COMING HOME 

IN  AUGUST 

Poem for Today - August 2, 2014

RETURN

Never return in August to what you love;

Along the leaves will be rust

And over the hedges dust,

And in the air vague thunder and silence burning;

Choose some happier time for your returning.

Choose Spring, acrid and cool, unshaped, unmade;

See all that you love come awake,

Stream swell and buds break;

Or choose some Autumn month with loud winds crying,

Stormy with leaves and dark birds southward flying.

Choose Winter if you must, for that stark season

Waits, as you learned to wait,

For loveliness come late.

And all that you have longed for you may hold

Safely within the Winter’s barren cold.

But never return in Summer to what you love,

O heavy beauty that your eyes possess,

O deepest beauty past its perfectness,
Where is the mad bright wonder, the divine

Rapturous lightness that eludes all sense –

That is like flame – that is like wind – like wine –

Only more strange and sweet of influence?

Where are you? Where?

The smell of fruit hangs in the windless air.

(c) Bernice Kenyon

WHERE  DID THIS MAN 

GET  SUCH  WISDOM…? 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Where Did This Man Get Such Wisdom…?

Sometimes when we are with someone, we say just what people said of Jesus in his time, “Where did this man get such wisdom….?

Sometimes when we are with people, we think just what people wondered about Jesus in his time, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t Mary known to be his mother and James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas his brothers? Aren’t his sisters our neighbors?”

I think of a plumber named Leo from West Pittston Pa. – an extremely sharp guy – also a farmer in Paulding, Ohio, named Francis – filled with wisdom.  I also met Tom Berry – one of the brightest persons on the planet in the last century – and I was privileged to hear him give a new creation account – which took him a weekend to present – in several talks.

The title of my homily is the question in today’s  gospel – when people experienced Jesus – and ended up rejecting him: “Where Did This Man Get Such Wisdom…?”

ST. ALPHONSUS

Today, August 1^st, is the feast of St. Alphonsus d’Liguori.

He was a great preacher – and writer – and made the Hall of Fame  - as a Doctor of the Church.  As of 2012 there are 35 of them in our history – finally 4 women in our times: Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen.

Where did he – where did they get their wisdom?

As you know there is a difference between information and wisdom.

A person can know all the Capitals of all the countries in our world and be stupid.  A person can win in Jeopardy and lose in life.

SCHOOL OF WISDOM

For starters we learn from our parents and grandparents and those around us as a baby and a child.

Alphonsus had a tough sea captain of a father – a naval captain – and he ran a tough ship at sea and at home. Alphonsus’ mother was the complete opposite – educated in a convent school for girls – and wow was she surprised when she was in an arranged marriage with a rough and tumble vocal husband.

How much did that mold Alphonsus? I don’t know. God could be very strict to him – but he also discovered the tenderness of our God.  Did he get both from his parents?

Where did we pick up our images and likenesses of God?

Alphonsus was very scrupulous and everything was a sin – but then he met and worked with poor goat herders in the mountains above Naples and the Amalfi coast – and somewhere in there – especially in hearing confessions and hearing about their lives his moral theology became much more moderate and balanced and freeing.

Somewhere along the line he discovered the feeling side of religion – the feeling side of God. We see feelings in his music, his hymns, his paintings, his Stations of the Cross, his Visits to the Blessed Sacrament.

He was a lawyer – and in a big land case – he either made a mistake or there was a bribe – and he lost the case. It  wiped him out. He fell apart. He was deeply hurt and depressed.   It was in the midst of this disaster – that he saw the light to move towards another way of life: becoming a priest.

He had hit bottom – and the only place to go – was up.

He was a hard worker as a lawyer – so he became a hard worker as a priest. He took on too much – and became quite sick as a diocesan priest.

Once more he hit bottom. Friends suggested taking a break so he went to the Amalfi Coast – to recover. Good choice.  It  was there he looked up into the mountains when he found out there were folks up there – whom priests didn’t really care about – especially goat herders

He cared about them – and started the Redemptorists.

Pope Francis tells us to smell like sheep.  Would goats fit the bill?

Finding lost sheep  - working with folks who were considered the goats of society – is the attitude and ambiance Redemptorists have in mind.

We find this vision for life – and outlook – in the motto he chose for the Redemptorists : Copiosa apud eum Redemptio.

With him, with Christ, there is fullness of Redemption.

It’s from Psalm 130. That’s the De Profundis Psalm. From out of the depths I cry to you, O God. Out the depths – when you’re in the pits – when it seems like it’s only night – everyone hopefully – hopes for the dawn – for the light – for help – for redemption.

