Everything I Thought I Knew, I Didn't: Reflections on 15 Years of Priesthood

Today I celebrate 15 years of ordination.  I am celebrating it!  As I look back on the last 15 years of being a Catholic priest, I look at one heck of a journey.  There have been extraordinary highs and gut wrenching lows.  The seminary did the best it could to prepare me with a base of knowledge, spirituality, and human formation to help me meet the road as it unfolded over the years. To be honest, I came out of the seminary all wild eyed and ready to proclaim, serve, and restore.  I came in with a profound ( or so I thought at the time) desire to serve.  I thought I knew it all and what the people wanted.  I thought. It is not that I was horribly wrong or off base, it is just that I had no idea of the magnitude  of what lay ahead.  Thankfully, God has always moved my heart to engage Him and His people and to keep trying to adapt without losing anything of a true Catholic priestly identity.  That openness has lead to a wealth of epiphany moments.  I wish to share some of the bigger ones.

1: What I actually know about God, faith, and Catholicism is little.  It is not through lack of trying.  I am a rather well read person who always believes there is always more that I can and need to learn.  Content wise, I probably do know more than the average person, but is like being a scientist, the more you study the more we know how little we know.  It is a given that we simply cannot come to know everything about God; we struggle with just the tidbit He gives us through Divine Revelation. 15 years of preaching on the Scriptures almost everyday and I still am amazed at how many layers there are and how much more there is just on the surface.  15 years and I have yet to grow tired of preaching and studying the Scriptures because it is like a multi-faceted gem with an infinite numbers of sides; each begging to be examined and integrated.  The depths and power of faith, I have come to find out, will go as deep as we allow them. Because it is based in God, the experience of faith and grace is boundless.  The more I experience, the more I know that is still left unexamined.  The depths of the theology, philosophy, logic, and wisdom present in Church teachings is profound.  Some of the greatest minds of history help in reflecting upon Christ and what the Christ event fully means.  I am a smart guy, but I am not St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Chrysostom, or any of the other great minds that have populated our teaching landscape.  I read the writings of the great Fathers and mystics and realize just how little I know.  I like to think that my desire to keep knowing and delving deeper into the mysteries of the faith is pleasing to God.  It is a lifetime endeavor.  It is a perpetual challenge.

2: The People of God don't need another Savior.  We already have one.  The Catholic Church existed long before I became a priest and will be here long after I depart from this life. My role is to point to THE Savior.  I have found out that this is far from easy.  It is more than using the right sequence of words, it is by living a correct example.  That is difficult for me.  I think the easiest trap for any cleric to fall into is that trap of hypocrisy.  It is easy to preach love, mercy, forgiveness, patience, love of God and love of neighbor; it is much harder to live, especially knowing that my parishioners have the right to be able to see me living that example.  It has meant that I have had to wildly reign in my temper, a temper that has gotten me into much trouble.  The first time I lost my patience with a parishioner, it hit me after I was done of the potentially devastating effect of the Roman Collar.  I became aware that when I lost my patience, it just wasn't me as a person, but it came across as the entirety of the Roman catholic Church, if not Christ Himself, coming down on the person.  I shudder to think how many people I might well have driven away, how many vocations I might have crushed, how many good souls were rightfully scandalized.  I look back at those 2 or 3 incidents and still feel deep regret and sorrow.  As I have grown, my temperament has settled and my anger is usually saved for people who cut me off in traffic (and yes, I know I must work on that as well).

3: I am called 'Father' for a reason.  This realization has grown so much stronger over the past few years.  When we started Camp Maccabee some years back, it was with the understanding that all the same things needed to be a good dad and husband were also needed to be a good priest.  Archbishop Flynn told me that in a one on one conference during a retreat my 1st year in theology.  that conversation was probably one of the most significant of my life.  It took me almost 20 years to unpack that.  My role in a parish is that of a father.  It is my duty to provide from the wealth of our faith and to lead others into a deeper relationship with the God who entrusted me with their care.  The same can be said of dads and their children.  It is my duty to nurture and maintain union built upon stewardship and selflessness, so that each member of the parish knows they are loved, wanted, and needed as part of this parish family.  I use the term 'parish family' not in some sappy sense of forced fellowship of people who would otherwise have no connection, but in the same dynamic that Christ did when He used  familial terms to describe the relationship He has with us, we have with the Father, and that we have with each other.  It is not my job to dominate.  It seems it would  be easier if I tried that, but I know it would undo everything and drive off wide swaths of the family entrusted to my pastoral care.  It is a constant source for internal dialogue and external whining.  I know that I am far from being that ideal father.

4: The people don't need to know what I think, they need to know the truth.  So many times people have been confused because clerics have come down like Moses from Mt Sinai with their own slant or opinion on the teachings of the Church.  It creates great confusion and invites division.  My opinion saves no one.  My opinion is not synonymous with Divine Revelation.  My opinion can dilute the Gospel.  I will be held responsible for that.  I am well aware of that.  In fact, it frightens me.  One of my pet peeves is being lied to because when I am lied to, I can not make reasonable or correct decisions; it is hard to build decisions on a lie.  If I dilute the Gospel, I present a deceit and force other people who may not know better to build decisions on those deceits.  The reason I read so much is because I want to be as sure as I can that I am presenting the truth and giving those entrusted to my care a solid foundation.  Sometimes the truth can be challenging and provoking. In fact, the vast majority of the time it is.  The truth always provokes us to a deeper and greater relationship with God and with one another.  The truth challenges our bad habits and favorite sins.  I cannot tell people a deceit in hopes of not hurting their feelings,  or not making them angry with me, or in hopes of not losing money in the collection.  It is hard and the temptation to take the easy road and say what people want to hear (or what I want to hear) it ever-present.

5:  I wouldn't give this up for anything.  Even in the incredibly dark days of 2002 when the sex scandals broke and priests that I not only knew, but admired as well, I had no intention of leaving.  There were days when I was weary.  There still are.  There are still days of great frustration, but isn't that true for everyone? However, those days are greatly outnumbered by the great days, the powerful days, and the truly spiritual days.  The schedule can be grueling.  Being constantly in an unwanted spotlight is aggravating at times. I still get nervous preaching and teaching.  I still feel somewhat inadequate in some of my pastoral duties.  I am okay with that in that I have only been doing this for 15 years.  I know that I am far from the perfect priest and perfect pastor; I still have much to learn and much to grow.  I am not a finished product.  That said, I can say I have tried my best most of the time.  I sincerely hope that as time passes that I will progress deeper and become a better pastor.  Despite every struggle that I have faced, am facing, and will face, I love the challenge that being a priest in this society.  I love that I have to keep my own weaknesses in check with God's grace.  I love that I have learned much and still have much to learn.  I love that there will be never a reason for me to grow cold or apathetic.  I am interested in what the next 15 years bring, what I will learn, how I will develop, and how I can better be what God has called and created me to be.    I am okay with the fact that I will never grow wealthy by earthly standards.  I am okay with the fact that this society will probably never respect me.  I am okay with knowing that if I am a good priest there will be much sacrifice that lays ahead.  I look forward to the future and I am happy in the present.  the best thing that I have learned is that God is ever generous with His grace and mercy with anyone who willing to at least try to rise to the challenge of the Gospel.  Here's to many more years of learning. growing, and deepening.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me!...or maybe not

It has not always been easy being Catholic in this country.  From the early settlements of the colonies, English settlers took a very hostile view of those papists joining them in the new world.  It would take over 170 years before a Catholic would be elected to the presidency.  Otherwise, Catholics were to keep to themselves, shoulder outright hate, bigotry, and intolerance.  Then with the age of media, we were treated to some positive images of priests and sisters...singing and kindly.  We saw a Catholic Bishop, Fulton Sheen, have a hit TV show.  Then we elected Kennedy and something changed.  In a speech before Evangelicals in Texas, Kennedy basically promised that would not use his faith in the way he led, he would be a good little protestant dhimmi and be just like them.  No wonder the speech made Sen. Santorum want to puke.  He got elected and Catholics had an epiphany...all we have to do is chuck our faith if we want to be popular.  We could still retain the cultural identification as Catholic, we just didn't have to live any of it or publicly profess any of it.

Then, just off the heels of this epiphany came the sexual revolution.  We might have had problems with this or that teaching of the Church, but now we were free to just let loose.  What better way than to fornicate like bunnies and feel no tinge to that nasty old conscience! We could contracept our way into a new and freeing existence of  all the benefits of marriage without having to marry.  Women were told that marriage and family life weighed them down anyway, but why chuck that ball and chain and have to miss sex?!  When that stodgy old Pope Paul VI put out Humanae Vitae..well we just had in black and white just how out of it the Church was.  It wasn't just lay people either.  Many of those priests and sisters who stayed, after so many left, adopted this new 'freeing' mentality and , well, woo-hoo,  just went to town.  In fact the less that you could act or even look like one of those nasty old relics, the better.  Sure, some people got bent out of shape, but they were humorless puritans.

