GROANING  PAINS 

AND  GROWING  PAINS 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 30^th Tuesday  in  Ordinary Time is, “Groaning Pains and Growing Pains.”

I’m taking that title and that idea from today’s first reading from Romans - when Paul says, “We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and  not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

GROWTH IS PAINFUL - IT MAKES US GROAN

Last week we were up in New Jersey for a big meeting. We had the main speakers giving us the state of where we are speeches - what we need to face - changes that we have to make - where we’ve been and where we’re headed. We are aging and getting few new guys - unlike our provinces in South America, Africa and Asia.

Some stuff in life is tough to hear - and hard to face.

As I’ve heard from the aged population of this parish, getting old can be tough - and bring about whining and groaning.

As Bernie Bernsten used to say, “Old age is not for sissies.”

Last week - and in many big meetings in the past, I discovered that I learn the most in one to one conversations.

For example, one evening - after a big meeting was over - I was having a casual conversation with a classmate. He was telling me about what happened to him in our high school minor seminary. They had them back then.

He said there were 3 years in his life - when he was 15, 16, and 17, that his legs were killing him - all the time. He had been a really short kid - but during those 3 years he stretched - he grew - till he was 6 foot 2.  There was nobody there to tell him about growing pains.  This was the first time I ever thought about physical growing pains.  I don’t remember ever going through that kind of pain - or if I did, I didn’t know what was happening.

That conversation was last Wednesday and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

It’s an obvious theme:   no pain no gain.

All growth comes with suffering and stretch.

Hunger teaches more than a full belly.

I went to a minor seminary for high school, so I never had the dating experience. Teenagers must  learn a lot of stuff - or they can learn a lot of stuff - from rejections, break ups, being dumped. I didn’t have that experience.

But we had the experience of making or not making the team or the play or the choir or what have you.  We had the experience of friends dropping out of the seminary and not deciding the life we were hoping for.

The priesthood is an automatic job. Get ordained and you’ll have work to do. So I never had the experience of job searching, interviews,  or not making a job. However,  come to think about it, my dream was Brazil and I never got that assignment.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel talks about A mustard seed - being planted - and like all seed, it has to be broken, stretched, and struggle through hard dirt and earth.

Today’s gospel talks about bread making. The flour and the yeast has to be mixed and mushed, crushed and kneaded together, then baked and burned to become bread.

Life - so too us.

Learning is tough work. 

Experience can be the best teacher - that is, if one learns from their experiences.

Difficult experiences - we probably should say - are the best teachers.

Learning in classrooms can be great experiences - especially if we get tough teachers. Then there is the struggle with books and study, listening and homework, mistakes and learning from our mistakes.

We can learn from comparisons - comparing one teacher with another teacher - comparing one classmate with another classmate.

We can learn a lot from the classroom called others - experiencing acceptances and rejections - experiencing that others think, see, do, want differently than us.

I learn more from a sermon that flops in my opinion - than one that is soft and sweet.

I like to write - and I’ve had more rejection slips than acceptance letters.

Writing is the hard work of rewriting - improving the text - learning from rejections.

CONCLUSION

So that’s my homily thought. Growth comes with groaning. Come to think about it, didn’t Jesus say all this much better than what I just said in John 16:21, “A woman in childbirth suffers, because her time has come; but when she has given birth to her child she forgets the suffering in her joy that a child has been born into the world.”