FIGURING  OUT  WHERE  PAUL 

OR  JESUS  GOT  THEIR  MATERIAL 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is this: “Figuring Out Where  Paul  or  Jesus Got Their Material.”

When I read the readings of the day, I like to read them out loud and try to figure out the experience that triggered such a thought.

That’s the thought that hit me from the readings for today’s readings for this 23 Thursday in Ordinary Time.

FOR EXAMPLE

For example, today’s first reading is from Colossians 3: 12-17. Did Paul have  a complaint or a whine or a gripe about someone and then realize he had to forgive them? Did that have to happen  before he could write, "bearing with one another and forgiving another, if one has a grievance against another"?

For example, today’s gospel is from Luke 6: 27-38. Did Jesus see a stall keeper in the marketplace who always seemed to give extra to all his customers - and as a result, he got all kinds of return customers?

I said Mass in Asbury Park yesterday for some of Mother Teresa’s nuns. Father John McGowan had taken me to their convent last week so that I would know where they were. On the way back from our dry run, Father Jack  pointed out Frank's on our way back from the Sister's place. He said, “Frank's is the place where the guys get donuts.” So I went in yesterday and ordered 6 donuts and the lady gave me 7 saying the jelly donuts were still hot. The message Jesus took out of a market experience was: the measure with which we measure will be measured out to us.  I was seeing a lady with a big heart and gave me extra jelly donuts. Neat.

In today's gospel, Jesus talked about people who lent stuff and then got angry with people who didn’t make returns. Did Jesus notice some person who gladly lent their neighbor a wheel barrel or a ladder or a plow - but go crazy when the person wouldn't return it?

IN OTHER WORDS

In other words did Paul and Jesus sit back and think out lessons from their experiences. I figure that I've preached well over 5000 times - and I'm sure for the first 10 years I preached on what I read in books, but at some point I had to switch over to preaching from experiences.

Father Jack McGowan in driving me to your place here at Lincroft, last week when he was showing me how to get here said, "There are homilies everywhere, everyday, in every place. You just have to see them."

Last night in preparing this homily, I’m thinking about conversations we have at the dinner table.  A says Blue Oldsmobile. That triggers in B the words Blue Nun wine. That triggers in C, an  ­Immaculate Heart of Mary Nun who wears a blue habit. That triggers in D  a  friend who was in an Oldsmobile car accident.

Isn’t that how conversations and life happens?

So when I read the readings the night before I have a Mass in the morning I just read the readings out loud for myself a few times and all kinds of memories are touched.

So today's gospel talks about not judging, forgiving, loving enemies - now that's the tough one - compared to loving those who are good to us.

What triggered that thought for Jesus?

Today's first reading talks about gentleness and patience.

Would living with a brother who was rough on everyone - and had no patience trigger mentioning that in a letter.

THE NEXT STEP

So there are homilies everywhere.

When Jack McGowan took me on a tour on how to get to this place as well as Holy Cross in Rumson, I jotted down directions in this pad.

I took out this pad at breakfast with the jelly donuts yesterday and a visiting young priest says, "That's Andy's GPS. And it's made of paper."

I was thinking: did Jesus have something like a pad in his pocket when he worked in the carpenter shop or when he walked through the town’s market or when he made trips to the mountains near Capernaum? Did he do that in his 20's and think about what he recently saw: brothers not talking to each other and father's trying to bring about reconciliation.

CONCLUSION:

So my  homily thought for today has been: the readings for the day give us possible hints not only for us  homily thoughts but possible experiences the author had.

So the homilist as well as the readers as well as the hearers of the daily readings ought to  listening and try to  figure out what triggered what?

SUIT OF STONE

I visited the graveyard

filled with stones of every

size and shape.

I felt I was in a clothing store,

wondering what suit of stone

would suit me well.

It was then, and only then, that

I realized it’s the numbers

that had the grab and the look.

How many days, how many years

do I get to play on planet earth,

before they bury me deep down below?

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

September  12, 2019 

Thought  for  today: 

“Father:  the  quietist member of the family unit.” 