So we bolted from our faith, dumbed down...I'm sorry...breathed new life into the practices, and acculturated so much worldly wisdom,  that assuredly now they would like us!  65% quit going to Church much at all or completely.  It became fashionable to be a cafeteria Catholic, picking and choosing what teachings we liked or didn't challenge our favored sins.  Surely, the world would love us now!  Of course, the clergy decided that this would be a wonderful time to hand our detractors boatloads of ammunition (not to mention boatloads of money as well) and break their vows of celibacy with children, women, and men.  Okay, it was a small percentage of the clergy...a really small percent...but we bought the narrative that most priests had all the sexual restraint of a teenage boy in a brothel with his dad's credit card.  We bought the premise that most priests were gay or just really weird.  Surely, the world will like us now!  Our convents emptied out!  Our seminaries emptied out!  Surely the world would like as now! Yeah, not so much.

 Catholics are learning that you never negotiate with someone who wants you dead.  While those who abandoned their faith were lauded and gave themselves such non-offensive names like 'recovering Catholic" (get it?  Like a recovering alcoholic? because Catholicism is a disease?  Funny !  Oh never mind) and some became official spokesmen for the Church in the mainstream media and were trotted out like prize turkeys whenever a pope dared cross the pond and drop in.  All the better if a former priest of sister..better yet if a current one who just show how worldly they were in trashing the pope.   But for those who decided to stick it out, the attacks have been relentless.  The more faithful we are, the more they hate us, and we  have to happy with this. Really...happy?! The entertainment industry will continue to portray all clergy and religious as either dolts, Huns, gay, or criminals.   The media will continue to portray faithful Catholics as insipid, ignorant, intolerant, hate filled, half breeds, hypocrites, and nitwits.  The oh-so-smart academic types will continue to doubt our intelligence, our teachings, our rituals, and our faithful with little more than derision and scorn.  Maybe even the government will continue to try to strip away our rights.  SO WHAT!?  My attitude is : BRING IT!

History shows that whenever we are persecuted is when we grow.  When we take the moral high ground and stand our ground without returning their attacks with equal aggression, we prevail.  When we are forced to defend our ground, we have risen time and again to the occasion.  If this sounds defiant..well, that is the point! Truth be told, I don't want the world to like me and approve of me.  I don't need their stamp of approval.  I don't want to be the shape-shifting insecure about who I am person that allows the cool kids to dictate their likes and actions.  In Luke, the Beatitudes bless those who are persecuted and curses those who are liked and approved of by the world.  The Catholic who doesn't see their faith as something worth dying for is the Catholic who doesn't see their faith worth living for.  So to Hollywood...bring it on!  Music industry...bring it!  Government officials...hit us with your best shot!  Media...we're not scared of you!  We came before you, we'll be here long after you.  We have outlasted every kingdom, empire, and trend that has tried to destroy us.  We have survived every foolish self-inflicted wound with which we have struck ourselves.  That is because we have Christ promise that you would never prevail and crush us. We have the power of the Holy Spirit.  We know already who wins the war...and it isn't you!  So bring it...by the grace of God, we're ready! 

Transference, Barney, and Rebellion: Things to avoid in following God's will

The readings for this week have been so wonderfully apropos for this week where we as a Church remember vocations and pray for them during Vocations Awareness Week. Hopefully this isn't news to you.  The first reading are from I Samuel, with yesterday's being the call of Samuel.  This reading happens to be the 1st reading for this weekend.  While the young Samuel is mistaking the call of God for the voice of the priest, Eli, finally Eli understands that God is calling the boy and tells Samuel to respond with "speak, Lord, you servant is listening."  What a bold statement!  This statement is supposed to be at the heart of every Christian every day.  The responsorial psalm for that day (and coincidentally this weekend as well) has the response of "Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will."  Again, another simple statement that should be at the center of how we live. Were every Catholic to really capture this, all of the problems we experience within the Church would simply dry up.  Vocation crisis? Gone!  Scandals within the Church?  Never would have happened?  Numbers of practicing Catholics dwindling?  Not any more? I could go on and on with this list, the upshot is that if we were to live out these two simple sentences, there would profound change and great good.  So why isn't it happening?

My first guess is a what I would call a simple case of transference.  We become suspect when we hear that we are called to do God's will.  We transfer onto God what He means by that with what we mean by that.  We know that our wills can be awful self-centered.  We know that we can want other people to do our will because it suits us to have them to do so.  In this light, God comes across as a eternal me-monkey  with a colossal ego that needs to be stroked lest He go all Rambo on you.  We assume that God is every bit as self-centered as humanity and bristle at the idea of having to serve such a megalomaniac!   However, God is not such.  Instead of being self-centered, He is other centered, that is, he loves us and wants what is best for us now and for all eternity.  He watches out for us and want to protect us.  When He asks us to do His will, He asks us to be other-centered (that is to be truly loving) as He is and thus to watch out for the true good around us. 

My second guess would be what I call the "Barney Syndrome".  In this scenario we accept that God loves us.  We even believe that God unconditionally loves us and wants what is best.  Where the breakdown starts is that in believing these things we fail to make the jump that we are called to model out behavior on His.  God becomes the Great Enabler.  Instead of "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will", the response becomes "Turn the other way God, I want to do my will!"  God's job is to rubber stamp whatever I want to do.  Furthermore He is suppose to bless it as if I were doing His will!  This God doesn't have a hell because everybody gets into heaven, unless, like, you know, you're like Adolf Hitler and stuff.  The morality bar is set as low as needed to accommodate whatever it is I want to do.  The problem here is that if we enter into a relationship with God, a relationship necessary for heaven, then the love goes both ways. As with a good marriage where the two spouses are actively concerned with the other person's needs , our relationship with God is bound on our looking out for God's will (which as above said, looks out for our good) as He looks out for what we need.  God blesses this.  God, however, is not one to taunted, ignored, or dismissed.  He is not the great enabler.  He allows us to make our choice about whose will we follow and then bear out the consequences of those choices.

My third guess is outright rebellion. In the story of Samuel, Samuel is given to the High Priest, Eli, because Samuel is called to serve the Lord.  Eli has to sons who are priests as well: Phineas and Hophni.  They were self-centered men who has the audacity to steal from God what was His during the sacrifices.  Not only were they indifferent to God, they were outright hostile.  Their response to God wasn't "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will" it was "Go away God, I am going to do my will." Phineas and Hophni push away the hand of God because they have no desire for a relationship with God, especially a relationship that will require them to change.  Without God's hand, they are destroyed.  This story is repeated over and over again.  God does not want such things to happen, but He allows the consequences of our choices to happen if we are insistent upon it.  On a slightly separate note: why we think as Americans, that we can push God out of the public sphere, routinely mock Him and those in relationship with Him, replace Him with materialism,  lust for power, hedonism, and materialism, how we can surgically excise from any avenue of our school children's life, mock His existence,  pile corpse upon corpse with our violence, abortion, and disregard for the basic needs of other and then have the audacity to demand that His only job, if He exists at all, is to make happy and bless whatever it is I want...just baffles me!

The point is that we are called to rise above transference,  Barney, and rebellion and follow God in our lives knowing that His will is always oriented towards our collective best interest.  There is no reason to be afraid.  If we want the vocations we collectively need, it will be in having the faith to say "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will."  If we want true peace in our parishes and to be free from scandals of all sort, then again, we will have to conform our will to God's.  If we want true unity and peace in our country, it will come from living, actually living, the Gospel which calls us for defer to each other in imitation of Christ.  If we want strong marriages and family life, then it will only be through this mutual submission of will for the good of others.  God is not a rubber stamp to approve of a life divorced from His will, nor is he a giant purple doofus who enables reckless and selfish behavior, nor is He one who is to mocked.  He wants what is truly good for us and leads us to peace.  We have to want that to!  How will you, the reader, live up to "Here I am Lord, I come to do your will" today?  How will your life reflect that?

