Thursday, August 3, 2017

August 3, 2017

AUGUST

August doesn’t carry much glitter
or glamour. It’s a so, so month.
For kids there’s the suspicion - the
sense - that it’s back to school soon -
with moms buying school supplies
and clothes for the upcoming school year.
It’s hot and humid. Lawns are dry - hard -
and dust flies when they are mowed.
Latino laborers are in the fields -
digging and picking up potatoes.
Then there’s the evenings - beer
and wine - and voices can be heard
from invisible people on porches
or lawns or stoops or steps.
They don’t have enough of
those cool breezes that could
make moments on dark porches
or comfortable coves or inlets,
much more memorable. April and
October, November and December,
now they have the possibility of a
lot more pizzazz and a lot more push.


© Andy Costello, Reflections  2017



Wednesday, August 2, 2017

August 2, 2017


DIFFERENCES

Differences, distinctions,
comparisons, contrasts,
red, green, blue, orange,
black, white, yellow,
seeing differences help us
to see what we’re seeing….
female, male, young, old,
but sometimes we forget
those are only labels on the
package. Remove the
packaging and find out,
"Who and what’s inside?"



© Andy Costello, Reflections  2017




"Look at the birds of the air...."  Matthew 6:26


Tuesday, August 1, 2017


SOME REDEMPTORIST STUFF





Father Jack Kingsbury
- former pastor of St. Mary's Annapolis, Maryland
put together this video on Redemptorists in North America.




5  SIGNIFICANT  MOMENTS 
IN  MY  LIFE. 


INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this feast of St. Alphonsus is 5 Significant Moments in My Life.

If I handed you a pen and paper and asked you to jot down 5 significant moments in your life, what moments, what experiences, would you come up with?

Would it be - becoming a parent, the changes that happen in the womb of the mind when there is a  pregnancy, birth, seeing your baby for the first time, raising him or her, putting her or him through school, seeing a kid go off to college, then marriage, then the experience of a grandchild?

Would it be falling in love, marriage, changing, the struggles of marriage, even a divorce, and remarriage, what have you?  Only you know your experiences and how they made you, broke you, helped you recover or what have you?

Would it be a death or a parent, a child or a spouse?  Death can be a powerful teacher. So too sickness, being cared for or caring for another. Then there is aging….

Would it a job, becoming what you did/do in life? Or a job change, or a loss of a job, or retiring?

Would it be moving, a dramatic out of state move, going off to college, the military, moving to Tennessee, or Utah, or Arizona, or where have you.

So that’s my homily thought and question for you today?

SAINT ALPHONSUS

It’s August 1st, the feast of St. Alphonsus.  As I sat there last night working on these thoughts,  I asked my mind and my memory, “What were the 5 most important moments in the life of Alphonsus Liguori?

First would be his father. His father was strict. Boy do I have plans for you. He had started arrangements for Alphonsus to get married when he was a kid. It was to be a moving upwards. His father was often on his case. Nothing was good enough. His father would be the type to challenge his kid to do better, to have more, etc. etc. etc. His father was angry when his son quit being a lawyer to became a priest. Then one day his father was walking by a church. He heard a familiar voice coming out the window. He walked in, sat down, listened to his son and said, “Not bad!” Then “Good!”

A key moment was the loss of a law case.  We heard that he missed a minor detail and that was why he lost.  Then we heard it might have been a bribe from the other side in a land case - and he was on the wrong side. He hit bottom with that. Depression and locked doors resulted - till he came out of his room and became a priest.

He became well known as a preacher in the Naples area - but he broke down - health wise. His friends told him he need to take a vacation. They sent him own to the Amalfi Coast to rest. Great choice. Then someone -hearing there was a priest there - asked him to go up into the hills - and reach out to the goat herders - whom nobody cared about. Then he found lots of neglected people - up there in those small towns - far from the big city, Naples.  Then he founded  a Religious Community to serve the neglected.  We came to the United States for that reason.  We came to Annapolis for that reason. I became a Redemptorist to go to Brazil. Didn’t luck out.

Then there was his move from being strict  and severe - to becoming compassionate and kind.  Growing up he was scrupulous - and strict on himself, till he discovered that his perception and understanding of who and what God was like changed. His met  Jesus Christ - the Good Shepard.  He later said, “In 61 years of hearing confessions, I never refused anyone absolution.” Of course not….

He began to write - writing around 111 published books - and the Jesus one meets there is Jesus the Jesus of the gospels.  I believe Pope Francis discovered all this as well. Alphonsus discovered that Jesus was warm, a lover, a friend, a Redeemer. His key book, I was always told, was The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ.  Get into a warm relationship with Christ.  Meet him in the stable, a baby, then grow in your relationship with him, meet him in the bread, the Blessed Sacrament, and sit under the cross and let his blood drip on your head.  Crib, Cross, Sacrament as we always heard. 

CONCLUSION

Enough already….


Those are 5 significant moments in the life of St. Alphonsus.  I hope you met him here in the Redemptorists at St. Mary’s.  What are your 5?
August 1, 2017


TANTRUMS


At 2 or 3 we make them rather openly,
At 66 we make them rather sneakily.
At 86 we’re back to wearing a bib and
banging our fists and forks and the
spaghetti and the meat balls slide to the
floor  - as we tell all in the nursing home:
“I want what I want when I want it.”

How about God? Does God want
his will to be done on earth as it
is in heaven? Are earthquakes and
tornados and tropical storms and
forest fires God’s tantrums? Or
is God’s will - really our will - to be
done on earth and it is in heaven?



© Andy Costello, Reflections  2017