Mass on Saturday this weekend–October 15, 2016–4:30 P.M.
Dear Friends,
We continue on this weekend living in Jesus’ footsteps as St. Paul says, “When convenient or inconvenient.” We pray to our brother Jesus for the help we need which he is always willing to give.
Come; celebrate with us this Saturday.
Peace and love,
Pastor Kathy
Readings:
My friends, it is great to be back with you all again! Being away always serves two wonderful realities. Getting away opens one up to more and new ideas through seeing how people in different places respond to their lands of origin, life choices in work and relationships and just the pure and simple beauty of the land. The other reality is returning home to all that is familiar and dear and re-engaging with life—refreshed! Being away did both for us; so here we are!
Today, we are called and challenged to practice two very important values in our faith that come directly from what it means to be human. The values are compassion and gratitude. As human beings, our very natures call us to be our best and we know that life in community flows along so much better when we are respectful of others and their needs as well as our own. Furthermore, if we can show gratitude for the good that others do for us, life becomes so much better.
Unfortunately, some people in our age and time have more of a sense that life owes them something and they bullishly move through their days and years trying to claim “their rights” while giving little if anything in return. In our faith as Christians, as followers of our brother, Jesus, the Christ, whose life was all about love and service—especially to those in society considered, “less than” others, for whatever reason; we must be people of compassion and gratitude and take it to a new level.
In two of our readings today, we hear of the dreaded illness, leprosy. Known medically as Hansen’s disease and thought by most to be eradicated, is, says the World Health Organization, a major health concern in the developing countries of our world.
That having been said, in both the First and Second Testaments of the Bible, the term, “leprosy” covered a multitude of skin diseases, psoriasis and eczema among them. There was so little understanding of what caused illness at this time, that it is understandable that people would fear being around folks who they might contract illness from, and a despicable one at that. Any affliction that included weeping sores was considered leprosy and made the person ritually unclean or unfit for worship.
So then, enter Jesus who as we know, always called his followers to more goodness, to more character. He always tried to work within the law and he understood how the people thought, thus his instruction to show themselves to the priests who would then OK them for worship. And then there was the added piece—that this affliction was no doubt caused by a grievous sin—again, because they didn’t know how it was caused, this seemed plausible and was reinforced by the clergy of the time. Jesus, our brother didn’t let it stop there knowing that the common practice was to shun them from the community when really what they needed was good food, good care—to be kept clean, so that they could heal—basically, to be loved and that is why he cured them.
Then, we meet Naaman, a non-Israelite in the First Testament reading from 2 Kings. In both this reading and that of the Gospel of Luke; we see two people whom we might think , given their status as outcasts, might not be grateful, if in fact we can make the case that those on the lower rungs of society would have no social skills either. We see that the one who returns to thank Jesus is a Samaritan, and even though a Jew, is still considered “less than” even within his own group of people.
Naaman shows us the way when he sees what has happened—he praises the God of Elisha and takes it up a notch, wanting to gift Elisha for his goodness, his compassion toward him. Because Elisha will take no reward for what God has called him to do, Naaman makes a strange request—that he be given two mule loads of earth. It makes sense though, you see, when we learn that Naaman not only chooses to now follow and believe in Elisha’s God, but he wants to take some of the ground of Israel back to his own country where upon he can praise this God who was so gracious and compassionate as to cure him of his affliction.
This is much the same notion that travelers, such as Robert and I—yourselves and others have in mind when we bring something back from the places that we visit to keep the good of our experiences close by and to not soon forget what we experienced in a new place and culture.
Part of my desire to go to Prince Edward Island was to experience the land and places that writer; Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote so delightfully about in Anne of Green Gables. I was introduced to Anne first through the public television series and only now am reading the stories and finding myself pleased with how faithful the movie version is to the written form—in many places, word for word! Prince Edward Island is a lovely, green place as are many of these Northern provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where the “colors” were at their peak last week.
The Samaritan in today’s Gospel, who in many ways, can be called, “good,” even though his society looked down on him, was the only one to return and give thanks for what Jesus had done for him. The others went off to show themselves to the priest which was part of the law that they followed—in fact, it was what Jesus told them to do.