A Vision to the future

The following is my pastor's pen for this upcoming weekend:

The direction of a successful person’s life is determined by the vision they have or the goals they set for themselves.   Having  set goals, the person will have to adjust their actions, redetermine their priorities,  figure out how these goals can be paid for or achieved, and make the sacrifices necessary to make these goals a reality.  The successful person also knows that these goals cannot be reached without the help of others.
    Keep this all in mind when we speak of the Church at large and the parish more locally. What is a parish to be?  What is its reason for existence?  Jesus, Himself, set THE goal for the Church.  From the Pope to the local parishioner, the goal is exactly the same: “All power in heaven and earth has been given to me.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit., teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18-20)That is THE goal of every person who has ever passed through the waters of baptism.  Our participation in this mission is the standard by which we will be judged.  The Church is the ground upon which and from which this mission springs; this is true for the universal, the diocesan, the parochial, and the domestic Church.
    The point of setting goals or having a vision  is that we want something that can be measured in concrete terms of results, actions, and , ultimately, success.  Christ set the goal, He gives us the grace and the tools to make that goal come to fruition.  He instructs each of us, regardless of whether we happen to be lay or clergy, to the same end.  How do we engage ourselves in this and encourage others to do so as well?
    This is what 2020 is about.  It is an internally created and driven set of concrete goals by which we live out the command of Christ. It is driven by 4 question: in the year 2020 1) what do we wish to see when we evaluate our parish of St. Clement?, 2) How do we get there?, 3) How do we pay for it? and, 4) Who does it?  There are elements of our call that we need to cooperate with God’s grace so as to advance.  For example: Only about 45-50% of our registered parishioners come to Mass at all.  How do we get that percentage up?  We continuously either squeak by or fall short financially, something that makes some goals we might set as undoable.  How do we rectify this situation so that money does not become an excuse why we do not forge in a particular area that we need to engage? Can we make fledgling programs like our new youth ministry and Friends of St. Martha not merely survive, but thrive?  How do we recruit and support the next priest and religious from among our own?  Between our school and PSR program, we have only a percentage of our children in any form of faith formation.  How do we up those percentages as well?  This is, by no means, a exhaustive list of questions or potential goals.  This is why more than merely pastor has to set a vision for how we carry out our call.
    The vision we set must be in union with Christ.  Any other vision is doomed to failure.  Too many times we approach ‘setting a vision’ in the parish or diocese as an exercise of fantasizing about reshaping the Church into what I personally feel it should be or come up with a crop of excuses as to why nothing can be done or at least why I should not have to be a part of it.  2020 is not about rescinding Vatican II, nor is it about holding our breath till Vatican III or until the church ‘wises up’ and sees some it teaches are inconvenient.  2020 is about seeing how we as fellow members of St Clement parish can cooperate with God’s grace and do our best to wildly thrive at doing that for which we receive any of the Sacraments at all.
    Some , no doubt, will wonder why we have to do this all.  We didn’t do it in the past.  Why is it so urgent that we do it now?  I would wager that because we didn’t do this in the past, it has led to most of the problems we have in the present.  There was time when 90-95% of our parishioners went to Mass,  Sure, it was decades ago, but it still happened.  Our school had a much bigger student body.  We used to have more registered families.  We used to have active youth programs.  I am sure if we looked at the parish in former days, we will find that we used to do and be more.  No doubt  a litany of excuses that prove ourselves helpless to stem the tide will gush forth.  How bad do things need to get, though, before we are finally provoked into engaging ourselves in the mission of Jesus Christ?  Holding our breath and waiting for what I feel are the ideal conditions (example: all the Masses go back to Latin, we ordain married men and women, the church changes its teachings on_______) only ensures our continued downslide.  No excuses!  No complaining and whining from the sidelines! It is time to engage!
    On Thursday, November 3rd, those who volunteered for the steering committee will meet.  What we are wanting to do is neither simple or easy.  This steering committee is always open to new members.  We will eventually move to town halls to further set concrete goals and a path to get to these goals.  The more involved, the better.
We will meet in the parish youth room.
    Let me be blunt: Indifference and apathy do not help, in fact, they are our major foes.  The idea of ‘let someone else do it’ has been the major reason we are experiencing our problems.  Each of us has a simple choice: We can be part of the problem or part of the solution:  Which of the two do you want to be able tell Jesus you were on the day of judgment…He’ll be asking.  This has to be embraced by the parishioners and lived there first and foremost; pastors come and pastors go, we can not tie a vision to any pastor; vision cannot be a result of a cult of personality.  Parishes cannot simply rise and fall by whoever happens to be living (or if we do nothing) or not living in the rectory. If we pull this off ( and I believe if we are in union with Christ, we will), St. Clement can become a prototype for other parishes and a sign of hope that cooperating with Christ bears concrete rewards.  It is our decision, though, to engage or go on with business as usual.  All things must start with prayer if we are authentic to our call as Christians.  I ask you to pray not only for the wisdom and guidance we will need to do this correctly, but to pray earnestly in how you and you family should be involved.

Pater Noster: Part 3: Hallowed be thy name

In continuing with our discourse on the Our Father, we come to the next point, 'hallowed be thy name'.  Hallowed, is a older English word for 'holy'.  The word 'holy' has slightly different meaning depending upon whom it is applied.  When in reference to God, it means 'wholly other', in other words, that God is wholly unlike anything of this world, something beyond our comprehension.  When applied to us or any other material matter, it connotes, 'being set apart for God's use.'  Dr. Hahn, in his treatment of this phrase, goes back to the original language of the Old Testament, Hebrew, and the words used for holiness/holy.  they tell us something of why this phrase is here and how it relates to the words before and after it. 

The first is the word kiddushin, which is also the Hebrew word for marriage.  God is a god who draws us into a covenant.  The entirety of the Scriptures likens the bond between God and us in the terms of a marital covenant  In fact, in catholic teaching ( and scriptural as well), marriage is the foretaste and visible sign of the relationship that is to exists between a God who is wholly other, yet wishes out of love to come to us and we who have been set apart through the waters of baptism.  Yet go back to the pronoun,'our' again, he deals with us as a community in covenant and as individuals who belong to that community.  In coming into the covenant relationship by our own free will, we do so in the Lord's name.  This is no small thing!  To take the name of the Lord faithfully in the covenant relationship is to share in its blessings; to be unfaithful to that name and hence unfaithful to the covenant relationship is court being cursed.  Why?  To  break the covenant relationship is to willfully remove ourselves from God's love and protection and thus be at the whims and cruelty of the world; much like the prodigal son who is used and abused by the world once he has left his father's home, so do we leave ourselves open to use and abuse once we have pushed God away from all or part of our lives.  If we are to live this covenant relationship, then it is recognizing the holiness of God and that we are called to be holy as well.

This leads to the second Hebrew word, segullah, a word that connotes belonging to king and hence enjoying his protection.We are holy when we live willingly and joyfully with Him who is holiness in its perfection. Because God wishes to draw us into a relationship based in His own holiness, then that holiness becomes the identification not only of God, but of us as well.  Whereas God lives that holiness always and everywhere, not ever breaking His covenant through Christ, so we are called to make that holiness our own through our cooperation with the holiness of God.  Hence, 'hallowed be your name' is more than merely our saying something true about God, but our committing ourselves to that truth of holiness in the way we live and in the choices we make.  As no element of God is separate from holiness, so too no part of us is to be absent that holiness.  'Hallowed be thy name' is more than expressing an attribute of God, but a pledge to live in that attribute as those bound in a covenant relationship.

Thus when we pray this, we are either acknowledging our faithful covenant relationship with God our Father, or we contemptuously mock it through a life that negates this profession of faith.  The more we go through this simple  prayer, the more dangerous it becomes for us to merely say it without acting it.  Rather than shy away in fear from saying it, we should seek God's grace to authentically live this prayer.

Pater Noster: Part 2: ..who art in heaven...

As my Adult Education group keeps going through the Our Father, accompanying the reflections of Dr. Hahn on this greatest of prayers, we come to the the second point: who art in heaven.  Recall, that in merely referring God as Father, and proclaiming Him to be Our Father, we set the foundation of this prayer in the terms of relationship, specifically, familial relationship.

This relationship, though, is unlike any other relationship of which we have experience.  Since we are dealing with a relationship with God, who is neither limited to time and space, the depths of that relationship are mind-boggling.  When we call God 'Father', we may allow the diminished images of fatherhood we are familiar with to color, warp, if not destroy, who God as Father is.  We can take all of the warped images provided in our media, a  media who actively rebels against a positive description of fatherhood. WE can see the fathers in our own lives and their foibles and imperfections.  We can see the priests whom we call 'father' who fail to live up to that awesome responsibility.  We might even see those fathers, both paternal and religious, who were good men and tried their best. All of that said, God, our 'Father' is the perfection of fatherhood and far greater than even the greatest of our dads might be.  He 'is in heaven', He is the prototype and image of what fatherhood is to be about.  As He is in heaven (not to the exclusion of being among us), He is eternal in His fatherhood and it is His Fatherhood that is perfect.  Like an earthly father, he creates and brings forth life.  Unlike earthly fathers, whose love is imperfect or altogether gone, His love for us knows no bounds or limits.  As we see in the parable of the Prodigal Son, though, the fullness of his gifts depends upon our submitting to his will and protection.

That our Father is in heaven also tells us of whose home we belong.  Our eternal home lies not of this life nor existence.  This passing home, though, is where we make the decision whether we truly want God as our Father.  We make our choice here as to which kingdom we belong.  Since God created us not be mindless robots incapable of loving Him as He loves us, he allows us to choose whether we will attach ourselves to His household.  When we pray "Our Father, who art in heaven", we are at least vocally saying to whose home we wish to belong.  But our commitment to God must be more than words; our lives must proclaim that we belong to the household of God.  Fr Larry Richards, in his book "Be a Man", reminds us that when we call God 'our Father', we are saying to God, "Father, I am your son/your daughter."  We bind ourselves to a loving Father and that which belongs to Him.  Again, the ideas of relationship (especially familial relationship) are in fill play.  What a tremendous act of faith and promise to relationship we make in saying just these words: Our Father who art in heaven!   

