A Little Salt and Lime

The other day I posted on Facebook about how disappointed I was when the school had a celebration for Cinco de Mayo and didn't include everyone.    I still don't know the details of why it was all inclusive, or even offered to everyone who wanted to participate.   What I do know is that it being Cinco de Mayo I want to talk about the significance of this holiday.   Here in America we tend to use it as an excuse to 'eat tacos and drink margaritas' as Father Don waxed poetically this morning.  The thing is, it's a celebration of freedom, of overcoming adversity and enormous odds.

I think to truly understand the significance of this date, we have to understand what the world was like when these events were occurring.   Mexico had been at war with America, followed by it's own internal civil war and was nearly out of resources.  Many lives had been lost, the treasury itself was almost bankrupt and the people were prime targets for occupation.   The United States were embroiled in their own civil war and couldn't pay attention to the geopolitical maneuvering that was going on.  Many countries decided to demand payment from Mexico for it's debts to them, but only the French saw this as an opportunity to gain new lands and peoples.   So they attacked the Mexican country and even though the French military was considered strong and enormously better trained and equipped than the small Mexican force, yet, the Mexican army "crushed" the premier army of the world.

Eventually the French did take over the Mexican government but were expelled a few years later.   The US began to get involved, the Mexican people continued to revolt never giving up, and all of these situations caused Napoleon to retreat.   This is a decisive moment in history not just for the Mexican people, but for the entire continent.  In fact, many historians believe that had the French maintained their hold in Mexico from the onset of this war they would have joined the southern forces to overthrow the northern yankees and our country would have turned out much differently than it did.  Lots of repercussions there that we need to understand as a people.

What does that have to do with the readings for today?   I think the first reading shows us a good example of exactly what the Mexican people did.   They were grounded.   They planted themselves where they needed to be.   They never gave up on their cause, even when they suffered defeat.  The Apostle Paul was not always successful.  Just the other day we read about his failure at the Areopagus, where people basically said "call me some other time, not interested."  Now we see him working tirelessly at a trade to support himself while still trying to spread the Gospel.  Then a few friends come and begin to support him so he can work at preaching instead of making tents.  Even then, with 100% of his efforts concentrated he begins to lose his temper and claims he's finished with the Jews.   But God isn't!  Paul ends up moving in with a man who lives next to the synagogue and all of a sudden the leader of that synagogue and his entire family converted!  Paul kept working, even when it seemed it wasn't going his way.  His friends backed him, supported him and worked with him.  No matter what failures, no matter what successes... they still worked preaching the word of God.. just like the Mexican people on Cinco de Mayo, they fought against odds that the rest of the world would never have faced, and were triumphant.

I think that's our lesson for today.  To stand our ground, to move when God needs us to move, to fight when God needs us to fight, and to preach when God needs us to preach.  How though do we prepare for all of this?  How do we get ready for knowing where God wants us?  How do we know when it's time to preach, when it's time to make tents, or when it's time to move shake out our garments and move on to a new household?   The Gospel reminds us of that simple truth.   Jesus disciples were a bit confused when he said: “A little while and you will no longer see me, and again a little while later and you will see me.”  We 2000 years later, in light of much theological thought and discussion have a glimpse into that truth.  Jesus was sending the Holy Spirit to not only lead us, to guide us and teach us, but also to make bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.   That's how we see him in the most substantial and present way we can on this side of Heaven.   Though he went away physically in his human, glorified body;  he comes back every time we gather to worship.  When the Priest lifts up that Host and says the words of consecration, do you realize that is the fulfillment of that promise?  "You will see me."

So when we receive him, when we gather together and proclaim to be Christian, we have to ask ourselves.. have we shaken out the dust of our cloaks?  As I was reading the office of readings this morning, these verses stuck out in my head:

Little ones,
let no one deceive you;
the man who acts in holiness is holy indeed,
even as the Son is holy.
The man who sins belongs to the devil,
because the devil is a sinner from the beginning.
It was to destroy the devil’s works
that the Son of God revealed himself.
No one begotten of God acts sinfully
because he remains of God’s stock;
he cannot sin
because he is begotten of God.

That is the way to see who are God’s children,
and who are the devil’s.
No one whose actions are unholy belongs to God,
nor anyone who fails to love his brother.

When Paul shook his cloak he was getting rid of everything he felt was wrong with that place, even the dust of the air.  How about you?  Your body is the temple of God, your spiritual covering... have you shaken out those things which are unholy? Or are you clinging to some of that dust?  What stands between you and being the kind of man/woman that God has created you to be?   It's been 40 days since Easter Sunday, have you transformed your life?   Or are you back in the same old ruts?   We have work to do Church.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

So ya thought ya might like to go to the show

In today's news feed I found it interesting to see headlines that declared Donald Trump and the Pope at war with one another. One article making it seem as if the Pope had declared Trump a heretic and excommunicated him, another in which Trump declared the Pope despicable for questioning his Christian faith. All of them had one in thing in common, they weren't showing the whole truth. Clips out of context and misquotes abounded. What the Pope said rather, was that building walls instead of bridges was not the action of a Christian. What the Pope said was radical.  What he said was counter cultural.   What he said is Catholic teaching.

