10/25/22 - This is a Hard Reading

From the first reading for Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week, Year II:

As the Church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her…

What do we do with a difficult reading? Do we toss it away blithely, with a glib aside, or deride it ruefully, or simply pretend it doesn’t exist? Do we judge the reading based on contemporary attitudes, making the standards of the age the criteria for interpreting the Word of God? Are we the judge of the Word? Or do we let the Word judge us and our contemporary age? Do we let it transform us into a new creation? Do we wrestle with it and have it strike us in our hip joint so we walk away limping?

The Word should stop us in our tracks, make us reassess our selves and our assumptions. It should leave us doubting that we are as wise, clever and enlightened as we know we must be.

From 10/18/22

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 1:26-27 | RSVCA

“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire. 

Matthew 5:21-22 | RSVCE

What does it mean to be created in the image and likeness of God? The theologians tell us it has to do with our immortal, rational soul. St. John Paul would add that we also image God in our physical bodies, since it is in the body that we love. 

Love implies another. To love only one's self is an infinite loop of narcissism. God is Three in One. His love isn't self gratification. It is shared between Father and Son, and through the Spirit extends through all creation. Not because He has to. Love is not compulsion. Love is a free gift.

Unlike God, we can reject love. We can get caught in an endless loop of narcissism. We can forget that our sister and brother is created in the same image of God. We can also forget that we are imperfect. All of us are broken images. 

It doesn't mean we don't correct a brother who strays, or tolerate abuse. It means that we understand that hatred is as deadly as lust. We can remain perfectly chaste and temperate, yet lack charity. What good is our chastity and abstemiousness when we are cruel and arrogant? What good is our activism for those on the other side of the world when he are indifferent, at best, to the people around me?

We are created in the image of God. God is love. Love open my eyes to see you in others. 

Love calls us to sacrifice for others, as the Son sacrificed Himself for us. Love break the bonds of narcissism in my life.

Love calls us to chastity and temperance so we may live in true freedom. Love free me so I may truly love you in my sisters and brothers. 

10/17/22 - Living in the Material World

Jesus wants to give us himself. We want the world.

From this today's Gospel reading:

“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Luke 12:14

The weather effects me in strange ways, especially in the mornings and especially in the fall and in the spring. I think it has to do with sudden movement of fronts and the volatility of the barometric pressure at those times of year (not that I know anything about those things). I just know when warm fronts and cold fronts collide, or a clear bright day is followed upon immediately by a rainy one, it's as if my head is glued to the pillow and my eyelids are stapled shut. I then go through the day in a fog, unable to focus and barely able to stay awake.

I share this with you, because this morning was odder still. Yesterday was a clear and (mostly) bright day. Overnight rain did indeed move in. Yet I was up before the alarm: early enough to be miffed, but alert enough that trying to go back to sleep was pointless. In spite of this, trying to stay awake during the holy hour was a struggle. It was almost comical at times. But the Lord did speak, which tells me that he is the one in control. I may be tired or distracted, but He does His work. There are plenty of mornings where I'm relatively rested and ready, and I don't feel moved in any particular way. It's just for me to be present and open, because it really isn't about me.

As for what the Lord "spoke," I was hearing Him say that He wants to give us Himself. He wants to share with us a portion of His Spirit. It means living in the material world, using the things of this world for our good and the good of our neighbor, taking what we need and forgetting the rest. 

It means not being obsessed with following the spirit of the world. We aren't to worry about those who's opinions count for something in the culture. We aren't to fear those who can cancel us in this world, but who have no other power over us. We should instead fear the one who can cancel us eternally (see Gospel for Saturday of the 28th Week). 

Our seeking of justice in the material world should not contribute to the disillusion of family bonds. That was the problem with the person who wanted Jesus to arbitrate his estate. He may have been in the right, and then again, maybe not. We're not given that information. But maybe we can be so zealous in our pursuit of justice that we cause damage worse than the injustice we are trying to redress. Knowing when to press our case and when to pull back takes discernment.

All things need to be ordered to the building up of the family, the Church community as well as the civil community, in that order and for the glory of God.

I'll be back to flesh things out a little more later.

10/5-14/22 - Catching Up

10/14/22

Today is going to be sort of an exercise in virtual housecleaning. I had a cold last week, which didn’t keep me from the daily Holy Hour, but did distract me from writing. Since my office is in my room, I was able to get some office work done while tending to my health, but the beginning of the week was still taken up with some clerical catching up. 

As for the blog, I do have some loose notes and scattered thoughts I put down that I’ve gone back and cleaned up into a presentable, cohesive post. At least, that was the goal.

Before we go any further, I need you to please pray for the repose of the soul of Fr. Tomasz Grzegorzewski, SDB, a member of my community who passed away suddenly yesterday. He had just returned from a vacation in his native Poland and wasn’t feeling well. Still, no one expected that the Lord would call him home so swiftly. So, please pray for the repose of his soul, the consolation of his family back home, and of the Polish community here, who loved him so much.