...and Mammon failed.

I have been watching, with some interest, the unfolding of the events with the Occupy Wall Street crowd and its like movements throughout the major cities of this country.  They claim to be the 99%. The 99%, as far as I can tell from their websites, are the overwhelming amount of Americans who are not members of the banking, insurance, mortgage industries, who have to foot the bills and barely make it.  For them, the other side are greedy, self-serving parasites of society who live off of the misery of others.  On the other side is a group called the 53%, a group who say the represent the 53% of Americans who actually pay taxes every year (or are supposed to). For them , the other side are greedy, self-serving parasites of society who live off of the hard work of others.  I would imagine in either group there are some who would fit that bill.  Both sides, though, represent an increasingly evident truth, we are unhappy as a nation, afraid of the future, frustrated with the status quo, and looking for answers and finding none.  Why?

I have thought and prayed a great deal about this.  Over the past few years, bracing for impact of what the future held, I dumped almost all my debt (by the end of the year I will be completely out of debt) and started to embrace a life of simplicity (which Canon Law says I as a priest should do anyway).  It means I had to make a lot of hard decisions.  It also means I had to really start taking my faith seriously.  It was a harsh reality for me that in some venues of my life I had not taken my faith seriously.  I cannot point a finger at anyone and chide them for being materialistic as I have been there myself as a priest.  I had been at the altar of Mammon.  When I started simplifying my life, I gave a lot away.  To my shame, as I packaged things to go to the local clothes shelter and to a pro-life yard sale, I realized I was packing things that I had never used but 'just had to have'.  I packed clothes with the labels still on them, CDs and DVDs I never listened to or watched, books I never read.  The list goes on and on.  I felt rather ashamed.  Not only had I bought all this stuff, I did it on credit.  I racked up quite the bill.  I worried about those bills and my ability to pay them off.  Spiritually, I became pre-occupied with these things.  I moved into my current assignment with a 17 foot U-Haul.  I once thought that this was awesome, now, I am deeply ashamed of it.

Truth be told, though, I am not the only one at the altar of mammon.  It is human nature to associate wealth with security and happiness.  We possess within us a desire to be free of want and the fear it brings.  In this country, and in the western world, we have amped this association on steroids! Because of this, we have the rumblings of class warfare, something that has never historically achieved anything positive.  One side accuses the other of greed whilst the other side accuses their rivals of envy.  There is truth in both, but at the end of the day it is greed that underpins the whole thing. We live in such a wealthy society that we simply believe if 'I want' thus "I should have".  Furthermore, we believe that I want it now thus I should have it now! Questions about whether 'I need' or that 'I need to wait' or 'can I afford' no longer apply.  Furthermore, we do not want to deal with the prospect of having to suffer the consequences of poor choices.  It is not without irony that there are enough I-pads, I-Phones, various recording devices, and such rolling around the Wall Street crowd (each side) as to one wonder whether one has happened against a revolt about corporations or a celebration thereof!   I know those things are expensive.  I know, because I have priced them and decided that I didn't want it enough to pay that kind of price for something that I have managed to live 46 years without already. Having been one caught in the trap, I can say that I know what it is like to tacitly believe that wealth and belongings equate happiness.  By the grace of God, though, I realized how much Mammon failed me.

We posses an emptiness inside that we desperately want filled.  It is longing for completion and purpose.  I liken it to what I have heard happy married couples say about their spouse: in their spouse they feel a part of them wanted and waited for and felt complete once married.  That is fully appropriate as the marital bond is the image of the relationship God wants with us.  We have this longing that refuses to be satiated by the things of this world.  People will spend their entire lives searching through the things of this world looking for that one thing that fills the gap.  They try wealth, power, pleasure, ease, reputation, and fame.  When these do not work, they fall into addictions to alcohol, narcotics, sex, food, and other stimuli to numb the gap that now has turned into an emptiness.  They become the type of wealthy who believe if they hoard enough of the world's goods, they will eventually find happiness.  There is never enough.  There is a too grand of a scale.  For the have-nots, it is a burning belief if only they had more they would find joy and contentment.  Both place their hope in Mammon and both have nothing left but greed and envy...for them Mammon failed.  The definition of insanity is to engage in the same behavior and expect a different outcome.

AS one of my favorite songs said when I was child "If you're tired of the same old story, turn some pages."  For me, that meant be faithful to the covenant God made with me and I with Him: A covenant sealed in Baptism and Confirmation, strengthened though Confession and Eucharist, and cemented in a special way through Holy Orders. That meant I could not go chasing after Mammon and still presumed I was faithful to God.  As I embraced this new found simplicity, I realized that I had been Mammon's slave.  Where God sought a marital bond with me, Mammon only sought me to be its slave.  God did not create me to be anyone's slave.  God created us to be His partner as we hear he created Eve for Adam.  God wants my good.  He knows what will bring me true happiness.  He knows that happiness will never be found in slavery.  Because of that, I have neither the fear of the hoarders, nor the envy of the have-nots.  I do pray for those on both sides and mourn their self-inflicted misery.  I, like ancient Israel, am between the enslavement of Egypt and the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey (heaven: the end result of the covenant relationship).  To make it there means I will have to live and rejoice in that bond the Christ willingly gave His life to forge. It is not easy.  It beats enslavement.  The temptations are always there to turn back (believe me, I know that!).  But as one who starting to enjoy that freedom, I can only show my appreciation for that freedom by wanting it for others as well.

To those in the streets: you seek something from a source that will never give it to you.  You will not be able to have enough hand-outs, free rides, wealth, and prosperity to fill the hole within.  To those hoarding: obviously the accrual of wealth has not brought you what you hoped for and now you fear losing it...your hole, too, has gone unfulfilled.  As one who has been in both of your shoes, there is another way.  Equality and peace do not come through the distribution of wealth, they come from not being beholden to wealth to find peace, happiness, and joy.  As a former occupant of the hole you are now in, there is a way out that requires neither fear nor loathing...it only requires a willingness to give of oneself for one's brothers and sisters and a willingness to live a covenant relationship with  a God who desperately loves you.  You need not be Mammon's slave, when you can be God's own.

Pull Them In!!! Catholics and evangelization

On April 15th, 1912, in the early hours of the morning, the luxury liner the ‘Titanic‘ hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.  Of the 2240 passengers and crew aboard the vessel, 1514 died that night.  One of the main problems was that the vessel did not have near enough life boats.  When inquiries happened as to why more life boats were not available, the main reasons were that the builders had such great faith in the technology of the time and  had such great faith in the strength of the vessel,  that they thought it unnecessary to have the needed number of lifeboats to accommodate the entire manifest of passengers and crews.  When the lifeboats were launched that night, many were two thirds full.  After the Titanic sank, only two of the boats went back to pick up any survivors whose groans could be heard in the now stillness of the night.  Many died that night of hypothermia in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic.  While many would not be able to be saved, some could have been, but as the majority of lifeboats stayed away, we will never know who would have survived after being pulled out of the water.
    For many centuries humanity has become enamored by its own power, wealth, and wisdom.  In our society, we are continually chasing after the newest technology, the newest research, the newest gadget, all in the hopes that these things will someone how make us better, safer, and happier. Faith is seen as a crutch, the spiritual equivalent of a security blanket, for those who have not yet grown to maturity and is regulated to the status of a pious hobby.  Like the builders of the Titanic, we believe our wisdom is sufficient to the task and that it will keep us from harm.  Yet, this society is one of the most dysfunctional in history.  There are so many who are wandering, floating, and even drowning among us.  So many, upset with the hole left when the money and power are either not forthcoming or are unable to fill the emptiness, will numb that emptiness with sex, narcotics, alcohol, risky behavior, and other such things that leave them ‘damaged goods’.  Sometimes, those wanderings have taken them to very dark places and the scars and mistakes are readily visible.  It is easy to look from our perch in the lifeboat and wonder if we want ’that type’ in the boat with us.  It is easier to focus so much on me and Jesus that we forget that when He was asked to teach us how to pray He directed to us to pray OUR Father.  No one was created to be outside the lifeboat; no one was created to be condemned.  We should be no more comfortable leaving these people floating out in the harsh world than we would be comfortable in letting a person float in the North Atlantic.
    The major reason why the boats stayed away from the survivors was fear.  Based on testimony after the fact, the reason the other 16 boats didn’t go back to pick up survivors was for fear than they would be caught in the suction of the sinking ship as it plummeted to the ocean floor and out of fear of being swamped by desperate survivors who knew they were only moments from death if they remained in the ocean.  Fear can prevent us from doing what is foolish but, more often than not, prevents us from doing what is necessary as well.  As followers of Christ, we are never to be ruled by any fear of anything of this world.  When we see someone struggling with life, we respond as Christ would: with hand outstretched.  So many times we back away from the job of evangelization, that is, the spreading of the Gospel, because we are scared of the response.  We may fear rejection.  We may fear anger.  We may fear getting in one of those “you Catholics…(worship Mary and the Saints, believe you earn your way into heaven, are led by nothing but pedophiles) and either feel we lack the knowledge or just don’t want to get into a fight.
    There also has to be a country club mentality that needs to be defeated.  On the Titanic, those who were of lower classes and rode in 2nd and 3rd class died in far greater numbers and percentage than those in 1st class.  While 63% of the 1st Class passengers survived, only 43% of 2nd class, and 25% of 3rd Class (which compromised 2/3 of the total passengers) survived.  It is easy to look at those outside our faith or who have dropped away and see them in a way that asks whether their joining/re-joining actually adds to who we are.  It is easy to treat those who are related somehow better than those who are not.  This is just human nature: we prefer to stick to the familiar and shun away from that which is different.  In the Scriptures, Jesus did not pick and choose who got to hear His message.  He healed all who asked.  He frequented the homes of sinners, tax-collectors, and other assorted riff-raff by the standards of His day.  He showed no fear in calling all those who were in need of His help and grace.  As Catholics, we must reach out for all in need of a home.  Like Christ, we don’t reach out for people so as to leave them there, but to lift them up from the ashes into a new life infused by God’s grace.  It does not matter whether they come from the right families, the right socio-economic class, the right race, or whatever else we use as separating influences to sort the invited from the uninvited.  Evangelization isn’t about picking the ‘right ‘people as if were picking pledges for a fraternity; it is about reaching out for all who are seeking, letting them know that we have a Father who desperately wants them home.  Because we are called to mimic the love of Christ in all things, we can never see anyone as beyond help or beneath us to help.  We cannot be in a lifeboat who will not go back to pick up the drowning because it is captained by fear.  By the grace of God, we are called to be better than that!
    My questions to each one reading this are simple: who will you give the chance to join us?  Who will be part of our faith because of your outreach?  How will you be the way that God reaches out to a lost soul?  Who will you invite?  Who gets into the lifeboat because you reached out?  Fear nor disinterest are options for those who follow Christ.  Only looking to my own salvation is unbecoming for those who have received the gift of new life from God.  By God’s grace you have been pulled into the boat.  Maybe you are one who needs to be pulled into the boat.  Either way, in the lifeboat you and those around you belong.  This is something we can measure concretely.  There is no shortage of those flailing in the sea drowning in the emptiness of materialism, sin, and addiction.  It is to such that God reaches out.  In the task of evangelization, a task we are given by virtue of our baptism, the target is anyone who seeks, anyone who needs to find their way home, and anyone who needs the safety and security of being pulled into the lifeboat.  Identify them.  Pray for them.  Model the faith for them.  Invite them!

