January 17, 2019
Thought for today:
“Faults are thick where love is thin.”
Thought for today:
“Faults are thick where love is thin.”
Danish Proverb
Sunday, January 13, 2019
January 16, 2019
William Lane
Amen Come Lord Jesus.
WE HAVE SUCH
A HIGH PRIEST
INTRODUCTION
The title and the theme of my homily for this First Wednesday in Ordinary Time is: “We
Have Such a High Priest.”
It’s the first thought that hit me when I read today’s first
reading from Hebrews 2: 14-18.
JOYFUL EXPERIENCE
One of the experiences that I have had at various times has been someone bragging about their priest or about a Redemptorist.
Having had 14 years of retreat work, I have often had the
experience of hearing someone brag about their parish priest. And it’s nice
then to meet that person.
“We Have Such a High Priest.”
DICK FRANK
I think of Father Dick Frank. He used to be the pastor of Honesdale, Pa.
He was a nice guy. A man of prayer. He was gifted especially
with the gift of the human touch. To meet him was to love him.
Various retreatants at Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, where I was stationed told me about him. Then I
met him a few times at priests’ meetings. Then I gave a 40 Hours in his parish,
then a mission.
I remember him telling me about a little boy coming into the
sacristy after Mass with a Christmas present for him. Dick was absorbed in a
conversation with someone, so he took the present from the kid, thanked him,
and put it on the sacristy vestment case and went back to his
conversation with whomever he was talking to.
The little boy stood there waiting. Finally Dick noticed him
and the kid said, “Well, aren’t you going to open it.”
“Oh, the present. You’re waiting for me to open it.”
So Father Dick
took the present and opened it then and there.
The kid stood there waiting full
of anticipation.
The wrapping came off. The box was opened. It was a monk—a
cookie jar monk—you might have seen them—a big fat monk. The kids parents were
off to the side waiting. And his mom said, “Tommy saw that cookie jar, Father,
in the store, and immediately said, `That’s Father Frank. We gotta get that for
him for Christmas.’”
Then the boy giggled.
And it was Father Frank—a big fat monk—a big fat cookie
jar—that people could come to for nourishment and life.
After Hurricane Agnes, he was chosen to be the one to bring
money to people in Wyoming
Valley
The priests of the diocese elected him head of the Parish
Priests’ Senate. He was well loved by all. Meeting him I understood what people
meant when they said, “You gotta meet, Father Frank. He’s a beautiful guy.”
That was my experience too: a warm, real, honest, funny,
giving priest, human being.
“We Have Such a High Priest.”
LIST GOES ON
I could list lots of priests that I have met that I luck to
have me: Father Louie Grippi, Father Charlie Muholland, Father Pete Gavigan,
Father Neil Graham.
And it has been great to hear Redemptorists bragged about by
others: Chippy Majewski, Paul Bryan, Frank Skelly, Brother Andy Coronoto, etc.
“We Have Such a High Priest.”
LETTER TO THE
HEBREWS
Well, this Letter to the Hebrews is a sermon telling people
that we have Jesus. He is a great high priest. Go to him.
“We Have Such a High Priest.”
And the author of Hebrews is saying that we have a great
high priest, who is aware of our plight, who is in solidarity with us, who
identifies with us.
And then the author develops what the human situation is at
that times:
• fear of
death,
• fear of
suffering,
• fear of the
felt absence of God,
• fear of
meaninglessness.
Well if you feel any of those things, go to Jesus. And if
you do, you will discover, you will experience the felt presence of God—Jesus.
He became one of us. He knows what it is to live. He knows
what it is to die. He knows what it is to suffer. He did all that.
Christ was born. Christ has lived. Christ has died. Christ
has risen. Christ will come again.
We are born. We live. We die. In Christ we can trust that we
will live again. In him, we don’t have to be wiped out in our fear of death and
suffering. Christ is the one who is always with us. Christ is the one who gives
meaning to life.
GOSPEL
If we go to today’s gospel [Mark 1: 29-39], we will experience a real human
Christ in a real human scene—healing Peter’s mother-in-law. Mentioning, "mother-in-law" often gets a
laugh.
Well, people were coming to Jesus because they wanted food and healing. What Jesus needed was to escape and get a break.
We see Jesus in these opening scenes in Mark doing
things and having feelings and experiences we have over and over and over
again. We want people to get better, because we need their service. We discover
people needing us. We look for hiding places, to get a break. We have that
feeling of, “Get me out of here.” “Give me a break.” Jesus escapes to a place
of prayer. Yet they find him and he goes and helps and heals others.
CONCLUSION
“We have such a High Priest.”
He is with us in our humanity and he lifts us up to into
divinity.
Amen Come Lord Jesus.
January 16, 2019
BRAKES
One more act of faith ….
One more sign of trust ….
that our car brakes will
work for us when we
need them to work for us -
to stop our car when we
need them to stop our car.
A spouse at our elbow -
a brake who stops us
from saying the wrong
thing at the wrong time.
We didn’t marry each other
for this reason - but now we
know this was one smart move.
© Andy Costello, Reflections
2019
January 15, 2019
EXERCISING OUR DEMONS
OR
EXORCISING OUR DEMONS
INTRODUCTION
The title and the theme of my homily this morning is
“Exercising our Demons or Exorcising our Demons.”
Everyone of us has demons within. They are living there
consciously and unconsciously inside our mind and heart and psyche. And these
demons within us can destroy us. Let him without sins cast the first stone. Let
him without demons cast the first stone. To deny them is to move towards becoming a Pharisee.
TODAY’S GOSPEL
In today’s gospel, Jesus comes along and frees this man of
his demons, so that he can take those energies and use them for community. This
is good news. Jesus brings freedom. He shares his strength to help those who
are being overpowered by strengths and energies that they can’t control. He
frees that energy that is locked up by our demons.
