It's About Time

19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

What is the most important thing to you? Think about it a moment. What is the one thing most precious to you, the one thing upon which all other things depend?

Is it your family? Your health? Success in your career? Your possessions? How about your life itself?

Isn’t it really time? All those other things exist in time, and time is the one thing we have no control over. It rolls over and over like a great river, and we are carried away with it from the moment of our conception to the instant of our death. We exist in time, and it is the one thing we can never get more of. All those other things are servants of time.

How are you spending your time?

Last week we heard the parable of the rich man who planned to tear down his barns to build bigger ones so he could store up all his riches and live a life of leisure, only to find out that he had run out of time and would die that very night. Jesus is always calling us to be watchful because the Son of Man will come when we least expect him. I think these parables are not so much a condemnation of earthly riches as they are about the proper use of our time. For time is the greatest treasure we have.

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.

Show me your calendar and I will know where your treasure is. If you’re like me, most of your calendar is filled with all the stuff I need to do. Appointments and meetings and tasks to complete. The bulk of my waking hours is spent on work and career. It’s probably the same with you.

Most of my calendar is taken up with work things, but there are many other appointments scattered throughout that deal with relationships, with people. It may be dinner with some friends or helping one of my kids work on their homes. It may be spending 20 minutes bringing communion to a shut in or counseling someone who’s going through a rough patch in their marriage. Those are things I do as a deacon, but you have similar things on your calendar, without the title or the role. Those are the things that make a difference. Those are the things that you will and should be remembered for.

How will you be remembered? I was in San Clemente last weekend and Nancy and I were walking down by the beach, and they had a bunch of concrete benches set up facing the sea. There were about a half dozen of them, and each of them had a little plaque on it with someone’s name. I guess those people used to love spending time sitting there looking at the ocean, and so their names are memorialized on a bench. And I thought to myself, “Is that how I want to be remembered, with a plaque on a bench somewhere? Is that how people will remember how I used my time?” I don’t want to be remembered for what made me happy but for how I made other people happy. I want to make a difference in the world, and I think you do, too.

You learn a lot about what was important to someone at their funerals, when people tell stories about the deceased and the experiences they had shared with them. The pictures the family puts out at the funeral tell a lot also. Here in Park City there are a lot of skiing and outdoor pictures. He was such an avid skier, she loved to hike in the mountains, and the stories to me often seem empty and a bit sad. Is that what you want people to say about you at your funeral? That you loved the outdoors? That’s a great part of life, and we all enjoy it, but is that all there is?

You know, Jesus spent a lot of time outdoors. He isn’t remembered for that, obviously. The stories we read and hear about him are about his singular focus on other people. His teachings are not about nature or science but about relationships. He healed and taught and died not for things but for people. His people. His friends. Us. He spent such a short amount of time here on Earth, but has anyone in history accomplished so much in a lifetime?

At your funeral, your friends will come not because you were such a good skier but because of the memories they have of the time they spent with you. They will come to honor how you affected their lives and made them better. I don’t want to be remembered for all the things I liked to do. No one will care what I liked to do, they care about how I made them feel, how made their lives a little bit better. I want to be remembered by how I spent my time with people, bringing them to Christ.

I think there is something in every human being that draws us to others, to give of ourselves to others. If God is love, every time we do a loving act we are the image of God to the other. It doesn’t matter if you even believe in God or not, by definition if we love, God is there. That’s how we are wired and that is how God chooses to interact with the human race. Through the love we have for one another. And the greatest sign of our love for each other, the greatest gift we can give one another is our time. It’s not about the amount of time you have been given, it’s about what you do with it.

For we Christians, it goes even deeper, it goes to life itself. We spend our time with others not just because of the enjoyment it brings, we do it because we want to draw others to Christ. Sometimes we spend our time here, at Mass and celebrating the sacraments, but each and every interaction with other people should have the effect of showing the love of Jesus to them. I don’t mean we go around proselytizing and preaching and making a nuisance of ourselves. If we live as true disciples, it will just be part of who we are. It will actually be who we are. As St. Augustine said, “Love God, then do as you will.”

