WHAT’S  IT  LIKE 

TO  BE  THE  OTHER?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 4^th Monday after Easter is a question: “What’s It Like to Be the Other?”

Today’s readings trigger that question for me.

After Easter a lot of these first readings during the week are all about these struggles in the Early Church about different groups – becoming Christian and then the struggles with integration – circumcised with uncircumcised, pork eaters and non-pork eaters, Gentiles and Jews.

I’m sure there were various other language struggles and barriers – in all the different areas – around the Mediterranean Basin. I’m sure various cultures and customs brought struggles into the growing Christian community.  In fact, that’s one good way to read and listen to the New Testament: the Acts of the Apostles, The Letters of Paul and others, as well as the Gospels.

And today’s gospel - John 10: 11-18 - has Jesus talking about sheep from other flocks – and the urge – the hope for unity and mergers of flocks.

MODERN TIMES – SOME QUESTIONS

Down through the centuries the Church had to deal with these issues of differences – with nationalities, tribes, cultures, class struggles, etc.

The title of my homily is, “What’s it like to be the other?”

That’s a great opening generic question. It might be helpful to be more specific with the question.

What’s it like to be in a wheelchair?

What’s it like to not be able to hear?

What’s it like to divorced?

What’s it like to have had an abortion?

What’s it like to be widowed?

What’s it like to stutter?

What would it be like to be parachuted into central Africa or central China and be the only person who looks like what we look like?

What’s it like to have a son or daughter on drugs?

What’s it like to have a brother or a sister who is gay and someone is blasting those who are gay?

What’s it like to a first year or first teacher – standing there in front of 28 first grade kids or senior high school kids?

CONCLUSION

Years and years ago, I remember my mother sitting there in this big hall and a black priest I knew walked into the room. Spotting me he walked up to my mom and started talking to her.  She was shocked. He might have been the first black person she ever met.

I remember my first assignment as a priest. Every guy in the community was an old man. Most were probably around my age right now or younger. It was the late 60’s and they were educated and trained before Vatican II – and so they were quite different from me. The first evening I walked into our common room to watch a ballgame on TV with them. Half were sleeping and half were smoking horrible smelling cigars.

Welcome to a new world.

Welcome to life: isn’t it all about seeing, learning, comparing, adapting, adjusting, compromising – and expansion of discovering others are different.

Hint. Hint. God is different.

Hint. Hint. Others are different.

Imagine Christ – the Son of God – becoming human, born of Mary, a teenage girl. It took time - but as Luke tells us, he grew  in wisdom and age – with people who had no idea who he was.

All this is called life – and Jesus gives lots and lots of one liners on how to deal with life and others. For the sake of being practical, let me just line up guess three secrets we have from Jesus on how to deal with all this:

1)   Try the golden rule. Do unto others.

2)   Expect the Cross

3)   Love the Lord your God with your whole mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS PERIOD

Poem for Today - May 12, 2014

THE MAN WHO 

HAS MANY ANSWERS

The man who has many answers
is often found
in theaters of information
where he offers, graciously
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.

© Mary Oliver, 

page 69 in

A Thousand Mornings.

JOHN 10:10b

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “John 10:10b.”

Have you ever wanted to have a Bible text – that you knew by heart – chapter and verse - and loved that text – and it was your’s?

The last sentence in today’s gospel is a possible candidate for that honor.

John 10:10b goes like this:

“I came

so that

they might have life

and have it more abundantly.”

John 10:10b:

“I came

so that

they might have life

and have it more abundantly.”

Could you please repeat those 13 words. It’s like a Psalm Response.

John 10:10b:

“I came

so that

they might have life

and have it more abundantly.”

Once more:

John 10:10b:

“I came

 so that

they might have life

and have it more abundantly.”

It’s your’s.  Bumper sticker it in your memory bank.

The title of my homily is, “John 10:10b.”

John 10:10a – gives the opposite – what takes away life – what stops the abundance of the good stuff of life – the thieves and slaughterers and destroyers of life.