The point of this story friends, is not to criticize people for following the law, but to challenge theirs and our thinking around the fact that if following the law ever gets in the way of making the compassionate response–that of being purely grateful for what was given–moving perhaps out of our self-centeredness, then our response should be clear. We must always remember that Jesus our brother, calls us to more—more goodness, more character.
With this new month of October, I have begun to consider renewing my commitment to the Rochester Franciscans as a Cojourner, which I originally made three years ago. As a Cojourner, I am choosing to try and walk more closely with these Sister followers of Francis and Clare. I will put together a ritual that will lift up the fact that I am better and the Sisters are better in we can walk together—sharing, each from our God-given gifts, for the betterment of all. Interestingly enough, one of the candidates asking for the privilege of leading our country this year has been saying the same thing! “We are better when we stand together!”
The reading from 2 Timothy finds Paul in prison; yet he is able to continue to believe and trust in Jesus, the Christ, who saved and allowed him to live in a way that would save others. Faith is another important piece in the stories we are given today. It took faith for Naaman to jump into the river—it took faith for the 10 lepers to go off and present themselves to the priests, believing that indeed they had been cured.It takes faith my friends for each of us to trust and believe that God will be true to God’s word—that Jesus’ words toward the end of his physical life with us, “Don’t be afraid; I will be with you, always,” are true.
During the second week of our recent trip, I was called to reflect on Jesus’ words here when my body was more of a hindrance to me then a help as I had a bout of sciatica in my left leg that made itself known in the early hours of each morning. My spirit was tested as I implored God to be with me. Our good God sent my dear husband Robert for comfort and in the days since home, I am treating the symptoms.
We cannot leave these readings without lifting up one more key point that they make clear, and that is God’s over-the-top love for each of us–no exceptions! Once again, Luke’s Jesus makes it clear that Abba God’s love is for everyone—no one is less than anyone else.
Jesus additionally challenges all of us around the thinking of his day which is still with us in our day to some extent, and that is the idea that God punishes us with illness because of our sin. Jesus choosing to be with the afflicted in his earthly life certainly put the lie to such thinking. My bout with sciatica could certainly have caused me to wonder where God was, had I chosen to go there.
As I stated earlier, God was present in the love and support of Robert as I would have been for him were the tables turned. This is something we simply must always remember, our God is with us in all the love that surrounds us—we must always believe that for it gives us so much hope. Our faith, my friends, our belief in Jesus always calls us to more, to be bigger, better people, to name lies as such whether they come from Church or State demanding the very best from our leaders, including the “wannabes.” Jesus pulls down the walls of power that we humans construct saying that a certain culture, gender, lifestyle is better than any other.
Pope Francis, a breath of fresh air for our Church is doing the same—once again calling our nation to the need that each of us let go of control and grab onto love as the way to face and embrace our world. He is coming at the “woman issue” a little bit slower than many would like through the issue of women deacons, but at least he is allowing some conversation and engaging in it himself.
A book that a friend introduced me to a few years back that Robert and I have been discussing lately, The Creation of Patriarchy, by Gerda Lerner is one that Francis and all church men need to embrace so that they can let go of really ignorant statements such as, “women can’t be ordained—it can’t be done!”
As Lerner spells out so well, it’s a move of power against women from earliest times—that simple, born out of power and it can be changed whenever the men decide to do it—end of story! To ever give the reason that somehow God would be offended if leadership roles were given to women, is absolutely absurd coming from a God who created us all as equal. Maybe from a male, chauvinistic god, this would be understandable, but not from the God that I know.
On a positive note, this past week, Francis has been talking to the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby about the ways the two groups are alike pointing to some movement forward.
We must all begin to look at God’s people—everyone as God looks at each of us—with love, nothing else, just love. Presently, we are holding on our hearts and minds the people of Haiti, especially those in Jeremie, whose town was flattened by the ravages of Hurricane Matthew. This particular place has special meaning for our family as our son Isaac served for 2 years in that area while in the Peace Corps. And certainly the people along our Eastern Coast as well should be remembered.