A True Legacy for our Youth

A few days back I saw the following posting on Facebook, which I reposted, and have thought a great deal about consequently: " We need to teach our daughters how to distinguish between a man who flatters her and a man who compliments her .... a man who spends money on her and a man who invests in her .... a man who views her as property and a man who views her properly ..... a man who lusts after her and a man who loves her ..... a man who believes he is God's gift to women and a man who remembers a woman was God's gift to man.....And we need to teach our boys to be THAT man.”  It captured a pre-occupation that I have had for several years now.  We live in a society that teaches our young men that women are something to be manipulated into sexual activity, dominated in life, and discarded when it is no fun anymore.  It has started teaching young women the same thing about how to treat young men.  Furthermore, it teaches women that they merely have to settle for the best that they can hope to get and, if anything, treat their boyfriend or spouse to be as a reclamation project, the human equivalent of a fixer-upper.  I have rarely seen this end well.  As I have told young couples in marriage preparation, “Marriage is not a magic wand that makes all the deficiencies of your future spouse evaporate into the ether.”    By the same token, a man who would not make a good husband will not make a good priest either.
    Our children get swamped with the negative messages about human relationships and sexuality.  The way to reverse the damage is a two pronged approach: to point out and limit their diet of a poisoned message and replace it with a healthy life giving message.  Our parish and our families must act in union with each other to accomplish this.
    On the parish level, we are doing the following.  As all our 9th graders are boys this year, we are using the book, “Be a Man” by Fr. Larry Richards as the text for their education this year.  The book is a great study on what being a Catholic man is about and how being a Catholic man directly effects everything, including how we, as men, treat and view women.  It encourages an embrace of manly virtue and a courageous and selfless lifestyle.  With our confirmation students, we are using Theology of the Body for Teens with Chris Everet to talk about the same issues in a way that they understand that their being a good Catholic reflects in every avenue of their life.   We gave the parents the parents’ handbook so that they may follow up what we do in class.   I cannot encourage this enough.  I am contemplating getting the Theology of the Body for Jr. High, so that we may be able to begin this positive life affirming message earlier.  If anyone would like to help pay for the program, which would be several hundred dollars, and help buy a copy of it for the parish library. I would greatly appreciate it.  The Theology of the Body for Teens is already in the parish library and is frequently out.  Each have a 10-12 lessons set of DVDs, parents guides, and workbook for the youth.  I started using the Theology of the Body for Marriage as the primary tool for our engaged couples.  I really believe that this positive message paired with what I have been saying from the pulpit will hopefully at least provide a lot of seed which we hope will take root.
    On the diocesan level, we began summer camps for our young men and women (camps Maccabee and Siena, respectively) to help our youth understand what it means to be a young Catholic woman or man.  The topic is often brought up in our youth rallies and Confirmation Reflection Days. We believe, as a diocese, that every cent invested in our diocesan youth is a cent invested in the well being of our youth and their futures.  The well being of their future directly effects all of us as these youth will provide the next generation of priestly, religious, and lay leaders.  Giving them all that we can to promote a healthy self-identity and a healthy way of treating one another only bodes well for our collective futures.
    As I alluded to earlier, parents must be partners with the Church in this.  When your children were baptized, you vocally accepted the responsibility of bringing them  in the ways of the faith.  This is more than giving them a set of data to memorize, but instructing them in a relationship based in the love of God and neighbor.  Parents should be and can be the most effective teachers in their children in the ways of the faith.  What is provided in the home will be one of the primary nourishments of our youth.  This means several things.  First, I would assume no loving parent would purposely feed their children poison, even if that poison tasted good.  Poison is poison regardless of the way it tastes. We have to monitor what our children ingest in this culture as most of it is poisonous.  For example, I can think of two shows off the top of my head that are or were very popular: Two and Half Men and Sex and the City, both built on the premise that the opposite sex is something to be manipulated, used, and dumped at will.  So many shows on TV have the same message as do many of our movies.  The same message is dominant in music, regardless of the genre.  A steady diet of these things does have an effect on our youth in showing them what the world considers normative behavior.  It can be no surprise that our youth will act out on these premises and find out that the consequences of that acting out cannot be wrapped up quickly and without lifelong harm.  I know it is not popular, but parents must be as vigilant with what their children entertain themselves with as much as they would with what their child eats.  Poison should be recognized for what it is and dealt with accordingly.
    Along these lines, we should make sure that our youth are warned about the great scourge that is pornography.  Pornography, by its very nature, teaches to reduce another human being to a thing for self-satisfaction.  It is a cancer.  Because of the internet, it is also all too readily available.  Pornography isn’t bad because the human body is something ugly and sinful, it is wrong because the human body is good and beautiful; pornography debases that beauty, robs the dignity of another (even if they are offering up that dignity), and teaches the person to turn themselves and others into nothing more than a means of pleasure.  It is a devastating lesson that has horrible long term results.  Parents should treat porn with the ferocity they would treat a criminal trying to break into their home to harm their children.  Porn can have no harbor in any Catholic home!  I know they may not like it, but monitor what your child sees on the internet.  There are far too many wolves more than happy to expose your children to truly awful things.
    What we teach our children is the legacy they will pass on to their children.  We should want what is best for them and protect them from what would harm them.  Let us work together towards this common good so that we raise godly young men and women.  No woman or man should have to settle for anything less that the dignity that God has created them to experience.   Let us protect that dignity and raise our youth to do the same.

Thoughts arising from an untimely death

This morning, we did at our school what we do every 1st Friday.  WE move the Blessed Sacrament from the Adoration Chapel were it sits waiting for those to come in for Perpetual Adoration, into the main church and onto the main altar.  During that time we make the opportunity for Confession for our grade school students as they come to spend some time in Eucharistic Adoration.  Since I take the visiting priest’s confessional, as a courtesy to the other priest that comes to help, I have only the option of anonymous (behind the screen).  Occasionally, a student will come in and step around the screen.  That happened more than a few times today.  One of the young men came around and stared right into my eyes the whole time.  I was a bit taken aback.  It was nothing he did.  Last night I read an obituary of a young man from a former parish who had died in a freak tractor accident.  They had a picture of the young man, and I swear, the boy standing in front of me could have been him 10 years ago.  My head has been in the wake service of the young man to which I went a few days back.  I had this sudden urge to take the boy, wrap him in bubble wrap, and tell his parents to never let him out of their sight.  This preoccupied my mind as each student came in.  The young man who had died had been in my instruction at one time.  He was a fine young man who was mature and wise beyond his years more often than not. When I looked into the eyes of his parents at the wake and saw two people who had just lost their only son and just looked weary, it broke my heart.  When I saw his grandmother, a very dear sweet woman, who also looked so very tired, and saw his aunt, who couldn’t stop crying, it just was heart wrenching.  Although the pastoral care of this family belonged to another, these were people I cared about and to see them in such pain was troubling.

