Some Advent Thoughts as we Await Christmas

(This was sent to me by a parishioner at Francis de Sales. I now share it with you)

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I grew up with practical parents. A mother, God love her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen before they had a name for it. A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.   I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, and dish-towel in the other. It was the time for fixing things. A curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress. Things we keep.  It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, eating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant you knew there'd always be more.  But then my mother died, and on that clear summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't any more.  Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away...never to return.. So... While we have it..... it's best we love it.... And care for it... And fix it when it's broken......... And heal it when it's sick.  This is true. For marriage....... And old cars..... And children with bad report cards..... And dogs with bad hips.... And aging parents...... And grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it. Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away or a classmate we grew up with.  There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special........ And so, we keep them close!  I received this from someone who thinks I am a 'keeper', so I've sent it to the people I think of in the same way... Now it's your turn to send this to those people that are "keepers" in your life. Good friends are like stars.... You don't always see them, but you know they are always there. Keep them close!  When you die, 10 things GOD won't ask you:  1..... God won't ask what kind of car you drove. He'll ask how many people you drove who didn't have transportation..  2..... God won't ask the square footage of your house, He'll ask how many people you welcomed into your home.  3..... God won't ask about the clothes you had in your closet, He'll ask how many you helped to clothe.  4..... God won't ask what your highest salary was. He'll ask if you compromised your character to obtain it.  5..... God won't ask what your job title was. He'll ask if you performed your job to the best of your ability.  6..... God won't ask how many friends you had. He'll ask how many people to whom you were a friend.  7..... God won't ask in what neighborhood you lived, He'll ask how you treated your neighbors.  8..... God won't ask about the color of your skin, He'll ask about the content of your character. 9..... God won't ask why it took you so long to find Him and ask Him into your house, He'll lovingly take you to heaven and not to the gates of Hell. 10..... God won't have to ask how many people you forwarded this to, He already knows your decision.

First Sunday of Advent, Cycle B

Image: "End and Beginning" © Jan Richardson

When I was working at the Center for Development one of my responsibilities was visiting dioceses across the country.

I was part of a team that would administer instruments to priests.

One of these was a time competency instrument.

The almost universal problem among the priests was a lack of competency for living in the present.

Much of their time was spent either worrying about the past or worrying about the future.

They turned out to be just like most people, they found it difficult to live in the present.

How competent are we in living in the present?

It is the question the whole season of Advent poses to us.

The first reading is a lament.

Israel has returned from exile but is living in a heap of ruins, in a destroyed economy.

Beaten down, broken and abandoned, Israel is anxious and afraid for the future.

But note where the prophet Isaiah ends his lament:

AYet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you are the potter: We are all the work of your hands.@

Isaiah ends squarely in the present.

The lament concludes with a simple acknowledgment of who God is for Israel and who Israel is before God.

The people stand simply in the here and now C watching, waiting, trusting in God's power to save.

In the gospel, Jesus calls us servants.

A servant is one who is at another's beck and call, one whose life is not fully his or her own.

The master knows the way and draws the boundaries.

There is no need for the servant to be anxious or afraid.

The servant need only be faithful to the boundaries.

So the gospel calls us squarely into the present:

 Be on watch! Stay awake! Be on guard!

We are to acknowledge simply who God is for us and who we are before God.

The gospel invites us to turn the whole of the future over into the hands of God.

It invites us to stand in the here and now faithfully watching, faithfully waiting, faithfully trusting in God's power to save.

In the second reading Paul reminds us that this faithful watching, waiting and trusting in God's power to save assumes a particular shape for the Christian.

That shape is fellowship with Jesus.

Indeed, we might say that the very shape of our watching, waiting and trusting is the Eucharist.

For faithful servants, there is no time or event that pulls us more profoundly into the present than Eucharist.

And there is one moment in the Eucharist, above all others, which places us squarely in the present.

That moment is when the minister says to you, ABody of Christ@ or ABlood of Christ,@ and you respond, AAmen.@

That moment in the Eucharist plunges us into communion with God and one another

beyond past and future, beyond anxiety and fear, beyond time and space C

into the eternal present where we meet God face-to-face.

Let go of anxiety and fear God tells us, give past and future over into my hands,

embrace the eternal present offered us in communion at this table and in the coming of the Lord.

To the extent we are unable to live fully in the present, we cannot fully know God=s presence.

Remembering those who have gone before us

Nothing can compel us to practice hope, that most fragile of virtues. 

We can only be inspired.