So Alphonsus reached out and decided to start a community of priests and brothers – to work for those in the pits – those on the outskirts – the edge – the neglected.

We came to America from Austria, because there were a lot of German people here  in America – who needed priests.

We came to Annapolis because there was nobody really there – and it was a good place to set up a place to train priests for those who needed us in German communities in the upper eastern part of the United States.

OUR LIVES – HOW DID WE GET TO WHERE WE GOT SO FAR?

I joined the Redemptorists to go to Brazil – never got that deal.

I often wonder how that would have molded my life.

What would I have learned that I have not learned?

In the meanwhile I look at what I learned from not just my education – but my mom and dad – family – experiences – mistakes – and so many people that I have met in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington DC, Ohio, Maryland, etc. etc. etc.

I think key to wisdom is not the experiences, but what we learn from our experiences.

I love the saying, “A  person can have 30 years’ experience or 1 years’ experience 30 times.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “Where Did This Man Get Such Wisdom…?

I gave some personal answers – as well as the example of St. Alphonsus- on his feast day.

Let me close with a mnemonic.

If you want to get a Ph.D. in Wisdom from one’s experience, use those 3 letters: “P H D.”

P stands for perception. We perceive something. We see something. We spot something.

H stands for humility.  I love the old saying, “Teach thy tongue to say, ‘I do not know.’” I don’t. We have no clue to really what is or what happened.

D stands for digging. Dig into what we have seen and see what happened and the why’s – and calmly keep doing that – and in time, we’ll have a Ph.D. in wisdom from our life experiences.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

PRAY  FOR  RAIN

Poem For Today - August 1, 2014

CALIFORNIA HILLS IN AUGUST

I can imagine someone who found

these fields unbearable, who climbed

the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,

cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,

wishing a few more trees for shade.

An Easterner especially, who would scorn

the meagerness of summer, the dry

twisted shapes of black elm,

scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape

August has already drained of green.

One who would hurry over the clinging

thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,

knowing everything was just a weed,

unable to conceive that these trees

and sparse brown bushes were alive.

And hate the bright stillness of the noon

without wind, without motion,

the only other living thing

a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended

in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone

raised in a landscape short of rain –

the skyline of a hill broken by no more

trees than one can count, the grass,

the empty sky, the wish for water.

© Dana Gioia

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME....

Poem for Today - July 31, 2014

THE LISTENERS

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone. 

© Walter de la Mare

ONENESS WITH GODNESS

Poem for Today - July 30, 2014

ONE WITH GOD

A fish cannot drown in water,

A bird does not fall in air.

In the fire of creation,
Gold doesn’t vanish:

The fire brightens.

Each creature God made

Must live in its own true nature;

How could I resist my nature,

That lives for oneness with God?

© Mechthild of Magdeburg (1210-1297)

Translated by Jane Hirshfield,

Page 64 in The Enlightned Heart,

An Anthology of Sacred Poetry

by Stephen Mitchell

MOUSIER  MARTHA

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this feast of St. Martha is “Mousier Martha.”

Last night in preparing this homily I noticed on Google that description of Martha as “mousier.”  

Interesting.

That’s a metaphor: Martha being described as a mouse – scurrying around – but also notice the “ier” in the word “mousier.” It’s a comparison  - referring to another. That would be Mary – also being described as a mouse – as in “a church mouse” or being as quiet as a mouse.

In the Detroit Institute of Art there is a famous painting by Caravaggio entitled, “Martha and Mary.”

It has two other titles as well: “Martha Reproving Mary”; and, “The Conversion of Magdalene.” It hit me: maybe some artists or at times artists don’t give their paintings the names we see on the wall next to the painting. So from now on when I see the title of a painting – I’ll have the wondering, “Is this their title or did someone else make it up.”

In 1985 I visited the Detroit Art museum  - but I don’t remember that painting. I do remember the big pictures and stories in the mural paintings by Diego Rivera. Now he was an interesting character. Check him out as well as Caravaggio.

I love to look at paintings in art museums – not trying to see all the paintings – scurrying around like a mouse – but only a few – and to see those few very well. Would that be how Martha and Mary would do a museum?

And there’s one more beauty of Google and the  Internet. It's this:  one can slowly look at copies of so many great paintings – and get excellent commentaries on a painting – and take one’s time – in doing so.

In fact, as I was looking up Caravaggio’s painting on the Internet, “Martha and Mary,” that's where I spotted that writer describing Martha as being “mousier” than her sister – and having an insistent presence.  So that’s where that mousier metaphor comes from.

