Thursday, February 25, 2010

Are We Really Different?

1 Sam 8:4-7,10-22 / Mk 2:1-12

In today’s Old Testament reading, we find the Israelites making one of the most foolish mistakes in all their history. They wanted to be like all the other nations around them. They wanted a king. How ironic! They claimed unceasingly to be different from and better than every other nation on earth, indeed, to be God’s chosen people. Yet in the same breath, they said they wanted to be like their so-called inferiors!

It’s a foolish mistake we Christians make all too often. Our vocation as followers of Jesus is to live by values that are essentially counter-cultural. True Christians judge success and greatness by standards that are very different from the world’s. Having and getting are not our highest values. Building a just society in which everyone has a place takes top billing for true Christians.

The list of differences between Christians and the culture is long, and it poses very nicely the essential question for us: When it comes to lived values, are we recognizable as Christians? Do our daily choices speak unmistakably that we are different from the surrounding culture in wholesome ways? If not, we might want to look again at what happened to the Israelites who so desperately wanted to fit in, that they let go of what made them special.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

God Cannot Be Manipulated

1 Sm 4:1-11 / Mk 1:40-45

I found something quite astonishing in our church the other day, a stack of nine copies of a perfectly fine little prayer to St Jude. But typed on the bottom of each one was this instruction: "Make 81 copies of this prayer, deposit nine copies in your church every day for nine days. No later than the ninth day, your prayer will be granted." As if the Almighty God and Lord of the universe could be manipulated so easily and made to do our bidding! As the title of that old book says, "Your God Is Too Small"!

It was the same kind of mechanical, magical approach to God that the Israelites tried when they sent for the Ark of the Covenant as they faced the Philistines in battle. It didn't occur to them to look inward for the source of their recent defeat. "We just forgot to use the right magic," they said to themselves as they repeated their mistake yet again.

The quest for a quick fix and for cheap salvation is a perennial one, and it can leave us dangerously impoverished within. There is no valid religious practice or experience which is not about transformation, our transformation on the inside. Wherever that is lacking, we are wasting our time, and fooling ourselves into thinking that God can be manipulated or fooled.

He can't! So let's get serious about transformation.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Are Your Troubles Too Ordinary for God?

1 Sm 3:1-10, 19-20 / Mk 1:29-39

Are there ever times in your life when you refrain from asking Jesus for healing because you think that your sickness is too ordinary or that your troubles are not great enough for our Lord to come to your aid?

In today's Gospel, you may identify with the mother-in-law of Peter who lays ill in bed with a fever, while Jesus travels through the town casting out demons and healing those afflicted with horrible diseases. It took the outside insistance of Peter and Andrew to make Jesus aware of the woman's illness, for she did not seek His healing out on her own.

There may be times in our lives when we may feel unworthy to receive healing. We must consider that Jesus desires our need of Him. He wants to be invited to heal our hurts, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem. Are we inviting Jesus into our hearts and homes to receive the power of His healing grace?

If today you struggle with something you deem not important enough for the Lord, don't listen to this spirit of weakness. Ask Jesus to heal your smallest affliction, your most ordinary need. And in return, be like the mother-in-law in today's Gospel, respond immediately with a heart of gratitude and service.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Jesus' Author-ity

1 Sm 1:9-20 / Mk 1:14-28

“He spoke with authority.” Jesus is the author-ity. Jesus is the author of life. We -- made in His image and likeness -- reflect Him. That is why the demons hate us so much. The fact that the Author chose to become one with His own “writing” made them jealous -- especially Lucifer. Yet, His author-ity could not be denied or ignored by them.

Ultimately, that same author-ity cannot be ignored by us either. Jesus has written our hearts with His own creative love. He has also written how we are to respond to that love. The best and most enduring writing He gave us is in The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, Luke 6). Would you confound the demons in and around your life? Let Him write -- re-write -- your heart. The Sermon on the Mount is a great place to start the re-write process.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Loving Is Giving Your Gift

1 Sm 1:1-8 / Mk 1:14-20

A young man was walking along the beach when he stumbled on a magic lantern. He rubbed the lantern and a genie popped out with a hearty greeting, "Have I got good news for you! This very afternoon you will receive three gifts: a miracle cure for all ailments, a huge diamond, and a dinner date with a famous movie star."

Of course, the young man was elated, so he rushed right home where he was greeted at the door by his mother. "Some odd things have being happening this afternoon," she said. "At noon someone delivered a barrel of chicken soup. A half hour later, a telegram came saying a long lost relative has left you a minor league baseball stadium, and just a few minutes ago, MGM called inviting you to dinner tonight with Lassie!"

+ + +

So much for good news! As with much of life, that fellow was raised up for a moment and then let down fast. We know the experience well: a hungry longing for something more, a momentary hope that it's within our grasp, then disappointment and back to hungry longing.

It is to all of us who know that hungry longing that Jesus is speaking His invitation, "Come with Me! Follow in My path." Many of us are ready to say "Yes" to Him, but we still have a question: How do we follow Him? What is His way? We know the generic answer: Jesus's way is the golden rule: "Love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself." But how does that translate into the concrete? How do we actually put together a life out of that?

