joy

When it is time to mourn, we weep, and when time to celebrate, we dance!

“To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep'” (Lk 7:31-32).

Jesus convicted those who held a narrow view of who was a true follower of God by sharing the image of a flute being played and no one was dancing, thus in times of joy, there was no celebration, and when the funeral dirge was sung, they did not weep, they did not mourn. Jesus then tied the analogy to his present condition where there were those who did not accept the ascetical practices of fasting and the call to repentance from John the Baptist, nor did they accept the inclusive table fellowship of Jesus.

In our own time, we have encountered those that are not pleased beyond their own narrow focus and who suffer from tunnel vision. Anything that hints at even a slight variation of change sends tremors of discontent. If we are honest, we all have some resistance to change, but if we are to authentically live the Gospel, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s quote is an apt barometer: “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

JoAnn embraced change much more easily than I. She consistently helped me, even when I didn’t feel it was helpful, to resist getting too comfortable. She did so again in “changing her address” five years ago to a heavenly zip code. Working through the reality of her death and the new adventure of two years of seminary were two big changes that I embraced with a lot of help, which has prepared me well for my first few months of priesthood.

It would have been easier to seek an early retirement and live a quieter life, but that was not a part of God’s plan. When most my age are thinking of or beginning an early retirement, I decided to embrace the invitation to change again and embark on a new adventure. I am very happy that I did.

The Church, at her best, is a balance between the rock foundation of our core beliefs, such as is outlined in the Nicene Creed, which provides stability, assuredness, and identity, while at the same time we need to be open to the life-giving inspiration of change from the Holy Spirit. Each of us in each generation must make the Gospel relevant. We must enter into the tension of remaining true to what we believe while being flexible to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us. In this way, we can avoid molding the Church into our image, and instead be conformed into the image and likeness of Jesus, who is the embodiment of Love, the Trinitarian communion of which we profess in the Creed.

We can live a life of joy when we resist the temptation to hold on too tightly. Nothing and no one in this world lasts because all is finite. When it is time to mourn, let us weep, and if we do so well, when it is time to embrace life we can do so with joy and we can dance again. What lasts as St. Paul says is love. God is love and God created us out of an abundance of his love. When we are willing to surrender our will to the Father, our heart and mind to the Son, and allow our soul to be led by the Holy Spirit, we can better embrace change and better live our life to the full!

Photo: On my first day in the sanctuary of Holy Cross Catholic Church, Vero Beach, beginning my new journey with some quiet time with Jesus, Mary, and JoAnn.

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Material happiness is fleeting but the joy fueled by Jesus is eternal.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man” (Lk 6:22).

The Beatitudes are contrary to much of what too many of us are tempted by when seek our satisfaction, security, and fulfillment in what St. Thomas Aquinas calls the substitutes that we put in place of God: power, fame, wealth, and pleasure. What is more, we may resist Jesus’ teachings because we do not agree, there are behaviors we may not be willing to let go of, we don’t understand them, or we find them too hard.

In today’s Gospel account from Luke, Jesus taught his disciples how to attain the kingdom through five blessings and four woes. Jesus’ message is a universal message, an invitation to and for all who have ears to hear and a heart open to receive. These teachings though challenge us to place our trust, not in the things of this world but in Jesus. That which is finite and material are fleeting and passing and cannot fulfill us. We will always be wanting more and we are never satisfied. In placing our trust in Jesus, he will lead us to his Father, and it is in building that relationship that we will experience true happiness and fulfillment for the deepest core of our being is made to be in communion with God and only he can fulfill our deepest need.

This is an inviting offer, yet when putting Jesus’ teachings into practice in our everyday lives we will receive opposition from those in our lives and from ourselves from within. Another word for blessed is happy. Can we really be happy if we are as Jesus said, poor, hungry, weeping, and when people insult and hate us? Yes. When we seek to live out these beatitudes with the help of Jesus, we will find that we are indeed happier when we are not attached to material goods, when we are more moderate in our consumption, and when we are not attached to outcomes as we want them fulfilled and when we are not seeking immediate gratification. We will experience much more joy and freedom if we are not gauging our every thought, word, and action based on what others think and instead be free to live our lives by following God’s will.

To be blessed, happy, and fulfilled in this life can be fleeting, like trying to catch the wind, if we seek to do so by acquiring more material things and having things our way as we want it, when we want it, on our terms alone. We will experience true happiness and deeper joy when we are willing to let go of our attachments to the things of this world and instead, place building a relationship with Jesus as our primary practice.