Once more 10:10b - but with 10:10a first, “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy. I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

The way I memorized that text - John 10:10b- for the past 50 years had the pronoun “you” instead of “they” in it. I’ve always heard Jesus saying to me, “I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”

QUESTION: IS THAT THE MEANING OF LIFE?

Is that the meaning of life? Is that the secret of life?

That we all want abundance of life?

Are we all like that little kid in Oliver who gets up from his table and goes to the head table and says, “Please sir, could I have some more?”

 Is that every person that ever lived?

“Please .... I want some more.”

Today is Mother’s Day. Isn’t the most basic nature of ever mom – to get more food for her child or children?

Isn’t that what mamma bears and mamma sheep, mamma ravens and mamma orioles, mamma alligators and mamma alley cats, and all our moms do and did for us?

They gave us more!

Food glorious food – for starters.

Please mom, could I have some more – especially some more of those cookies.

Want a cookie? Want a treat?

I notice Father Tizio with his dog Wilbur – who can’t speak – but is forever stating in doggy language and gesture, “Please sir, could I have some more?”

We’re born hungry. We die hungry. And we spend our lives hungry for the More.

Is that the meaning of life? More!

Last Monday – May 5^th, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 decision – allowed prayer – and specific types of prayer in public places like city council meetings.

Talk about Church and State issues -  listen to the following quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt in an  Address to the Federal Council of Churches of Christ [December 6,1933],  “If I were asked to state the great objective which Church and State are both demanding for the sake of every man and woman and child in this country, I would say that that great objective is, ‘a more abundant life.’” 

Is that the universal hunger – “a more abundant life” - which includes food – as well as all those rights in our Bill of Rights – as well as in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Is abundance what we all want?

Do we all want the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and in abundance?

Robert Browning  - the British writer and poet – wrote a poem – from way back in 1883 - that touches and triggers some of this. It begins this way:

“Wanting is--what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
--Where is the blot?”

I assume we can ask every human being, “What is it that you want? What do you think blots it out?”

Robert Browning’s answers in his poem: I want summer right now – and lots of it redundant and in abundance. He wants an abundance of blue.

I’m sure kids by now want summer. I'm sure we’ve all said we want bright blue skies overhead - after a long streak of cold grey skies - with rain intermingled.  

Robert Browning says in his poem he looked around outside and saw roses and trees. He realizes they too are incomplete – always in process - always growing towards completion – but dang it – there is also death. Those rose petals will fall and die, so too leaves and the blue skies will become fade and fall and winter will appear.

Incompleteness is in the air....

Life…. Death …. Wanting….

VOICES

Today's gospel brings in the theme of voices.

What are my voices? What are my sounds?

More!

We feel hungry, thirsty, incomplete down deep.

Please mom, please dad, please family, please spouse, please kids, please friends, please neighbors, please relatives – let me tell you down deep – I want more.

If we listen to ourselves, our inner voices – if we listen to each other – what is it that we all want: it’s the more.

More peace, more love, more holding, more appreciation, more “thank you’s”.

Mom’s say today: One day – one weekend – is good for starters.

But what about tomorrow? Monday? Am I still special tomorrow?

Today’s second reading from Saint Peter voices a “be patient.”

We say with our voice, “Okay, for starters, but still I want more.”

Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles says, “Change and forgive and accept.” 

We respond, “Okay, also, but I still want more.”

Today’s gospel has Jesus saying with his voice be careful of letting into your life what can rob and steal from your life. Be careful, because you don’t know at times that you are letting through the gate of your life – strange voices – if you really knew them. 

Then he says, “I am the gate.”  He says that twice. “I am the gate.” He is saying, "Take me into your life. Make me your gatekeeper, more and more and more. 

Jesus is saying,  “Learn to recognize my voice in your life.”

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “John 10”:10b”.

Haven’t we all picked up the phone and said after a few moments of listening, “Who’s this?” We don’t  recognize the voice.

