October 9, 2022
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
20 QUESTIONS
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily is,
“What’s It Like: 20 Questions?
I have 20 Questions to think
about as we come to the end of this retreat.
You have to be sitting here
wondering – questioning - thinking about lots of things – just before you’re
heading home.
I’m sure you’re wondering –
questioning your life – or the lives of those you live with, work with,
neighbor with - without even realizing
you have 4 or 5 good questions that came up while making this retreat.
Today’s First Reading and today’s
Gospel trigger the question: “What’s it
like to have leprosy – a skin disease – when everyone goes, ‘Oooooh! Oooh! Ugly!
Disappear!’?”
What’s it like?
Maybe one of these 20 questions that
I bring up – will trigger some questions you wonder about unconsciously. Maybe one of these 20 questions will help you
sum up this retreat – in a clearer way. Maybe you’ll realize it’s never over
till it’s over – and you have more work ahead.
20 QUESTIONS
What’s it like to make a retreat
on presence – real presence – with God and with each other – and you go home to
the same old same old - being with people who are in the room - but they are always on their phones with
people in far distant rooms and interests?
What’s it like to go to Mass – where
you experience God’s presence in the bread – and in the Love of God – and your
kids and grandkids – are into sleep and sports and everything else on Sunday
morning?
What’s it like to have terrible
skin?
What’s it like to have dark skin
– darker than anyone else in your family? You were adopted.
What’s it like to have more acne
on your face than a stop sign has paintball gun splotches on the first road
outside a paintball gun shooting range?
What’s it like to be alone at a
wedding – and your spouse has died or left you or you had to break up – or what
have you – and everyone seems connected to someone and you feel so single, so
singular, and so all alone?
What’s it like to come into
church late because it was tough getting an aged mother or four kids organized
for church and the traffic was crazy and the only seats are the front row of
church – and you got to go down that long aisle – feeling so conspicuous?
What’s it like to have a couple of kids – and grandkids - and you do everything
possible for them and nine of them never ever say, “Thank you!”
What’s it like to have 2 kids
with heavy duty tattoos – and at a lunch break or a coffee break – everyone is
making fun of people who are so dumb for getting tattooed?
What’s it like to have wrinkles –
lots and lots and lots of wrinkles?
What’s it like to have a sister with
3 college degrees and her kids college degrees on the walls of their basement pool table and
pingpong table room. You dropped out of high school – but did get a GED in
your 30’s?
What’s it like to have had an abortion and you come to a church that seems to
only have pamphlets and pictures at every entrance about abortion – and you
don’t notice anything else and you have made your very difficult and painful
peace with God twenty years ago - but it seems to get triggered every time you
come to church?
What’s it like to be a kid that
loves skateboarding and everyone curses you?
What’s it like to start telling a
story – and you’re cut off by someone who wants to tell their story – which
your story triggered – and they are louder and get more central than you?
What’s it like to be preaching
and you notice 37 yawns and 23 watch watchings – in your 9 minute and 49 second
homily?
What’s it like to be a Catholic
and a couple of people at work say things like: “I would think someone like you
would have got beyond church a long time ago?
What’s it like to have had a
mastectomy?
What’s it like to be overweight and you’ve tried 316 different diets and you
have estimated that you have taken off 1,160 pounds in your lifetime so far –
and you’re 6 pounds heavier than when you started your last diet?
What’s it like to have had plastic surgery and you overhear some friends in the
other room laughing at your plastic surgery?
CONCLUSION
What’s it like to be me?
What’s it like to be you?
