Homilies

Homily – 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

Today friends, we continue winding down on the Church Year, heading toward Advent.  We will concentrate on our continued journey, following our brother, Jesus, an idea that was scarce during the previous papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but one that Francis is most comfortable with.

Once again; we are treated to a reading from the Wisdom literature as we reflect on how best to follow our brother Jesus. Wisdom is something we are told we should seek after, but often we know this fact more in hindsight than we do at the outset of our journeys through life.  Wisdom is described as “understanding fully grown.”  The Wisdom writer tells us that wisdom wants to be found as much as we want to find it.  Additionally, we are told that wisdom has a feminine personification—modern exegetes name wisdom, the feminine face of God and Sophia is her name.  Finally, we hear that wisdom is found by those who seek her.

I believe when exegetes stop short as Diane Bergant does, in making the bold claim that Wisdom is the feminine face of God, it is because they have felt the “long arm of the [Roman] law” from a hierarchical church that couldn’t imagine God in feminine characteristics, graciousness being one of them.

But they should because the idea of wisdom being personified as a woman is part of the tradition of Israel, our roots.  In addition, the People of God, in the covenant with their Creator, were always searching for the One they were in covenant with. The psalmist today speaks beautifully and with great longing about the desire to be united to this One, a longing comparable to an arid land longing for water and as we sang so beautifully, “Your love is finer than life.”

These last Sundays of the Church Year have an urgency about them and the Wisdom literature is perfect for helping us to, as it were, “get our ducks in a row.”  Wisdom should be sought early, we are told, and exegetes say, this might mean; we should seek her in the morning—or my thought—perhaps we should seek God’s mind and heart first before moving ahead in any situation concerning ourselves and others.

Wisdom, we are told, waits at the city gates—she wants to be where the action is—where life is—at the heart of things. Bergant tells us that wisdom signals “a meaning and a purpose behind and within everything.”  If we seek her, she will “graciously appear in our paths” and meet us in our every thought, showing us the way as Jesus said before physically leaving the earth.  But, the operative word is, “If,” we seek her!

The Wisdom writer goes on to say that we will have to work to obtain her—she will be at the deepest levels and perhaps that is why many do not find her. We are encouraged to reflect deeply on our life experiences and look to the heart for the meaning. Again, we must keep in mind that we will find her, only through the heart.  It is unfortunate that so much of what we have heard from Rome and the official ecclesia comes from the head. Fortunately though, we have seen a switch in Pope Francis! We will know we have connected to and with wisdom by her fruits—peace and security, meaning and fulfillment and once we have found wisdom; we will see her everywhere, we are told.

I think back to the significant decisions in my life:  to enter the convent, to leave the convent, to get married, to pursue ordination—in all these decisions, after prayer, if there was peace for the most part, then I knew it was Spirit-led.

So, it would seem important as we are doing today, to spend a good amount of time on “wisdom.”   For me, it is the connecting piece between the other readings as we reflect on the end of the Church Year and on the end times.  Wisdom teaches us to seek the help that is present—the parable of the ten attendants in the gospel is a caution to prepare for what is coming—it isn’t something we should fear if in fact we seek after wisdom and order in our lives.  We were created to care for ourselves and others—to always seek that balance. It can’t simply be about us, as individuals, us, as a nation of people, as is apparent in rhetoric coming from Washington at present.

Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians is his answer to their questions about death. They had the misunderstanding from what Paul had already taught concerning Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that their loved ones shouldn’t die and now that some of them had, was it really true all that Paul was saying?

His letter is a comfort to them in their fear and anxiety; that “yes,” all he promised would come to pass—Jesus had lived and died, he had risen and indeed;  he would come again.  No doubt, Holy Wisdom was backing up Paul’s words as he explained to them the wonderful words recorded later to the Romans—“Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus, the Christ” (Romans 8: 38-39).

The gospel recorded in Matthew that we shared today might seem harsh, but we must remember what Jesus was trying to teach here. It was all about being prepared, not about being generous. For those of us wanting to make everything “nice,” we might think, well why didn’t those “selfish,” albeit prepared attendants share some of their oil with those who didn’t have any?  It seems that being prepared for the end times is all about doing something that only we as individuals can do—no one can prepare us except ourselves.  It is for the same reason that we don’t give our children everything they ask for—because it wouldn’t help them to grow up, to be good, strong and confident people.  And as those of you who are parents know, it isn’t always easy to deny something that we can give, but it makes all the difference in the end.

