Monthly Archives: May 2017

Wednesday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 12:24-13:5 | Psalm 66(67):2-3,5-6,8 | John 12:44-50

If anyone hears my words and does not keep them faithfully,
it is not I who shall condemn him,
since I have come not to condemn the world,
but to save the world.
He who rejects me and refuses my words has his judge already:
the word itself that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. (John 12:47-48)

In my consulting work, I sometimes have the unpleasant task of telling my client that their inspired idea or grand plan Just Won’t Work:

That new filesystem with spanking new control software won’t be worth a hill of beans, when a power glitch crashes the customer’s database server, and it gets stuck at boot time trying to fix itself, while your engineer’s halfway across the world.

That 100Mbps network pipe to your data collection server won’t help when you have 200 clients pumping 1Mbps of data each. (I actually had to write this simple equation on a whiteboard, to make someone see that what he said could be done was physically impossible.)

Hard disk died? What happened to the backups I kept telling you guys to set up since day one? Sorry, I’m not Jesus; your data’s gone!

And then I get the Evil Eye for making them look like fools, for torpedoing a young engineer’s dream project, for not being a miracle worker.

It usually takes a while for them to realize that I’m not condemning them. I’m just trying to save them from themselves.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

Every one of us probably remembers a time in our childhood when we turned a deaf ear to our parents’ advice, and ended up both regretting it…and blaming them for our misery.

Jesus has been on the receiving end of that too, millions of times over.

As Catholics, we have the benefit of receiving His Word of Love and Life through an unbroken apostolic heritage. If we continue to turn away from that Word, to live our lives in hedonistic bliss, that Word would be our literal downfall at the end of days.

We’ve also been charged to spread that Word to others around us. When we keep the commandments that we’ve heard, rest assured that others will notice, and perhaps come to believe too.

And if we don’t, it’ll be one hell of an afterlife.

Lord, You have given us Your Word out of love for all mankind. Help us to take that Word in, and meditate upon it, and live it daily, so that all who know us may some day come to know You too. Amen.

Tuesday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 11:19-26 | Psalm 86(87) | John 10:22-30

The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice;
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life;
they will never be lost
and no one will ever steal them from me. (John 10:27-28)

Last week, the venerable American dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster triggered an Internet firestorm, when they added the word “sheeple” to their product. Their currently-listed example is fairly neutral, but the original text was a rather uncomplimentary observation by CNN’s Doug Criss back in 2015:

For those of us who aren’t immersed in the tech world: The more vocal Android smartphone users love to call Apple users “sheeple”, in reference to the late Steve Jobs’ uncanny ability to mesmerize millions into buying “second-rate products with sexy shells”. Apple fans retaliate in turn against “fandroids”, who “blindly chase technical specifications without appreciation for overall product quality”.

This long-running “sheeple-fandroid” war of words had actually simmered down to a bare murmur; each side mostly ignored the other, with a few renegades taking a handful of pot-shots each time a new product is released on either side.

Merriam-Webster, by inadvertently “legitimizing” the Android fanbase’s derision, fanned the glowing coals into a raging inferno. No wonder they backpedaled with remarkable speed, though also without a mea culpa.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

It’s no secret that the non-Christian world at large vocally criticize Christ-followers as “sheeple”, and some Christians even taunt us Catholics as “papist fanbois”. It’s enough to make those of us whose faith is already shaken for one reason or another to simply quit St. Paul’s race altogether:

I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7)

That doesn’t mean that Jesus was wrong when he said “they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me”. It is we who walk away from Him; blaming the secular world for stealing us away from our Lord is merely pushing the blame from where it rightly belongs, resting heavily on our own shoulders.

We will be lost…if we choose not to actively follow Christ, by faithfully attending to our faith formation through daily scriptural contemplation and regular Eucharistic celebration.

We will be stolen away…if we choose to listen to the sensual song of the siren that is worldly impiety.

If following Christ in love makes me one of the “sheeple”, then I gladly bear that moniker of “shame”.

And I can think of many worse “fanboi” obsessions than the promise of eternal Life, the fullness of joy in God’s presence.

The secular world thinks of us as fools, being led like sheep to the slaughter.

But I say to you, brothers and sisters, that we are being led by our Saviour like sheep to the ever-after.

As a modern take on Psalm 100 might proclaim:

We are his sheeple, the peeps of His flock.

Jesus fanbois, unite!

Amen.

Monday of the 4th Week of Eastertide
Acts 11:1-18 | Psalm 41(42):2-3,42:3-4 | John 10:11-18

The hired man, since he is not the shepherd
and the sheep do not belong to him,
abandons the sheep and runs away
as soon as he sees a wolf coming,
and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep;
this is because he is only a hired man
and has no concern for the sheep. (John 10:12-13)

I had a revelation yesterday: I love my parish deeply, and all who serve in it.

Even though it’s technically not my parish.

Even though there are those in my own choir who frustrate me deeply, staring off into the distance or down into their scores, or otherwise distracting themselves, while I’m trying to get everyone to sing as one.

Even though those close to me have urged me repeatedly to distance myself mentally and spiritually from who have no interest in following,

to not get involved in matters that could bury me in excruciating and unappreciated effort,

to avoid further agony from the internal struggles I’ve written about several times already.

And especially since we’ve elected new choir leaders and a new liturgical committee. I have, as I’ve pointed out to many folks already, no further obligation or standing.

