I AM 

THE WAY, THE TRUTH 

AND THE LIFE.

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 5th Sunday after Easter is, “I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life.”

It’s a message from Jesus in today’s gospel.

There are several topics and themes in today’s readings: deacons, having Christ as the cornerstone of one’s life, see Christ, you’re seeing the Father, and seeing Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life that can lead us to our Father’s house for all eternity. I was wondering if any priest or deacon will tackle the second half of that last sentence in today's first reading: "even  a large group of priests were becoming obedient to the faith."

I am choosing to preach on the theme of seeing Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. 

FUNERALS

In some parishes, like this parish, when someone dies, the family is asked to pick the scripture readings they would like for the funeral.

I’ve noticed various things can happen when a family is asked to do this.

The family gets a faith person in the family to do the pickings - someone everyone sees as a regular chuch goer and someone who knows what's what when it comes to these things. Or the whole family gets together and goes through either the Bible or the paperback booklet the parish provides for preparing a funeral celebration. The booklet has significant 1st, 2nd, and Gospel readings.

The same thing is asked of folks who are getting married. Neat.

Back to funerals. Then there is one of the those wonderful moments that I have experienced as a priest. Someone or a couple call and then come in and say they are planning their funeral long before they die. And they pick out the readings and music they would like for their funeral.

Because of that I sat down and picked out the readings I would like for my funeral – as well as the music. I would love to be in my casket and hear Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” and hear the Quaker hymn:

          “'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free,
            'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be,
            And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
           'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
           When true simplicity is gain'd,
           To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
           To turn, turn will be our delight
          'Till by turning, turning we come round right.”

How about you? What readings and what songs, hymns, or music would you like for your funeral celebration?

BACK TO TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel is a gospel text that people pick at times for a funeral – and I would assume it’s chosen because of the Resurrection overtones – the Eternal Mansions or Dwelling Places with the Father in it and I would assume that’s why we have this gospel on one of these Sundays after Easter.

The text in the gospel reading that resonates big time for me is: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Suggestion: take your rosary and recite on the beads 59 times – one for each bead, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Try it. Saying it and praying it out loud, it took me –2 minutes and 47 seconds.

Or just use a decade of your rosary. Say 10 times on your rosary beads those words, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

I like to push using the rosary for many different things and people have come up to me afterwards and mention they have been using their rosary that way for the past two years or what have you.

The word will become flesh and dwell in you.

And maybe that text will become the number one text you will want for your funeral.

FURTHER SUGGESTION

Besides, “I AM” – and besides seeing and studying Jesus, one sees the Father, a further suggestion would be to reflect on the 3 key words in that saying of Jesus: Way, Truth and Life.

Jesus is saying that he is, “The Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Let’s look at those three as the meat – the beef – of this homily.

1) WAY

We all know what a WAY is.

We use the word all the time. Do you know a back way to the Bay Bridge and avoid as much of Route 50 as possible on a Friday afternoon – or evening? Would anyone catch me if I sneak out the back way of St. Mary’s parking lot?

Was Jesus standing on a road one day and pointed to the road below and said to his disciples, “I am the Way!” “I am the Road!” “I am the Path!”

That’s a theme in many religions and philosophies.

The TAO in Confucianism means “The Path” or “The Way.”

The Pythagorean school of philosophy in Greece used the letter Y for their symbol. You are walking a certain way and you come to a junction, a fork in the road, and you have to make a choice. Their message was to Choose Our Way!

Robert Frost has his famous poem, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I took the road less travelled.

AA and the many programs that spinned off it stress 12 Steps. This it the way to recovery. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Take one step at a time.

Read the Gospels and the Letters of the New Testament and you’ll slowly discover Jesus’ Way to do life: love one another, forgive one another, see people, especially the unnoticed, feed people, visit the sick and those stuck, etc. etc. etc.

One name for the Early Christians were, “The followers of The Way.”

2) TRUTH

Jesus said he was the truth.

Jesus stressed honesty.

Don’t be a Pharisee or a Phony.

Avoid cheating. In fact, give extra.

Don’t live a double life. Be able to look each other in the eye. No hidden agendas.

I haven’t seen anyone in Annapolis with a parrot, but I still love the old saying, “So live that you wouldn’t be scared to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”

How many people have made it their life policy, “Honesty is the best policy!”

If you lie, you better have a great memory. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said the last time.