So friends, wisdom really is the key in understanding the message of the Scriptures today. Wisdom teaches us that we can’t live as though the end is upon us, only that indeed, it will come and the only way we can live fully is to live in the present—we don’t know what the future will bring—that’s where faith comes in—we must trust the wisdom of the past—that God has been there in many ways, blessing our path through life and that God will be there in our future too.

Rather than look ahead with fear—wisdom allows us to live fully in the present here and now, believing in the love of our God to complete all in the future in the way that it was meant to be.  This reminds me of a poignant conversation that I had recently with a wise elder. For me, he is the epitome of one living in the present, now, knowing inherently as I think one comes to know as we age, that length of days for him is in the past, but with faith, he moves with joy toward the length of days that eternity offers.

Homily – 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

 

Hello Friends, 

Sorry to be late with this homily–it is Pastor Dick Dahl’s contribution from yesterday–he has given us a wonderful message–enjoy! 

Let’s begin by considering the three readings we’ve just heard. The book of Malachi, by the way,  is the last book in the Old Testament. It consists of only six brief passages, and the author is anonymous because “Malachi” means simply “my messenger.” The passage we heard is an indictment of the priests who had profaned God’s table by offering stolen, diseased or impaired animals in worship. The real issue here was performing worship that outwardly looked good but was dishonest and disrespectful to God whom it was supposed to honor.

Then in the reading from Matthew Jesus told people not to follow the example and behavior of their religious leaders who sought praise and honor for themselves, but did not themselves carry the burdens they put on others.

Finally we listened to Paul’s affectionate letter to the Christians at Thessalonica.

Paul thanks God for the way they received the words he had preached to them as the words of God and had changed their lives when they believed it.

From the first two readings comes a challenging invitation. It is the whole point of this homily. The invitation is both very simple, but also one that cuts through hypocrisy, mixed motivation, and misguided efforts to control God. It is simply to do the right thing, for the right motive, solely out of love for God. It involves not caring if anyone else knows when I’m doing something good or if anyone sees it. It also involves not trying to control God by what I am doing. I am not gaining points or trying to make myself better than others. Whatever I’m doing I’m doing solely out of love for the One who loves me—who loves me overwhelmingly and always. Paul was delighted to see the Christians at Thessalonica responding with such love.

If all we’ve known is conditional love, opportunistic love, it’s hard to accept the overflowing love of God. People have been taught to think of themselves as imperfect rather than as good, rather than as the divine children of the Loving God who has breathed, his Spirit into each of us.

A couple days ago I listened to a talk by Franciscan Father Richard Rohr. He pointed out that in the creation story in Genesis God is pictured as affirming six times each stage and part of creation as good and finally it all as verygood. Humans—along with all of creation—are good, lovable, valuable. We recognize this goodness in newborn children, in young animals, in the beauty of nature, but we often find it difficult to recognize it in ourselves—to accept that our indwelling God is doing for each of us what we cannot do for ourselves.

The first humans are pictured in Genesis as given the freedom to enjoy all of creation, to eat from any of the trees in this wonderful paradise. The only thing they were warned not to do was to take part in the knowledge of good and evil. They were warned that if they began dividing the world into good and evil, it would result in destruction and death. By separating things, the dualistic mind always views one person, one tribe, one religion, etc.  as better than the other, one as right and the other as wrong, we are drawn headlong into divisiveness.

So, sadly, Christianity has focused on good and evil, especially on sin, rather than on the original blessing that emphatically asserts all creation is good in God’s eyes.

Our challenge is to accept this reality. Think of the many times we have heard that when Jesus cured someone, he told them, “Your faith has saved you.” They had not professed belief in some set of dogmas. This isn’t what he meant by “faith.” A word closer to his meaning is  the word “trust.” They opened their hearts to him and they were transformed within. We are invited to open our hearts, spirits and awareness to the transforming, loving presence of God within us.

Paul reassured the Colossians: There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything. (Colossians 3:11) The Spirit is dynamically implanted in us. We cannot lose this implanted Presence and hope.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “The mercy of God does not come and go, granted to some and refused to others. Why? Because it is unconditional—always there, underlying everything. It is literally the force that holds everything in existence, the gravitational field in which we live and move and have our being.”