If we are serious about being his disciples, then a good place to start is learning and living the beatitudes. This is no easy task but as we come to better understand what they require, we are willing to let go and allow the Holy Spirit to heal and work through us, “we will rejoice and leap for joy” (Lk 6:23)! Joy because we can experience the good things that God wants to give us.

When we can see the difference between God’s gift of grace, the very gift of his life he wants to impart in us, and the apparent glittering of goods and false truths we have been seeking to provide for our security and foundation, we will be less apt to be ensnared by them. Slowly and surely, step by step, making time each day for prayer, reading and meditating upon what we learn in scripture, struggling with them, yet trusting in Jesus and putting them into practice, we will experience the love of Jesus, the eternal source of our joy, and we will drink from the well that never runs dry!

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Photo: Fireworks this past July 4. They have passed, but the joy in serving at Holy Cross continues to grow!

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Jesus has risen! Let us share his love, light, and joy!!!

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark, 16:9-16, is commonly called, “The Longer Ending.” Most ancient manuscripts of Mark end at 16:8. Whether this Gospel ended there, or the original ending was lost is not definitively known. Many biblical scholars also recognize in these verses a different writing style, so attribute this longer ending to a different author. This ending recounts that Mary Magdalene and two disciples, presumably the same on the road to Emmaus, met the risen Jesus. When both Mary and the two disciples share their experiences with the eleven, they are not believed, and “later, as the eleven were at table, he [Jesus] appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart”

How many times had Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for being hard of heart? Now he is saying the same to the eleven for not believing the accounts of Mary and the two disciples. We do not have a reason for their unbelief and maybe that is well and good because that gives us the opportunity to ponder for ourselves those times when someone has brought us a message from Jesus and we responded to them with hard hearts and were unbelieving. Are there certain people we would not believe no matter what good news they had to share with us? Maybe someone is bringing us a message from a different or no faith tradition…

Jesus does not belabor the point. His rebuke helped them to see that as his followers their hearts needed to be open to him working through others, as he told John when someone was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, “whoever is not against us is for us” (cf. Mk 9:40).

Christianity is not a secret sect, it is a universal call and proclamation to share the love of God with everyone. The source of this love that we celebrate this Easter Octave is the Paschal Mystery, that the Son of God became incarnate, entered into our human condition, lived, suffered, and died, conquered death, and rose again, for all of humanity and creation.

This was no mere resuscitation. Jesus conquered death and became the firstborn of the new creation and invites us to participate in his reign of the kingdom of heaven which is at hand. This is the Good News he wanted his eleven to proclaim when he said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15).

Jesus is calling us to do the same, as brothers and sisters, working in solidarity, not for a select few in our pew, but for all in our realm of influence. We are to build relationships by bringing the light, joy, and love of Jesus to each individual that we meet, person to person. Let us also be open to allow God to work through others and receive his message from them as well! Alleluia!!!

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Photo: One of my last classes at Cardinal Newman HS in May of ’22 before leaving to enter seminary. Hopefully, I was able to share with them the love of Jesus and that they are spreading his light, love, and joy!

Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, April 6, 2024

Peace comes when we align our will with our Father’s will.

Look at me, serve me, I want, are attitudes and dispositions that tempt us. Fame, honor, power, prestige may be another way of making the same point, which is that we often have a hyper-focus on self and self-promotion. Social media offers more of a platform to fuel this temptation. If we think this is something new with the advent of modern technology, we can look at today’s Gospel of Matthew to see that we have been operating from this posture for a very long time.

Jesus, for the third time, was attempting to prepare his disciples for his passion. He said: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day” (Mt 20:18-19).

The response of the mother of James and John (the two brothers make the request themselves in the Gospel of Mark) is actually not that surprising if we spend any time with people. She disregards what Jesus just mentioned about his imminent death and requests that when Jesus assumes his seat of power that her two sons will be number one and number two. The other disciples were quite indignant, and I can imagine what followed was not a pretty sight.

Jesus shares directly with the brothers that to give them a place at his right and left “is for those for whom it has been prepared for by my Father” (Mt 20:23). He addresses them all by letting them know that the preeminent place in his kingdom, whoever is to be first, is the one who serves his brother and sister.