But none of that matters, when I see, hear, and feel the spirit of my parish, the spirit of the “old guard” with whom I’ve served for decades, crying aloud in the pangs of needed but too-rapid change.

None of that matters, when I’m already neck-deep in counselling moderation, discussing alternatives, advocating new points of view.

None of that matters, when I’m compelled by some unseen force to sit in on the next LitComm meeting, despite my lack of official status, just to be in a position to listen, to process, and perhaps to quietly suggest a moderate path.

None of that matters, because I am not a hired man.

I’ve already proven myself over the years to be full of love but a terrible shepherd. I’m still motivated to keep working on that shepherd bit, even though part of me fears that it may be a futile effort.

Because I love my parish deeply, and all who serve in it.

I don’t know why, but that’s OK.

WARNING: LANGUAGE AHEAD, PARDON BEGGED.

Cold logic is telling me I’m so screwed, that emotional involvement generally ends badly, but love is telling cold logic to go screw itself.

In any case, whether I’m royally screwed or only gently so, it’s a pleasure to be screwed in the service of others. As St. Peter reminded us in yesterday’s liturgy:

The merit, in the sight of God, is in bearing punishment patiently when you are punished after doing your duty. (1 Peter 2:20)

Oh, such sweet, sweet agony.

Lord, You commanded me to stop running away, and I have done so.
If it is Your will that I should help others through their problems out of love, with neither authority nor request, and though loved ones may call me fool, then Your will be done.
For Yours is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, now and forever.

Amen.

4th Sunday of Easter (Year A)
Acts 2:14,36-41 | Psalm 22(23) | 1 Peter 2:20-25 | John 10:1-10

I tell you most solemnly,
I am the gate of the sheepfold. (John 10:7)

As I read, then re-read the above passage and everything after it, it occurred to me that I’d been interpreting it incorrectly all this time, as I imagine many other folks have done before me.

You see, this being Good Shepherd Sunday, I’d always mentally substituted “shepherd” for “gate”, as it just seemed to make more sense. It’s only now that I realize that Jesus really meant to describe himself as the gate through which the shepherds must pass to reach the sheep.

To be more precise, Jesus is the gatekeeper, the “quality assurer” of a sort, ensuring that those who would lead us as shepherds, our priests, are prepared in His character, to dedicate themselves in self-sacrifice to our spiritual well-being, to be in unceasing communion with God, and to find and guide us through the narrow door of faith onto the path of Life.

In a way, I think Jesus is also reminding us that we too should be prepared in His character as Catholics, to sacrifice our cushy comforts for the sake of our disadvantaged brethren, to invert our daily preoccupation in favor of God, and to take others by the loving hand and walk together through the narrow door of faith, and onto the path of Life.

It’s certainly not easy, and our human weaknesses will make us and even our clergy stumble and fall in our daily journey, but with humility and abandonment to Christ, His love will surely prevail in the end.

And all those temptations and other nasty stuff trying to sneak through our gate of faith? Over time, we’ll learn to tell them to take a hike.

Let’s make our heavenly Gatekeeper proud. Amen.

Saturday of the 3rd Week of Eastertide
Acts 9:31-42 | Psalm 115(116):12-17 | John 6:60-69

‘But there are some of you who do not believe. […] This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.’ After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him. (John 6:64-66)

Last night, I spent my first Holy Hour in years with the Lord. It was an exceedingly contemplative experience, with Fr. Richards leading us in pondering, via Luke’s recounting of the Annunciation and Visitation, of how our faith progresses…

from doubt (“that’s not possible!”)

to wonder (“that’s a miracle!“)

to belief (“it is the Lord, for whom all things are possible”)…

and how many Catholics end up stuck at “wonder”, marveling at all the Marian apparitions and Eucharistic miracles, but not actually taking them to heart and letting them change their lives to be closer to Christ.

It reminded me of our Eucharistic celebration this past Sunday, when he switched to the Apostles’ Creed and caught everyone off guard. Only a few of us were able to recite the words by heart, while the AV folks scrambled to put up the text on-screen for everyone else.

And yet, there was no satisfaction of remembering the Creed I pray every day as part of the rosary, only a searching question: “What, exactly, do I believe? When will the words take on real meaning for me?”

I think the painful truth for most of us is that we state the Creed like our national pledge, rather than profess our faith with both mind and heart. We say “I believe in one God,” until someone asks “what do you mean by that?” and gets instantly rebuffed with “talk to Father, he can explain better than I can” (because I can’t explain it at all).

We can do better than that, brothers and sisters. We must do better than that, for to be a true child of God, we must be able to speak the Truth.

And I think it starts with committing ourselves wholeheartedly to learning more about what we claim to believe. Progressing from doubt, to wonder, to belief, is worth setting aside sensual pastimes like TV and movies, online games and idle online chats.

And, of course, knowing must lead to doing, experiencing that faith in our loving interactions with others in our daily lives…especially those who continually give us grief.

✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞

One lady broke down last night, sobbing loudly when we sang the Divine Praises at the end of the Hour, as she witnessed the Blessed Sacrament being moved to repose in the tabernacle.

As for me, when the monstrance was swung in my direction, the shifting patterns of light dancing across its rays, contrasting with the constant purity of the host within, took my breath away for a moment, and sent a shiver down my spine.

Perhaps, when God sent me the double sign of Jonah, he really meant “stop running away and spend more time with Me!”

Now that’s a message that I can have faith in.

Lord, I’m glad I came to You as You called me to. Help me to make You the center of my life, not in idle word, but in committed deed. Amen.