If we just tried to look at people and our relationships with them as Jesus did when interacting with his apostles and those he met along the way, they will want to know what we know and have what we have. They will see hope. And as we heard today in the letter to the Hebrews, faith is based on hope. Faith is the realization of hope. Hope is outside of time because we have hope for eternal life.

And the interesting thing, maybe even the most ironic thing is, it is by using our time wisely for the glory of God here that we will enter into timelessness with God in heaven.

Only One Thing is Required

16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

We are so anxious and worried about so many things. Only one thing is required.

Summertime is a time for barbecues and weddings and such. There are so many events going on here, so many things to prepare for, so many visitors in town and in our homes. Many of us travel to see family and friends and welcome them as they visit us. Summer is the time for vacations. Summer is a time for connections. Summer is a time of hospitality. And oftentimes summer is a time for worry and anxiety over so many things to do, so many things to get ready for, so many details to attend to.

Have you ever gotten back from vacation and felt you needed a vacation from the vacation? You did and saw a lot of things but never truly relaxed? It took you a couple days to unplug from work, you had a couple days of real vacationing, then the last couple days you were thinking about getting ready to go back to work again? We never really vacate, do we? We never really leave our jobs and homes behind in our minds. Vacations are supposed to help us recharge, to step out of the pressures of our lives for a while so that we can return to them refreshed, stronger, and with new perspectives. For many of us that is rarely the case.

There are some people who have chosen to spend their entire lives or careers studying the scriptures and serving God. They seem to be singularly focused on Jesus. Nothing else is as important as learning all they can from and about him. And Jesus says today that that is the better portion. Did Jesus mean we are to ignore everything except that type of singular focus?

Most of us have not chosen the studious or professed religious or contemplative life. Most of us are living and working in the world. We have families and careers and mortgages. We take our relationships very seriously, especially our relationship with Jesus. We invite him into our lives, just as Martha invited Jesus into hers. We strive to keep Jesus the center of our lives, even as busy as we are.

It is important, no, vital, that we all study and listen and internalize the Word of God if we are to be his disciples. For he has the words of eternal life. But we must do that in the midst of the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives.

Martha wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was doing what custom said she was supposed to do. She was being the good hostess. She was the good servant.

There is grace in hospitality. Martha was serving, but Mary was being fed.

Martha was focused on serving Jesus in a worldly way, worried about the traditions and requirements of hospitality. Mary was focused on the servant himself. Martha was making things complicated; Mary was keeping it simple. Martha was concerned with getting it just right; Mary was concerned with her relationship with Jesus.

And I think that is really what Jesus was getting at. He wasn’t telling Martha that what she was doing wasn’t necessary or important. Somebody had to make dinner. Martha’s problem was that she wasn’t serving with joy. She was resenting her sister and begrudging her tasks. What was important was that Jesus was in their midst. He was there right in front of them, and that was where they should focus. There would always be time to cook and clean and attend to the details of living. But when Jesus is present in our midst we should not worry about all those things and just be in his presence.

There are a lot of preparations that must be made for our liturgies to be sacred times. It takes the efforts of over 80 people to celebrate our weekend Masses alone. But when Jesus is in our midst that is where we should focus. It’s tough sometimes to get everything set up, get all the people in their places, handle all the little mishaps that inevitably spring up, and still be able to let it all go and experience the living Jesus in our midst.

It is hard to get up early on a Sunday morning, get the kids washed, dressed and fed, herd everyone into the pew, clean up the spilled Cheerios, fuss with a crying baby, and still be able to experience the living Jesus in our midst. It’s hard to turn off the world for a few moments to be in the presence of Christ. We come here to experience a bit of peace in our week. We come here to enter into the transcendent, to enter into the mystery. Our everyday lives can be so worrisome and complicated. Here things should be simpler. Here it should be all about Jesus.

But liturgy is messy. People are messy. There are many times I think that we come here hoping to find peace and be fed, but distractions in the church and worries about our problems do not allow us to just sit at the feet of Jesus and be in his presence. We can’t just flip a switch and the world goes away. And Jesus knows that. I think we can still find joy in the midst of our distractions and worries. Joy is a decision. We acknowledge our problems but we do not let them wear us down. We don’t come here to escape the world, but to make the world holy. Our presence here is as important to Jesus as his presence here is to us.