A table in my living room has become a kind of shrine. On it rest photos of people special to me: my grandmother, my parents, my best friend.  All have passed away. My grandmother passed away after 84 full years of life. The others died far too soon in my reckoning: my mother at age 64, my dear friend at only 59. Their deaths leave an emptiness that fits this season of longer nights and colder days. And yet their images bear a fullness as well. The memories they trigger also contain a yearning expressed in the hope that their absence is not the final word. The shrine is an act of hope that my loved ones are not gone forever.

In November, Catholics remember those we call “the faithful departed” who have “gone before us marked with the sign of faith.” In many parishes, we bring pictures of deceased loved ones to church and pray in a special way for those who have died over the past year. These acts of remembrance are signs of love. They are also acts of hope. Our prayers declare our hope that, in the words of the funeral liturgy, “Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended.” As a people we nurture the hope that life will continue again, but in a way we can’t imagine or conceive.

But this November my thoughts will go beyond my own loved ones to include the parents of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and many other unarmed African American young men whose deaths have caused such concern and reflection in our nation these last few years. The litany of such premature passings is too long to list here. They occur in every part of our country. They happen far too often. And most often they pass unnoticed by those not directly impacted, or those who are unlikely to ever be subject to the threat of such a premature end to their lives.

This year I will wonder: What does this month of hope mean for those who have been taken from us so suddenly and abruptly, for those whose violent deaths are in part the consequences of unacknowledged social fears? What does it mean to hope in the face of such ongoing bloodshed?

Hope has been called the most fragile of the virtues because, in the words of Jim Wallis, founder of the peace and justice organization Sojourners, it requires “a leap beyond the evidence.” Hope is not built on ironclad proof. There is no proof of life everlasting. Or that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. Or that praying for justice is not folly in a world of violence and strife. Hope is indeed fragile. We can’t be compelled to hope. We can only be inspired.

But hopelessness mocks memories of past love and success, and empties the future of possibility. Without hope, the present becomes unbearable when the future is made bleak by the foreclosure of anything new. Hope, then, is a shorthand way of speaking of the power of the new. Hope is the inner conviction that life—despite its pain, losses, and disappointments—is still open to new possibilities, to the unexpected, to the amazing and marvelous.

This, then, is the belief we celebrate each November as we remember those who are no longer with us. As I remember my grandmother, parents, and sorely missed friend. As I and others remember young unarmed men who died violent deaths. Our remembrances are testimonies of hope that our God is one “who makes all things new” (Rev. 21:5). We thus become beacons of hope in a season of encroaching darkness. We bear witness to God’s power to bring something new, just, and life-filled out of personal and social pain, sorrow, and loss.

This column appeared in the November 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 79, No. 11, page 8).

This Thanksgiving, develop an attitude of gratitude

The good news: If you have an attitude of gratitude, it does rub off on your kids.

When I was about 7, the family next door took me out for ice cream. This was a rare treat because they chose Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors, not the local frozen custard stand with only vanilla and chocolate, where my own family normally went. I chose mint chocolate chip, which was delicious. As I got out of the car afterward, I said goodbye. The mother of the family said, “You’re welcome.” I was horrified. I had forgotten to say thank you.

I hope the reason this memory is etched in my mind is because my lapse in gratitude was relatively rare. My parents were—and still are—people who value gratitude. My mom writes thank-you notes for everything from strong homilies to kindness done by volunteers at church. My dad appreciates things others may take for granted.

I’m pretty sure their gratitude rubbed off on me. Most of the time I feel authentically thankful for my husband, my children, my job, my friends, and, strangely, even for some of the difficulties of my life. I notice that grateful people tend to be joyful people. Research shows that when participants are asked to write gratitude journals or thankful letters, they become happier.

Gratitude at home. True gratitude is best learned by absorbing the thankful attitude of those around us. When kids hear a parent say why they’re grateful, they internalize the idea of being thankful for important relationships.

Sam, a father of three, says his children are learning that being grateful can grow into a desire to contribute to the family. “Our children can see my appreciation for how my wife, Emma, cares for the entire household,” he says. “I especially appreciate the culture of accountability Emma fosters. Each of us who benefit from her care must do our share in helping her and each other when possible.”

As children age, parents will witness the power of gratitude in their children’s relationships. “Each birthday, anniversary, Mother’s or Father’s Day, my husband and I have always sent each other a card with reasons we love and are grateful for each other,” says Liz, mother of four. “Now we see our teenagers writing similar notes to each other and to us. They never just sign their names—they always write a few sentences about the goodness of the other person.”

Gratitude at school. Children’s genuine thankfulness can buoy the classroom atmosphere.

