A Regular Joe: June 2018

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

HAWAIIAN RULES!

One of the tougher tours of duty my family had to endure while we were in the Navy was being stationed in Hawaii for six years. While we lived there we were very engaged in the base parish’s liturgical and educational ministries, as well as local sports for our children. Judy and I have always taught our children how to play by the rules, to be a gracious winner and loser, to always look to improve in our own abilities and responsibilities, and when on a team play with the team’s success in mind, not just playing for our own benefits and stardom.

Hawaii was beautiful, most of the year you could leave the windows open and let the Hawaiian breeze cool the house. It also allows you to hear a lot of what was going on outside. One day the children were out playing a pick-up football game with the local children. I could hear voices being raised in dispute, it was a loud discussion over the rules of the game, the last thing I heard was a loud acclamation by the neighbor’s son “Hawaiian rules!” In other words, while we live in Hawaii, we get to change the rules to suit the home field or the one who owns the ball.

In our reading from Kings the high priest Hilkiah found the playbook (the book of the Law). A book that documented the covenant between God and his people Israel. Once read to the King, he realized they’d been playing by “Hawaiian rules” in Jerusalem! So the King gathered all the people had reminded them of God’s desire and the covenant that their fathers made with the Lord to revive the covenant and right relationship.

“Remain in me, as I remain in your, says the Lord; whoever remains in me will bear much fruit.” (Jn 15:4a, 5b) Jesus warns us in the Gospel, beware of false prophets who play by “Hawaiian Rules”. He tells us, you know them, “by their fruits”.

Our world, nation, and communities are becoming increasingly segregated and individualistic in how it approaches life and success. Pope Francis is constantly trying to remind us of the covenant we entered into through our Baptism, to realize we were created for each other and baptized into the “one” body, the Body of Christ. It’s not all about us as individuals!

Our Mass is a communal prayer, once the procession starts our individual prayers stop and we unite as individual living stones that make up the “one” holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We raise our “one” voice in worship to the “one” God in thanksgiving for all he has accomplish through us as the “one” body of Christ. Then we process in communion to receive his Son, who offers himself, body and blood, soul and divinity, to feed us, to nourish us, to go and seek the lost and forsaken and invite them back to the table of his love and mercy.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

GET IN THE GAME!

Several years ago while I was working with Habitat for Humanity, our affiliate was building out our first subdivision. 28 families in need were working to build a simple, decent, affordable place to call home. But this is not the important part. As the crews worked on these houses, every Saturday 3 young teenagers would show up to work on the houses. They were respectful, hard workings teens willing to do anything necessary to move the house construction along; framing, roofing, insulation, painting. One day when I saw them on site I began a conversation with them, wondering what motivates them to work on these houses every weekend. Their response floored me.

Ten years ago it was their mother who was in need of a simple, decent, affordable home for their family, and it was Habitat for Humanity who gave them the opportunity to succeed in her dream. The boys anxiously awaited the day that they would be old enough to return the blessing to other families. They saw their work on the construction site as a way to fulfill other families dreams of safe, affordable housing. This was their way of getting into the game, of contributing to the success of their community, who contributed so much to their family’s success so many years before. They told me, “They wouldn’t trade this experience for the world.”

Sometimes we fall into the trap of not showing up, nor participating because we get so lost in our own life challenges or our own daily grind. That there just isn’t anything left to give.

In the Gospel today, Jesus invites us to show up and participate. We are to give alms, pray, and fast. Our job isn’t to give the most money, to starve ourselves, or even to become the best pray-ers like the saints. Jesus is telling us to just show up and offer whatever you have and just get in the game.

Christians participate by giving money—a lot or a little—so others might eat. Christians pray every day so our lives are conformed to that of Jesus. Christians fast—especially in North America where there is so much—because we don’t need all those calories, alcohol, or technology. We participate because that’s what Jesus did and He calls us to do the same.

Let's all show up because in fasting, giving alms, and in praying, we can share the blessing we have received from our Heavenly Father and we become more like His Son, who gave everything.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

A SPIRITUAL SUBMARINE

[1]The story is told of a father of five children who came home with a toy. He summoned his children and asked which of them should be given the present. “Who is the most obedient one here? Who never talks back to Mom and does everything that Mom says to do?” He inquired. There were a few seconds of silence, and then all of the children said in one accord: “You play with it Daddy!”

A godly father is an unseen spiritual submarine who lurks below the surface of every activity of his child’s life. A man who has put on the full armor of God and with that armor, goes to warfare on his knees for his children, is a force to be reckoned with. We cannot be with our children 24 hours a day. Yet, through his prayers he has the ability to affect situations even when he is not physically present. He may be undetected but that does not mean he’s ineffective.[2]

Using the agricultural analogy, I see my role as a father much like a farmer. By word, and more importantly by deed, I must be a sower. As a sower I must prepare the field, my children, to receive the seeds of faith. This may include the need to remove rocks, uproot bushes and remove weeds that will disrupt growth. I also have to have the sense that, through it all "the seed would sprout and grow, I may not know how. Of its own accord the field yields fruit.” (Mk 4:27-28) Sometimes I need to realize I need to be the unseen spiritual submarine.