Of course, we can’t bubble wrap our children and keep them forever at our sides.  They grow.  We always pray that they grow strong and wise and live up to their full potentials as human beings and as people of faith.  We have to count on their learning those lessons well and being ready to answer for  how they lived their lives when their day comes to pass from this world.  We will fidget and groan as we watch them make mistakes and even mess their lives up entirely.  But there is always a hope that tomorrow they will come to their sense.  As this death this week reminded me, as does every funeral I have, all of us will come to a point where today is the last day of our life.  So what do we do with it? We’ll not be able to pass though our days here without experiencing some pain, disappointment, and grief.  It is part of life. It occurred to me this evening as I was pray Evening Prayer that while do not have any real control over when or how we die, we do have tremendous control over how we live.  I got to thinking about what I would say to every student I have had over the years.  It would go something like this.

I really believe that every single person that has ever been born has the deep inset desire to be remembered; a consequence of having made one’s mark in the world.  What will be your mark?  Will it be positive, negative, or barely visible?  Will it change other people’s lives for the better or will other people be sorry they ever met you?  I do not think anyone wants to be the person that makes other people’s lives hellish, but so often will do so because it is easier that make another person’s life better.  You were born into this world, created by God, to make other people’s lives better and be a positive force for good.  I know that is hard because it requires you to be selfless and exhibit self-control.  I know the temptations to be selfish and out of control are overwhelming.  I  cannot speak to being a young lady, but I can to being a young man.  I know the temptation to strip the dignity away from a woman is ever present.  I know society expects you to be promiscuous even if it later condemns you for doing so.  I know you are told over and over again that you have to rely on your physical prowess in sports to get anywhere in life.  I know you are told that religion is for the stupid, for children, or for the women…but that men do not need a God other than themselves.  I know you are tempted to party hard, drink hard, ingest whatever mind altering substance happens to be around.  I know you are told to ignore whatever emptiness might come from this.  I know as you get older that the definition of success comes from the accrual of power and wealth. I know you struggle with wanting to be a real man in a world that is quite content for you to remain a boy.  Boys are easy to control.  I know it because I have been there or still get tempted towards these things.  I know it sucks and that it easier to give into rather than rise above it.

Remember, though, each of us is only given one chance at this life.  We don’t get to redo it.  What we have at the end of our lives is the finished product of our lives; an accumulation of our choices.  Choose wisely, knowing that you are held responsible for what you do.  Be selfless, courageous, and strong.  Do not waste your life on numbing it.  Make your mark in such a positive way as to make a permanent positive change.  God gives you so many graces, charisms, talents, and abilities for this purpose; He expects a return on His investment.  Be thankful for the blessings in your life; never allow envy or greed be what motivates you.  Protect the dignity of those around you, don’t rip it away through lust.  Treat your life and your faith as the precious gifts they are.  While you gave neither of these to yourself, you are responsible for how you develop them. Please stay away from risky and dangerous behavior!  In 14 years I have buried far too many young men and women and had to witness the crushing and haunting look of an inconsolable parent, mourning the loss of their child.  I can assure you, that look will stay with you for awhile.  So many times the deaths were completely avoidable.  There are many people out there that actively care about you and are concerned for your well being; people who want to see each one of you grow up into a great and strong adult.  I know, because I am one of them.

You have to want this for yourself. I know this.  I have tried to fill the void we are born with so many things that the world says will work, but don’t.  I have tried money, power, drinking, and other things to fill the void and they failed.  I know faith has provided for me not only a firm foundation from which I can weather any storm and find comfort in the bleakest of moments, but helps me to become all that I am created to be.  The man who has faith has nothing to fear, not even death.  Faith is all that we get to take with us past this life, where our faith is and how we actively allowed it to be developed will be shown in how we acted.  Choose well.  May each person who reads live a long happy life. Be all that you are created to be and do not allow any fear of any person rule you.  In the end you are answerable to God and God alone.  May each of you hear when that time comes :“Well done my good and faithful servant.”

Our Hearts are Restless Till THey Rest in Thee

Today is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time and the Gospel we have is a continuation of last week's Gospel in which upon being asked by Jesus, "Who do you say that I am?", Peter answers correctly, "Your are the Christ, the Son of the Living God."  Jesus gives Peter the 'keys of the Kingdom of Heaven', a unique authority that extends from Christ Himself.  What is Peter's first act as keeper of the keys?  When Jesus tells the apostles what being the Messiah actually meant, Peter wants none of it.  In arrogant presumption, he takes upon himself to rebuke Jesus as if Jesus were insane or at least taken temporary leave of His senses.  What leads Peter to such a bold move?  Jesus describes the role of the Messiah as one of being rejected by the religious leaders. put to death, and then rising in 3 days.  This was not the job title Peter had in mind for a Messiah.  Jesus was supposed to go to Jerusalem, wow the religious authorities (and maybe even the Romans) and through either that or through war, establish a new Davidic kingdom.  Peter is looking to the things of this world to satisfy his longings and is tempting Jesus to do the same; a temptation that Jesus had already experienced in the 40 days in the desert when Satan tempted Jesus to do the same by promising to hand over all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would worship him.  Jesus has the same response both times; he refutes it.  This time, He instructs His apostles (and by extension all who would follow Him) to fix their gaze not on the things of this world, but in the things of God.

It is easy to chide Peter as if he were some singular dope who didn't get it.  But that is the story of humanity, isn't it?  We continually seek within the things of this world fulfillment and contentment.  For some it is an accrual of wealth and power, for others it is knowledge.  Take, for example the saint whose feast it is, St Augustine.  In his Confessions, St. Augustine talks about his searches  for contentment within this world.  He talks about how he chased this inner longing God places within us and tried to fill it with the things of this world.  This lead him to sinfulness and even a heretical cult.  He describes how his mother, St. Monica, who had herself found the answer to that longing in God Himself, had desperately prayed for her son to do the same and had invited him over and over again.  Augustine persisted in seeking in the world, but eventually converted to Christianity and understood what is was that his mother had, saying in the Confessions , "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee."  He would find in God what the things and pleasures of this world had failed to provide and stopped building his own temporary kingdoms and gave himself over to the Kingdom of God.  St. Augustine, after this self surrender to God, would become a prolific writer and preacher whose teaching still greatly influence the Christian faith.

There is a powerful lesson to be learned from both of these: Specifically, what fills that hole within us.  It is easy to look to the things of this world to fill that need.  In fact, the world will tell us that there is no God, so if we are to find fulfillment it will be here and now.  This way of thinking can subtly or not so subtly drive our lives, even those of Catholics.  Ambition for the things of this world and the possibility of their filling that longing is not just a feeling that Peter or Augustine felt, but one common to our human condition.  Sometimes we can replace the refrain from today's Responsorial Psalm, "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord, my God" with trying to satiate that thirst with wealth, power, status, influence, and reputation.  When those inevitably do not work, the emptiness gets numbed.  In his book, "Prayer Primer", Fr Thomas Dubay writes the following: " When one rejects the real God, he inevitably substitutes lesser things to fill his inner emptiness.  If we are not captivated by the living God and pursuing Him, we will center our desires on idols, big or small: vanities, pleasure seeking, prestige, power... while idols never satisfy, they often do serve as narcotics that more or less deaden the inner pain of not having Him for whom we were made and who alone can bring us to the eternal ecstasy of the beatific vision."   So many times our quest for fulfillment in this world is dashed by the realization that no matter how good the feeling provided, it soon or later goes away.  This leads us to double down on stupidity in the hopes of a permanent fix.  If a little materialism doesn't work, maybe more will.  If a little sexual promiscuity doesn't work, maybe more will.  If my use of narcotics and alcohol doesn't work, maybe more will.  Much like a person smacking their head against a brick wall and wondering why they are dazed and bleeding, we can keep going to the same unfulfilling trough  thinking maybe this time it will be different.  The bottom line is that our longing will never be totally fulfilled by the things of this world because the things of this world are temporary.  We who fix our hopes on the temporary set ourselves up for our own disappointment, disillusionment, and unhappiness.  Were simple accumulation of wealth or power a constant in the fulfillment of the human condition, there would be a level at which every person would declare that they are totally satiated.  Does that sound like the world in which we live?  When we chase after specters, we will have nothing but a haunted longing in the end.  We are meant and made for far greater than what this world can provide.