“Very few children in my school will remember to say thank you when someone is handing out a treat or a snack,” says Bill, a middle school teacher. “Once one student does, though, there is a domino effect, and all the children will remember to say thank you.” Bill says he understands that some children are developmentally unable to truly appreciate what he and other teachers are doing for them. When a child or a parent does take the time to express their gratitude, however, he says it means more than the family might know.

Thankfulness and faith. The word Eucharist means thanksgiving. “Sometimes my only prayer at Mass is thank you, thank you, thank you,” says Emma, mother of three.

Many parents find their gratitude to God deepening as they grow older. “I see the presence of God much more clearly now than I did in my 20s or early 30s,” says Liz, 42. “I am more likely to thank God for a great conversation with a friend or the chance to help someone because I was in the right place at the right time.”

This article appeared in the November 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic (page 49) and in the November issue of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications' family spirituality newsletter (homefaith.com).

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

November 30, 2014

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With no fanfare and little celebration beyond the ordinary, this Sunday marks the end of the church year.

Granted, this is a liturgical way of organizing time;

but, during the past 52 weeks, the liturgy has involved us in the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ,

our shepherd-King for all time and eternity.

Therefore, we Christians have a different view of time and the way we human beings are supposed to live in it and through it.

Even though we see time differently, we are not meant to live outside of it.

We take the world very seriously because God took the trouble to create it.

This stance puts a basic tension at the heart of our Christian existence.

We are in the world but not of it.

We live here but we are on our way to somewhere else.

That is why we call ourselves "a pilgrim church."

As pilgrims, we pass through constantly changing situations.

Because we are constantly moving from place to place, we must always be adjusting our language, changing our habits, creating new ways of living-just to survive.

Pilgrims, however, never quite go native, never lose their identity, never fully settle down.

They always feel a little out of it because a pilgrim's lot is not to find a spot to call one's own.

The pilgrims' task is to keep their heads turned toward the goal until they arrive there purified, purged, forged in the fires of all their experiences on the road.

You and I, the church, are pilgrims.

But how can the church move without losing her way, how can the church maintain her identity while changing the world?

That is no small problem.

It is part of the continuing tension we experience.

Other institutions can adapt to their environment as necessary; and, if they end up as something different from what they were, no matter - they have served their function.

Not so with us!.

If we break living contact with our origins, if we lose the sense of our tradition. if our beliefs become blurred and our faith fuzzy,

then we have nothing to say and no authority to say it.

And yet, we cannot be imprisoned in our past,

we cannot get bogged down in our tradition.

If we do not relate our faith to our culture, then we wall ourselves up in a ghetto.

If we cannot communicate our belief in current language, then we end up talking to ourselves.

God is present to us now in the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that was present in Jesus.

And Jesus promised that we would do even greater things then he did because the same Spirit empowers us

and there are more of us to do great things.

And what mlight some of those good things be?

The Son of Man describes a few of them in today's gospel.

What all of these things have in common is that they make no sense on the ordinary level of life.

The only time we can be certain of God's presence in our actions is when there is absolutely no other explanation,

when we do something for no earthly reason.

Then we know we are working out of a different set of values and living in a different kind of time.

Of course, this does not mean that we should always be doing only crazy things.

But, every once in a while, we should do something foolish like feed the hungry or clothe the naked

just to check it out and see if God is still hanging around with us -- as he used to.

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Image: "Whether Awake Or Asleep"
©Jan Richardson

November 16, 2014

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You can tell a lot about a company by the risks it takes.
Insurance companies take low risks based on carefully calculated actuary tables.
That's good for us--we pay them to be safe.
Venture capitalists, on the other hand, eagerly go out in search of ways to risk money.
Losing it all is considered better than keeping what they have.
Today's parable of investing clearly puts the church in the venture capital category; and calls Jesus an entrepreneur who values risk over security.

Now, if that analysis is at all close to the truth, then how did the church become the largest, safest insurance company in the world?
Why have Catholics replaced Jews as Keepers of the Law instead of following the frisky spirit of adventure?

The Christian church began as a dare.
It dared to believe that the ancient dream of a savior actually came true.
The idea was so risky, the synagogue terminated their policy and forced them out.
So the church left the security of the traditional biblical ideas and took a chance on the new-fangled Greek philosophy.
That risk was repaid with the genius of Catholic theology.

And when the overly sophisticated Greeks lost their virility, the church threw in its fortune with the barbaric Roman hoard.
That high risk resulted in the Holy Roman Empire which ruled the world for centuries.
But when that amazing empire started to disintegrate, the church seemed to lose its nerve.
Anything new and exciting seemed to traumatize it.
In succeeding centuries, this insecure Church winked at the Enlightenment, winced at Nationalism, cringed at Industrialism.
And at the onslaught of Science, she stashed our mighty God in a fortress for safekeeping.

