SUFFERING

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 23 Monday in Ordinary Time  is, “Suffering.”

Yesterday in The New York Times  - in the Sunday Review Section -  there was a front page article entitled, “The Value of Suffering.”

As of 11 AM  this morning there were 241 comments from all over the world - on line - expressing thoughts etc. about the article.

The article was by one of my favorite writers, Pico Iyer. I spotted the large print title of the article first - then noticed the author - who travels the world - making comments about life as it is lived everywhere.

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Then I noticed this morning - in today’s first reading from Colossians - that St. Paul spells out some of his comments about sufferings.  He begins by saying,

“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his Body, which is the Church,
of which I am a minister
in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.” [Colossians 1: 24-26]

In the article on suffering by Pico Iyer, there is no mention of Christianity. However, there are a few in the comments by others that follow.

For the Christian, the cross with Christ on it is our symbol.

Christ on the cross stands center stage!

In our church here, Christ on the cross is loud and big and clear.

Christ on the Cross hangs there to help all human beings deal with suffering.

Paul is saying amongst other things - that he sees his sufferings working to help the rest of Christ’s Body - the Church - others - along with the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

Being a Christian - what are your comments - what are your insights - about dealing with the crosses and sufferings of life?

ST. PETER CLAVER

Today - September 9 - is the feast of St. Peter Claver. I checked out his life - from the angle of suffering - having had the first reading and Pico Iyer’s article coming together with the issue of suffering.

Peter Claver was a Spanish Jesuit - who left Spain as a young Jesuit - for Cartagena - which is now part of Colombia in South America - where he was ordained in 1615. [1]

Cartagena was one of the chief centers for slaves coming to this hemisphere. 10,000 slaves arrived every year.

Peter Claver took on the ministry of reaching out to these folks - a ministry he took over from his predecessor, another Jesuit, Father Alfonso Sandoval - who did that for 40 years.

Peter Claver then does that for 40 years - meeting slaves at the boats with “food, bread, brandy, lemons and tobacco”. He gave them hope. He gave them instructions in the Christian faith - baptizing over 300,000 slaves. He protested and pleaded for them.

After all that, he ended up with 4 years of sickness. He became disable.  Moreover, he ended up basically neglected - and looked down upon by anyone of importance.

Yet his memory continued and he was canonized a saint in 1888.

BACK TO PICO IYER’S ARTICLE

Pico Iyer is not a Buddhist - but he gives a bit about the Buddha’s take on suffering in his article.

Suffering is part of life. In fact it’s the first rule of life for the Buddha.

The article gives example after example of violence and suffering - children and parents dying - destruction by people and destruction by storms - and nature.

The article - if I read it correctly - makes various observations about suffering. Here are some of them:

• There is plenty of suffering.It can wake us up to what is really important - getting us to listen to ourselves down deep.
• It can wipe us out.
• People do stupid things.
• Who said, “Life is easy!”
• It’s part of life - like the dew on the grass in the morning.
• We can give up or we can do our best.
• We can change our heart and mind and deal with suffering.
• Suffering can get people to help one another.
• Sometimes we’re given an insight - or a sight - that gives us new understandings.

Near the end of the article he talks about the Dalai Lama - who at 23 - was told one afternoon to leave his home that evening - to prevent further fighting by Chinese troops and Tibetans around his palace.

He did.

He never did  get back home in 52 years. He left friends, home, a small dog. Two days later he heard all his friends were dead.

He realized being out of Tibet he had the opportunity to spend the rest of his life trying to make life better for others.

The article ends by saying two things: suffering has been around and always will be around - like the dew -  and there is always something we can do.

NOTES

[1] Leonard Foley, O.F.M.  Saint of the Day, Volume 2, “Peter Claver, priest (1581-1654) pp. 77-79. I make my comments based on what I read in this book.

GETTING IN TOUCH

WITH THE STUFF 

IN THE BASEMENT 

OR IN THE ATTIC!