The terminology around Hurricane Matthew speaks of “storm surges” and “walls of water”—devastating to say the least. If we were to take this terminology and apply it to our world in Jesus’ name—letting our compassion for others be that big—letting each of us strive to be all that we can be—can you imagine what a force that would be? Let’s give it a try in our own backyard going forward. Amen? Amen!
Dear Friends,
Pastor Dick Dahl gave us this homily to reflect on last Sunday–may you be inspired as was I.
David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote an opinion-piece this week entitled “The Age of Reaction.” In it he stated: “The more serious problem is today’s pervasive and self-reinforcing pessimism, which feeds the reactionary impulse.
Brooks’ view is that “The belief systems that used to reinforce a faith in progress have become less influential.
First there was moderate religiosity, the belief that God is ultimately in control, that all things are ultimately fashioned toward the good and that the arc of history bends toward justice. This was the mind-set that made Martin Luther King Jr. fundamentally optimistic, even in temporarily dark times. Then there was humanism, the belief that people are learning more and more, inventing more and more, and so history is a steady accumulation of good things. Brooks concluded, “As humanism and moderate religion have withered, gloom has pervaded that national mind.”
David Brooks’ words about the way many people think today seemed to reflect the way many were thinking at the time of Habakkuk in today’s first reading: “I cry out for your help, O God, but You do not hear me…Why must I see misery? Desolation and violence are all I see?” These words would seem to be more appropriate today in the dreadfully besieged city of Allepo in Syria, than in the United States, yet many here also feel besieged and overwhelmed.
In the second reading Paul writes to Timothy to “stir into flame the gift of God bestowed on us…the Spirit…that makes us strong, loving and wise.” Although Paul is in prison, he urges Timothy “never be ashamed of your testimony to our Savior…but with the strength which comes from God, bear your share of the hardship which the gospel entails.” Do so “with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.”
Even the Gospel reading is a challenge to have faith and to do our duty and not expect life to be easy.
As I thought about these scriptural challenges, I was helped by a book which I am reading for the second time, “My Life with the Saints,” by James Martin, S.J. After six years in the business world, James Martin left his job at age 28 to enter a Jesuit novitiate. Once there he was struck by the deep devotion many of his fellow novices had to various saints. At first he found the idea of praying to the saints rather superstitious. He wrote, “What was the point? If God hears your prayers, why do you need the saints?”
Then he started to read about them, such as “The Story of a Soul” by Therese of Lisieux or “The Long Loneliness” by Dorothy Day. He began to see them as models of holiness relevant to contemporary believers” and perhaps even more important, he began to understand better the remarkable ways that God acts in the lives of individuals like you and me. He realized that none of us are meant to be like anyone of the seventeen saints he wrote about in his book. As he put it, “We’re meant to be ourselves, and meant to allow God to work in and through our own individuality, our own humanity.”
First of all, he breaks through the image of “saint” that is a barrier for many of us. These were not perfect people. They were not all the same. Many of them felt disappointment, frustration and anger with organized religion. Dorothy Day liked to quote Roman
o Guardini’s saying, “The Church is the cross on which Christ is crucified today.”
All of them encountered suffering of some kind. When we undergo similar difficulties, it’s consoling to know that others went through similar trials without giving up. In knowing their lives, we can avail ourselves of their hard-earned wisdom.
Therese of Lisieux, was a simple young French girl who wanted to become a Carmelite nun like two of her older sisters. Six years after entering the convent at age fifteen, she developed tuberculosis and died after enduring a painful illness. What does she have to offer us? Why has this young woman, secluded as she was throughout her brief life in a French convent, become a beloved, inspiring person to millions throughout the world?
Therese’s illness was a barrier to the missionary life in Vietnam she had hoped to live. Once ill she knew she would be unable to great things for God. She decided she would do the small and insignificant acts of her life with as much love as possible. Father Martin writes, “She suffered small indignities at the hands of her sisters and strove to be as generous as possible even during her illness. The sisters in the convent who showed the least kindness to Therese were the ones she tried to love the most; the most vexing and disagreeable sister was the one she chose to sit beside during recreation.”
