Gone Fishin'

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Peter had a horrible self image. He was a bumbler, a fool, and a coward. He usually said exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. He usually spoke without thinking. This was one such time. When confronted with his first miracle, he didn’t say, “Wow, Jesus, that was great, thanks.” Or, “How did you do that? Who are you?” Instead, when confronted with the unexplainable, the first thing he thought was how unworthy we was to receive such a gift.  He got one thing right, he was a sinful man. He must have been acutely aware of his shortcomings if that was the first thing he thought of when in the presence of pure love himself.

I can imagine Peter struggling with himself every day of his life. Like most of us, he probably wanted to live up to God’s law as he learned it in the synagogue, but then the frustrations of life came up and he would blow it. He’d say or do something stupid, no matter how hard he tried. And every time he failed to live up to the ideal he beat himself up a little more. I know how he must have felt. Whenever I screw up, and it’s often, it’s usually because I don’t think about what I’m saying or doing and how it will affect others. Whenever people call me out as a hypocrite I tell them, “Just think how bad I’d be if I didn’t have my faith to help hold me in check a bit. This is nothing compared to what I would be.”

I myself felt I was unworthy to be called to the diaconate. I actually was thinking of dropping out six months before ordination, because I did not think I could live up to the image I had of what a deacon should be. All the deacons I knew were quiet, humble, gentle men, sort of grandfatherly figures. I am none of those, and I knew I probably would never be. But then a wise priest told me that God wasn’t calling me to be perfect. He knew better than anyone the kind of man I was, and he was calling me anyway. He wanted me with all my imperfections. He was calling me as I was, and he wanted me as I was. My job was to say yes to the call and then struggle to find a way to live it in my everyday life.

Peter’s feelings of unworthiness were perfectly natural given whose presence he was in. Humility comes from just that self-awareness. It was Peter’s humility that ultimately made him prince of the apostles. As Fr. James Martin puts it in his book, My Life with the Saints, “Peter is among the greatest of the saints because of his humanity, his shortcomings, his doubts, and moreover, his deeply felt understanding of all these things. Only someone like Peter, who understood his own sinfulness and the redeeming love of Christ, would be able to lead the infant church and lead others to Jesus. Only someone as weak as Peter could do what he did.”

Jesus had a tendency to call people, and then send them out to tell others about him. He completely ignored Peter’s protestations and simply said, “From now on you will be catching men.” No judgments. No qualifications. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus does not go out searching for Peter, James and John. Peter’s boat was simply the closest. Peter won the luck of the draw, and it changed his life, and ours, forever.

Like a fisherman, Jesus sometimes cast a net; sometimes he used a line and a hook. He used five loaves and two fish as bait for 5000 people, and he spent hour’s one-on-one explaining profound truths to Nicodemus. Whenever you cast a wide net, you never know what you’ll catch. You just throw it out there and hope for the best. When you fish with a line, you use bait that’s specifically attractive to one individual.

Jesus didn’t play favorites, he called everyone he encountered. He called them right then, where they were in their lives, at that moment in time. He didn’t wait until they had completed seminary studies, or had gotten married, or had bought a house or gotten a new job. He called them right then, casting his net and hoping they’d answer his call. Then he moved onto the next person, and the next, and the next.

We encounter Jesus in our everyday lives. Peter, James and John were at work. St. Francis was praying in a church. St. Ignatius Loyola was recuperating from a wound he had received in battle. Each of them was profoundly affected by their encounter with Jesus; most of us do not have a single, life-changing event. We have to look for Jesus in the most mundane ways and in the most ordinary people. And whenever we do find Jesus, it is easy for us to fall back on Peter’s excuse: Leave me alone because I am a sinner.

If you read the lives of the saints, especially those we consider to be the greatest, one common theme you will quickly see is their sinfulness. And some of them committed some whoppers. Moses was a murderer. St. Augustine had a son out of wedlock and lived with a woman not his wife for twenty years. Dorothy Day had an abortion plus an illegitimate child. Saints are not perfect, but they are open to being perfected. When called, many will fight the call with all they’ve got, only to give in gradually. God can be very persistent. And after they answer the call things usually don’t get easier, they get worse. Saints don’t get absolved from pain and temptation, they get polished by them.

Mother Theresa said, “God is not calling me to be successful, he’s calling me to be faithful”. I remember that whenever it seems like everything I do is futile, that we’re losing the battle for souls in a big way. Every time I see what our society has become and how far away from God we’re moving, I think. “It’s not my responsibility if people reject the call. My job is to cast a line or a net to the best of my ability to as many people as I can. It is up to the Holy Spirit to do the rest. I cannot change hearts, only Jesus can. The only person I have responsibility for is myself. I can choose to answer the call or not. In the end, I will stand before God alone, by myself. And I will be judged on how I answered that call.