Quote for Today - September 9, 2013

"A real book is not one that's read, but one that reads us."

W. H. Auden, recalled at his death, September 28, 1973

Questions:

What are your favorite 5 books?

Name a book that has read you - got you to go down into your basement or up into your attic - and you started talking to yourself about stuff you should have talked to yourself - a long time ago?

UNDERNEATH

THE BOTTOM LINE

[The following is a story homily for this 23 Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C. The Gospel is  Luke 14: 25-30.]

Everyone who ever knew him, knew him to be the perfect gentleman: the perfect son, the perfect father, the perfect spouse, the perfect brother, the perfect neighbor, the perfect boss, the perfect person.

All his life - he did what was right - never once did he veer off course. Being and doing what is right - was what he thought was the bottom line. “Of course it is,” he thought. “Isn’t that what God wants of all of us?”

Yet, Jack thought, "Something is wrong!" 

There ... he said it to himself - “Something is radically wrong with me!” “Something is missing!” 

So down through the years - he felt - on and off - the itch - the inner sort of twitch - that maybe he should be making some kind of switch in his soul - for something more - or different - or what have you. 

But what?

That scared him - but never once did he tell any of this to his wife - or anyone else - about these inner scratches on the inside skin of his soul.

He went to every game his son - as well as every game his daughter -  played - as well as every art show his wife, Jill, exhibited her paintings. He gave nods to people in the car next to him at long red lights in city heavy traffic - as well as the guard at the front door at the bank he worked.

Enough of that - you got it - Jack was a straight A student and a straight A person.

So from the outside people saw Jack as one of those people who have life radically right. 

From the inside, at times Jack sensed that life was supposed to be different than this life he was living.

At Mass that September Sunday - when the Gospel was read - he heard the word “HATE”. 

"HATE!"

That was a foreign word to him.

It was like the name of a one word horror movie on the marquee movie listings outside the mall - a movie he would never see.

“HATE!”

Jesus was telling great crowds traveling with him that if they want to be his disciple,  they would have to hate their father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and even their own life.

The priest preaching after that gospel tried to backtrack a bit. He explained that the word “hate” was a stark Jewish way of speaking in early Christian communities. Someone would  say, “Jesus said, ‘You can’t let your families - or reputation - or worries what others in the village might say, if you want to start following me.’”

The stress was: “If you want to follow Jesus you’re going to be considered different - strange - even laughed at. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to expect the cross. You have to expect death to self.”

Jack said to himself: “I have to think about this!”

“HATE!”

He kept thinking, “I can’t hear Jesus saying that - to hate even one’s family members - if you want to be my follower.  All my life I’ve been trying to love everyone - even the difficult ones. Now I have to hate even those I love. Something’s tricky here and I don’t get it.”

“HATE!”

The priest that Sunday morning was repeating himself. Jack thought that he too must be having troubles with that word “hate.” 

The priest said, “Look it up on your computer. Type into Google, ‘Hate. Luke 14: 26.’ You’ll find out that most  translate the original Greek word “MISEO” as hate. 

The priest that Sunday morning continued that the word “hate” is tough and rough - so some translations give notes saying that this was a Jewish way of speaking  - saying bluntly - that nothing should separate us from the love of Christ - that Christ should come first.

That rang some bells for Jack.  But he still sort of couldn’t hear Jesus walking around telling people, “Love me. Make me # 1. Make me first." 

He could hear Jesus saying to make his Father, God Our Father,  first, but not me, myself and I - first. No.

Jack could hear Jesus’ disciples saying that. He could hear St. Paul saying that. He could hear Matthew, Mark, Luke and John saying that, - but he couldn’t hear Jesus saying that. He could only hear Jesus saying: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Or “Love one another as I have loved you.”

“Love!”

“Hate!”

Jack then began wondering, “Does life boil down to love-hate relationships. Could both be the flip side of the other?”

