Time to put away Childish things.

When we read sacred scripture, especially the writings of and about St. Paul the Apostle, we see such a transformative experience.  Here the man who once persecuted the Christians himself, pulling them into the streets and out of their homes, looking to kill them and destroy them; is coming to the end of his own race.  God has revealed to him via the Holy Spirit that imprisonment and hardships are what await him in the future and that he is running out of time to do the things he has been doing.  How much does one's life have to change in order to go from wanting to spill the blood of the Christians to preaching to everyone he comes across in order to make sure they have the same offer of salvation that he had?

In my teenage years, especially during college, I fell into that branch of Christianity which basically says once you are saved, you can do whatever you want; and I did.   I partied, I drank, I had relationships that were inappropriate.  I still believed very much in Jesus Christ, but I put all of it on God... none of the relationship on me.  That's really the key isn't it?  Relationship can never be one way.  It involves someone else.  Why then do some of us pretend that Jesus is the one who has all the work to do and that all we have to do is skate by?  He never said that.  He never acted that way.   Paul here in this first reading shows us too that even with a direct encounter on the road to Damascus he didn't stop and just quit being a religious man.. but rather went out to "bear witness to the Gospel of God's grace." 

I think as we journey toward Pentecost we should be thinking about our own Baptism, our own moments of conversion.  The Apostles received the Holy Spirit on that day and were emboldened to journey out into the world to preach the Gospel as well.   All of them, including Paul, considered "life of no importance" to them. Rather, all they considered of importance was spreading the Gospel to as many people as they could, to bring about God's will, God's Kingdom, right here on earth. You and I received that same Spirit and that same Mandate when we became Christian.   It's no longer enough to live as a young man, putting all of a relationship on someone else, expecting all the perks of being the family but none of the responsibility. "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."   

You and I are no longer children.  That's what it means to be an adult.. to stop simply existing off of someone else, and begin to take our own place in society.   To start taking on responsibility for our actions and to stand accountable for our failures.  St. James wrote it so eloquently in his letter: Faith without works is dead.  You show me your faith without your works.. and I will show you my faith through my works.   Are we ready for that?  To stop letting our hormones and emotions control our lives and instead to work for God's version of justice, for God's version of mercy?  You see our world has taken justice and mercy and made it about I, about our own egos... what the world owes me...   My rights, my entitlements.   Rather God challenges us to reach out into the world and worry about the other.  The broken, the poor, the widow, the orphan.   The refugee.  The downtrodden.  The oppressed.  The illegal alien.  God's mercy demands that we worry about them, not I.   It involves agape love, self sacrificial giving.  

I'm not there.  I worry too much about me.   Respect.  I tend to demand it.   I want it.  I get upset when I don't get it.  God challenges me instead to become meek, merciful and to leap for joy when men treat me wrongly.  How do I get there?  There is only one road, one path to Heaven.   Only one food which can prepare us for this transformative journey, a food that when eaten does not get consumed, but rather transforms the person who receives it.   That is the Eucharist.  Receive it often, receive it reverently, and receive it disposed towards God's grace.. and watch as he transforms you from a child... into the image of Christ you were created to be.    That's what discernment is about.   If there is anything I've learned from my Diaconate classmates this past year is that growing up requires sacrifice, it requires effort, and above all it requires trusting in God's grace.  Are you ready to make that leap?   

His servant and yours, 

Brian 

"He must increase, I must decrease." 

Sail on Silver Girl

Lately, as most of you know, I've been having some kidney issues.  As part of the treatment for this 10mm kidney stone my doctor suggested I invert myself to 45 degrees every night after having consumed sixteen ounces of water.  They already took the step of doing lithotripsy to break the stone up into smaller pieces (hopefully).   Now the goal is to use gravity and fluid to get those pieces up out of the bottom of my kidneys and through the bladder to freedom.  The Exodus of the kidney stones eh? So I've been taking this old box spring and placing it on the couch to create as much of an angle as I can.  Then I drink my water, wait thirty minutes and lay with my face downhill for half an hour.