St. John says that the same Martha who was so worried about getting it right was the one who declared Jesus to be the Messiah when her brother Lazarus died. It was Martha who came out to meet Jesus before he even came into the village. She had been waiting for him and looking for him. Mary stayed at home. Mary the student did not go out in search of the Master that day. Martha the servant did.

The person who was so concerned with convention and doing everything just right is the one who found Jesus in the end. It was the servant who recognized the savior. It seems that Martha had taken Jesus’ admonition to heart.

So don’t worry about it. Seek first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness, and all other things will be given to you. Keep your focus on what is truly important, on who is truly important, and all the other things will work out. Serve one another with joy, and I think you’ll find Jesus there, too.

We can find holiness in the ordinary. We are here in the 16^th week of ordinary time, and while technically all ordinary time means in the liturgical year is that we are not celebrating any of the great feast seasons such as Advent, Lent and Easter, the fact that there are far many more weeks in Ordinary Time than in the other seasons is a sign that most of the time we are living our ordinary lives, doing all the everyday things that can seem so routine and cause us so much stress. And in the middle of all of that Jesus is there, making the ordinary extraordinary.

I think it is important that we take time out of the busyness of our lives to recharge with Jesus. Sit at his feet and just spend time with him. Take a half hour a week and pray in quiet here before the Blessed Sacrament. Go on retreat every once in a while. Come to the Way of Christ talk and meal on Thursday nights here at St. Mary’s. Simply create a habit of prayer every day to build your relationship with God. It’s those little connection points with Jesus that make all the difference. They keep us focused, help us live worry-free, and give us hope.

Tell Them the Truth

5^th Sunday of Easter

Cycle C

Acts 14:21-27

Rev 21:1-5a

Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35

 “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” How are we doing with that?

I like to read Catholic blogs. There are so many really good ones out there, and since I am called upon very often to defend and explain the faith, I am always looking for another insight on how to do so. Some blogs are very deep and profound. Others are funny and show common sense. But what I find about most of them is that they are respectful, forthright, and charitable in the way they explain the truths of the Catholic faith. They show no hatred or intolerance towards those who hold differing opinions. However, the same cannot be said of the people who comment on these blogs.

And it’s not just the comments that oppose the position of the blogger. It’s the people who comment on the comments. That’s where you see the divisions amongst the people in the pews. That’s where you see the ignorance and intolerance and name calling and sometimes pure venom. Usually, when someone cannot articulate a good argument they resort to name calling and ad hominem attacks.

The issues of the day have polarized us all. If we disagree with someone, we don’t have civil discourse, we attack them personally. The advent of social media means we can call people all sorts of names anonymously with no threat of reprisal. We post statements that make sweeping condemnations of entire groups of people, not thinking that we may be calling some of our closest friends bigots or racists or worse by association. So many friendships have been lost this way.

All the time we are fighting amongst ourselves we fail to address the tidal wave that is approaching us from outside. We are all worried about how our religious freedom is being whittled away day by day, and we see all the attacks on the Church and its members around the world, but do you blame them? How can the world see the Church as a loving presence in the world when we cannot even show love for one another?

If we ourselves are attacking one another, how can we expect the world to treat us any differently than we treat ourselves? If all we show the world is our own self hatred, how can we expect them to see anything in the Church to emulate and admire?

Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

In the time of the apostles, the most attractive thing about Christianity was that its adherents didn’t just believe differently, the acted differently. They seemed to care about one another. They took care of the widows and orphans, gave to the poor and healed the sick. Their worship was not based upon individuals fulfilling a prescribed set of rituals in this temple or that, with the hope of appeasing this or that god. Instead, they gathered as one community to worship a different kind of a god. Their god was humble and gentle and loving, not stern and demanding of obedience and sacrifice. He actually gave his life for his disciples, to free the entire world of sin.