He thought of his two kids when they were very little. If he held one, the other tried to squirm into his arms - till he learned to hold one in his left arm and the other in his right arm. That would work - for a time - sometimes - but one always seemed to want to be number 1.

So as he sat there in church,  as he was talking to himself about all this - lights kept going on. Question mark hooks kept hooking him.

He thought about his father - who was still living - but a couple of thousand miles away and retired. His mom had died 3 years ago: cancer. 

He thought, “I have give dad a call.”

He thought, “Jill and I have to go down to see him.”

He thought, “I have to get some alone time with him - to talk about these wonderings I have often had about him - from when I was small - what made him tick - what his questions were - what he wondered about me."

His father had been a president of a small company. A good education, good luck - as well as having the gift of being in a high energy family certainly helped his dad make it big in this world.

Jack and his three sisters  and an older brother - also got the best of a good education  - at home and at schools - so they  too did well.

Jack's mom always thought they had the perfect family.

Yet Jack still had that itch - that maybe there was something more - something more under that bottom line - that bottom line of loving one another.

At communion time - at that same Sunday Mass - the one with the gospel about hating dad, mom, family, everyone - and putting Christ first - something else hit Jack.

To be bread, to be wine, to be communion, which enables Jesus to get into us - starting as food - for him to get into our very inner being - underneath our bottom lines - Jesus had to die - like wheat which has to be cut down, crucified, crushed to become flour - then mixed and baked to become bread. It's just like grapes also being crushed to become wine.

He received communion.  

Jack got back to his bench in church and sort of knelt and sat next to his wife and kids. 

At that Mass all these thoughts were giving Jack glimpses of the whole scenario - of Jesus. 

He realized the Mass was about to end.  

He would be told to go in peace.

Then he got one more glimpse - one more insight - one more glimpse of Jesus. He said to Jesus - “Okay, now I see why we have to do this over and over and over again - this communion after communion - this Mass after Mass - to be in communion with you.”

His tongue was trying to dislodge some of the communion bread he felt was still felt caught in his back upper teeth on the left. 

He laughed to himself. "There I am  trying to be perfect again, to look perfect - to have nothing caught between my teeth. I guess that's why I always floss and brush my teeth. I have to be perfect."

He laughed at himself - because  that Sunday morning - he got it. He was digesting Jesus. 

He was thinking to himself, "These tiny glimpses - like these tiny bits of chewed bread - still stuck and mushy in his teeth and in his mind - maybe this is how Jesus works. Jesus gets in there under out teeth, under our skin, under our bottom lines - and tells us to be in communion with him - in the messy - in communion with our mom and dad, brothers and sister, spouse, children, the guard on the way into the bank. We have to die to self - like wheat cut down and grapes crushed - ooh that hurts - so that others can rise and be in communion with us and all."

Jack got it that his dad and mom, brothers and sisters, his wife Jill, their children, neighbors, strangers, people at work, customers - were not who he thought they were.

"Now to be in communion with them, I have to hate - kill - cut down - all my preconceptions of them - like that of Jesus - and let them rise from those deaths before me- so that I  can discover who they really are."

“Whoa!” Jack thought. "I need more time here in church - in this moment - to go underneath all these thoughts  ...." 

His kids and his wife were moving out of their church bench - heading for the back of church - for the parking lot.

“Ooops!” Jack thought as he stood up,  “Who said things have to be perfect?”  “Who really knows what the real bottom line is and what’s underneath it."

"Wait,” Jack thought as he too headed for the church door to catch up with his wife and kids, "what just happened here?"

JUST LOOKING,

JUST LISTENING

Quote for Today - September 8, 2013

"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I am doing."

Wernher von Braun

CIRCLES:
GETTING OUTSIDE
THE CIRCLE
CALLED, "ME"!

Quote for Today - September 7, 2013

"The only war  is the war you fought in. Every veteran knows that."