Fr. Tomasz truly loved life, and lived it to the fullest. He spent his whole Salesian life as a missionary in various countries in Africa, as well as stints in Ireland and New Zealand. He was looking forward to getting back on the road at some point in 2023 to continue his missionary work in a yet undetermined local. As of this writing he’s been gone a little over 12 hours, and I miss his presence already. May the angels carry him to Lord he served so faithfully. 

Eternal rest grant unto him o Lord

and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

AMEN

10/5/22 - Francis and Alberto

What are our riches? How do we use the riches we have? What riches are we willing to sacrifice? 

Yesterday (10/4) was the feast of probably the most loved saint of the Western Church: St Francis of Assisi. Today (10/5) is the commemoration of a blessed few know of outside the Salesian family: Bl. Alberto Marvelli. Other than that they were born on the Italian peninsula, they have very little in common.

What they do have in common is a desire to surrender all to God. Francis did it as a mendicant, living a life of radical poverty in an age of new found wealth and upward mobility. Alberto did it as a young layman putting his talents as an engineer at the service of his community. 

The Lord's plans are beyond us. Alberto was only 28 when he was killed in a traffic accident. He had a strong devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and was a daily communicant. He saw the connection between deep piety and serving others. He had a promising life ahead of him: he was engaged to be married and was a rising star politically in his city. He saw both marriage and the political life as paths of service, not personal gain. He is for us an example of what it means to be a Catholic politician. May his name and story be more widely known. 

10/10/22

[Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 

Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? (see John 14:1-14)

I do believe, help my unbelief! (see Mk 9:14-29)

In a short time the Lord has truly done great things in my life. 

Justice is getting what is due. That is a baseline. It is the minimum God wants for us. What he wishes to give us is super-abundant mercy and the blessings that flow from that.

What I want is to surrender]

Added on 10/14:

T.S. Eliot held a public reading of his poems once, and in introducing one of his older pieces he told the audience that he had no idea what he was thinking about when he wrote it years before. I only wrote the above lines less than a week ago, and at first blush I can not for the life of me remember what the good Lord was inspiring in me, if He even was. 

After some reflection, what I can reconstruct is that I was feeling a bit discouraged that morning. The first two quotations come from John's gospel when Jesus tells the disciples he is going away (to be crucified) and not to worry. Of course they did. The last is from when Jesus returns to the disciples after taking Peter, James and John to witness the Transfiguration. He finds them squabbling with some scribes over the best way to exorcise a demon from a young man. When Jesus questions the faith of the boy's father, the man retorts with his proclamation of faith seeking greater strength. 

When I was a young priest I went through a very deep vocational crisis. I never doubted my call to be a priest, but I wasn't sure about being a Salesian. Most people don't understand that being a member of a religious community and being a priest are two separate vocations. I wondered if going to a diocese was the right thing. But my struggles over my future in the religious life put me in danger of losing both vocations. 

My answer was to seek the guidance of a spiritual director, and rededicate myself to my prayer life, which was in tatters. The crisis did pass. But I realized that I was spiritually immature, and it was effecting every aspect of my life - especially my apostolic zeal. I only came to see this after I began to take my prayer life seriously. The long lasting effect of it is that I've had a steady, consistent prayer life for many years now. Lately the Lord has called me to "up my game" by making the Holy Hour a regular part of my daily routine, rather than something special I do during Advent and Lent (maybe). 

When you step into that intense light you see your defects more clearly. But that's alright. God wants us to see our short comings, not to discourage us, but to let us know where we still need to grow. 

I think I was also a little down because I wasn't "feeling" as energized or alert that morning. Again, the Lord sometimes gives us energy or consolations to start a new phase of life, but then curbs our enthusiasm  so we do what we are doing out of love, and not for what "we get out of it," like feeling good.

The key is simply to surrender to the Lord, and let Him lead you, whether you feel like it or not.

As for the point on justice and mercy, I'm going to let it stand, and maybe unfold it little by little over the course of these reflections.

The bottom line is that if we surrender to the Lord, live an active life of prayer, the Lord will carry us farther than we can imagine. It may not seem that way at the time, but if we pause and reflect back we often see more clearly the progress we are making year to year, if not month to month. 

10/13/22

Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa is a stumbling block to the disciples of therapeutic religion. Not just her, but any victim soul; one who willfully takes on suffering or applies their suffering in reparation for the sins of the world. I want to be careful not to be too harsh. There are those who understand that suffering and sacrifice are unavoidable aspects of the Christian journey. But that suffering is usually explained as being a normal consequence of our “human condition.” This goes along with a contemporary aversion to the idea that reparation for sin is necessary. It begins either with a denial of Original Sin, or a denial that God the Father would actually send His only begotten Son into the world to suffer and die for us. It's all an attempt to make the faith reasonable, and it's unreasonable to believe that an all loving God would demand satisfaction for the sins of the world (if there is even such a thing as sin).