The readings for tomorrow's daily Mass remind us of this simple truth. God wants to forgive us. He wants to bring us to the fullness of humanity, to become the person that we are created to be. Thomas Merton said “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.” That doesn't mean that how I am currently acting is saintly. Rather it means when I truly live out the fullness of what God created me to be... when I am the authentic Brian he intended me to be, that's when I find Sainthood.. that's when we have arrived. I remember when I was in school as a kid the ladies in the cafeteria had a sign hanging up with this little boy kind of frowning as if he was trying to figure something out. It said "I know I'm somebody, cause God don't make no junk." How true.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel. - Pope Francis

What do writings about anger and hatred have to do with Trump and the Pope? The Catholic Church teaches :

Our attitude to our neighbor will disclose acceptance or refusal of grace and divine love.  (CCC 678)

The more filled we are with love, the more we treat our brother with love, dignity and respect. The more like God we are, the more we want to share that love. Many conservatives often want to quantify this love by saying that of course Jesus did not mean to put ourselves at risk. Yet, when people came to capture him in the middle of the night he did not even defend himself, but even had Peter put his sword away. Then he healed his 'enemy.' Now, we have a right to self defense. Of that the Church has been clear of over the years. Not only a right but even a grave duty. (CCC 2265). Jesus though called us to a radical notion, a self giving that goes beyond our own box.

The problem truly has become our segregationist attitude. We in our search for greed, security, and pleasure; have divided the world up into countries, states, and political entities. It's a system that helps bring order, sure. It's also a system that turns our fellow man into the 'other'. Then we decide who is 'us' enough to be included as our neighbor, and who isn't. When we say 'lets take care of those at home first,' we are essentially saying 'those born in our country deserve more freedom, more love, more charity than those who were born elsewhere. How is that we get to decide that? What did they do to deserve that? Why is being born somewhere a deciding factor in how much we care for someone? Isn't that pretty much what the caste system attempts to do? Those born into the right family are treated with respect and dignity, those in the wrong are the unclean, the outsider, the ones who will always be downtrodden.

Building bridges, not walls. That is what Christ came to do. Christ came to tear down the wall of hostility and make the two into the one, the gentiles and the Jews into one family (Ephesians 2:14). He didn't come to die only for those in America, only those in the Church, or even only those who are free from sin. No he came to die for all men, that all might come to be one. When we pray the our Father we are praying for 'us.'

Finally, if we pray the Our Father sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us from it. The "our" at the beginning of the Lord's Prayer, like the "us" of the last four petitions, excludes no one. If we are to say it truthfully, our divisions and oppositions have to be overcome.  (CCC 2792)

Doesn't that just hit home? It's time for us as Christians to truly ask ourselves, are we living the Gospel? Are we holding anything against our brother? Are we serving God's Kingdom or our own? The only crime many of these refugees have committed is being born in a country that is not our own. A crime that they did not choose to commit. In the case of Mexico alone, we see people being murdered in a drug war, raped and pillaged. Then we demean and degrade them by keeping them at bay. We use terms like illegal to make them seem unwanted, undesired, criminal. We put up a mental wall that makes us feel safer, and then cheer when someone wants to put up a physical one to keep out those undesirables. What will we do on judgment day when Christ says to us, “What you did to the least of these, you did to me”? None of us got to choose where we were born. It's time to stop punishing people for that.

What will we do on judgment day when Christ says to us, “What you did to the least of these, you did to me”?

The first reading from Ezekiel is wake up call. It remind us that for those who choose to do good, to live the fullness of what God created them to be, heaven awaits. For those who reject it, those who decide to do evil and ignore the potential for freedom of excellence that God has offered them, awaits the fires of Gahanna. 

The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."  (CCC 1036)

Today we are faced with a choice. Jesus is asking us for water, he is asking us for food, he is a stranger asking for shelter. How will we respond to him? We have a right, even a duty to keep those we are responsible for safe. We also have a duty to reach out to fellow man and lift him up to that fullness that he too is created for. That fullness which was revealed completely and perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ. That's what Christianity is all about. That's what Lent is about. Forgiveness. Prayer. Fasting. Alms-giving. We are deeply entrenched in the desert of our own ego. God is offering us a chance to move outside of our own small mindedness and reach out to the rest of the world and say, “Christ is the way the truth and the life.” More poignantly than ever echoes the words of that beautiful hymn, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”

His servant and yours,

Brian

“He must increase, I must decrease.”