Allan Keller, N.Y. World-Telegram and Sun, August 1965

THE OLD 

AND THE NEW

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 22 Friday in Ordinary Time is, “The Old and the New.”

We hear about both in today’s gospel - new wine, new wineskins, old wine, old wineskins. New cloth, old cloth.  [Cf Luke 5:33-39]

The old and the new.

In today’s first reading from Colossians - we have some mysterious words about Jesus. He is described as the first born of all creation. [Cf. Colossians 1:15-20]

That makes Christ forever old. Yet he is listed as the first born from the dead. That’s the theme of resurrection - which is the forever new. As soon as we die, because of Christ we who believe - we believe he’ll make us brand new all over again.

Bye, bye wrinkles. Welcome in new skin - the skin of a new baby.

It’s a win-win situation.

The title of my homily is, “The Old and The New!”

LIFE IS BOTH

Obviously, we know life is both.

We go into any house and we see the new and the old - and the older we get - the older the old.  Yet there’s always that something new - somewhere - a new TV, a new refrigerator, a new ramp that leads to the car - because of a wheelchair - a brand new metallic red wheelchair.

We spot a novel - the new - but we see the classics on a book shelf.  

We walk into a house and we say, “What’s new?”  And we get the latest news about each other’s family.  We don’t want old news - but after the new news, we revert to telling the old. We tell the old stories about the time we went to Barbados or Barcelona or Boston. We tell the story about how we almost won the state Spelling Bee in 1943. We talk about what our salary was in 1950.

Obviously, life is both the old and the new.

THIS  PLANET

The planets in our Solar System are dated from 5 to 15 billion years old. But what will we know in 4013 that we don’t know in 2013?

How old is old?  How new is new  Maybe new galaxies are being born this very minute, this very million years.

Yet on this old earth, each day mosquitoes and mice are being born - and there is a new song and a new dance and a new procedure for arthritis and aneurisms.  The newspapers give the new - the news - otherwise they go out of business. So too television….

Yet sometimes we love the old - TCM - Turner Classic Movies - present in Black and White - a great movie. I noticed at weddings when the Golden Oldies are played, the Golden Oldies get out on the dance floor.

I noticed at Baptisms of brand new babies, the joy in grandparents faces because the kid is going to be baptized in a baptismal garment that is over 100 years and it’s a family tradition to use it.

The old on the new…..

The Annapolis Historic Society sticks to it’s Rules and Regulations to preserve the past whenever someone wants to make new an old house.

And Williamsburg and Annapolis, St. Petersburg and Rome, keep featuring the old to new customers.

ANY NEW MESSAGES FROM ALL THIS:  SOME BEHOOVES

Are there any messages here?

I would think that it behooves us to carefully preserve our past - gather the pictures. Label them. Make sure they are passed down to someone who will also preserve them.  It behooves us to put in the will not only who we want to have a special table or sewing machine - but also it’s history and story. It behooves us to write our autobiography, our memoirs, our story, for generations to come.

I would think that it behooves us to listen to each other tell our stories - our old - not just to write them down - but to share them with each other.

I would think it behooves us to not become a broken record or an old cold cheeseburger on a soggy paper plate at a picnic, but to read, to think, to go figure, to take long walks, to use TV and lectures well, to get fresh takes on life - and discover areas of life and the planets we don’t know much about.

I would think it behooves us to talk to Christ daily - about out future eternity with him and those who have gone before him - to picture heaven as the great wedding banquet - in which all will dance before the Lord. Amen.  It behooves us to have faith - because of Christ - that these wrinkled skins of ours - holding old wine - will one day rise - body and soul - and become brand new bodies - Risen Bodies - filled with the Newness of the Eternal Christ. Amen.

THERE IS A GOD!

Quote for Today - September 6, 2013

"I gave in, and admitted that God was God."

C.S. Lewis, on relinquishing atheism at the age of 31 in 1929, quoted by William Griffin, Clive Staples Lewis,  Harper and Row, 1986