything that a glorified human could possibly know.

Those few facts actually give our imaginations quite a bit to work with.

And a lot of room to tailor our own expectations.

The more clearly we envision our own image of Heaven

The more thankful we'll be.
And the more motivated we’ll be to keep working toward that goal.

And the more comforted we'll be

When we or our loved ones are leaving this world.

In building our image,

We should be as excessive, as exorbitant, as we can be.

Consider today’s hors d’oeuvres—today’s joys and wonders—

As only weak, bland foretastes of the Great Feast.

Pile on the glorious details.

We really can't overdo it.

Because one more assurance that Scripture gives us to work with is that

We can never fully imagine how wonderful Heaven will be.

It will be better than whatever we imagine.

As we heard in today’s readings:

God will destroy death forever and wipe away the tears from every face.

God will fully supply every need from his glorious riches.

And we’ll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 22:1-14   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

What Time Is It?

As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what the time was

That was on my watch.

And I said:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?

Lyrics from a hit song by a group named Chicago nearly 50 years ago.

But the observation is still true today.

Just as it was 2000 years ago.

Some things seem to never change.

In Jesus’ time there were men waiting, some standing idle all day.

Today, if you drive up to certain places, like Home Depot or Lowes,

You’ll see laborers waiting to be hired for the day.

Some are hired early in the morning.

Others are still waiting in the afternoon.

If you drive past certain parks or corners or liquor stores

You’ll see men (maybe some women) gathered together, standing idle.

Those who have given up on being hired.

What do we think about those un-utilized, idle people?

Do we look down on them?

Is it okay if they and their children go without basic needs?

Are they getting what they deserve?

Jesus’s parable is, on the surface, about worldly labor and reward.

And most of us here might feel deserving on that level.

But just below the surface,

The story is about spiritual labor and reward.

If we’re at all self-aware, we won’t feel quite so deserving there.

We’ll see that there’s a lot of work we’ve left undone.

We’ll see that we haven’t been faithfully laboring since dawn.

We’ll see that we should start really caring about what time it is.

And how much time is left.

We’ve heard a lot the past few weeks about forgiveness and mercy.

Those fundamental gifts of God to us.

And our fundamental duty to others.

Do I deserve more than my brother or sister?

How many times must I forgive them?

Should I judge them?

How do I want to be judged?

As my friend and spiritual guide, Fr Joe, always used to say,

You can’t deserve God’s love.

There’s nothing you can do to earn it.

God freely lavishes his love and mercy on all his children.

It’s easy for those of us who have been working since 3:00

To look down on those who didn’t start until 5:00.

And those who started at Noon to think they deserve a greater reward Than those who started at 3:00.

And we certainly understand that those who started at dawn

Would feel that justice demands they receive more 

Than those who started at dusk.

But if we accept that view, we’re thinking as man does, not as God does.

That’s not too surprising, after all, we are human—not God.

But we do have the word of God, delivered through His Son.

We have that instruction to help us recognize and overcome

Our human knee-jerk inclinations.

When we’re tempted to judge someone

On how much work we think they’ve done,

We can catch ourselves and remember that we don’t really know.

We don’t really know what gifts they’ve been given to work with.

What obstacles they’ve been given to deal with.

What they’ve paid in diminished satisfaction and joy and self-esteem.

And we can remember our own failures.

We can’t earn God’s love, but we are expected to return it.

To spread it around, to share it.

How well have we been working to love our neighbors as ourselves?

What material and spiritual support are we giving others?

Have we really been faithfully laboring since dawn?

What time is it anyway?

With those thoughts in mind,

Do we want a reward based on justice?

Or do we want a reward based on God’s great love and mercy?

25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 20:1-16   Read this Scripture @usccb.org

Demons

Jews will not replace us!

A chant in the darkness from torch-bearing militant marchers.

Just down the road in Charlottesville.

An alternating chant with, You will not replace us!

Both chants expressing white supremacist hate and fear.

Fear that Jews and other groups will replace them.

Surpass them in America's power/privilege rankings.

A privilege they feel entitled to, simply because of their whiteness.

And it's not just a matter of skin color, it's Northern European origins.

These folks would face a rude shock if they took a DNA ancestry test.

For many of them, their arbitrary whiteness is crucially important.

They seem to see it as the only plus they have going for themselves.

They’re possessed by a force that counters their virtue,

Their character, even their intelligence.

So, they try to draw everyone into their us versus them struggle.

A divisiveness that has plagued mankind from its beginning.

When it comes to us versus them and Jews will not replace us,

They should take a look at today's Scripture passages.

(Many of them consider themselves to be Bible-guided Christians.)

Jesus is, of course, a Jew.

As were Abraham and Moses, Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist,

All of the apostles, and many of the early saints of the Church.

And today we hear Jesus say that he came

Only to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

It was only the persistence of that non-Jewish Canaanite woman

That led him to reach beyond his calling to the Jews.

His ultimate mission may have been to all of mankind.

But in his plan or his understanding, at least at that instant,

He was here only to save the Jews.

That woman is one of my favorite Gospel characters.

She's not only persistent, but bold and clever.

Who among us would stand up to Jesus if he gave us a firm No.

Keep after him if he hit us with a stinging rebuke.

Calling the Jews his children, and us the dogs.

That was an us and them situation where we were the clear losers.

But the spunky Canaanite woman hung in there.

Throwing Jesus's analogy right back at him.

Cleverly, and humbly, pointing out that even the dogs get some scraps.

And she moved Jesus so much that he made an exception.

Moved him to change the plan, or at least the plan's timing.

Somewhat like when Mary moved him at the wedding feast in Cana.

When she asked him to do something about the wine.

And he at first refused, saying his time had not yet come.

But he listened, and he relented at her repeated request.

So, it was we Gentiles who cut in on the privilege held by the Jews.

A privilege far more precious than any other.

Our readings from Isaiah, Psalms, Romans and Matthew all confirm,

God first favored the Jews, but then opened his kingdom to all of us.

Jews might have been moved to chant, You will not replace us!

And we didn't.

But Jesus listened to us and took us in—along with the Jews.

Gave us a place among his children.

Welcomed us to follow the God of Israel.

When asked to grant mercy, Jesus would not refuse.

Even when it didn’t quite fit the scripted plan.

There are many lessons in today’s Scripture passages.

Two are: God listens, and Mercy triumphs.

Jesus told us many times that we should be persistent in prayer.

Today he shows us that he responds to our persistence.

God listens and responds to us.

He may not give us exactly what we ask for.

But he’ll give us what he, in his infinite wisdom, knows we need.

And he’ll shower us with his love and mercy.

When we see incidents like Charlottesville

We see that we have a lot of work to do.

We’ve seen that Jesus doesn't withhold mercy when we ask for it.

We shouldn't withhold it from others.

We’ve seen that God takes us in when we ask.

We shouldn't exclude others.

As with the Canaanite woman’s daughter,

There are still demons within our brothers and sisters, and within us.

Demons that need to be driven out.

If we persist in our prayers and our voices and our example,

God will listen and take notice.

And, in his mercy, he’ll respond and drive them out.

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mt 15:21-28   Read this Scripture @usccb.org