Jesus uses the image of the tiny mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, scattered on the Earth, and we’ll hardly notice that it’s growing, yet it grows, a purely organic growth. What an image of how change happens, how growth happens, how love happens. You see, it’s not in doing great, big, heroic things, but doing little things with great love, little things like being a good daddy on an ordinary day, when no one notices.

Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom are intentionally non-glorious. They’re not big. They’re not organizational or institutional images. Jesus doesn’t talk about creating a huge building. He doesn’t talk about running an institution from Rome. He just talks about little people doing little things that are hardly noticed and they change the world. Little by little, often unnoticed they yield a harvest. Isn’t this the story of most of our lives?

The “mustard seed conspiracy” has little to do with formal or clerical ministry. It is more about the little things that we all have the power to do in our everyday ordinary, simple lives.

The point Jesus is making in today’s parable is, once a mustard plant takes root, it takes over everything, even where it is not wanted. It gets out of control, and it attracts birds and animals, it is teaming with life and it wreaks havoc with our crops, and our plants, and our plans.[3]

The parable of the kingdom is about God’s reign on earth, where people respond to God’s grace and try to live in justice and peace. It looks forward to a day when God’s will is done on earth as perfectly as it is in heaven. The Kingdom of God is not like the majestic and orderly cedars of Lebanon but like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties.

When the seed of Catholicism first reached North America remains a complex conversation. We do know the seed planted grew to include the formation of the Diocese of Orlando and now 50 years later, our diocese has grown its branches across Central Florida to include 79 parishes, 12 missions, 2 basilicas, 37 schools and hundreds of ministries.

As followers of Jesus it is our challenge to be the messengers of hope that changes lives. We are challenged to be like tiny mustard seeds taking over hills and fields, spreading the Good News of the Kingdom of God everywhere.

We are called to sow the seeds of faith and to allow our Heavenly Father to act on these seeds, so they remain true to themselves and their purpose. His Fatherly influence, often as an unseen spiritual submarine, begins with something very small, that grows of its own inner strength into something very big, that provides a nesting place for the birds and home for His adopted children, which is an image for the universality of the Father’s love.[4]

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

IDENTITY & RELATIONSHIP

Many years ago, a couple on the brink of divorce sought the assistance of a counselor. The wife had decided to leave but they were giving it a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. She told how she had tried to get her husband’s attention for years, but he wasn’t there. She would have to beg him to spend time with her and the kids on weekends. She would talk to him but he didn’t really listen. If she asked him to help her with housework and all the things she had to do, he would put it off. She felt she was raising those kids on her own. She was lonely and frustrated.

Then, the sink broke in the kitchen and the plumber came to fix it. After he did the job, she offered him a coffee and they sat at the kitchen table and talked for a half hour. That’s it. Nothing more happened. But when he left, she made up her mind to get a divorce. She realized that the plumber, a perfect stranger, gave her more attention in that half hour than her husband had in the entire past year.[1]

Our readings today continue the conversation of understanding our identity as a people of God and our need to maintain relationships. It seems so easy to lose ourselves and track of relationships in the things and culture of this world. Whether it be work, social groups, even ministry can be taken so far that we lose important relationships and assume an identity quite different from our original identity. Elijah is appealing to the children of Israel to get off the fence, to remember who they are and who their Lord and God is.

Now we most likely will not see a slaughtered calf, grain, altar and water lapped up by the Lord’s all-consuming fire. Jesus does remind us he came to fulfill the law, that not even the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until heaven and earth pass away.

The fourth commandment illuminates other relationships in society. In our brothers and sisters, we see the children of our parents; in our cousins, the descendants of our ancestors; in our fellow citizens, the children of our country; in the baptized, the children of our mother the Church; in every human person, a son or daughter of the One who wants to be called "our Father." (CCC 2212)

As we enter into the communion procession, let us be keenly aware whose children we are, who our brother and savior is, and that our relationship with each other and the world is a proclaim that “the Lord is God. The Lord is God!” (1 Kgs 18:39)

[1] Psychology Today. "I Have to Beg to Get His Attention, A Wife’s Lament” by Vikki Stark M.S.W., M.F.T.

Sunday, June 10, 2018

OUR ORIGINAL IDENTITY

[1]"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I wasn’t to sure how the congregation was going to respond to me standing tall to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the parish environment. If it would have been a government building or sports event many would pop to, hand over their hearts and join in.

Modified three times over the last 62 years, in its current version, it has communicated been our national vision statement and expresses our national identity since 1954. The original pledge, written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy. Bellamy’s vision was that his more generic pledge would be used by citizens in any country.[2]

For the United States, the Pledge has become both a patriotic oath and a public prayer. It expresses our national values for which so many have given their lives in its’ defense. Yet it is not without controversy. Many question whether we truly live the values professed and question, with our house so divided against itself, how long our nation will be able to stand in the current atmosphere of division between races, gender, and politics.