CARAVAGGIO’S PAINTING

The painting shows two women: Martha and Mary.

Mary is touching  a big mirror  - as well as holding a flower in her hand.

A commentator says Martha – the one on the left is pleading something to Mary.  Martha is the more active one; Mary is the more quiet one.

The Gospels have several Mary’s – and they get mixed up at times – in the scriptures – as they have often been done by preachers – and now an artist by the name of Caravaggio.

Caravaggio mixes up the Mary in this story with Mary Magdalene – which makes it a good story telling painting.

Some think the painting was commissioned by a rich woman in Rome. Here’s the comment I noticed: the paining “was commissioned by a noblewoman and sole heiress to a vast family fortune, Olimpia Aldobrandini, since it is first listed in an inventory of her collection, made in 1606. It is itself an object of conspicuous consumption, displayed to show off Aldobrandini’s taste and wealth among the elite of Rome.”

The two models were Anna Bianchini (Martha) and Fillide Melandroni (Mary). The painting must have gotten lots of comments because Fillide was a well know courtesan in Rome and Anna as well. They were used by Caravaggio in several paintings. In an earlier painting “Penitent Magdalene” (1591), he cast Anna Bianchini as Mary. [Notice the pearls and perfume of her former way of life off to the side - bottom left.]

QUESTION

If you were looking at either painting – what would be your thoughts and reactions?

To see the first painting - the one on top,  you could go to Detroit – and to their famous art museum – but check first – because the city is in financial problems – big time – and there has been talk of selling some of their famous paintings – or you can check the painting out and study it on line – or you can find it on my blog with this first draft sermon.

Question: in life am I more like Martha or more like Mary?

Question: am I mousy? Or would I pick another animal to describe myself  – dog, cat, monkey, bird? “Woof! Woof!”  “Meow! Meow!” "Eeek! Eeek!" “Chirp! Chirp!”

Question: is there someone I can encourage to be better – and how would I do just that? Check out the two different gospel texts we can use for today: John 11: 19-27 or Luke 10:38-42 - and picture Martha's approach. There there Jesus' approach. How do they differ?

Question: do I need to change? Do I need a conversion?  How and where I do need to meet Jesus?

CONCLUSION

The thing I like the best in the top  Caravaggio painting of Martha and Mary or The Conversion of Magdalene or Martha Reproving Mary is what’s in the center of the mirror. It's not a person – but a small light.

What is the symbolism of that light? 

I noticed the commentators say: it’s Grace.

2 MARTHA AND MARY POEMS

Poem for Today - July 29, 2014

THE SONS OF MARTHA

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;

But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.

And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,

Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.

It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.

It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,

Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, "Be ye removed." They say to the lesser floods, "Be dry."

Under their rods are the rocks reproved -- they are not afraid of that which is high.

Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit -- then is the bed of the deep laid bare,

That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.

He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.

Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,

And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.

They are concerned with matters hidden -- under the earthline their altars are --

The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,

And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.

They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam'-well choose.

As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,

Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat --

Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!

Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,

But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed -- they know the Angels are on their side.

They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.

They sit at the Feet -- they hear the World -- they see how truly the Promise runs.

They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and -- the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!

© Rudyard Kipling

Painting on top

of this poem,

Christ in the House

of Martha and Mary

by Diego Velazquez, 1618

Or

MARTHA AND MARY

Martha was busy and hurried,
Serving the friend divine,
Cleansing the cups and platters,
Bringing the bread and wine;
But Martha was careful and anxious
Fretted in thought and in word.

She had no time to be sitting
While she was serving the Lord,
For Martha was "cumbered with serving,
Martha was "troubled" with "things"---
Those that would pass with the using---
She was forgetting her wings.

Mary was quiet and peaceful,
Learning to love and to live.
Mary was hearing His precepts,
Mary was letting Him give---
Give of the riches eternal,
Treasures of mind and of heart;
Learning the mind of the Master,
Choosing the better part.

Do we ever labor at serving
Till voices grow fretful and shrill,
Forgetting how to be loving,
Forgetting how to be still?
Do we strive for "things" in possession,
And toil for the perishing meat,
Neglecting the one thing needful---

Sitting at Jesus' feet?

Service is good when he asks it,
Labor is right in its place,
But there is one thing better,
Looking up in his face;
There is so much he can tell us,
Truths that are precious and deep;
This is the place where he wants us,
These are the things we can keep.

© Annie Johnson Flint

Painting on top of this poem,
"Martha and Mary"
 by Johannes Vermeer, 1655

(c)