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.