That’s not a fatalistic attitude, it’s realistic. We are all called to go forth and make disciples of all nations, but it has to begin with me.

Catholics need to rediscover our evangelical side. For all those years when Christianity was the dominant religion in the culture, Catholicism grew largely because it was part of the culture. You were Catholic because your family was, and your extended family was, and all your friends and your parents’ friends were. But now that the fastest growing group in the country is the “nones”, those with no religion. The culture is turning away from Christianity. When it was cultural, it was easy to say that I can evangelize others simply by the example of living a good life. That is no longer the case. Today, Catholics are called to do more than just live examples of love. We are called to actually go out and tell somebody about it.

When I was a sales manager, whenever I added an additional salesperson, sales went up. Go figure. Common sense. So, if you want things to grow, call more people to help. Don’t you think God knows that? Don’t you think he knows that if numbers are down, the last thing you do is call fewer people. The first thing you do is exhort the ones you have to do more. That’s us. Then we all double our efforts.

Do you really believe that God has been calling fewer men to the priesthood the past 50 years? In 1960 there were about 37 million Catholics in the U.S. Today that number is around 67 million. Even if the percentages of men being called now is the same as it was then, logically, there would be a lot more priests today than in 1960. So what, has God been making cutbacks? Is he looking for increased productivity from our priests, trying to do more with less?

If God were like the typical businessman, if he were getting fewer answers to his call, wouldn’t he just call more men rather than fewer? The scandal of the priest shortage is not that fewer men are being called, but that fewer are answering the call. The scandal of Christianity is not that God is calling fewer people to him, but that we Christians are not calling them. But we must first answer our own call.

Watch out, Jesus just got in your boat.

Snake Wine & Splinters

3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Have you ever had snake wine? I have. One time in China, our host brought out this big jar of a clear liquid with three big snakes, dead of course, coiled up in the bottom. He ladled out some of the liquid, which still had bits and pieces of stuff in it, and gave it to us to drink. It was so strong that I actually felt its warmth flowing down my gullet and out into my fingers and toes. Two weeks later, I was walking down the street and I suddenly shivered from head to toe. The wine was still affecting me.

And right now I have a sliver in my finger, right at the knuckle joint. I can barely see it, and I can’t seem to get it out. I forget about it until my hand brushes up against something and that little splinter gets hit, sending a jolt that I feel up my arm and into my back.

We hear once again today St. Paul’s beautiful analogy of Christianity as the Body of Christ. And we are reminded once again that the greatest sign of Christianity is our unity with one another. We hear that all parts of the body are indispensible, that all work together for the good of the body, and that one part is no more important than any other part.

We tend to think of Christianity as mainly a Western religion; we rarely think of the all members of the body throughout the world. I think that we American Christians often think that we’re what it’s all about. I think Americans in general act like we’re what it’s all about, and it’s become a cliché that we’re really ignorant about what’s going on in the rest of the world. If we’re not exactly the entire body, we’re at least the head and the heart. We don’t think much about all the other parts, do we? We worry about our own problems – the priest shortage, the abuse scandal, the assault on religious liberty – and forget sometimes that we are only about 3% of the Christians in the world.

Author George Marlin reports that Christians throughout the world are experiencing far greater persecution than here in the States. Just in the last year alone, Church officials throughout the countries of the “Arab Spring” fear that there will be a mass Christian exodus from them because of Islamist fundamentalism that denies religious liberty.

Eighteen years after the end of the war in the Balkans, discrimination against Catholics is still rampant. Confiscated Church property has not been returned. Catholic parishes and homes are denied electricity. Priests are refused medical care. Abuse of Catholics, particularly nuns wearing habits, has significantly increased. Nuns travel in pairs out of fear of abuse and they are turned away or harassed at local shops.

Tens of thousands of Catholics were killed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and since then a majority has fled. Today, there are approximately 450,000 down from 835,000.

In Albania, Orthodox Christians represent 20 percent of Albania’s population and Catholics 10 percent. Here in Blessed Mother Teresa’s homeland, widespread corruption and unclear property rights has halted construction of chapels, churches, rectories, and parochial schools.

In Syria, Christians are being targeted and driven from their homes. More than 120,000 Christians have been driven from the city of Homs, which had been home to one of Syria’s largest Christian populations. Bishop Antoine Audo, S.J. of Aleppo predicts that Christians will be targeted and driven away in Damascus and Aleppo as well. He said, “The fear of Christians is particularly strong. We are a minority. Always we are threatened.”