I love Jesus words, “The truth will set you free” and then I like what someone added, “but first it will hurt.”

3) LIFE

And lastly life.

Jesus is life. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we receive the Word and the Bread in communion – for life.

I learned from the Jesuits – the great principle of discernment.

Looking back at anything, if something gives me life, more and if something is killing me less. It’s as simple as that.

We know that when it comes to use of time and food and relationships.

Then there is the tricky part of the formula. Sometimes what looks good, something that looks like life – like that extra drink or third dessert, afterwards feels like ugg and ugly. And sometimes what looks painful or too much effort – like good regular exercise in the long run, we feel this was a good move.

CONCLUSION

Enough all ready. A long sermon can be draining. A short sermon can give life.

HURTING  ANOTHER

Quote for Today  May 22, 2011


"To kill a human being is, after all, the least injury you can do him."


Henry James [1943-1916]  Complete Tales (1962), Vol. 1, "My Friend Bingham" (1867 short story).

Questions:

What has been the greatest affront you've experienced?

Was the hurt deliberate?

Have you forgiven the person?

Did you talk to the person about what happened?

The tongue is metaphored as a sword or pen at times. Have you ever stabbed a person with a comment you made - or have you ever written a letter that really hurt another?

CHILDLIKE

Quote for Today May 21, 2011

"The great person is the one who does not lose one's child's heart."

Mencius [372-289 B.C.] Works, 2:12 [Check out Jesus' version, Matthew 18:3.""The one who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."  In Bartlett's Familiar Quotations where I found the quote from Mencius, a James Legge adds, "But Christ speaks of the child's heart as a thing to be regained. Mencius speaks of it as a thing not to be lost."

NATURAL  LAW 

Quote for Friday on  Right and Wrong from C.S. Lewis - May 20, 2011

"The Law of Human Nature

"Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kinds of things they say.  They say things like this: 'How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?' - 'That's my seat, I was there first' - 'Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm' - 'Why should you shove in first?' - 'Give me a bit our your orange, I gave you a bit of mine' - 'Come on, you promised.' People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

"Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: 'To hell with your standard.' Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing   does not  really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair player or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and  he  had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

"Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the 'laws of nature' we usually mean things like gravity, or heredity' or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong 'the Law of Nature,' they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law - with the great difference, that a body could not choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to destroy it."

C. S. Lewis, pages 17-18 in his book, Mere Christianity - Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1952

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

May 19, 2011

Quote for Thursday, May 19. 2011, on the Forbidden  from St. Augustine

THE STOLEN FRUIT

        "(9) Surely, Lord, your law punishes theft, as does that law written on the hearts of men, which not even iniquity itself blots out. What thief puts up with another thief with a calm mind? Not even a rich thief will pardon one who steals from him because of want. But I willed to commit theft, and I did so, not because I was driven to it by any need, unless it were by poverty of justice, and dislike of it, and by a glut of evildoing. For I stole a thing of which I had plenty of my own and of much better quality. Nor did I wish to enjoy that thing which I desired to gain by the theft, but rather to enjoy the actual theft and the sin of theft.

       "In a garden nearby to our vineyard there was a pear tree, loaded with fruit that might be desirable neither in appearance nor in taste. Late one night - to which hour, according to our pestilential custom, we kept up our street games - a group of very bad youngsters set out to shake down and rob this tree. We took great loads of fruit from it, not for our own eating, but rather to throw it to the pigs; even if we did eat a little of it, we did this to do what pleased us for the reason that it was forbidden.

        "Behold my heart, O Lord, behold my heart upon which you had mercy in the depths of the pit. Behold, now let my heart tell you what it looked for there, that I should be evil without purpose and that there should be no cause for my evil but evil itself.  Foul was the evil, and I loved it. I loved to go down to death.  I loved my fault, not that for which I did the fault, but I loved the fault itself. Base in soul was I, and I leaped down from your firm clasp even towards complete destruction, and I sought nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself."

St. Augustine [354-430], Confessions, Chapter  4, Book 2 - pages 69-70 in John K. Ryan's translation of The Confessions of St. Augustine, Image Books, A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, N.Y., 1960

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Quote for Wednesday on the Forbidden by Mark Twain - May 18, 2011

"Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden."

Mark Twain [1835-1910], Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) Chapter 2

IT WAS ________.

FILL IN THE BLANK

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 4th Tuesday after Easter  is, “It Was ______. Fill In The Blank.”