But it is perhaps unkind to belittle the fears of others while our own knees are shaking.
Prudence is still a cardinal virtue.
But when prudence paralyzes us, it becomes a deadly vice.
You can die of prudence without ever having lived.
But life is supposed to be Lived,
not Preserved!

Unbelievers seem to sense this more than we.
Pagans attack life, devour it each day as if there were no next day.
For them, there isn't.
For us, the miraculous belief in resurrection appears to have backfired.
Christians ought to swing from birches over roaring flames to land on a narrow ledge with the aplomb of a cat confident of eight more lives.
Instead, we camp on the safety island out of traffic.

Christians ought to dare the impossible, knowing that we cannot finally fail.
We ought to defy death, knowing that we will bounce right back.
We ought to be in the thick of the action instead of being wallflowers at the dance of life.
Why has Christianity not bred a breed apart, a people of adventure and daring?
For people who have been promised life overflowing into eternity, we expect far too little.

Creative people do not compress their lives, they enlarge them.
Architects always work with what they call the "Next Larger Context."
They design a room with the house in mind,
the house with the lot in mind,
the lot with the neighborhood in mind.

Humans are the architects of the universe.
Some of us have discovered continents, walked on the moon.
What have we done?

Christians are architects of the Kingdom of God.
Some of us have converted whole nations and died for the faith.
What are we daring?
I know.
It is no small thing to raise children, support a family, live single in a double world, balance a budget, and maintain sanity.
I know.
Some days, just holding the scattered pieces together is a heroic accomplishment.
I know.
Grimly holding on is sufficient for people who have nothing more to hope for, who are content to grind their teeth in the dark.
But for people of the Light, the way things are is not good enough.
For those who want to share their Master's joy, risk is demanded.

The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

November 9, 2014

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A study on accidental death occurrences shows that
(a) 20% of all fatal accidents occur in automobiles,
(b) 17% of all accidents occur in the home,
(c) 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians on streets or sidewalks,
(d) 16% of all accidents involve traveling by air, rail, or water,
(e) 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals,
and (f) only .001% of all deaths occur in church during worship services.

According to this study, therefore, the safest place for you to be at any given point in time is not in your car, or in the home or in the hospital but in church!
Today we celebrate the dedication of the basilica of St John Lateran in Rome.
Why celebrate the dedication of a church in far away Rome, you may ask.

It is to remind us of the importance of the church building as sacred space set apart for personal and collective encounter with God.
Historically, the basilica of St John Lateran is the oldest church of Rome and the
highest ranking church in the world, followed by St Peter's basilica in the Vatican. As such it is the mother of all churches.

When we celebrate its dedication to God, therefore, we celebrate the mystery of God's special presence and indwelling in buildings set apart for divine worship, including our own parish church.
We know that God is everywhere.

Yet when the people of God erect a building and dedicate it totally to God's service,
God's glory comes to dwell in that building in such a way that the building can now be called the house of God.
Solomon recalls this mystery in his prayer of dedication of the temple in Jerusalem: "Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27).

So, while we celebrate God's special indwelling in a temple, we must remind ourselves that God's presence is not confined in the temple.
God is still everywhere.
But God manifests His glory in a special way in some persons, places, and things.
A temple or church is one such place.

In earlier days, a temple, church or shrine was revered so much as to suggest that God dwelt exclusively in such places.
People went to church, participated in service, received communion and went home without knowing who was sitting beside them in church.
Spirituality was very individualistic and the man or woman sitting next to you was rather seen as a distraction in one's intimate communion with God.
Worshipers forgot that we are brothers and sisters, and that we come to church to worship God as family.
To discourage this self-centered religiosity, Vatican Council II introduced some changes in worship such as the priest facing the people at Mass and worshipers exchanging the sign of peace.
But we swung from one extreme to the other, and today many Christians have lost the sense of the church as a sacred place, to the point that the comportment of many worshipers in our churches today borders on irreverence.
Many Christians have altogether abandoned traditional practices that were meant to remind us that we are in God's presence when we enter the church.
These include such little things as signing oneself with holy water on entering the church, genuflecting or bowing to the altar before taking one's seat or before leaving the church, and lowering one's voice when one has cause to talk in church.
When we realize that the church is a holy place, a place of encounter with God, with one another and with oneself, then we bring a certain disposition of mind and body to church service which helps make worship an uplifting rather than boring experience.
Today's celebration of the dedication of St John Lateran invites us to renew our faith in the church as a house of prayer and to cultivate habits and practices that make it easy for God to encounter us whenever we go to church.