In the Gospel, Christ invites us to walk in his footsteps and in doing so find both the focus and locus of true and lasting fulfillment. We cannot expect the eternal from the temporary.  To find that which is lasting, we must look to that which is eternal.  Those who find it, find it easy to detach from this world and find joy regardless of the wealth, health, prestige, power, reputation and such they have or lack thereof.  This is because when we find that which is eternal, that which is temporary is recognized and treated as that which is temporary; but finds in the temporary the visage of the God who made the temporary as well as the unending life within the Kingdom of Heaven. We always have the choice to pursue the things of this world or the things of God; we have the ability to try and find fulfillment in the here and now (if you are into exercises in futility) or we can broaden our vision to the eternal.  God gives us His grace to do so.  His footsteps show us the path.  This means that the love of God must influence all that we are and all that we do. For it is agape that fills us with what the world promise but cannot deliver upon.  It is our choice to walk in frustration or fulfillment.  Be aware, though, that St Augustine is right in that our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

As one who has seen with my own eyes the ruins of a great and powerful empire (Inca) that is now consigned to the dustbin of history along with every other empire, it is wise to understand the Latin saying, 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundi'..that is, Thus passes the glory of the world.  We are called to a far greater dignity and promise.  Let us set our sights on that which is of God while we live it that which is of this world.  It is difficult to be sure, but if we truly want to experience a foretaste of the eternal union and fulfillment of heaven, it will by striving, though the grace of God, for it in the here and now.

Some troubling question about Catholic Youth Formation

This certainly is not going to be a popular subject, but I am going to ask questions that are going to be uncomfortable and for which I really have no answers.  I am going to use my own diocese as an example.  First, let me say that I am a big supporter of Catholic Schools and especially those to whom I have been assigned.  Second, I think that youth formation is one of the most important things we do in a parish after the sacraments.  In fact, I think it absolutely critical for the hope of the future of our faith and its continuance from generation to generation.  The following are questions, musings, and perhaps grasping at straws to figure out what is next.

Several years back I was at a meeting for pastors and principals where the presenter was extolling the importance of Catholic education.  In the talk, he mentioned that neither of his children practiced the Catholic faith anymore, but the formation they got was wonderful.  I know many of my brother priests had a moment of cognitive dissonance.  One would assume if the formation were wonderful that his children would still not just be practicing Catholics but actively involved as well.  I was talking to a friend who was at a Catholic High School graduation where the principal was going on and on about what fine young Catholics the current graduating class is while knowing that about only 30% of the Catholic students were at Mass on the weekend.  All totaled throughout this diocese ( a diocese of around 90,000 Catholics with 3 Catholic High Schools, 38 parochial grade schools, 100+ PSR programs, almost as many Confirmation programs, several parishes with full time paid youth ministers and many more with volunteer youth ministers) will spend upwards of 30 million dollars on our youth this year alone.  Untold hours of volunteering, fundraisers, and such will happen.  Many parishes will have to make very hard decisions about non-school activities because of tight budgets. In this diocese, we run above the national average of Mass attendance (nationally @30%, in the diocese of Jefferson City it is around 45-50%.  But giving is usually just at or below what parishes need to pay bills.  It is not as if we are not making an effort.  Just for some perspective: I have been a priest for 14 years; this means in my short time as a priest in this smallish diocese, we have spent $420,000,000 dollars on youth education and formation.

Yet the vast majority of weddings I do the couples are co-habitating. I see a very small percentage of them at Mass on any regular basis.  I am not saying this to condemn them, only stating facts.  I can count on not seeing at least 50% of my confirmation students after they are confirmed, and about that many during the summer vacation break.  The number of priestly and religious vocations coming out of our Catholic schools is anemic at best, and this is with a full time vocation director who spends time in each of the schools every year, in the high schools frequently, and is never at an end of finding new ways to get the message out.  I am fortunate in that I will say I see 75% of our grade school students every weekend, but I know this is not the norm.  I have seen parents scratch their heads...good stable catholic parents...wondering what happened; why is their child not following their example and not listening to what they know their children are being taught.  We could only muster less than 100 youth for the summer programs we have...less than 100 from the entire diocese.  It is particularly hard to get young men interested in anything having to do with faith and religion. 

These are not bad kids.  I sometimes look at what they say on facebook and see what their attitudes about faith become and it makes me weep.  I see popularity and partying become the foci of life.  I see dedication to sports and other activities crowd out faith.  I see kids ridicule the one who actually does take faith seriously.  We are losing them in so many ways.

Some will say that it is because of the horrid catechesis.  Maybe, I know many catechetical series are variations of Christianized narcissism where the value of anything is measured by how it makes one feel.  But I know there are very good series out there as well that are being used.  It does not seem to make a difference. I have seen dynamic youth ministry and lethargic youth ministry without noticing a huge difference in the majority of a parish's youth.  I have seen fine young Catholics come from apathetic and even antipathetic homes and apathy generate from strong Catholic families.  I have seen fine young Catholic men run away like they were on fire when a mention of the possibility of a priestly vocation is mentioned.  So, after 14 years and 420 million dollars, after seeing heroic and dedicated volunteers, priests, religious, and lay people give tremendous amounts of time and energy to our youth, after seeing a product (for lack of a better word) that does not measure up to the immense amount of time, energy, and resources, I have to wonder what is going on and how do we turn it around.  Turn it around we must! (Sorry for that Yoda moment) These youth are the pool from which the next generation of parochial leaders, parents, priests, and religious will be drawn.  How do we compete with (or more to the point combat) their culture of instant gratification, focus on only today, consumption with self-esteem, and engaging in behaviors that only numb the emptiness and isolation felt when these foci fail to produce on any lasting basis?  I am not willing to write a single student off that I have ever had...not a one...not the ones who have left, grown cynical and bitter at life, not those who see faith as a childhood whim with no depth, not a one who prefers to be drunk, high, and sexually active.  I can't.  None of us should.  I truly care about these young men and women and want what is best for them, even if they are misled about what is best for them, or could not care less about what happens to them.  I am happy we are starting to make inroads in my parish, but it is the smallest of inroads and one that is very fragile.

So what do I do?  I pray.  I pray a lot.  Mostly for guidance.  Like so many things as pastor, I still feel like a newbie priest, trying to figure out with the grace of God the next step.  I make an effort.  I care.  Whether that is enough, I do not know.  But maybe the answer is to continue trying and challenging.  Spiritus supplicet. But perhaps it will take all of us actively praying, encouraging, and setting good examples. There is an answer.  Christ does not ask us to do something then leave us high and dry without His help to accomplish it.  There you go, tonight's rambling.

Providing for Future Generations

I have it heard so many times in the last year or so that the generation in school now will probably be the first generation in some time in American History who will not have it better than their parents.  Increasing debt, both personal and national, paired with slimmer job prospects, skyrocketing education costs, and moral decay are all conspiring against those in our future.  The cause of this comes from the same root: we do not sacrifice anymore. In a society that prefers to be served and not to serve, the "I want it all" attitude prevails.  Unfortunately other people, especially those placed in our care and those who will be placed in their care, will suffer the consequences. This same fact has plagued us in so many ways, in our world and in our church.

The unwillingness to sacrifice comes from a very dark place in the human soul, a place of rebellion against God.  It follows the attitude of Satan, whom in Paradise Lost John Milton writes: "Ego non serviam!" "I will not serve."  Sacrifice is necessary for service, but sacrifice is willing to put the needs of another before oneself.  It is seen in a good parent who willingly gives up pleasures they might enjoy, or even personal necessities, to make sure their child has what they need.  This isn't just a matter of things, but of time and energy as well. Where sacrifice is absent, however, absent also is the love of God.  Without the love of God, our projects are castles of sand built on sand on the shore of the sea. We are finding out in this culture that living for oneself is costing us dearly, not only cheating future generations, but also ending in our own destruction as well.  This society, a society that consumes like locusts to satiate its materialistic longings, is a society that shows all the marks of a society in decline: moral decay, promiscuous licentiousness,  an over emphasis on leisure and sports, the overindulgence of instincts, and a declining emphasis on the spiritual.   Too many people think all is lost so they might as well party till the fall comes.  This is nonsensical. 

The virtue of self-control and sacrifice, also known as temperance, helps us to be wise about the expenditure of our time and our energy and do so with the love of God infusing our efforts.  Thus temperance is where we begin.  How is it that I can use what I have to benefit others?  This is particularly the case in tithing.  In tithing, we make a sacrifice of self for the good others.  WE help out our local parish so that the mission of Christ might be able to come about in its fullness.  So many parishes limit what they do because the monies are not there to do so.  Unfortunately the group that needs it most is the group most often treated minimally: our teenagers.  So many times we reduce our Catholic stuff to maybe an hour for Mass on the weekend and maybe an hour for education ( if the teens are not in Catholic Schools) and presume that this is enough or that even this is a colossal burden. If we were to dedicate just the minimum time for masses every year, we are talking a maximum of 56 hours out of the 8760 hours of a year! (.006%!)  If we dedicate the normal time allotted for youth education (non parochial school students) one would add another 38 hours of the 3760 hours in the year for a grand total of 94 hours a year (1%) for their religious formation. That is what we provide for these youth to grow up to be holy young men and women?!  They will spend more time cleaning up, watching TV, playing video games, on sports, on school, on jobs, on sleeping, on partying.  Youth activities, even education, are commonly held in much lower esteem than school activities and trying to plan for church youth activities is like trying to steer a Cooper Mini through traffic  during the Indianapolis 500.  In case we are wondering why there is such a dearth in priestly and religious vocations....  It is time for some temperance.  That doesn't mean we quit doing these things, just in appropriate moderation that reflect our priorities as Catholics.  If a child never learns sacrifice and having to make hard choices based on good principles and priorities, they will be ill suited for the future.