Haven’t we all picked up the phone and said after a few moments, “I recognize the voice a bit - you sound familiar a bit – but who are you?”

Haven’t we all picked up on - or heard a voice - in the midst of the messes of our life - as well as our Masses - as well as the joys and wonders of life – the voice of Jesus and we said, “Thank you, Jesus. i know your voice.  I know you have come to me with life and given it to me more abundantly.”

And then we add with a smile in our voice, “And I have only one prayer to make, 'More!'”

REMEMBERING  HIS  MOTHER

Poem for Today - May 11, 2014

IV

“You see,” my mother said, and laughed,

knowing I knew the passage

she was remembering, “finally you lose

everything.” She had lost

parents, husband, and friends, youth,

health, most comforts, many hopes.

Deaf, asleep in her chair, awakened

by a hand's touch, she would look up

and smile in welcome as quiet

as if she had seen us coming.

She watched, curious and affectionate,

the sparrows, titmice, and chickadees

she fed at her kitchen window—

where did they come from, where

did they go? No matter.

They came and went as freely as

in the time of her old age

her children came and went,

uncaptured, but fed.

And I, walking in the first spring

of her absence, know again

her inextinguishable delight:

the wild bluebells, the yellow

celandine, violets purple

and white, twinleaf, bloodroot,

larkspur, the rue anemone

light, light under the big trees,

and overhead the redbud blooming

the redbird singing,

the oak leaves like flowers still

unfolding, and the blue sky.

© Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, 

The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997,

Page 211-212 [1997] 

WAITING? 

AREN'T WE ALL? 

Poem for Today - May 10, 2014

THE DESERTED CAFÉ

I go there vaguely thinking of a meeting,

Meeting whom I am not sure.

I go there, my heart dry as a hollowed out shell.

Thirst and hunger hang thick in the night.

In the afternoon the sun beats down hard ….

In the afternoon it rains and rains ….

The café is empty. The lamp shadows wait

Through the long nights for someone’s return.

It’s my own fault.

I’ve forgotten the date of the meeting.

Pity for the one returning. Pity for the one who waits

And no one comes.

Life is filled with errors.

Regrets change nothing.

We must grin and bear it.
Make the best of the journey.

In the afternoon the sun beats down hard …

In the afternoon it rains and rains ….

The café is empty, the lamp shadows

Wait a thousand years.

© To Thuy Yen

Translated from

the Vietnamese

by Nguyen Ba Chung

and Kevin Bowen

THE CALL TO BE 

A PROPHET

Poem for Today -May 9, 2014

THE POET’S VOICE

I don’t want freedom gram by gram, grain by grain.
I have to break this steel chain with my teeth!

I don’t want freedom as a drug, as a medicine.
I want it as the sun, as the earth, as the heavens!

Step, step aside, you invader!

I am the loud voice of this land!

I don’t need a puny spring,

I am a thirsting ocean!

© Khalil Reza Uluturk

Translated from the Azeri by

Aynur H. Imecer

“Author’s Note: This poem

Has also been published with

The title, “The Voice of Africa.”

During the Soviet period, many

Azeri poets used other

Geographical locaions in their

Poems to disguise their feelings

About their own coutry and their

Own situation so that the Soviet

Censors would not suspect

The true meaning and ban their

works.”

STOPPING - REMEMBERING -

WHAT'S - BETTER - 

WHO'S IMPORTANT

Poem for Today - May 8, 2014

WHAT THE LIVING DO

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days,                  some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, 

             and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is                  the everyday we spoke of

It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue,                  and the sunlight pours through

The open living room windows because the heats on                 too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of                             groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And                     yesterday, hurrying along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my                 coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring

               to come and the winter to pass. 

We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss —                  we want more and more any then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a                          glimpse of myself in the window glass,

Say the window of the corner video store, and I’m                        gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and                                unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

© Marie Howe (1950 - )