Jesus is encouraging us this Lent to take the focus off ourselves and get out of our heads. To let go of I, me, and mine. Even when we let go a little, we will feel more peace. We will be able to take a few more deep breaths. We can experience this as well when we get outside, look up, and see the expanse of the sky. We’re no longer thinking about ourselves but touching the gift of our eternal nature and call to be one with God. Instead of feeling contraction, we can experience a sense of expansion.

When we allow ourselves to take a breath, we can then let go of the stress and the strain and the needless energy we expend following the distractions, diversions, and temptations that keep us on a treadmill pace. We can then instead spend a few moments with Jesus, and he can, as he did today with the apostles, correct any ways in which our mindset is not aligned with his Father’s will. We can then place God’s priorities for our life first, properly order our own, or let go of any that are not of his will.

When we are able to breathe, receive, and abide in God’s love, discern and make decisions from his guidance, we are changed and transformed. We will experience healing and renewal. We will begin to experience the fruit of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). In this way we can let go of being first or best, sitting at the right or left of Jesus, and instead, rest in being who we are as loved by God. As we experience more of the love of God, it is easy to let go of the need to be served and be more willing to serve and share the love we have received.

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Photo: Looking up and outward, and breathing deep! St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, Boynton Beach, FL.

Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Discipline and love can lead to freedom.

Jesus reacted to the criticism of not observing ritual washing prior to eating that was leveled at him from the Pharisees and scribes by recalling the tradition of the Prophets through the words of Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mk 7:6). For Jesus, following the law for the law’s sake is an empty act. What is important is encountering God, experiencing his love and forgiveness, developing a relationship with him, being transformed by him, and restoring what has been lost from being created in his image and likeness, so as to be able to glorify him by serving others and inviting others into communion with him. Jesus challenged the hyper scrupulosity and exactitude of the rules that had nothing to do with being humble servants of God.

Just laws and practices are those that are enacted to build up and empower people through discipline and clear boundaries. They help keep us from being enslaved to our passions and sins and instead lead us to freedom for excellence, for fulfillment, and to experience a heart on fire with an ever-growing love that yearns for a relationship with God and each other, like the deer that yearns for running streams.

As with any game we play, theatrical or musical performance, there are rules and regulations, there are referees, officials, directors, and conductors to keep order. When the rules enforced encroach on the flow of the game or performance, such that they inhibit the freedom of play, the communal interplay is stunted. When there is no enforcement, the opposite happens and all devolves into chaos. When the rules are consistent, they provide the structure and boundaries that limit abuse, allow for a freedom to flourish, and all those engaged to experience the freedom to actualize their potential, and as such, there is the experience of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

The first time I saw people skate, I was enraptured. I think I was seven. My father was working on a project at our local ice rink and even though we were not there to skate, I refused to leave until he took me on the ice. It didn’t matter that the only skates to rent that fit my feet were figure skates. It didn’t matter that my first attempt was a dismal failure. What mattered was that I made it to the ice and the joy of that experience carried me as I learned the rules of balance, how to stop and what a toe pick was and was not for. Soon I had the freedom not only to skate but to join a hockey team. The freedom and joy I felt any time I skated or played hockey, I still carry with me to this day.

The Church, when we are at our best, leads love and joy of what we believe and live in our everyday lives. We don’t lead with the rules and moralizing, but instead, we share our time, presence, and the joy of our faith. We empower and support one another as we enter into the play between our finite freedom and God’s infinite freedom. We are built for a relationship with God and one another and as our relationships mature, we start to learn and share the finer points of our life of faith. We experience the meaning of why we do what we do and why certain thought patterns and actions lead us either away from or closer to God. There is a unique balance between the rules and the freedom of play.

Loving someone does not mean we allow them to do whatever they want, but in willing their good, we offer practices of discipline, invitations, options, corrections, critiques, which establish boundaries that will provide opportunities for growth, maturity, and authentic freedom and we are open to receive the same. We are going to make mistakes, I have made many. Those we let into our lives will make mistakes. The key is recognizing that we are on a journey. As we walk together, when we are willing to be patient, understanding, forgiving, and kind, we will better support and learn from one another. In this way, the boundaries, disciplines, and rules we follow are meant to set a foundation for healthy relationships and actualizing who God invites us to be; joyful, human beings that fully love and are alive!

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Photo: Back on the ice over Christmas break at Bushnell Park, Hartford, CT!

Link for the Mass readings for Tuesday, February 6, 2024