We begin by remembering that love is never in the abstract -- general good feelings are nice but they aren't love. Love is always in the concrete. We give our love and care to this specific person or that one at this specific moment or that. Furthermore, we love and care with what we have and with what we are, and not with what somebody else has or is.

The specific shape of the loving and caring to which we are called individually is defined by the specific gifts that God has entrusted to our personal care. That means, on the one hand, that you are very probably not called to be Mother Teresa, and I am definitely not called to be our parish organist. But it also means we have to work very hard at seeing, naming, and developing what are our own special gifts so that we can share those gifts with those who need what we have to give.

The deep and hungry longing for joy, which we all know so well, will never be fully satisfied in this life. But if we see, and name, and develop our own special gifts and then share them open-heartedly with all who need them, we'll begin to experience the joy we've always longed for. We'll begin to know the peace for which we were made.

That's the Good News we've been waiting for! Joy and peace can be ours here and now! Thanks be to God!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Is It Time to Let Go?

Is 42:1-4, 6-7 / Acts 10:34-38 / Mt 3:13-17

A woman went to see a psychiatrist with an urgent request: "Doctor, you've got to do something about my husband. He thinks he's a refrigerator!"

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," said the shrink. "Lots of people have harmless delusions. It'll pass."

"But, doctor, you don't understand," insisted the woman. "He sleeps with his mouth open, and the little light keeps me awake!"

+ + +

It's hard to stay connected to reality! And sometimes it's very hard not to close our eyes to what's right in front of us. We see one of those hard moments in Sunday's Gospel. John the Baptist had spent his entire adult life on one single mission: Preparing the people for Jesus' coming. And then, Jesus came. John's work was over, and his new task was to fade into the shadows -- not easy for someone who'd been the equivalent of a rock star for so many years. But that's what John did: He let go of center stage and gave it to the Lord.

How was he able to do that? How did he avoid letting his ego get in the way? Because he'd understood from the beginning that his life's work wasn't about himself. It was about carrying God's gifts to God's people -- just as every wholesome life's work must be.

More often than we'd like, we face hard moments like the one John faced, when this or that part of our life's work is done and it's time to let go and move on. Every parent faces those moments of letting go -- again and again. And that's when they discover who their parenting was really about: Their children or themselves!

(The same is true of us at any transition moment in life. When the moment comes, we discover what we've really been about -- if we're willing to look!)

As our lives continue to unfold, the shape of the work to which God calls us changes, sometimes radically. What makes these transitions especially difficult is that usually we can't see what comes next. The fear, of course, is that it may be nothing -- perhaps the best part is already past.

So we cling to what we've been doing. And our life's work ceases to be about carrying God's gifts to those who need them; and it degenerates instead into mindless repetition -- with no purpose. It's rather like a gardener I once observed, week after week, carefully watering a big clay pot full of soil in which nothing had been planted for years!

At every stage of life, no matter how young or old we are, God has valuable work for us to do, and we have the gifts that need to be carried to someone. Trust that. Listen to God whispering to you through your gifts and through the circumstances of your daily life. He'll let you know when you're done in one spot, and where you're needed next. And rest assured, you'll always be needed, because you don't just carry God's gifts: When you're at your best, you ARE God's gift, and you are very much needed!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Believe and Your Heart Will Be His

1 Jn 5:5-13 / Lk 5:12-16

Unless we've hit one of those terrible periods in our lives when everything fades into shades of grey and the hours hang heavy upon us, most of our days seem to pass with astonishing speed. And if we ever take the time to recreate one of our days, minute by minute, we'll be astonished to see how much we've crammed into so little space. No wonder that we seem to have so little time to think. No wonder we forget some of the most important things that we know.

In today's epistle, St. John reminds us of the most important of all of those things we forget. He says, "You who believe in the name of the Son of God ... (already) possess eternal life." It's astonishing but true, and it's something we'd all like to be a part of.

So what does it mean to 'believe in the name'? It involves a good deal more than a mere intellectual affirmation. It means nothing less than entrusting our very life into the care of God's son, and bonding our heart to his, so that his life flows into us and we are progressively reshaped into his likeness.

That bond is far too important to risk our forgetting it. So, as the hours and days go racing by, be sure to take some time to remember the one to whom your heart is bonded, the one who shares his life with you. Remember and give thanks.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

The Disease of the Pharisees

1 Jn 4:19-5:4 / Lk 4:14-22

Many thinkers and many people in general flee into the abstract and the universal as a way of avoiding the very dull and very concrete demands of everyday reality. It's like the proverbial housewife who flees to daily Mass, while ignoring the obvious needs of her children for breakfast. It's the disease of the Pharisees, having the passport perfectly in order, and then going nowhere.

St. John summarizes the problem with pungent words in today's epistle. "One who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen." It's a strident warning to us all. We can't hide behind eloquent prayers or fine sentiments. We have to take care of our neighbors, just as Jesus would, if we want to be His disciples.

So what kind of match is there between your prayers and your deeds? Does what you tell the Lord match what you do? Of all the people you pray for, are there any for whom you actually do something concrete? Why not look for the point where your gifts and their needs touch? That's God's assignment for you and He's waiting for you and for all of us to get busy.