Anonymous

COUNTRY  MUSIC  

AND  POETRY

Make sure you schedule into your schedule Ken Burns’ next documentary. It’s on Country Music.

It begins on September 15, 2019.

It will be 8 sessions - taking 16 and ½ hours.

I don’t know about you, but I like songs that I can hear the words.

I’ve been on many high school retreats - during which they played high school kids music.  Not my world. Not my words.

I can’t sing - but I do love poetry - so songs that allow me to hear the words - hear a story - get a message - are my world.

So check out Ken Burns’ documentary on Country Music and hear him get into memories and stories - the stuff of life - like his documentaries on the Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The National Parks, etc.

Country Music tells us so much - especially through music.  If you don’t believe me check out the documentary on this particular blog piece on the musical trio: Dolly, Linda and Emmylou.

It's poetry and sound in motion!

FOUR   POETS 
FOUR  POEMS 

Since I mention 4 poets in my next piece, "Poet and Priest" - I thought I'd present 4 poems - poems from Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov, Dereck Walcott and Seamus Heaney.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

by  Mary Oliver

THE SECRET

 Two girls discover

 the secret of life

 in a sudden line of

 poetry.

 I who don’t know the

 secret wrote

 the line.  They

 told me

 (through a third person)

 they had found it

 but not what it was

 not even

 what line it was.  No doubt

 by now, more than a week

 later, they have forgotten

 the secret,

 the line, the name of

 the poem.  I love them

 for finding what

 I can’t find,

 and for loving me

 for the line I wrote,

 and for forgetting it

 so that

 a thousand times, till death

 finds them, they may

 discover it again, in other

 lines

 in other

 happenings.  And for

 wanting to know it,

 for

 assuming there is

 such a secret, yes,

 for that

 most of all.

from “O Taste and See” (1967)
by Denise Levertov

THE FIST

The fist clenched round my heart

loosens a little, and I gasp

brightness; but it tightens

again. When have I ever not loved

the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong

clench of the madman, this is

gripping the ledge of unreason, before

plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

by Dereck Walcott 

DIGGING

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

By Seamus Heaney

POET  AND  PRIEST 

I am a poet. 

There I said it.
Dare I say it? 

I became a priest June 20, 1965

when Cardinal Spellman put his

hands on my head and said the words.

When can poets say that they are poets?

I’ve listened and read the poems of

Mary Oliver and Seamus Heaney  -

Dereck Walcott  and Denise  Levertov.

Am I being a bishop declaring them poets?

Or does a poet ordain herself or himself

a poet - by holding a book of poems -

in the air saying, “This is my body.

This is my blood - which I pouring out to you?”

These are my words made flesh,

my Listenings and my Cries …. But Silent.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

Listenings is my first book of poems - 1980;

Cries … But Silent is my second book, 1981.

Both are out of print, but I’ve written

thousands of poems, most unpublished.

September  11, 2019 - Thought for today: 

“The moment to spend with a husband who loves me, or a sick friend, or a delicious new grandchild is here and now. Not some time later .... The nation learned this lesson all at once that horrible day in September 2001. The pictures stay with us -- the fires and falling debris, and, most hauntingly, the faces. Look how young so many of them were, people who thought there would be much more time, a lot of 'later' when they could do all the things they really wanted to do. I grieve for their families -- especially for those, like me, who haven't found any trace of the people they loved. But I grieve even more for the people who died that day. They couldn't know what we know now about the precious gift of time.” 

Cokie Roberts -  contributing 

senior news analyst for NPR News

WE  ALL  DON’T   SEE  ALIKE

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 23 Wednesday in Ordinary Time is, “We All Don’t See Alike.”

It’s a possible theme from today’s readings.

It’s an obvious message from today’s readings: we all don’t see alike.

We get frustrated when we forget this.  We think everyone is seeing what we’re seeing and the way we are seeing.  Nope.  We see differently.

We get better communication with each other when we accept this obvious human reality. We listen to each other better. We ask, “Well, how do you see this situation?”