So we can’t buy God’s love with burnt offerings, as the priests in Malachi’s time were trying to do. We also don’t buy God’s love with our practices and rituals. We have been blessed with the Gift, the gift of God’s love and dynamic presence in and around us. We don’t take part in the Mass to earn or deserve the love that has been given to us freely. We can’t earn it and we don’t deserve it, but neither can we lose it. Amazing isn’t it?

So, again, the challenge, the invitation is to do the right thing, for the right motive, solely out of love for God. The right thing can involve everything that we do—that which is fun and that which is difficult—working, playing, eating, sleeping—all in gratitude for the foundational Blessing that we enjoy.

Homily – 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

Friends, exegetes tell us that there are three key themes in the readings today. First, each of us is “created in love.” Second, “Love of God and neighbor”—both are important, and third is the “witness of love”—words mean little if the actions aren’t there.  I would add a fourth, that being, “compassion of our God.

Joan Chittister recently commented in her weekly column that we can sometimes be “seduced by the good.” In other words, we can decide that we have always said or done some good thing a certain way and get upset if someone suggests we “do our loving” in a different way.  A good example is how our country is satisfied to simply send “our thoughts and prayers” at each succeeding act of gun violence in this country instead of putting some concrete laws into place that will keep us safer.  The law to love convicts us to this action.

In the passage from Exodus—the ancient law codes of Israel; we see that human nature is built in, as it singles out the alien, or stranger, the widow and the orphan—basically, those most vulnerable.  Here, as we know, the term “widow” generally meant a woman without children whose husband had died and she wasn’t able to return to her family of origin.  All was set up on the system of patriarchy—women had status—protection, care, only in so much as they had men in their lives—father, brother, husband, son—women and girls were simply out of luck in this society unless some care came from the men. If there was no man in a woman’s life, she was basically reduced to begging which could be very dangerous.  The culture is being challenged here beyond the immediate men in any particular woman’s life to care for these unfortunate ones—here we see the compassion of God.

It is interesting to think of what is going on at present in our culture—the discussion of several days now in the media concerning blatant abuse of women in society/in the workplace. This abuse has gone on so long that it has taken our culture an equally long time to understand and to take action. The #MeToo action on Facebook is calling attention finally to the culture of sexual harassment of women that exists in Hollywood, in business and really across our world: sexual innuendo and the understanding, spoken or not, that if you want to move ahead in whatever field you happen to be in, you will give a powerful figure, (read male), what they want, sexually.  The culture also allows for unwanted comments, at the expense of women that are accepted as the way we do things.  This aspect in our culture is so insidious that women have to come to understand that sexual jokes, passes, and innuendo at their expense are not acceptable and don’t have to be tolerated.  Jesus, for his part, cuts through all the law codes of Israel and says—there are really only two laws you need concern yourselves with—love God and your neighbor as yourself.

The term “alien” or stranger was used not just for people passing through the land, but those who lived among them, who had no resource, no family, no support system; much like the immigrants in present day looking for a better life. So, with that definition, women could be both widows and aliens in their own land.  The laws of Israel forbade taking advantage of those who were already unprotected by the social structures—the special reason for this consideration was that the Israelites were once alien residents in Egypt.

God will not look kindly on those who inflict hardship on others or who refuse to lift a hand in support—it would seem good for this world to remember that.  The Israelites came to see their God as one for the oppressed because of how God had been there for them in Egypt, and they came to see that they must do the same. This is confirmed by Jesus in the gospel; love God and your neighbor as yourself. How can we say we love God if in fact we don’t love our neighbor?  Or, why would you do to your neighbor what you wouldn’t want done to yourself?  We have come to see here that “neighbor” is a broad classification—one that includes anyone in need.

Our God is for the oppressed—consul is given here not to make worse the plight of the vulnerable—there should be concern for those in financial straits—the piece about asking for your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge of payment was going beyond what should be unless in fact you gave it back before sunset, because a person’s cloak also served as their blanket at night and to ask for that was to exacerbate an already dire situation for one’s “neighbor.” For these reasons we at All Are One, do not keep a surplus in our bank account but give back to those in our midst who likewise represent the widow, the alien, the orphan.

The term for love in Hebrew is ra-ham and it means “womb love”— the intimate love that a mother or father has for their young; this kind of love our God has for us. When I think of how much I love my children, my grandchild—it amazes me to think of God’s love for us—in this same way and so much more.