In January 2012, without warning, the Punjab government in Pakistan ordered bulldozers onto land owned by the Catholic diocese since 1887 and demolished a church, a girl’s school, and homes for the poor, elderly, and homeless. New blasphemy laws, as well as growing intolerance and fanaticism, has led to an increase in arbitrary actions against many of the nation’s 1.2 million Catholics.

The Christian population in the Holy Land has gone from 18% of the population to less than 1.5% of the population in the past 60 years. Similar stories can be told of Christians in Mali, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

St. Paul tells us today that “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” It’s like snake wine and slivers. The body is affected by suffering, even when one little insignificant part suffers, and the body is affected by rejoicing, even when one little insignificant part is happy. Even the smallest thing, the splinter, can cause us to be aware of greater pain. Even the simplest pleasure can make us forget the pain.

That’s why we have to be aware of what the rest of the body is experiencing, because we are all in this together. We cannot ignore any part of the body. When one part hurts, we all hurt. When one part rejoices, we all rejoice. We cannot ignore any persecution of our body and we cannot despair that what good we do has no effect.

And what we each say and do affects all of mankind. Each small, individual action does affect everybody else on the planet, for good or for evil. We like to think that we are each our own little world; that my little sin doesn’t mean very much. But that’s not the case. What may seem like a little splinter to you can actually make the whole Body hurt. Whenever we sin, it changes our own attitudes and future actions, so that it becomes easier to sin again, and again, and again. And when we all do it, society’s ideas on right and wrong change, morality is debased, and what was formerly seen as evil is now seen as good, and vice versa. And society does not want to hear that what is now considered good is actually evil, so it has to silence the voices that tell it so.

And it becomes easier and easier to lose hope that good will actually prevail. We can tend to think that when I rejoice in something good, it’s really not going to do anything to help get the world back on track again.

But there is good reason to rejoice. In the face of a concerted push towards secularism in the West, in two out of three countries in the world, the majority of the population identifies as Christian. Christianity may be declining in the West, but is flourishing in the developing countries of the world. The Pew Research Center's "Global Christianity" reports on major shifts since 1910, when two-thirds of the world's Christians lived in Europe. Now only one in four Christians live in Europe. Now, 37% live in the Americas, 24% in sub-Saharan Africa, and 13% live in the Asia-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, the faith has grown exponentially in sub-Saharan Africa, from just 9% of the population in 1910 to 63% today. And in China, Pew researchers believe Christianity has flourished despite a policy forbidding Christianity among Communist Party members. Researchers estimate the Christian community in China includes 5% of the population, or 67 million.

Here in the U.S., there is a new awakening of faith, especially among young adults. Over 500,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. this week to pray for an end to abortion. Our seminaries are filling up, and best of all, you are here today.

There is great reason to be hopeful. There is precedent. We heard it today from the prophet Nehemiah. He tells the story of Ezra the Scribe who was charged with rebuilding the temple Jerusalem after the exiles returned from 70 years in Babylon. Part of the Jewish people had been amputated from the body when they were taken into exile. The exiles had fought hard not to become assimilated into the Babylonian culture. One way they did so was to write down all the books of the law, what the Jews call the Torah and we call the first five books of the Old Testament. The law was the thing that identified them as a people. It was the glue that held them together and gave them purpose, gave them hope. It was a sign of their relationship with God, who had not abandoned them.

Everything they had had been destroyed along with Jerusalem. Now they had returned and the first thing they did was read and hear what their God had done for them. And the people wept when they heard the law being proclaimed to them, because the hope they had lost had been restored to them.

When was the last time you heard the gospels, and wept?

There will always be persecution, and there will always be hope. The good news of Jesus Christ is that in the end, joy will triumph over pain, and the Body of Christ will weather any storm. The body is a resilient thing, and God will find the way to restore to us anything that was lost.

Feast of the Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family

Cycle C

Sir 3: 2-6, 12-14

Col 3:12-17

Lk 2:41-52

We just celebrated the great feast of Christmas where the emphasis is on family. Most of us got together with our families from near and far to celebrate all those special traditions we have surrounding the season. We even celebrated with those family members who we don’t really like very much, and we tried to be on our best behavior so as not to ruin the day for everyone.

