now - under glass - in the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin? Tourists grazing and gazing on beauty - words becoming flesh - copied in gold - red lead - yellow arsenic sulphate - inspiring all of us to love
The title of my homily for this 16 Tuesday in Ordinary
Time is, “Making Mistakes: My Take - Other’s Take - God’s Take on My Mistakes.”
Today’s first reading from Micah and today’s Psalm 85
triggered for me the theme of this homily: Making mistakes: my take on my
mistakes as well as how I think others take my mistakes - as well as I think
God takes my mistakes.
WHEN WE MAKE A MISTAKE
When we make a mistake - whom do we think about mainly?
Ourselves? Others?
God?
In this homily I want to think about all 3 - how we see
mistakes impacting ourselves as well as others and God?
MYSELF
Let me begin with myself?
What do we say when we make a mistake?
When I make a mistake,I say things like, “Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!”or “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
I close my eyes when saying that or I say, “Dang it! Dang
it! Dang it!”
I might even hit myself orbang my fist against the palm of my hand. “Oooouuh!
Uuuuuuuuuuuh!”
For example, I miss an appointment and blame it on my old
age. Or I end up in the wrong nursing home as I did last Saturday and Iget frustrated at myself for the mistake I
made.Well, Crownsville and Croften
both begin with a “C”
So when we sin or make a mistake - we might ask - “How
does this make me feel about myself.”
What do I think about myself as myself? Can I forgive
myself? As priest people tell me about
the mistakes of their life -some they are
aware of life like a scar on the skin of their soul.
Do I feel guilty? Can I forgive myself?Do I deny that I made a mistake?
I like the distinction some make between shame and
guilt.Guilt means, I made a mistake.
Shame means I am a mistake.So guilt is
easier than shame.
OTHERS
Then there are others?Sometimes we worry about what others will say or think about us when we
make a mistake?
We hope they will give us a break - allowing us to be mistake
makers.
Here is where we get a chance to understandChrist - who said, “Let the one without sin
toss the first stone.
Here is a chance for us to discover what others are
really like - who our friends are?
Friends are those who call us up - to see if we are okay
- after the news gets out that we got caught shop lifting - or we got fired
because we stole from work - or what have you.
Sunglasses and side doors and the dark are mistake makers
best friends.
GOD
Then there is God. How do we see God - when it comes to
our making a mistake.
Today’s first reading from Micah has God described as the
God who removes guilt. It says that God does not persist in anger at our being
a mistake maker. Micah says God has compassion on us.
Micah says that God casts into the depths of the sea, all
our sins.
I remember hearing a big sermon by a priest saying God
buys this big trunk - fills it with our sins - locks it - chains it - and then
throws it into the deepest part of the ocean.
In today’s psalm, the author says God doesn’t rejoice in our sins. It says God
covers our sins.Like we’re sitting next
to God at a table with a white table cloth and a red juicy meatball gets away
and rolls off our plate and God says - pointing to the sunset out the window
and everyone looks that way while God slips off his white napkin and covers the
table cloth that we messed up - with that slippery meat ball.
God is all about joy, rejoicing, kindness, life, saving
us from sin and self-embarrassment.
We might get angry with ourselves - others might get
angry with us for spilling bloody red spaghetti sauce on the family name - God
doesn’t. God likes us as part of his creative juices. Amen.
“The greatest wisdom
often consists in ignorance.”
Baltasar
Gracian
Monday, July 23, 2018
THE LORD
IS NOT A
MOUNTAIN!
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 16th Monday in
Ordinary Time is, “The Lord Is Not A Mountain.”
Today’s first reading from the Book of the Prophet Micah
begins with a very visual image. The Lord says, “Present your plea - your voice
- to the Lord before the mountains.” [Cf. Micah
6: 1-8]
“Stand before the mountains -
yell - and hear your voice. Hear the echo of your sounds. Pay attention to what you are saying,
pleading, asking, praying for?”
In other words, listen to
your own prayers and pleas.
EASY TO PICTURE
It’s easy to picture a mountain.
We’ve been there - or we saw them in movies or on television.
When kids draw - they often draw
mountains - so easy - along with trees and cats and dogs.
So imagine yourself standing
there facing a gigantic mountain.
What is your biggest prayer in
your life right now? For family? Self? Friends? Our world?
Yell it out. Hear your echo.
Listen to what your saying - attentively. Carefully.
Then Micah says to us: Listen to
what the Lord speaks back to you.
WE ARE NOT MOUNTAINS
We are not made of stone - but
sometimes we are stone deaf. Sometimes we feel like a rock or a stone. Isn’t
thatthe sense of Simon and Garfunkle’s
song, “I am a rock. I am an island….”
Prayer, a conversation, is two
sided.
Unfortunately, sometimes we talk
to each other and we’re really not being with, listening to, looking into the
other’s eye and being - and hearing what the other is saying.
God is not a mountain. Yet God
is pictured as a mountain - in the scriptures.Mountains don’t have eyes, ears, a heart, an understanding.
Yet mountains can be very
powerful.Imposing. Overshadowing.
Overwhelming.
I was on Gibraltar. I was inside
Gibraltar - inside the big caves and tunnels within. It was a moving moment.
I’ve hiked up some of the Rocky
Mountains and the Presidential Range of Mountains in New Hampshire.
Momentous moments
I’ve prayed on Mountains.
However, God is not a mountain.
God is 3 Persons - a community
of 3 persons who are so together, they are 1.
TODAY’S MESSAGE
Today’s message is to be in
communion with God - however you imagine him: mountain, ocean, father, mother,
shepherd, spouse, bread, wine, fortress, wall, woman in labor, farmer.
Whichever, whatever, image you
use when you’re with God, make sure it’s personal and particular - one to one
with God.
Make sure you’re not alone - as a person standing before
a mountain - but as a spouse or child in your parents arms.
CONCLUSION
Let me end by making a few conclusions.
So God is not a stone mountain.
God’s voice is not an echo.
As Elijah discovered while he was hiding on a mountain,
“God was not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire. God was the sheer silence.”