In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, we hear that teaching the gospel is one thing, but the example of living it out in one’s life is most important.   Paul and his companions showed the Thessalonians the way, and they in turn were able to make the transition in their lives to live as they saw Paul doing and their example was seen by others.   Those of you who are parents know that to teach with words alone just doesn’t “cut it” so to speak—the kids will do what they see you doing. Francis of Assisi is well known for this adage: “Preach the gospel at all times—if necessary, use words.”

Turning to the gospel; we see that the question posed by the Pharisees was intended to trick Jesus. It is good to know a bit of background as we look at what is really going on in the gospel today. The history of the Law at this point shows that there were 613 commandments, 365 prohibitions (one for each day of the year) and 268 prescriptions (one for each bone in the body)—and of course some carried more weight than others—we might recall lists of venial and mortal sins.

Exegetes tell us that the lawyer challenging Jesus would have been more aware of the weight of each commandment and prohibition better than Jesus as Jesus wasn’t a scribe, but his interest again was to catch Jesus supposedly annulling a part of the law and then they could diminish his place in the community as a teacher.

Jesus goes to their Scriptures to answer the question posed about which is the greatest commandment. He points to the “Shem,” which is the most significant prayer of the Israelite religion—“to love God with one’s whole heart and soul” and Jesus adds, “mind” in order that the person’s whole being would be engaged and their response would not be a superficial thing.

Jesus not only gives one commandment, but two—basically saying that one can’t truly be done without the other—to say we love God whom we can’t see and not our neighbor, whom we do see, is a lie. Placing his answer within the Shem, their most significant prayer; Jesus uplifts the one-ness of the God they all worship and that there is no other. In order to love this God of their prayer; they must then love their neighbor as they do themselves.

So, in reviewing the themes of this day, the fact that each of us was created in love, our response must be to return the love. Jesus teaches that love of God and neighbor is what it is all about. It is easy to love those who are easy to love—our task in loving as our God does is to make our love more expansive—to reach out to the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned, and to remember that people are hungry, poor and imprisoned in many more ways than materially—due to ignorance, illness, discrimination.  In addition, our world calls each of us to reach out in love toward our planet earth and do all that we can to preserve it.  Caring for the land, the water, the atmosphere is so very important, not just for us in our time but for all those who will come after us. All is gift, given in love for no particular reason other than our God first loved and cared for us and wanted to share—can we do less than respond in love?

Homily – 29th Weekend in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

Dear Friends, 

Sorry for the lateness, but we made a quick trip to the Cities after the Saturday night mass for a visit with family and are just back today!

My friends—today we are asked to look squarely at the notion of the insider-outsider mentality that seems unfortunately still quite prevalent in our society and Church. And with so much unrest this past year, primarily due to the agenda of the Trump administration; we seem to be growing in this mentality rather than lessening it.

But the hopeful and exciting news is that our loving God takes all these ways that we as creatures choose to exclude, separate and divide, to instead, unite, include and love.  And this is the path that we, as our brother Jesus, modeled so well in his life, must follow.  Our main purpose for being in the world is to realize that all is gift from our loving God, to enjoy it, and then, our response must always be to give back in love.

This reminds me of the Water Working Group that I am part of as a Cojourner with the Rochester Franciscans.  Part of what I see this group doing each time we meet on conference call, beyond talking about ways that we all can protect the gift of water, that at least here in our area, we all enjoy, is to be most grateful for this wonderful gift.  Whether spoken of or not, gratitude underlies all that we do.  Along with the gratitude that we feel comes the responsibility to care not only for the water, but for the whole earth, from the skies above, to the soil beneath our feet, as the two are so interrelated.

And our God is so intent on getting this message of love and care across to our errant world, that God will work through those not even aware, to accomplish this goal.  Such is the case in our first reading, from Isaiah today. Cyrus is a Persian King and ruler and the reading states that he has been anointed—that is, chosen by God to bring God’s love to the Israelite people in exile.  He does this by proclaiming that these exiled ones may return to their homelands.  Cyrus has no clue that his actions are part of God’s plan, or that he has been chosen; but he has!  The wonder for each of us to behold is that in this action for one group of people, there is contact between the Persians and the Israelites and then, the opportunity exists for the saved or rescued to share with their liberators, and as a result, draw them also into the fold. And not only this, but God will have the learning going both ways, from those “saved” and those “not saved,” for if we believe that our God works through each of us, then indeed, those “not in the fold,” in our estimation, have something to show us of the face of God. God will use any and every opportunity to allow us to unite—to be one.