To fully understand this disharmony, we must go back to the Garden of Eden.

The story of the fall of Adam and Eve, what we call “original sin”. This is the place that we, as Catholics, often get stuck. But we have to realize, this was not the only original human experience. In Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, he discusses the original human experiences that “are always at the root of every human experience … Indeed, they are so interwoven with the ordinary things of life that we generally do not realize their extraordinary character.” (TOB 11:1)

According to Saint John Paul, three experiences in particular define the human person in the state of innocence: solitude, unity, and nakedness.

In Original Solitude man is alone (Gen 2:18) because he is the only bodily creature made in God’s image and likeness. As he names the animals, he also discovers his own name, his own identity.

In Original Unity God creates woman (Gen 2:21-22). Both are alone in the world, they both are different from the animals, both are called to live in a covenant of love.

In Original Nakedness "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed" (Gen 2:25). This is precisely the key to understanding God’s original plan for human life according to Saint John Paul.

Nakedness without shame demonstrates that the first couple participated in the same vision of God. They knew their goodness. They knew God’s glorious plan of love. They saw it inscribed in their bodies and they experienced it in their mutual desire. We lost this glorious vision with the dawn of sin.[3]

“Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins.”(CCC 2336).

The Gospel story sets Jesus’ family in comparison to influential religious leaders. Both groups express an inability to understand who Jesus really is. The religious authorities conclude he is possessed by Satan. His family assumes he has lost his sanity. At the time, these diagnoses were roughly equivalent to each other.

The scene underscores how those who presumably were in great positions to make sense of Jesus still were not immediately able to see him as God’s agent. As Jesus announced and re-inaugurated God’s intentions for human flourishing, many could not overcome the disorienting character of his message. Even close relatives and religious insiders were bewildered by what he said, which threatened to disrupt so many aspects of human society.[4] They couldn’t see past the ways things were in their present time, religious disciplines and power structures.

Jesus’ words prompt us to consider the relationship in the human family and what it means to know, and do, God’s will. To undo sins’ work of disrupting relationships, relationships with our immediate family, parish & local communities, but most of all our relationship with God himself. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians calls us to “look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, [I couldn’t help but think, as I was driving the other morning, it was a beautiful morning. Sun shining, the bright green Spring foliage, the cars, the buildings. Yet it hit me, it’s all temporary. Buildings will decay, we’ll eventually have to replace the broken-down car, even our bodies will eventually fail.] but what is unseen is eternal.”(2 Cor 4:18)

Participating in Jesus’ reconciling mercy and receiving His body and blood, soul and divinity, moves us closer to opening our eyes and heart, to discovering/rediscovering our true identity in God’s original vision for the human experience. His vision is that of an unashamed love and communion.

[2] The Pledge of Allegiance. UShistory.org. http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm

[4] THE BLOG 06/06/2012, Updated Dec 06, 2017. “Mark 3:20-35: What Makes a Family?” by Matthew L. Skinner. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-l-skinner/mark-3-20-35-what-makes-a-family_b_1573923.html

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

COURAGEOUS WITNESS

I just spent 5 days with 8 men on their canonical retreat in preparation for their ordination to the Order of Deacon. Our own community is still on an ordination high witnessing Fr. Matthew’s ordination to the Order of Priests.

The ordination of a priest and a deacon is a heart moving experience, for the individual priest and deacon, as well as for the witnesses of the ordination. The is full of ancient traditions: a greeting filled with the same love expressed by Paul in his letter to Timothy, the laying on of hands, the calling upon the assistance of the saints by the community, the donning of the vestments of their respective offices and then they receive a specific charge:

Priests (Hands on the gifts of bread & Wine)	Deacons (Hands on the Book of the Gospels)
“Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God. Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”[1]	“Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe and practice what you teach.”[2]

Then there is the fraternal kiss of peace. Together this is a great image of perfect communion between God and his children on earth.

Paul’s letter is a sort of rallying cry—as were most of Paul’s stirring messages. Here his powerful summation emphasizes joy and hope. Before putting forth the daunting challenge to Timothy to carry on the good work, Paul urges him—and us—to join in a celebration, a recognition of what has been gained, despite all the hardships. What has been gained at this point? Everything! We have witnessed and experienced “the appearance of our savior, Jesus Christ, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tm 1:10).

Just as our priests and deacons are set apart for particular ministries, the same Holy Spirit was given to you at your Baptism, we all receive the same living Christ from the one tables, confirmed with our ‘Amen’. This is the same Spirit who provides you with power, love, and self-control. “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice …” (2 Tm 1:7). So eat and drink this sacred food, and so nourished go into the world and courageously witness to the living hope of the reality of Kingdom of God, here and now.

[2] Ibid (210) “Ordination of Deacons”.