FIRST READING

Paul is telling us in today’s first reading from Colossians 3: 1-11  that some people look at those in the crowd and they see Greeks, Jews, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythians, slaves and those who are free.

Then Paul says you don’t have to see that way. We can see Christ and he is all and in all of us.

GOSPEL

In today’s gospel from Luke 6: 20-26 we hear Luke  telling his listeners this:  what looks like poverty, hunger, weeping, and hatred could be a blessing if we see differently.

Take riches vs poverty.  The person who sees themselves rich with brains, smartness, better than others, might not bother to ask others their input or ideas.  Why? Well, they already  have the answer.

MESSAGE

So my message is obvious common sense:  we all don’t see alike. We all see differently.

Bring 10 kids together.  Give each kid a big piece of paper and a box of crayons. Then put a watermelon or a cat or a dog in the center of a room and tell the kids to draw what they see.

We’ll get 10 different pictures.

I just finished 17 years in a parish in Annapolis, Maryland - and every year there were 3 retreats for our high school kids.  In a talk on creativity, the speaker, a high school kid, would show a picture and kids were told to look at it and then draw it - or write a poem or a story about it - and the results                  were big time different - every time.

We all see differently.

TEDDY MEEHAN

We had an old priest as a history  teacher in the seminary. In a given 1 hour class,  he would ask  over and over  the question: “Do you see?”  The record was 263 times in one class.

I think every person is saying, “Do you see what I see?”

I hope every person asks the other: “How do you see what’s right in front of us?”

I think that is what Jesus says out loud to us 100 times per day: “Do you see what you’re seeing?”

I think Jesus is asking, “Do you see what I’m seeing?”

CONCLUSION

Communion: does not just take place  at Mass.

September 10, 2019

GEOMETRICAL SHAPES

I did okay in geometry - getting to know

all those shapes: squares, circles,

rectangles, pyramids and parallelograms.

But I rather be outside - spotting

the shapes of rocks and leaves,

trees and fields and mountains.

Then footballs, baseballs, basketballs,

golf balls and the great big ocean

on the edge of my world: the Atlantic.

Then came lakes and rivers, ponds

and people, people with noses, bellies,

bodies  more interesting than classroom stuff.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

September  10, 2019 

Thought for today: 

“Critics always want to put you in pigeon holes, which can be very uncomfortable unless you happen to be a pigeon.” 

Max Adrian, Quoted 

by Barry Norman, 

The Times, July 4, 1972

CAN'T  ESCAPE? 

TAKE A VIRTUAL TRIP. 

NAME A PLACE .... 

TODAY:  IRELAND. 

DISMISSED

We all know the feeling

of being dismissed.

A yawn, a looking at the

watch or over our shoulder.

Dismissed: and we feel the

feeling, “I guess I’m boring.”

I won’t be missed if I stand

up and leave and close the door.

I’m gone. I guess the secret

is never to dis or dismiss my self.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

September  9, 2019 

Thought for today: 

“Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.”  

Margaret Culkin Banning, 

“Living With Regrets,”  

Readers Digest, October 1958

September 8, 2019

OUTSIDE - THE SPIRIT

I love it when the wind

or the weather catches me

the moment I walk out the door.

Cold, branches of trees shaking,

or soft rain or silent snow falling

everywhere - surround sound.

I love it when the Spirit pounds

my house and I need to get out

and get going - “Move it! Move it!”

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

September  8, 2019 

Thought for today: 

“Hindsight is an exact science.”  

Guy Bellamy, 

The Sinner’s Congregation, 

Secker and Warburg, 1984

PICKY,  PICKY,  PICKY

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 22 Saturday in Ordinary Time is, “Picky, Picky, Picky.”

There are two types of people: Picky, Picky, Picky People and Unpicky, Unpicky or whatever is the opposite of picky, picky, picky people.

I don’t see myself as a picky, picky, picky person, so I can pick on picky, picky, picky people in a homily.

But we all know down deep that picking on people is not the best approach for challenge, for healing, for change, for conversion, for growth, for niceness.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel has this theme of picky - picky.