How do I serve?  How do I encourage service?  How do I embrace sacrifice for others?  The more we get this and act on it, the better suited we are for the future.  We can see what living for yourself has wrought in this society.  We can do better.  Our faith demands better.  Maybe the sacrifice begins with getting our priorities straight.  there is a great saying by CS Lewis, " Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in, aim at earth and you will get neither." We are transient beings whose end is not here and now.  Whether we choose to believe that or not does not change this.Aim eternally and let your priorities reflect that!  If we do not, then not only will we lose eternal life but this life will be reduced to the nonsense and pain of greed and envy so prevalent in our world right now.  Find ways to serve. Find ways to serve as a family.  See the 94 hours as a jumping off point for an entire life and not hoop to jump through to satisfy an unfair God.  If we are to ever get the priests and religious we need, it will start from the nurturing of service.  If Jesus says about Himself that "The Son of Man came to serve and not to be served", can we as His followers profess any less?  Nurture service and its attendant sacrifice and we will be providing well for future generations in a way that stockpiles of wealth can never do.

A not so subtle challenge

It is easy, I know, to critique something we see and either believe or know to be wrong.  Within the Church this is especially true.  We can see many disturbing developments: fewer and fewer go to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, even fewer go to Confession on any kind of regular basis, most Catholics know precious little about the content and purpose of our faith, fewer of our young are retaining their faith, we have nowhere the number or quality of clergy we need, the religious life is in wholesale free fall in many religious communities, more parishes are closing, fewer baptisms, fewer marriages, more Catholics have co-opted worldly sexual mores, and the list goes on and on.  There is no shortage of things to bemoan.

 It is worth considering that most of this decline is in the 1st world nations (North America, Australia, Europe) (cf. cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/requestedchurchstats.html) while the opposite seems to be true for Africa, Asia, and to some degree Central and South America.  Were the culprit Vatican II, as so many want to blame, one would expect an across the board free fall.  This is not the case.  Something is distinctly different in the 1st world that is affecting the Church profoundly.  As the overwhelming amount of both laity and clergy in the 1st world are from the 1st world, it is only natural that the clergy of the West would come into seminaries, houses of formations, and religious orders influenced by the culture in which they grew.  It has become a downward spiral.  So here is my theory...for what it is worth...and perhaps some ways to fix it.

I am only speaking to the church where the decline is in effect.  I am a child of the 70's and 80's.  I know well the constant message that is continually and feverishly pumped into us: live for yourself!  Culturally, we are a rather narcissistic lot. We judge the efficacy of anything by what pleasure it gives me or how I feel about something.  Even when we are altruistic, it is because we get a good feeling about ourselves. We are told that life's goal is about comfort, pleasure, and ease. We are used to being so stimulated by outside sources on  an ongoing basis, that if outside stimuli fail , we deem whatever we experience as a failure.  We become so focused on the individual that we forget that we actually are a social being and that our actions bear directly upon the lives of others.  One who lives for themselves will rarely want or believe they need an outside force pressing upon them to restrain themselves, be it government, church, or God.  The first real culprit to the decline of Mass attendance is far too many of us simply do not feel we need God or do not want any institution telling us that there is more to life than ease, pleasure, and comfort.  We will turn to religion if the world fails to provide, but more often than not, the turning towards quickly becomes a turning away when the individual becomes challenged towards a permanent and profound change of heart.  Witness what happened after 9/11.

In our self-centeredness we prefer to be served and not to serve.  So many who do come to church have this mentality; I am there to be entertained, to have an emotional response, or to feel accepted no matter how I wish to live. We want all kinds of ministries and programs but want someone else to volunteer.  Trying to get volunteers in an average parish is a maddening exercise!  God and faith, in this mindset,  are supposed to enable behavior and not challenge it.  So many times I see people bemoan that priests don't regularly preach about contraception, homosexuality, and such.  I willing to bet that these are people who are not themselves struggling with such things.  I have noticed what happens when someone touches a spiritual spot they don't want challenged, the reaction is dismissive and derisive!  Normally people are happy to hear homilies or sermons that chastise someone else's behavior and leaves them feeling comfortable about their own lives.  This is human nature.

We loathe inconvenience in this culture. Everything needs to be quick, effortless, and satisfying.  It is why politics has become a collection of skin deep sound bytes.  It is why people like the quick to learn slogans (advertisers and politicians count on this).  It is why our diets have gone to pot and obesity is on the rise. We want the things we feel of lesser value to be quick so that we may return back to the ease, comfort, and pleasure we so crave.  This is very evident in Mass.  Last Pentecost, I had a gentleman walk into church, as I was greeting people, who looked me right in the eye and directed me to hurry this thing up. I thought, well, this guy ( not a parishioner of mine, thanks be to God) had picked the wrong feast, the wrong parish, and the wrong pastor to tell that to.  We priest often joke to ourselves that we might just as well put a drive through on the side of the church.  I was interning in a parish, frequented by tourists, were I saw people in very expensive cars drive up 40 minutes late, get out of their car (leaving it running), getting into the Communion line, receiving Communion, and walking directly back out again and return to their cars and drive away smiling!  They never even hit a pew.  I see the dismal response we often get in most parishes for adult education, use of the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, weekday Masses, Holy Day masses, youth activities, and such.  I know people who will avoid going to a particular Mass because that Mass has the Corpus Christi Procession afterward or some other special thing (really seen in attitudes about Easter Vigil) and "well, that just goes beyond that 1hour (including travel time), Father, that I have allotted to Mass this week."  Now, I have been blessed to be in a parish where these attitudes are quickly changing and even were challenged well before I got here.  But can we believe for a moment a parish where these attitudes prevail will provoke vocations, conversions, or true worship?   If we treated sports like we treat religion, the major leagues of every sport would fold tomorrow!   But sports are fun, though...much more fun that religion!

This leads to a deepening in the downward spiral in that so many priests cater to this attitude, many times choosing a safe side to be on.  It becomes a matter of which group happens to agree with me or which group will give the lesser grief.  As these clerics all sat out in the pews at one time, they have seen their pastors do this, have seen the various sides compete for attention in the pews and then in the seminary, and then have to preach  to this same lot as a priest.  They have seen priest maligned regularly for saying unpopular things and see priests regularly vilified in the media.  I know so many young priest who came out of the gate on fire for our faith only to watch them get bashed about by parishioners who endlessly critique everything about them.  It is sad that those who support the faith are not nearly as vocal as the critics of the faith.  The temptation to cater what is popular is overwhelming.  People forget that every cleric is a human being subject to the same temptations as anyone else and that the temptation towards ease (or at least less grief) can be a powerful thing.  I know this because there are days I struggle with this. 

We priests also know that most young men and their parents would sooner send themselves or their son to a fiery death rather than see them enter the seminary, let alone get ordained.  I have joked that the quickest way to get a teenage or twenty something young man to flee from Church is to ask them if they have ever considered priesthood.  Actually it is true.  I have seen parents act as if I just asked their son to kill puppies for a living by mentioning priesthood as a possibility.  When I re-entered the seminary, many of my friends and family had tried to dissuade me from the seminary because they thought the priesthood was beneath me and a waste of my talents.  Think we'll get good strong vocations in that atmosphere?  The bottom line is we cannot offer nothing but critiques and expect that anything will change.

Maybe the best place to start about what to do with our faith is to ask the questions: What do I know, actually know, about the Catholic Faith?  Where is it I need to change or grow?  Where have I resented being told to change?  What is it that I positively contribute to helping the Church continue the mission of Jesus Christ?  Is my faith too much about me and my personal likes?  Am I willing to take wholly unpopular stances in order to do what is right?  How do I serve?  What is my attitude about worship of God?  Do I make a profound effort?  Am I willing to endure hardship, inconvenience, sacrifice, or suffering in order to what is right?  Conversion of a people starts with one individual conversion at a time.  The sooner we learn that God is not to be at our convenience, something that has to fit into our schedule full of more important things, the sooner we will see a wholesale turnaround in our parishes in this country.  Nothing changes positively by sitting on the sidelines complaining.  Worried about access to the sacraments?  When was the last time you spoke to a young man about priesthood or supported a young man who has thought about such things?  Have you ever spoke to your children about such things or do the only time they hear about a priest is when someone complains about what a dirt rotten so and so Father is!? These are just a few suggestions, hopefully you are getting the point.

We live in a culture lost in a desert of unfulfillment...a people who are finding the emptiness of living for comfort, pleasure, and ease.  WE need to get our act together.  The grace of God is there in great abundance, but we have to have to get to the point where it is not just about me and what makes me feel good.