PURSUED  BY  GRACE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Pursued by Grace.”

I was doing what many people in the United States was doing on this past Thursday: listening to the hearings of Doctor Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

I was driving up to Doylestown, Pennsylvania to see my sister Mary for the day - my day off. It’s a 3 hour drive and I heard everything in those hearings  up to 12:30 and then re-caps in the evening on my way back to Annapolis.

I am a bit nervous - in what I say from the pulpit - because it might trigger stuff that sounds political.  I’m not trying to be political in an example I want to use that I heard the other day.  I’m well aware of different takes on all of this.  I am aware of the  divisions in our country - that gets some people to say, “Let’s not talk about this - especially at the dinner table.”

Yet I was taught in preaching that it can be helpful if one uses current examples and what’s happening all around us when preaching.

THE  COMMENT  THAT  HIT  ME

Senator Amy Klobuchar was asking Judge Kavanaugh about the effects of drinking and she mentioned that  her dad - was an alcoholic - and a member of  AA big time.  She used the phrase - “pursued by grace”.  She said, her dad was pursued by grace.

That triggered thoughts in me. I even said to myself - while driving - “What a great title and thought for a homily?” 

Pursued by grace.

When I got back I looked it up and found out that her dad wrote a whole book with that title: “Pursued by Grace: A Newspaperman’s  Own Story of Spiritual Recovery.”

QUESTION: DOES THAT TRIGGER ANY THOUGHTS FOR YOU?

Have you ever felt the pursuit of God for you?

Have you ever pursued God? Of  course…. You’re here at Mass.

Better way to put this: name the moments - name the memories - when we had deep thoughts and experiences of Grace and God that hit us

There are two directions for all of  this: God searching for us and our searching for God.

It goes both ways.

We’re using the Gospel of Mark this year, but in thinking about this, the gospel stories in Luke 15 - right there in the middle of the gospel of Luke - hit me. It has  3 stories.

The first and second story is about God in search of us: pursued by grace.

The third story is the story of God waiting for us to start pursuing Him.

The first story is about a shepherd in search of a  lost sheep. The second story is the story about a woman looking for a lost coin. The third story is the story of a Father waiting for his lost son to come home.

There they are: two experiences we have all had - searching and being searched for - being found.

Picture yourself as a sheep wrapped around the neck of God. I’ve had that experience in prayer. It got me crying tears of joy.  Imagine the stinky underneath - underbelly of a sheep around God’s neck. Thank You, God.  Thank You God, for finding me - stinky me.

Picture yourself as a lost coin. Biblical commentators think it’s one of the precious wedding coins women in the middle east sew to their best party garment - and this woman lost one coin - and would not let go till she found it. Picture God as the woman embracing that found coin - or ring - of what have you - anything that is precious - us in the warmth of God’s hand.

I assume searching and finding, pursuing and being pursued, is part of  the marriage story of all of you who are married.

Who chased whom?

I like the saying, “A man chases a woman till she catches him.”

I love the love story of my mom and dad.  I’ve thought about it a lot. I like to ask couples where and how they met and what happened next. I assume you have all asked your parents their story.

My father liked the look of my mother when they were teenagers in Ballynahown, County Galway, Ireland. I talked to my father’s brother once when I was in Ireland. My Uncle Cole told me that my dad would hide up on a hill and watched my mother down in the field below near their houses. Her friends knew he was up there. She knew he was up there. He didn’t know they all knew he was up there.

My father’s brother, Cole and my mother’s sister, Brigid, got married and lived all their life in Galway, Ireland. My mother and father, came to America separately. My dad wrote love letters from New York to my mother in Boston for 10 years  asking her to marry him. His last letter said, “If you don’t marry me, I am going to become an Irish Christian Brother.”

I’ve told this story before - but I love it, because - if she didn’t finally say, “Yes” - I wouldn’t be here. Moreover, if they didn’t have that 4^th child, I wouldn’t be here either.

Surprise! I didn’t find out till this year, that there was to be a number 5 child, but my mom slipped and fell and had an early on miscarriage. What else don’t I know?  Family history is very important history.

When I heard about that miscarriage,  I said, “Bummer, I can no longer say the youngest in every family is the best, because they quit when they finally got one right.”

Lost  and found - pursuing and being pursued - discovering and being discovered….

Human pursuits. That’s my first thought when I hear the phrase, “Pursued by grace.”

Grace  pursuits - God pursuits … the theme of this homily.

So first of all, I think of those 3 stories by Luke.

Next, I think of the titles of two books by Abraham Joshua Heschel: Man’s Quest for God, 1954 and God in Search of Man, 1955.

Next, I think of Francis Thompson, the British poet, who wrote the famous poem, The Hound of Heaven. He the addict, with a hundred problems, pictured God as a Hound, picking up his scent and chasing, pursuing him. Look that poem up. Make it part of your spirituality.

I think of Saint Augustine who both sought God and ran from God and he tells it all in his tell all book, The Confessions of Saint Augustine.  I hope that too is part of your spirituality.

Listen to these words and thoughts from Augustine: “You called, You cried, You shattered my deafness, You sparkled, You blazed, You drove away my blindness, You shed Your fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and I pant for You.”

That’s God pursuing us.

“Here’s another famous quote from Augustine: “You have created us for Yourself, and our heart cannot be stilled until it finds rest in You.”

Here are the words of his famous conversion moment in a garden, “I was weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when I heard the voice of children from a neighboring house chanting, “Take up and read; take up and read.” I could not remember ever having heard the like, so checking the torrent of my tears, I arose, interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book and read the first chapter I should find. Eagerly then I returned to the place where I had laid the volume of the apostle. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell: “Not in revelry and drunkenness, not in licentiousness and lewdness, not is strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” No further would I read, nor did I need to. For instantly at the end of this sentence, it seemed as if a light of serenity infused into my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

CONCLUSION

Today's readings bring out that the Holy Spirit, the Wind of God, blows into our lives in many different ways.  Feel the breeze of God.  Breath God into our lives.

I don’t know how this national story will turn 
out - but it will be part of our history.  It has blown into our bodies - into our mind -in ways we're not used to it yet. 

And it will have its impact on us for the rest of our lives.

I didn’t read Jim Klobuchar’s book: Pursued by Grace: A Newspaperman’s Own Story of Spiritual Recovery. I’ll look for it - because of that short comment by his daughter, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. I have always suggested to folks to read biographies and autobiographies, memoirs and diaries, and write and talk to each other about each other’s lives.

Now I have an added question: Looking at your story, how were you pursued by grace, how were you pursued by God?