In contrast to Therese, as a student at the University of Illinois, Dorothy Day became interested in a career in writing. She also became interested in the pressing political issues of the day: poverty, radical social change, and organized labor. She took assignments as a journalist in New York City with radical papers and covered socialist movements, the International Workers of the World, “bread riots,” unemployment, protest marches on city hall, and child labor laws. During a suffragist march in Washington D.C., she was arrested and thrown in jail alongside many other women protestors. Her time in jail left a lasting impression. She and her companions began a hunger strike to protest the treatment of the imprisoned. She deepened her identification with the poor and abused in society.
She became pregnant from an affair with a man she had met while working in a local hospital and had the child aborted. But she eventually came to see herself as one person in a long line of forgiven sinners. When in 1926 she became pregnant again, the event gave rise to a kind of natural religious experience. The pregnancy awakened in her an appreciation for creation and a desire to be in a relationship with God. She had the girl baptized. Her partner, the father of their daughter, whom she loved deeply was an anarchist with absolutely no interest in organized religion. He could not tolerate her newfound religious faith. As a result they parted a year later, a painful experience for Dorothy who feared being left along with her child. She had also become Catholic and thus paid a stiff price for her conversion.
With the guidance of Peter Maurin, her mentor, Dorothy founded a newspaper, “The Catholic Worker.” The first issue was distributed on May 1, 1933, May Day and later the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. It sold 2500 copies for a penny a piece (as it still does). By the end of the year it was distributing 100,000 copies. Dorothy started “houses of hospitality” for the poor in NYC. These centers offered food and shelter for hundreds of men and woman during the Depression. The Catholic Worker movement gradually began to spread throughout the United States. Many years later, in 1973 when she was 76, Dorothy was arrested and jailed for her participation in a United Farm Workers rally supporting Cesar Chavez and the rights of migrant workers.
Father Martin writes, “Dorothy Day stands for many values: the importance of solidarity with the poor in living out the gospel, the value of nonviolence as a way of promoting peace, the importance of community in the life of the church. She also stands for those who think themselves too damaged or sinful to do anything meaningful for God.”
Like her good friend, Thomas Merton, Dorothy had an expansive view of prayer. She maintained that people can pray through the witness of their lives, the friendships they enjoy, and the love they offer and receive from others.
One of Father Martin’s favorite passages in Thomas Merton’s autobio-graphy, “the Seven Storey Mountain” is when Merton is speaking with his friend Robert Lax shortly after Merton’s baptism. Merton tells his friend that he wants to be a good Catholic. “What you should say,” says his friend, “is that you want to be a saint.”
Merton tells the rest of the story: A saint? The thought struck me as a little weird. I said, “How do you expect me to become a saint?”
“By wanting to,” said Lax simply….All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe God will make you what he created you to be, if you consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”
Father Martin’s book helped me to recognize that there is a vast community of people whom we can come to know, who can offer us comfort and examples of discipleship, and help as we discover our own individual ways of being a saint. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “With the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, bear your share of the hardship which the gospel entails.” The saints encourage us to “stir into flame the gift of God, the Spirit, that makes us strong, loving and wise.”
In closing, I want to share a conversation I had on Friday with my daughter Stacy who lives in Vienna, Austria with her husband and two children. On Friday Stacy took her younger child, Luca, who is turning nine in two days, to a dance class which he loves. On the way home they were riding in a very crowded train. Luca said very loudly, “Mama, I now know what I want to be when I grow up.” He got everyone’s attention. Stacy asked him what that would be. Luca said “I want to be a street sweeper and to take care of the homeless. In my spare time I want to take care of the world’s problems.” I think everyone within earshot went home feeling a little lighter in their heart. Saints are not perfect but they come in all sizes and shapes and in all times. Each of us can be one.
Dear Friends,
Mass will be on Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 10 A.M.
I look forward to being back this Sunday with any and all who can make it for Mass! Our time away was good –the colors where we were in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick were at their peak, we were told, and they were outstandingly beautiful! Again my thanks to Dick Dahl and to Nancy Miller for the special ways they served to make the liturgy “happen” on my two weekends away!
This week we are being asked to contemplate what our faith actually calls us to, with a special focus on compassion and gratitude. The Scriptures, as always will be our guide.
Come; celebrate with us this Sunday!
Peace and love,
Pastor Kathy
Readings:
All Are One Church 