Somewhere along the line someone spotted a postcard - with our family name on it - along with our family coat of arms - along with our family motto. They sent it to me. I wasn't in on the drafting of the shield, or the motto or the coat of arms. I didn't even know we had a coat of arms. My mom described where she came from in Ballynahown, Ireland, "Ireland has nothing." I saw the spot - on Galway Bay - as not that hot. And my father used to say that he was within a rock's throw of where my mom was from.
Asked to translating the Latin on the coat of arms, I said it means something like, "Don't be searching for yourself, outside yourself."
"Quaeseveris" is the only tricky word of the 4 words in the motto. The quest, the seeking, the searching, the asking is at the heart of the motto.
"Quaeseveris" is the 2nd person perfect active subjunctive of the verb "quaero". It means questing, as indicated, asking, seeking, inquiring, requiring.
I would like to translate it as: "Be who you is, because if you be who you're not, then you're not who you is."
Ralph Waldo Emerson calls this "Self-Reliance."
Here is Emerson's famous lecture on Self-Reliance. Just hit the triangle on the button.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
April 9, 2020
COMPASS
Walking - early morning - in the woods –
coming to patches of light and darkness –
depending on the steep of the low hills -
then deeper and deeper into the trees ….
I come to a clearing - a palace place of light….
The light seems to be forming halos around
all the trees in the forest - lessening the
darkness everywhere - north, east, south, west.
It was as if I was standing in a compass of light,
and I stood there wondering if God the Father
had the particularity he had about Mary for the
tree 2,000 years ago chosen to be the cross of Christ.
“Every
day and every hour, every minute, walk around yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a
seemly one.”
Father Zossima in
The Brothers Karamazov
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
April 7, 2020
SATANENTEREDHIM
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this
Tuesday in Holy Week is, “Satan Entered Him.”
Those 3 words - right there in
today’s gospel – in John 13: 27 – hit me.
“Satan Entered Him.” Those words entered
into me.
That’s something that happens to us
when we read strong stuff – and if a sermon has salty stuff – we’re
can be aware of what’s enlightening us – what’s challenging us - and what is
entering into us.
We all have this current fear that
the coronavirus 19 might enter into us.
It’s an invisible enemy that
can kill us – so we fear it – and we take precautions – to prevent it from
entering us.
Is that why those 3 words in
today’s gospel – ‘Satan entered him”- hit me.
INSIDE JOB
Down through the years, e.e.
cummings words, “Be of love a little more careful than of anything” has
entered into me.
I’ve have also thought, “Be of hate
or hurt a little more careful than of anything.”
So too prejudice – so too anger –
so too greed – so too what I’m watching on TV - so too movies - so too attitude
– so too the atmosphere we can feel in the rooms we enter.
Without knowing it – without choice
– without voting for it – we become what we read, what we see, what we eat,
what we breathe in.
I love Tennyson’s words in his poem Ulysses,
“I am part of all that I have met.”
We speak English because that’s the
language that entered into as a kid in the playground and the playpen. “Give
Little Johnny a turn.” “Stop being such a baby!” “Wash your hands!”
“Do your homework.” “Say your prayers.”
THE BAD STUFF
In a reflection for today - in Give
Us This Day - Immaculee Ilibagiza says, “On April 7, 1994,
radio stations in Rwanda transmitted a fearsome message: it was time to ‘cut
the tall trees’ and eliminate the ‘cockroaches.’ Upon this signal,
Hutu militia began the wholesale extermination of their Tutsi neighbors and
moderate Hutus. In the course of a hundred days nearly a
million people were killed – mostly by machetes and other primitive weapons.
Many of the massacres occurred in churches, where Tutsis had sought refuge.
That such horror could occur in a predominantly Catholic country raised
troubling questions about the meaning of evangelization. Nuns,
priests, and catechists were among the victims. (In other cases, shockingly,
they collaborated with the killers.) Church leaders, whether Catholic or
Protestant, were largely mute.” [p. 96, April, 2020]
That’s tough stuff that entered
into me when I read that last night.
I remember watching in shock some
of that on television when it was happening. It happened again years
later when I was reading Immaculee Ilibagiza book – Left to Tell. It’s
all about this.
When – how many times – and in what
ways did that attitude of anger and envy and smallness and “Kill!” enter into
the psyche of some Hutus of Rwanda?
CONCLUSION: OUR CHOSEN
CALL
Our chosen call as Christians and
Redemptorists has been to bring Good News to folks – after it enters
into us.
The hope is that we reach out for
Christ and eat him up - as well as his whole body in communion.
The hope is that his real presence
and his love and respect for all enters into all of us.
The hope is that the Word becomes
flesh and consumes us.
It’s the same hope we have when we
listen carefully to each other each day when we come into each other’s real
presence.
It’s the same hope we have when we hear the first reading at each Mass.
Today it was from Isaiah. We read
him. We listen to him. Hopefully he enters into us.
Did you notice the two images from
today’s first reading – that we become sharp swords and polished arrows.
Unlike Judas we’re not in this for
the money – but for the feast!