We have seen evidence of God’s hand throughout history, social and religious, to unite rather than divide—to raise consciousness. The Spirit of our brother Jesus is always renewing the face of the earth.  Sometimes we are aware of her presence pushing us onward—sometimes not—but our faith calls us to be engaged, to do what we can.

God works through each of us, with the purpose of bringing others into our circle and they also are then able to bring us into theirs. This reminds me of the Winona Interfaith Council, a group of like—minded folks on issues of the day who come out of many different faith backgrounds and have joined together to allow justice to persist in our world.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is engaged in a battle of wits with the so-called leaders of his day.  They are attempting to trap him once again because their purpose isn’t to rule with justice and love, but to control.  We see this today in both religion and state. We know the story and the question in the Gospel today—is it lawful to pay the Roman tax?—these false leaders and teachers figured they had finally hatched a plan that would catch Jesus once and for all. If he answered “yes,” it is lawful, they could hold up Israel’s belief that each one is bound to God alone. If he says “no,” he will probably be encouraging political unrest because others will follow him in the action.

Now, it’s interesting to note that the national coin held the head of Caesar on it with the inscription that gave him political honor and divine status, a claim that the people of God totally rejected.  In order to be sensitive to them, the Romans had a copper coin produced with no image on it.  So, additionally, when Jesus asked these “leaders” to produce the coin that had Caesar’s head on it, it is interesting that they even had one, and it definitely showed their hypocrisy.

Jesus answers wonderfully and destroys their little game to entrap him—“Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and give to God that which is God’s.”  And what does God want of us? We might answer that by looking at the reading from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians today.  In this reading, Paul is basically conveying his gratitude to these people for behaving in a way worthy of those chosen by God:  they prove their faith by their actions—they labor in love and are constantly filled with hope in Jesus their Savior.

Again, I think of the Rochester Franciscans who presently have nine (9) working groups that are concerned about issues that affect us all—among these issues are: interfaith, Israel/Palestine, human trafficking, immigration, corporate responsibility, mountain-top removal, climate change and water, which I have already mentioned.

It is significant I think that the title of each of these groups includes the word, “working”—these groups are about doing something.  I am personally so proud of this group of religious women and their Cojourner partners, for as Paul says, “They are proving their faith by their actions.” Paul concludes his thoughts by reminding them and us that the most significant act of their faith is love for others.  Love, true love, will cause us to do what mere rules never would!

So, my friends, like Cyrus, like Jesus, like Paul, like the saints throughout history, past and present, each of us is chosen too by merit of our baptism, to live lives worthy of our call, to always include, never exclude, to let nothing get in our way of living out God’s all-encompassing desire that we be one—this puts many Church groups in jeopardy, it would seem, including our “Mother” Church.

What we do, called by the Spirit won’t always look perfect—in fact it will be messy at times.  What matters though is that we begin, that we try to make a difference and don’t wait until what we may think is a better time—we have wonderful models in this in the Rochester Franciscans, in the Interfaith Council and others, if we are observant.

Several years back, a friend shared with me the comments of a person when she asked her what she thought of what we are trying to do in our little Catholic corner of the world here at All Are One.  This person said she thought that this whole venture hadn’t been thought out too well, because what happens when Kathy Redig can no longer do this? She didn’t want to join something that wouldn’t be there for the long haul.

My simple answer was—the Spirit isn’t through with this venture yet! All of us together are about planting seeds that we may not see come to fruition. This venture is about now, what we can do now!  If nothing was ever done until all the contingencies were checked and rechecked, making sure as possible that nothing would go wrong, nothing would ever get done!

So friends, just like Cyrus who wasn’t aware of how God was using him; we don’t know the full extent of what God wants to accomplish in us.  So, we must simply keep on and trust that the Spirit is continually renewing the face of the earth—the final result is not our responsibility—that belongs to God—we simply must labor in love as the Thessalonians did so long ago.

 

Homily – 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

/ kredig

My friends, this parish, All Are One Catholic church has always been about inviting everyone to the table—this was one of our founding tenets, to welcome all who want to be with us, to pray and to share our lives as we journey to be closer to our God in Jesus, our brother.  This parish has never been about judging who is worthy or acceptable—we leave that to the person and God. In that, we are, I would humbly say, like our God as the theme for this Sunday is all about “welcoming” and the fact that the invitation goes out to everyone, no exceptions, is quite a wonderful thing to celebrate, I think.

