Monday, February 28, 2011

Thoughts on the Rich Young Man...Again!

It always seems to me that sometime during the course of the year, I will come back to the story of the rich young man in my scripture reading and prayer. Last year I had my morality class write an essay on this particular passage. Here it is again today, Mark's version (10:17-27) Again I entered into it, wondering how it would speak to me this time.

Later today, I will sit for the final time before the scrutiny board that will conduct its final interview on the road to ordination to the diaconate. At that meeting, I will submit my letter and my wife's letter to our bishop, requesting to be called to Holy Orders. Then we will wait hopefully for his invitation. In my journey to this place, I have learned humility and obedience to the point that I understand that the "riches" being given up are not necessarily material ones, but also dreams of how I will serve God and enter the Kingdom. I now realize and accept that how I envisioned serving God may not be the way he calls me to serve. I am prepared to be ordained, most likely will be ordained, and I am prepared to serve wherever my bishop tells me to serve. It wasn't always like this. I once automatically assumed I would be ordained, and I assumed I would be at my home parish, and I had this dream of what life as a deacon would be like. No more. I have given that up for the reality of what is to come and that is that I do not know what is to come and I leave it entirely in God's hands. He knows and he will lead me.
This I know because he says so in the last verse of today's reading. It is impossible for me to get into the Kingdom without him. Sometimes the riches we need to give up are our "plans" for how God should work to save us and be humble enough to follow his.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Loving the Ones Who Are Hard to Love

Jesus tells us that if you are going to follow him, you need to turn your cheek and love your enemy. He is telling us that in order to be in God’s love, you need to practice God’s love. Yes, you can have a personal relationship with God, but you cannot have an exclusive personal relationship with God. God is not into restricted clubs. If you are seeking this relationship with God, you must turn the other cheek and you must love your enemy.

Here’s where this trips us up. We get this mistaken idea that if we learn to turn the other cheek and love our enemy…which, frankly, we cannot do on our own…then God will love us. It is actually the other way around. If you want God’s love, God wants to give you his love, When you begin to get his love, you find that if you want to truly live and grow in this treasure, you cannot help but turn the other cheek. You cannot help but love your enemy.

My family is a 9/11 family. My brother died in the towers, along with a lot of other people I knew. In the days following the attack, not only did I pray for those who died, I kept finding myself being called to pray for those who did it! At the time, I was being drawn more and more into the love of God, a journey that began in the darkness of death. The more God revealed his love to me, the more I felt compelled to turn the other cheek, to love my enemy. Even today, as I read this Gospel, I thought of someone I know of who I do not like…and I prayed for him.

Look, if we’re going to be disciples, it’s our job to do God’s work of bringing them in, not cutting them out. If you want your relationship with God to be only about you and God, you’re kidding yourself, dangerously kidding yourself. It’s also about everyone you consider to be somewhat lesser than yourself. In that case, you have two people to pray for! This is what I believe Jesus is telling us when he points out how easy it is to love someone who is lovable. It’s loving the people who are hard to love that will be the evidence of God within us.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Update

Time now for the occasional "why I have not posted that much lately" post. Several reasons, really. The usual ones are the amount of work I am dealing with this year in preparation, God willing, for ordination to the diaconate in May. Coupled with the work that I do each day in the Office of Catechesis, and all that goes into a loving marriage. But the main reason has been my own personal discernment process. It has been both peaceful and painful, joyful and rugged. There are days, quite frankly, when I feel I have nothing to say and am better off just shutting up and listening. Probably not a bad idea, if you think about it. A priest friend told me that in this last year before ordination, do not be surprised to find Satan banging away at you constantly. He was right. In my heart, I am beginning to appreciate the days of Christ in the desert and the temptations from Satan. Christ went through what his followers would go through in times to come. He showed us the way.

These are all good things that are going on, but leave me a little short from time to time on posting. One thing that I am listening for is whether or not this is where my talents should be focused and time spent. On one hand, I hear the Holy Father talk about the need for new media evangelization. On the other, after 30 some-odd (mostly odd) years in media, I have had no qualms in walking away from it. We will figure it out and see where it all takes us.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Crimes of Passion

An interesting juxtaposition of readings in the lectionary today. Hebrews is a final exhortation as the letter comes to a conclusion, urging the reader to continue to act in love toward strangers, those in trouble, and to keep love alive in marriage, making it sacred. Finally, you can do all these things because God is always with you and will never let you down. It is because of this truly loving relationship between you and the Lord that you are able to live this way. In the past, I have told my morality class that it is almost impossible to live in the manner Hebrews calls for without the love of the Lord in your life. When we move over to Mark and the story of Herod beheading John, Herod proves my point. Here is this king who was fearful, indecisive, jealous, selfish, adulterous, given to making a stupid oath based on aroused passion and then, because of his pride, found himself forced to execute someone who he actually kind of liked.

In my corner of the world, we will sometimes hear stories of violence in homes involving either estranged parents, or a single mom, boyfriend, child out of wedlock, and a parent of the mom. They are called crimes of passion. I cannot say for sure, but I suspect the same fault of Herod may be at the heart of these actions. The complete dependence on self, the lack of a loving relationship with the God who made us and loves us. I use these situations as examples, without passing judgment, because God knows we've all gone there to some degree or another more than a few times in our lives. Simply put, Hebrews is telling us we cannot truly love without God and Mark shows us Herod proving the point.