It’s called Phariseeism.

The Pharisees are constantly picking on Jesus - for his non-fussy, non-meticulous, non-persnickety way of doing life.

The Pharisees sat back or stood back watching Jesus and his disciples - for mistakes.

There is a gospel text, “The Pharisees stood far off watching ….” [Check Luke 6:7.]

Here is Jesus and his disciples in today’s gospel walking through a field filled with growing grain on a Sabbath. They are hungry - so they start picking  heads of grain, rubbing it in their hands to separate the chaff - and get to the good stuff for nourishment.

I was trying to picture what that would be like - and I picture people at a baseball game with a bag of peanuts in those light brown shells - twisting and breaking the shell - to get the peanuts inside - and dropping the shells to the cement floor of the baseball stands.

If you’re a daily Mass goer, you have heard enough gospels readings where the Pharisees are trying to pick a fight with Jesus over some trivial pursuit of theirs.

Sometimes Jesus walks away. Sometimes Jesus challenges back at the challenger. Sometimes Jesus says, “Let me tell you a story.”

If there is one message we hear loud and clear from Jesus it’s this: the Sabbath is for us - not the other way around.

If people buy clothes, cars, houses with one eye to impress others - various people pick religion as a way to impress others - but the tricky, tricky, tricky thing about religion is that it’s dealing with spiritual stuff which is invisible. Bummer - if you want to be seen and to impress others.

What to do. Well, Picky, Picky Pharisees   make much of religious practices that can be seen and measured.

So Jewish law, Pharisaical law, religious laws were made up in the form of visible physical stuff:  rules for fasting, lifting, walking, working,  what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath.

Trouble is:   this made the Sabbath a day of rules and regulations rather than a day of rest. So people were not getting a break. They had 6 days of hard work then a strict day called “Sabbath” which was not an easy Lazy Boy Chair day - or a day to take the kids to the park or the Lake or to go hill climbing or get something sweet to eat.

In today’s gospel Jesus counters with a story about David. Maybe invoking him, the Pharisees would see a hero who didn’t have a picky, picky, brain. David and his men were starving. They entered the house of God and grabbed the bread offerings which only the priests could eat.  Hey if a hero like David could do that, what’s so bad about taking a grape off a vine or some grain off a grain stalk?

CONCLUSION

Being the world’s or the neighborhood  police - being the family spy looking for people who are breaking all the rules, takes energy - and can be draining - and we might forget we get to pick what we’re looking at - and sometimes what we’re inwardly complaining about - or enjoying or praising.

Uh oh! Better end this homily now.  Picky, picky people - when it comes to preaching - can be picky about length of time of preachers pontificating from the pulpit.

September 7, 2019

HOW  DOES  IT  FEEL?

Touching a cold front door knob - in early January ….

Being handed a college degree in May ….

Putting my hand on my grandma’s shoulder ….

Holding the roller coaster bar ….

Rye bread toast Saturday morning  breakfast….

Touching her hand and rosary in the casket ….

Being handed the Bread of life ….

Catching a foul ball at a Major League game ….

A slice of really red cold  watermelon - Fourth of July ….

Signing the divorce papers after a long wrong marriage ….

Waving back as the boat leaves the pier ….

Putting a caught garter from a wedding on my car mirror ….

Putting my first kid's baby shoes on my car mirror ….

Computer typing this list ….

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019

September  7, 2019 

Thought for today: 

“A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.”  

Lisa Kirk, 

New York Journal American, 

March 9, 1954

SEPTEMBER  RAIN

The wash of rain - cleaning the dust

off my blue car - clearing the sidewalk -

soaking the grass and the brown fields -

great sound on the porch and the patter

on leaves - seeing the defiance of grey

gravestones - hearing the musical swish -

the back and forth of windshield wipers -

appreciating living in the northeast -

knowing those in the southwest who

once lived in the northeast - miss their

roots and the fall of rain - on so many

a September day till the dislike of cold rain -

but like many things in life, that’s not yet.

  

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019