But here we have Alexandina Maria. Her feast day, October 13, coincides with the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I'm not sure this is coincidental, because she, like the seers, claimed to have received a request from Heaven for the pope to consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, again, as an act of reparation for sins against the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I tread carefully here, because in the last few years there have been self proclaimed visionaries claiming to have messages from Mary or Jesus flooding the internet with speculation. (I am not now, nor have I ever been the recipient of any supernatural locutions). They've all proven to be false prophets. There is one who I do believe is sincere, who voluntarily withdrew from the scene when a major prediction he made didn't come to pass. I'm willing to give him the benefit because his prediction, as unlikely as it was when he made it, wasn't all that crazy. And time has rendered the notion of such an event not only less crazy, but even more plausible, as to made me wonder if he wasn't off by way of timing rather than substance. No, I'm not going to say what it was. I'll go as far as to say that it had nothing to do with the use of nuclear weapons, which has been on many people's minds lately. 

Unlike some contemporary theologians and spiritual writers I have no problem with the idea that Jesus' death was redemptive and that we need to make reparation of our own sins and the sins of the world. We may not be called to such extreme sacrifices as Bl. Alexandrina Maria, but any small sacrifice or inconvenience we can offer up helps.

Since this post is getting long, I'll cut this off right here, continuing this, and other themes presented here, as we go along.

10/3/22 - And Who is My Neighbor?

Am I now currying favor with human beings or God? Or am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ. 

But because he wished to justify himself

When I’m not assigned the noon Mass, or have some other pastoral responsibility, I go to the Don Bosco Community Center (DBCC) to help at the soup kitchen. It’s less than a ten minute walk from the parish offices. On an average day we serve about 200 meals. During the pandemic it was all take out (not to boast, but during the lock downs we were the only soup kitchen in the area to remain open). Now that we’re serving in the dining room again, I’d guess it’s about a third sit down and two thirds to go. 

The numbers usually go down over the summer, then ramp up again when the weather gets cold. I wasn't around much over July and August, but I'm told the numbers stayed high, surpassing 300 meals a day. The last few weeks have been closer to normal, but there is still anxiety over what the winter will bring.

We get food donated, but mainly buy the food we use. Prices are going up. Cash donations are down. There's already been talk in the news of food shortages in the coming months. There is real anxiety over how we're going to make it. 

It's no secret that Port Chester has a large Latino community, and is also a destination for migrants flying into Westchester Airport. The latest news is that the flights into Westchester are tapering off while arrivals into Orange County are ramping up. We have more people coming to us for food, clothing and housing (we don't house people, but give leads on where they might be able to find housing).

The Gospel reading the Mass today is the story of the Good Samaritan. As a friend of mine pointed out, it is used by many now as a call to help the "foreigner and victim." We forget that the one helping the man fell victim to robbers was the hated foreigner and the one receiving the help was a fellow countryman. It was members of his own community who refused to help, using their religious obligations an excuse. The story is meant to remind us that we don't have a corner on morality. The person we disagree with over this issue or another isn't necessarily a cold hearted so and so. Conversely, we are not necessarily on the side of the angels just because we think we are right. 

What does this have to do with our needs at the Center? My time working with the homeless and migrants, not just here but in other parishes, has led me to believe that we think that as Catholics we are responding to these issues with Gospel based solutions, when in reality we too often parrot political talking points. In order to justify ourselves we cherry pick lines from the Scriptures, Catechism and Magisterial documents looking for the right "proof test" that supports our point of view. We fail to see that the answers aren't easy, and don't fit a neat party platform, much less lawn sign bromides. 

I have a homeless man in front of me. What should I do? Give him money? I know many who say yes, even knowing the risk he may use it on drugs or alcohol. But what if he's found dead the next morning not too far from your door? I'm not speaking hypothetically here. I'm not saying don't give him the money. Maybe he really will buy a sandwich this time. What I am saying is that you shouldn't necessarily judge the person who choses not to.

We have migrant families who need food, shelter and clothes. Of course we care for them. I don't ask how they got here. I'm not an immigration agent. I know young people, here since they were toddlers. They've never been to their birth country since leaving. They are American in every way except they don't have legal status. Some even served in the U.S. military, but still don't have citizenship. Can't we do something for them? Is the solution really to deport them? I know families where some siblings have status, others do not, or one spouse has status the other does not. Is it just separate families?

Some will say they came illegally, therefor they should be deported. Unpopular opinion: Our country can control the boarder if it wants to. For various reasons these people, in most cases, were allowed in, and are treated like political and economic pawns. It's hypocritical to treat them like criminals by the same government that encouraged them to break the law to begin with. 

At the same, are open boarders really the answer? I lived three years in Mexico. I know how protective that government is of their boarder. Is human and drug trafficking more or less likely to grow when boarder enforcement is relaxed? Are migrants more or less exploited where there are no controls? 

Yes, we need to help the foreigner and victim. Yes, we should welcome the stranger. Yes, the system needs to be reformed. But maybe we need to understand the deeper meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan; that none of us has all the answers, and a sense unearned moral superiority is in truth a form of moral blindness.