The church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family each year on the first Sunday after Christmas to celebrate and honor families. All the pictures we see of the Holy Family seem to be of two beautiful, perfectly groomed and neatly dressed people standing over the angel-faced Christ child. Totally at peace with one another and the world. The perfect family.  Not a care in the world. We put those Christmas cards up on the counter and then turn and look at our own families. And we never live up to the ideal. Mom is struggling with the turkey in the kitchen, Uncle Joe is snoring on the couch in front of the football game, and the kids screaming at each other about who got better presents. And grandma is in the middle of it all, trying to keep the peace. 

Joy to the World.

Typically, a family is defined as consisting of at least three people. Even when a man and woman get married they are still considered a couple, not a family. There needs to be at least three people to form a family. A family mirrors the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. Have you ever wondered why God is three persons in one? Very simple. God is love, and love is not love unless it is given away to another, and then the other returns it. That’s two. True love must go beyond the two, however, to bear fruit to the world. It cannot remain contained by two people, it must be shared with another. That’s three.

And so, God set up our relationships to mirror His. I just saw the movie, Les Miserables, and one line written by the author, Victor Hugo, sums up the entire movie. “To love another person is to see the face of God.” When we love each other we are acting as God acts, as we were created to be. God created us because his great love could not even be contained within the Holy Trinity. It had to expand into creation. It had to bear fruit. It had to have something to show for it.

And just as God’s love had to bear fruit, a family is also called to bear fruit. The most obvious and visible fruit of a marriage is children, conceived and born out of the love two people have pledged to one another. We do not create our children by ourselves. No matter how hard we try, unless God says so, there will be no children. We are co-creators with God, first with our children, then with what we create in our daily lives. Our thoughts, dreams, and actions are all co-creations with God. Therefore, whenever the love of the family affects the world, and it always does, that is God working with us and through us. St. Augustine said that “we plant the seed, God provides the growth.” The family is the incubator.

First and foremost, the members of a family are to be faithful to one another. It begins with the vows of fidelity a couple says to one another on their wedding day. It then continues as the family grows. It is said that we cannot choose our families, they choose us. We are just stewards of our children and of one another. And we live with one another through all the good times and bad, likes and dislikes of our lives. We’re stuck with one another and so need to stick together. We must support each other no matter what. That is what a family is for. It is how we survive in the world.

And the key to the survival of a family is forgiveness. No family is perfect, and we all need forgiveness. A lot of forgiveness. Whenever people are in such close relationship with one another there is more chance to hurt one another. Therefore, we need to constantly be asking for and receiving forgiveness from one another. It seems that every Christmas season there are stories and movies and TV shows about a family member who has been estranged from the family returns home. The prodigal sons and daughters of Christmas. Since we always equate Christmas with family, it makes sense that we try to reconcile with one another around Christmastime. 

The Feast of the Holy Family is the Feast of the Perfect Family, but for the rest of us, there are no perfect families. And even though the Holy Family was perfect, that didn’t absolve them from hardship. They were so poor that Mary had to give birth in a stable, where the only clean place to lay the baby was in the feeding trough. They lived in a small, insignificant town in a backwater province in a tiny, rebellious country that was overrun by conquering armies. They were surrounded by violence, and even had to leave the country and live abroad to avoid it, just like many families today. Mary was the subject of gossip and shame from the townspeople because they could do the math. No way she could have become pregnant by Joseph. And she had to live with that stigma her entire life. No one would believe a story about angels and a virgin birth. And her husband tried to divorce her when he found out she was pregnant. Only divine intervention prevented him from doing it. 

And into such a family our savior was born. We call it the Holy Family because God was part of it. Everything about the Holy Family revolved around Jesus. The Holy Family was truly God-centered. They ate, drank, lived and breathed in God, and God ate, drank, lived and breathed in them. That is what made them holy. Being holy is being like God, doing what God does, making God the center of your entire existence. And it’s something that we can all attain to. 

We hear today that Jesus went home with his parents, was obedient to them, and grew in wisdom and in strength. Sounds normal to me. The Holy Family was a special family, and through it God came into the world in a very special, personal way. We are all the Holy Family. On the cross, Jesus gave his mother to the Beloved Disciple. The apostle John never names the Beloved Disciple, and I cannot imagine that Jesus would ever have one disciple he loved more than the rest of us. He didn’t play favorites. The Beloved Disciple is a name for us all. We are all Beloved by God. And so when Jesus gave his mother to the Beloved Disciple he was giving her to us all. If Mary is our mother, then we are all part of the Holy Family.

We don’t have to be perfect to be holy. We can choose to be holy. We can choose to live with God as the center of our families. And as the Holy Family, we must be true to one another, forgive one another, and bring the fruit of our love for one another out into the world.