January 17, 2019

HARD  AND  SOFT

INTRODUCTION

A thought for today - this First Thursday in Ordinary Time.

Today’s first reading [Hebrews 3: 7-14]  and today’s Psalm response [Psalm 95] uses a word that hit me like getting hit in the head with a rock. “Today if you hear the word of the Lord, harden not your hearts.”

What struck me is the word, “Hard”.

The author of Hebrews tells us two times not to be hard hearted or hard headed  - but to be open.

The Psalm response tells us not to be hard.

Well, what hit me about the word “hard” is that the scriptures also tell us to be hard, be strong, be like rock.

So I guess it all depends. That’s my thought for the day.

MESSAGES

I suppose the scriptures are telling us that there are times when we better not be a stiff, better not be hard hearted, better not be hard headed.

I suppose the scriptures are telling us that there are many situations in life when we better be flexible, warm, movable, changeable, changing our plans.

TWO SONGS

We can still catch on the radio Simon and Garfunkle’s song, “I am a rock. I am an island...” the song of someone who is just that, all alone, unable to be reached.

And Mary Chapin Carpenter sings, “Have a little heart” in one of her songs.

MANY SITUATIONS

How many times in life have we been in situations where someone says, “Have a heart!” Meaning, translation: “Be compassionate. Stop. Change. Help!”

Jeremia the prophet, Isaiah the prophet, Ezechiel the prophet, Moses the prophet, all the prophets were always asking the people to change their hearts.

Jesus is always going after the Pharisees for being stiffs, unlovable dead skeletons of persons, inflexible, and unwilling to stop and help their brother or sister who might be stuck.

BUT

But the scriptures also present the opposite -- the call to be strong.

The scriptures present God not just as wind or a gentle breeze, but also as a mountain and a mighty fortress is our God.

IT ALL DEPENDS

So it all depends

CONCLUSION

That’s my thought for the day. Sometimes you have to be soft and sometimes you have to be hard. It all depends.

Sometimes you have to be a wall; sometimes you have to be a door.

It all depends. I guess we all have to do what Jesus did. He healed the man in today’s gospel, but he told him to keep quiet about it. When the man started broadcasting it, Jesus had to hide.

So it all depends. And I suppose it’s in quiet places where we can figure out which way to go, what position to take: rock or wind.

January 17, 2019

MARY  OLIVER DIED  TODAY

Mary Oliver died today - January 17, 2019!

She’ll hang around in books and anthologies

as well in graduation and commencement addresses.

As she continues to grace us and our God with her take and her observations about the wonderful gifts - especially crawly things.

Here’s a poem by Mary Oliver that I really like.

WHAT WE WANT

In a poem

people want 

something fancy,

but even more

they want something

inexplicable

made plain,

easy to swallow -

no unlike  a suddenly

harmonic passage

in an otherwise

difficult sometimes dissonant

symphony -

even if it is only

for the moment

hearing it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here’s my echo.

WHAT  I   WANT

In a poem,

I want a metaphor.

In a prayer

I want a connection with God.

In a prophet,

I want a challenge.

In a song,

I want it to get me singing.

In a baby,

I want a smile.

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2019 

January  17, 2019


Thought for today:


 “Faults are thick where love is thin.” 

Danish Proverb

January 16, 2019

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 big, tall, fat, happy, joyful, very well loved priest. He was a nice guy. Great smile. I can still picture his face.

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 who were devastated by the flood. He told me he had hundreds and hundreds of hundred dollar bills. “I felt like Santa Claus.”

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.”

William Lane has a book on Hebrews, Call To Commitment (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985). He says that Hebrews is a neglected book of the bible. He likes Hebrews, so he spent 6 years working on his major commentary on Hebrews. He says that it’s not a letter but a sermon. He says that it’s “A Sermon In Search of a Setting.” He says that the audience is a group of people who are experiencing the pressure of persecution, perhaps by the Romans.

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  16, 2019

Thought for today: 

“Forgiving the unrepentant is like drawing pictures on water.”

 Japanese Proverb

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. I usually don’t jump in, but I went up to her and said, “Kick ass. Get yourself some help. It looks like Mike has a serious drinking problem.” Her response was, “Oh, he’s just going through a rough few days.” The demon of denial is playing in her head. I said to her, “When you get to North Carolina join Alanon like your mother-in-law did up here.” I didn’t say that geographical changes can often be a denial of the real changes that are needed.

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!