These Christians were peaceful. They didn’t join the army, they weren’t vengeful, and they tried to love their neighbors as they loved themselves. They welcomed the people on the margins of society; slaves, women, the poor. There were no class distinctions among them. Everyone was welcome and everyone had the same hope of salvation and eternal life. That was a very attractive lifestyle, and I think that is one of the main reasons why the early church grew so quickly. It is also one of the reasons why it weathered so many periods of severe persecution. Jesus told them to love one another because he knew that that love would be the thing that held them together during those persecutions.

It will be the same today. The attacks on our discipleship from without are getting stronger and louder every day. Our love for one another will be what gets us through this time of trial.

But I think many of us have forgotten Jesus’ admonition to love one another. We have had it pretty easy as disciples. There have really not been very many challenges to our faith here in the U.S. in our lifetime, until now. Catholicism has been the majority religion in this country for as long as we can remember, and the potshots that have been taken at it have mostly either bounced off because of our numbers and influence, or worse, have been absorbed into our beliefs and made us more worldly rather than the other way around.

When I was growing up back East, Catholics were still the minority, and Italian-Americans were still looked down on, and so we tended to gather together as a group for support. Whenever a group is discriminated against they tend to circle the wagons. Christianity is no longer a radical way of living and believing, it has been watered down. We haven’t needed to defend ourselves until the past 50 years or so, and we have become complacent and may have forgotten where we come from and what we’re really all about.

I think we need to get back to the basics of what made Christianity such an attractive way of life. It is all based upon love, and love needs to start at home. Jesus said our mission is to go and make disciples of the entire world. But first we must be disciples ourselves. Tramping around foreign countries as missionaries isn’t in the cards for most of us, but why can’t we simply love? It starts small. First, we must see that we ourselves are loved beyond measure, just because we are. We are celebrating the great manifestation of that love these fifty days of Easter.

You notice I didn’t say, “First you must love yourself”. The danger of self-love is that it has limits and oftentimes our love just stops there. Self-love is inner directed while true love is directed outwards. Our love can fail; God’s love cannot, so build your foundation on that unchanging truth.

You know, Jesus didn’t say, “This is how all will know you are my disciples, if you love everyone in the world.” Instead, as usual, he focused on what was right in front of him. He knew that if only his small group of close friends could learn to love one another, then that would be an attractive example to the rest of the world. He said, first, love one another. Then go and make more disciples who love one another, and after a while the whole world would be disciples who love one another. And that is how he would renew the face of the earth.

Just strive to love those closest to you. Jesus didn’t say, “Love one another as I have loved all the crowds I’ve been preaching to and healing these past three years.” He said, “Love one another as I have loved…you”. He loved his friends. Jesus didn’t show his love to the crowds, he showed it to those right in front of him who were hurting. He taught the crowds; he had compassion for and healed individuals. It is sometimes easier for us to be kind to a stranger in need than it is for us to be kind to the people in our families. Why not start there?

And when there is need for correction, do so with love. St. Paul said we are to admonish one another out of love. Pope Saint John Paul II used to say that the best way to love someone was to tell them the truth:  To teach the truth with love. Get it right, know what you’re talking about, and then offer correction with compassion and charity. But do you know the truth? Do you believe the truth? Do you live the truth? Do you testify to and defend the truth? This can be hard when the truth is the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom. The truth can lose friendships, the truth can alienate your children, the truth can get you fired or even physically attacked. "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God." 

A disciple is more than someone who just learns from the master; a disciple becomes like the master. A disciple patterns his or her entire life on the master’s, and then calls others to do the same. What did Jesus do? He gave his entire life for the people he loved. He laid done his life for those he loved.

If we truly showed that kind of love for our families, we wouldn’t have to worry about them eroding. If we showed that kind of love for our spouses, we wouldn’t have to worry about the institution of marriage. If we showed that kind of love for our children, there would be no abortion or abuse of any kind. If our families are truly images of Jesus, society would be transformed in just a few generations.

So be kind to one another. Pray for one another. Admonish one another to live moral lives. Give material and spiritual support to those closest to you in need. Lift each other up. That’s how we show our love for one another. Start there and maybe, just maybe, other people we see that love and be attracted to that love and want a part of that love in their lives, too.

And when they ask you about it, tell them. Tell them why you love and who you follow. Tell them the truth.