EXERCISING OUR
DEMONS
Demons are our sins and the results of our sins. They are
also the ways we have been hurt and sinned against. And then they are all those
inner conversations and sometimes even shouting matches that we have with
ourselves when we let our demons out to play in the playground of our mind.
It has been my experience that people exercise their demons.
We flex them. We let them out to play.
And as a result, like any exercise they become stronger and more pronounced.
A good analogy for what I am trying to get at today is Eric
Bern’s analogy of the tape. Most of us spend hours and hours of time each day
playing tapes. We walk around with an invisible “Walkman” inside our skull. The
result is we can become deaf to everyone else. Haven’t we all had the
experience of being with someone who is totally involved with listening to
tapes and totally unaware of us. And then we start to talk inside our heads
about what they are doing. Sometimes it even pushes our button and we start to
inwardly bitch and bitch about them.
In other words we do spend a lot of time talking to
ourselves. Well, if they are conversations we had before, Eric Bern would call
them “tapes”.
And we have a whole cabinet of them in our inner storeroom.
And the topics and themes of our tapes are many. We play our anger tapes, our
lust tapes, our should tapes, our should not tapes, our poor me tapes. We have
drawers filled with all kinds of tapes. Someone just pushes our button and we
have immediate access to them. Or we inwardly run and get them and start to
play our tapes. We play them in traffic, in our rooms, in chapel, in the corridor.
Say the wrong thing and push - we begin to play them. We begin to exercise our
demons.
Warning: playing tapes, like using a telephone while
driving, can dangerous to our health. They can kill us, because they can run
the show. They can destroy us.
Let him without demons cast the first stone. Let him without
demons deny the presence of the tapes. Let him without demons look down on
those whose demons are running their lives and destroying their everyday.
MIKE
Take the experience of going to a funeral. We go to the
wake. We sit there. We go to the church. We sit there. We go to the cemetery.
We stand there.
And what do we do the whole time. Don’t we play tapes.
I remember going to my brother-in-law’s brother’s funeral. I
drove down for the wake and for the funeral. While driving back I began to play
back what went on in my mind and heart while I was at the funeral—the tapes
that I had listened to.
Mike had his demons. One was demon drink. I even heard that
phrase being used as a joke at the funeral parlor. He smoked. He died of
cancer—alone in a small rented room. 12 years ago his wife after repeated
attempts to reach him told him to leave. He did. She had gotten help from
Allanon. But the damage had already been done from years and years of
alcoholism. His 2 kids were quite messed up. Both had to get married.
At the funeral parlor I stood there and noticed that the son
of the man in the closed coffin was quite drunk. He would sneak out, as someone
told me, to take a drink or smoke a joint. He was bouncing all over the place.
The demon drink was bouncing within him. He was filled with guilt as one person
told me—living without his father for the past 12 years.
I figured it was useless to talk to him, so I butted in and
talked to his wife. They are planning on moving in 2 weeks for North Carolina North Carolina
The demon of not saying a thing was running around in my
head, but I didn’t play that tape. I figured this was the best thing to do at
the moment.
That was the just the funeral parlor. That’s what I was
talking to myself about. That’s what tapes I was playing. A whole new set of tapes
kicked in when I went to the funeral mass the next morning. It was disaster alley. The priest was a
robot. He said the whole mass in 29 minutes: sermon, prayers for the dead,
meeting the coffin in the back of the church before and after the mass. I sat
there stewing about impersonal priests. I even said to Jack McGowan after
communion, “I’m leaving the Catholic Church.” After mass a few people were
fishing for my reaction to the priest. One person said that the guy needed a
personality transplant. I kept quiet.
But afterwards I began to think. I don’t know this guy. But
I do have an obligation to know myself. Let him without sins cast the first
stone. Let him without demons give the first evaluation. What are the things
that I must do to make life more personal and better for others?
FIRST READING
That brought me to this morning and today’s readings. One of
the advantages of preaching is you get a chance to clarify your own
thoughts.
In today’s first reading a sentence grabbed me. Yes, all
things are subject to Jesus, but obviously, it has not happened yet.
GOSPEL
That brought me to the Gospel. This man in the gospel with
the unclean spirit is me. That man is me. I have many unclean spirits in me
that are often shrieking and yelling. I am here in this synagogue and Jesus
approaches me or I approach Jesus.
I need help. I have demons within me. They are scared of
Jesus Christ. They know that Jesus can destroy them. So they are very aware of
Jesus’ presence.
But being smart they identify with my person. They become
me. Demons become me. I spend so much time talking with them that I fear that I
will be destroyed if they are destroyed. I am like Francis Thomson who said,
“Lest having you I will have nothing else.”
Jesus: I confess today in this synagogue, this meeting
place, that you are the savior. You can take away the sins of my world. You can
uproot my demons.
And hopefully Jesus will say, Be quiet. Come out of the man.
And people will be amazed at our change - our change in
personality and behavior.
Writing about this section of Mark (page 39), calling it “A
Typical Day” in the Life of Jesus, Diarmuid McGann, a priest out in Long Island , has 5 steps that take place here:
1) I must
perceive my demons;
2) I must claim
my demons;
3) I must name my
demons;
4) I must tame my
demons;
5) I must re-aim
the energies that are locked up in the
demon.
CONCLUSION
So the obvious response is, Amen, Come Lord Jesus!
January 15, 2019
TIRES
One more act of faith….
One more sign of trust ….
Tires: that they will get
us there - back and forth -
for at least 50,000 miles.
An act of trust that slips
into thin air as we turn
the radio on - as we ride
by the world going by -
that is till we hit a pot hole.
© Andy Costello, Reflections
2019
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