UNDERSTANDING

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 4^th Saturday  in  Ordinary Time is, “Understanding.”

It’s the obvious theme to think about and to pray for – as it appears in the story about Solomon in today’s first reading.

Understanding ….

THE STORY

Solomon, the young son of David, goes to a place called Gibeon – a high place – and high places were where people liked to climb to – in order to get closer to God.

On an altar there Solomon offered a thousand  burnt  offerings.

A question: who lugged all those offerings and the wood for the fires – up that mountain?

A question for you:  have you ever climbed a mountain and felt the presence of God in a high place?

Colorado?  New Hampshire? The Alps? Top of the Empire State Building? The World Trade Center towers – before they fell?

If you’ve done that – and a high place triggered some awe filled moments - you had a glimpse of  what the author of the first reading is triggering.

After all that smoke and offerings,  God appears to Solomon in a dream and says, “Whatever you want, you got it.”

Solomon realizing he’s young and inexperienced – and he’s now in charge of the kingdom – he  asks God for the gift of understanding.

Great story – about what a leader needs  - it’s understanding.

NEXT QUESTION

What’s your take on what understanding is?

It’s different than knowledge – like 2 plus 2 is four. That’s knowledge.   Like water is made  up of H2O.  That’s information.  Understanding is not information. How to be a good leader? There are formulas and recommendations and anecdotes, but it’s still has a lot of the subjective in it.

So, a person can have the gift of understanding – and have a 4^th grade education or a person with a PH. D. from Cornell can be as dumb as cardboard.

People sometimes ask me to recommend a priest or a therapist and I say - ask around. I also found out what people really want when it comes to getting a car fixed – a good mechanic – but when it comes to relationship and family and marriage stuff, whom to talk to: people want a person who listens and hopefully  understands a bit of what to say and suggest.

HIGH SCHOOL  RETREATS

I’ve been at a lot of high school retreats and part of that is small group work and it’s always nice to hear a kid say, “My dad. He understands.”  “My mom. She understands.”  “My Spanish teacher. What a gift. She has two teenage daughters and she understands kids.”

HOW TO BECOME AN UNDERSTANDING PERSON?

Listen. Cry. Wear their  moccasins. Give others your  time.  Understanding people say,  “Let me think about this.”  They say,  “I’m not too sure about this, so I’d recommend you talk to Gloria who is a great counselor.”

MAGAZINE ARTICLE

To me, I should end this homily right here, but I just happened to pick up a copy of Commonweal two days ago: the May 3, 2019 issue.

If I haven’t read an issue of a magazine, the year and the date doesn’t make any difference. I picked up this issue because it had listed on the cover  an article “On Raymond Carver” – and I liked his short stories.

Anyway, after reading about Raymond Carver, I spotted an interview with Carolyn Forche about her and about her Memoir – and I love memoirs. It  described her experience living in Central America.  Surprise she experiences understanding.

She’s asked by the interviewer: “How did  your experience in El  Salvador affect your personal faith or your spirituality?”

Carolyn Forche answers: “You know, that’s a really interesting                        question because I went to Catholic school for twelve years as a child and I was taught by Dominicans, and after my formal schooling in a Catholic school ended, I went out into a secular university and out into life, and it was during the time of the Vietnam War and the civil-rights movement.  I drifted away from practicing Catholicism.  It wasn’t that I was no longer spiritual, but I didn’t practice Catholicism and  had that sort of questioning attitude that all high-school students develop.  And then I find myself in El Salvador and suddenly there’s the popular church, and people having Masses on boulders in the middle of the countryside, and I’m meeting these wonderful priests who are deeply committed to the poor and the wonderful nuns also deeply committed to the poor, and I’m introduced to the principles of the theology of liberation.

“And then there is of course Msgr. Romero at the heart of everything.  He is the one voice in  the country that has any institutional power that is speaking back to this barbarity and this butchery.  And you know, despite what it eventually might cost him, he was brave.  They were all brave, these nuns and priests.  I saw faith practiced in a living way.  In a way that  I think Christ would have approved of. I had never been in a community like that.  I had never met Catholics like that. And I’m not saying that the whole church was that way because of course there was still the old, established, hierarchical, conservative church in El Salvador, but the vibrancy of the popular church was not to be denied.

[Now here comes the paragraph that has the word understanding in it. It also has a sentence and an image that are great.]

“So, I tiptoed back into Catholicism through this.  I said, ‘I’ not a good Catholic,’ and Msgr. Romero gave me Communion anyway.  Nobody cared if I wasn’t a good Catholic.  Nobody asked me when the last time I went to confession was, because I’d have to be truthful; it had been years.  I found  myself surrounded by these wonderful souls who had all accepted the preferential option for the poor, which is of course the understanding that if you are going to put yourself at the service of the poor, you must also accept their fate.  You have to be fully with them, including in their manner of death.

CONCLUSION

A bit long – but I hope that triggers some thoughts about understanding.

Christopher Fry in his story The Boy With a Cart, 1925, wrote,

Between

Our birth and death we may touch understanding

As a moth brushes a window with its wing.

May you have touched understanding people and an understanding God – and you are an understanding person.