What I did not expect is that my daughter would love this time.  She can't wait to get on the mattress and lay next to me reading or watching TV.  Daddy are we going to do that tonight?  Then we play around, I poke her and tickle her.. and sometimes I roll over on her and mash her like I forgot she was there.  All the while she's giggling, reading, or often just falling asleep.  It's a comforting time.  It's an amazing moment of bonding that I will cherish for years to come.

Yesterday my buddy Clyde Joshua came over while I was cleaning out the garage and it reminded me of when Moira was very little.  He was walking around asking questions, pointing at this or that, or laughing and running away when he thought I was going to 'get him.'  He would follow right in my footsteps and hand me this or that, and mimic the things I was doing.  Moira used to do that when she was very small.  In fact, she mimicked not just the good, but the bad.  Isn't that how kids learn to do the bad anyway?  Children remind us of that fact when they pull out those special words in front of grandma or at school.  They become their parents.  Sometimes I open my mouth and my dad pops right out...  That's a big responsibility!

Today's Gospel reminds us of that truth, and gives us a better option.  Jesus is always upsetting the cart.  He never walks away with people indifferent.  Either they love him or hate him, but they always make a choice, they are always challenged.  Today they are mad at him, again.   He has just equated himself with God!   Today we would just kind of laugh if someone did that... "they're crazy!"  It was very serious to his contemporaries.   Serious enough they had him killed for it right?  Then he goes on to speak that truth, that children do what their parents did.

Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own,

but only what he sees the Father doing;

for what he does, the Son will do also.

There is that pesky Amen, Amen again.  Remember, in the Semitic languages often there are no superlatives. (Good, better, best would be "good" "good good" "good good good", brings a whole new meaning to Holy, Holy, Holy eh?)  Amen means that what he is saying is truth.  It has that connotation of this has been confirmed, it has been supported, it is upheld as the truth.  So to say Amen and Amen.. he's saying this is the truth of the truth!  It's as if Jesus is saying "Pay attention to what I am about to say!"  Then he goes on to affirm that notion that as the Son he mimics his Father.. he follows in his footsteps.  If God raises the dead? So does Christ.  If the Father heals the sick? So does the Son.   If He frees the captor and forgives sin?  Well so will Jesus himself.

That brings an amazing level of depth to that reading from Isaiah in which God lists off a litany of the things he will do to bring his people back to him, back to freedom, back to love.  He declares he will feed them, give them drink, protect them from the elements and never forsake them.  Regardless of what they ever do he will always remember them.  That's a powerful promise to us today as well.  God wants us to be in relationship with Him.  Jesus himself is offering a personal invitation to each and everyone of us to be in this amazing personal covenant, not just a private one with God alone but in communion with his entire Body, the Church.
That begs the question for those of us who claim to be a part of that Body though... If children mimic their parents, then who can we claim as ours?  When I was young my daughter would follow me around, just as Clyde Joshua did yesterday.  The words I used? She used.   The things I did? She did.  The places I went? She went.  I was just telling my friends last night that Saturday of last week I had a bad day.  You know those days when you wake up and the world seems off kilter?  I couldn't get out of this bad funk.  I was snappy.  I was rude.  I was a jerk.   I stormed around like some monster seeking to destroy an enchanted forest.   My wife and kids took the brunt of it.  If anyone had seen me that day, would any of them been convinced I was a Catholic at all? Probably not.   I wasn't acting like my Father at all.

How then do we know how to act?  We emulate the Son.  He healed the sick, he cured the blind, he fed the poor and hungry, he offered forgiveness and compassion to all he met, and above all he proclaimed the Kingdom of God.  Are we doing that?  Do our actions show others that we are Children of the Most High?  Are we reaching out to the poor, the destitute, the widow, and the orphan?  Are we welcoming the strangers who come into our midst?  Are we building walls or bridges?  As we journey through the last remaining days of our desert of Lent, let us take time to examine who we are... to draw closer to God... so that when people look at us, they can say "Now there is a child of God, there is a person who loves others!  There is someone I want to be more like."

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."