We, of course, have to keep what the Scriptures say in context to get their full import.  We might scoff at the thought that after the host of the wedding feast finally got a full house, among strangers from the streets, because the first guests didn’t come; he is willing to throw one of them out because he isn’t dressed properly!  And here is where we need to understand the customs of the times and remember that wedding dress was provided, so even the poor could come and be dressed appropriately—this person chose not to rise to the occasion!

And once again; we must remember that the stories Jesus told while among us always had deeper, secondary meanings, so we don’t want to read the texts literally. The wedding feast spoken of in Matthew’s gospel today and the banquet that is being prepared as related by the prophet, Isaiah, are both about the end times reminding us at this point in the Church Year to be serious about “checking our own houses,” so to speak, to see that we are on the right path—that we have a clear vision of that which is most important in our lives.  Are we searching after that which gives us life, or are we about more selfish pursuits?

Paul gives us a sense of this in his letter to the Philippians.  He is writing from prison, one of the many times he suffered in this way to spread the Good News of our brother, Jesus, which we know from our own study of Scripture, can be very challenging at times.  We know too as Paul relates, that we must try to keep Jesus’ message “to love” foremost in our minds and hearts, never losing sight of that, so, as he says so well, “whether on a full stomach, or…empty…, in poverty, or plenty, I can do all things through the strength of Christ.”

This summer and fall thus far have been full of tragedies from nature; hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and now, horrendous fires in California.  Whenever such events occur; we see that the people so grievously affected are called to see what is most important in their lives, often hearing from them, “We are sad for what we lost in a material way, but all of our family is safe, and that is what is most important!”  And the fact is, everyone doesn’t get through these events with their lives and it is then for the rest of us to do all we can to be in communion with those who suffer.

This is what Paul is expressing to his converts in Philippi—his gratitude to them for being remembered in his time of suffering.  The longer I live, it becomes so apparent how small our world really is—how closely we are connected and because of our faith in Jesus, are truly sisters and brothers!

That brings us to the wedding garment spoken of in the gospel.  It is provided for all of us to put on and now we are speaking of the greater sense of this gospel and this garment is made up of the virtues of compassion, mercy, justice, long-suffering, patience, and when we roll all that into one, it is love for our world, for its people.

This week, yesterday, in fact, I had the privilege of presiding at Joe Morse’s funeral—really a celebration of his life. Joe was a social justice advocate for many issues that affected people and the earth in the Winona area and greater world. If it could be said of anyone, it could be said of Joe that he had it straight in his mind and heart what the priorities were for right living.  He was motivated by the likes of Pope, Saint John XXIII, whose feast day was yesterday and who said, “All …are equal in human dignity” and by John F. Kennedy who asked us all to think, “What can you do for your country.”

So, back in the early 60’s this inspiration took him to the South to work with the Freedom Fighters to give our black brothers and sisters’ equal status in our country.  Throughout his life from that point there was no turning back for Joe—he was always about advocating for what was best for all, not just for some.

We saw this in his work with assisting men to be inclusive and respecting of women through the Beyond Tough Guise program and its MENding project to encourage businesses and tradespeople to donate work to fix the damage caused in homes by abusive men.  Joe was a friend of and advocate for the Women’s Resource Center assisting women in being safe from abusers.

Joe cared for the land and keeping it healthy—his work to ban sand-mining in our Winona County, which ultimately protects our water, protecting the bluffs from erosion by working to prohibit building on its slopes and his continual work through the Land Stewardship organization in Lewiston is testament to his concern.

Now those who knew Joe well would probably agree that he was relentless in challenging and encouraging all those he knew to do the right thing,  kind of like the host of the wedding feast wanting to fill the hall with guests.  To get a call from Joe was guaranteed to be about helping with some project.  We can be grateful for the “Joe’s” of this world who are persistent in choosing the right, even if the path is hard to follow.

So friends, we began today talking about getting the invitation from our loving God to come the wedding feast, an invitation that is continually extended to us and we live our lives between the time of that invitation extended and the actual banquet to be held. Each of us is dearly loved and appreciated by God—we shouldn’t lose sight of that.  This loving God, each and every day, gives us the strength and wisdom, and all-abiding peace to do God’s will with and for others. And as St. Paul so wonderfully says today in the reading to the Philippians: “I can do anything through the One who gives me strength.”  Amen.