Some homework for today. If you had to describe your life in 3 words, the first 2 words being, “It was” or “It is”, what word would be your 3rd word?

IT WAS WINTER

There is a short sentence in today’s gospel that triggered the thought for this homily. The sentence is, “It was winter.”

I remember when we were studying English literature, our teacher said that Ernest Hemingway’s impact on American English writing was, “Short sentences.”

“It was winter.” Now that’s a short sentence. This sentence appears in John 10:22. However, in Greek, which the New Testament comes to us in, it’s in a 10 word sentence. That is short compared to many New Testament sentences. The Greek New Testament is loaded with lots of “and’s” or “kai’s. In Greek “KAI” is the word for “and”.

There is another 3 word sentence in the Gospel of John that I also love, “It was night” (John 13:30) That was how the Greek was translated in the New American Bible. I noticed the New American Bible Revised Edition added the word "And." It's now, "And it was night." The Greek for that sentence is also 10 words. Not a big deal, but I still love, "It was night." What a great comment after Jesus dipped the bread in the sauce dish and handed it to Judas. It was the same hand that Judas used to steal money. It was the same hand that took the 30 pieces of silver. The dish might be filled with a blood red sauce. It was a sauce of bitter herbs.  Then Judas went out to betray Jesus with a kiss. "It was night!" Judas dipped himself deeper into the dark! [I also noticed that the word in Greek for dip is "BAPTO." Was there an early church theme that one can be baptized in evil as well as good?]

This coming Advent we’re going to have new English translations of the Latin Mass Prayers. From what I’ve been reading, those sentences are going to be even longer than they are now. Some of those prayers have sentences that are 30 and 40 words long – and sometimes they are headscratchers. Of course, that’s my opinion.

Also in my opinion, the translators for American English ought to take a course in the writings of Ernest Hemingway. Sometimes I catch my sentences being too, too long, so I have to keep remembering to make my sentences shorter when I write.

I’m assuming that those who worked on this new translation of the Latin to English want to be able to say after all is done, “It’s as close to the Latin as possible.” I would want them to say, “It is clear.” Once more this is my opinion, but who am I? This is why I love Emily Dickenson’s poem # 288,

                         “I’m Nobody! Who are you?
                          Are you – Nobody - Too?”
                          Then there’s a pair of us?
                          Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

                          How dreary – to be – Somebody!
                          How public – like a Frog –
                          To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
                          To an admiring Bog!

KISS

We’ve all heard the KISS principle for public speaking and writing: Keep It Simple Stupid.

We have a story about one of our Redemptorist general chapters in Rome. This Italian guy was giving a comment about some issue. He was going on and on and on in very heated Italian. The translators couldn’t find space in between his words to translate – so they waited till he finally finished. The English translator simply said, “He’s against it.” Everyone laughed – and the speaker started looking around – trying to figure out what happened.

I put a quote on my BLOG yesterday from Schiller, “What is the short meaning of the long speech?” I’ll have to remember that when I finish a homily. Re-write it. Edit it. Make it clearer. Make it shorter.

I also have to remember what I wrote down somewhere, “If you can’t put what you’re trying to say on a match book cover, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

CONCLUSIONS

So what am I saying here?

I’m saying I was taught that clear thinking and clear writing should be brief and to the point – a la Ernest Hemingway.

I’m saying that I would hope that the Church readings and prayers would be translated into crisp– short – sentences - if possible - sort of like “It was night!” or “It was winter.”

I’m saying that we’d be better communicators, if we say what we’re tying to say in short bursts of words like we hear at the end of today’s first reading, “It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” Translated into one’s home or one’s life, we should hear ourselves saying,  “Sorry. That wasn’t very Christian of me.”

I’m asking, “What are our personal prayers like? Are they brief and to the point or meaningless babble?” Translation. For example, a possible morning prayer: “Another day, Lord. Thanks.” For example, a possible night prayer: “Lord, it’s been a long day. Good night. I’m dead tired. Thanks for everything. Enough. Sorry."

In this homily, I've given you homework:  Describe your life in 3 words, the first 2 words being: It Was ______. 

I came up with my 3rd word. I’m glad I wouldn’t say of my life, “It was winter.” Or “It was night.” I would like  to say, “It was always spring.” But that is 4 words, so my answer is, “It was surprise.”

Fill in your blank. Your life: It was ________.