Just a Thought...or two...

November 28, 2021

11/24/2021

Happy New Year! ...no, I’ve not lost it...today we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent...the beginning of the church’s liturgical year.

Advent is truly a “wonder-filled” season. We look to the deep blue night sky...shimmering with a billion stars, each one a reminder of the dawn of creation...of the promise of the long awaited savior.

There is something about staring up at the night sky...something awe inspiring and spiritual in nature, it calls us to look beyond ourselves.

Advent is a time to “make time”...in the midst of all the commercialism, in the midst of all of the chaos that we call “the holiday rush”, we are called to slow down, to stand back and to reflect...to take time to allow the wonder of the Great Christmas Event to settle into our souls.

It is a time meant to shake us loose from the ordinariness of our daily lives and to allow ourselves to be wrapped up in the awe and wonder of the Incarnation -- the fact that our God so deeply loves us and that God’s very self became human to prove that love to us.

That love is for you...just as you are! This amazing love is for all of God’s creation, for all peoples and for the earth itself!

This Advent we find ourselves in the midst of one the largest humanitarian crises in recent memory, as we struggle through this pandemic that has claimed the lives of over five million people worldwide. And, in the midst of this horrible pandemic, our sisters and brothers flee war, violence and terror; they wander the earth in search of a home.

As we reflect on the wonder and awe of God’s amazing love for the earth and all humanity let us raise our voices and our hands to make sure that these refugees, and all who wander the earth in search of finding “home”, be taken in. Let us not allow fear to rule our lives, but rather the love of Christ!

Just as the Holy Family was made refugees by the tyrant Herod, so too these sisters and brothers of ours flee violence and war, let us work to make sure they find a “home” too! Let us not allow the immensity of the crisis to paralyze us and convince us we can do nothing -- for in Christ we can do all things. What can I do this Advent to help in the midst of these humanitarian crises?

As I open my heart to the love of God this Advent season can I also open it to refugees and migrants and speak up on their behalf? How can I make sure my voice is heard amidst all the vitriolic anti racial justice hate speech?

This year let our Advent gift to the world be a promise to work for and pray for peace and justice. What could be of greater value for a world plagued by religious and political divisions and torn apart by terrorism and war...through prayer and action we “prepare the way of the Lord”!

Advent Blessings,
Fr Tim

November 21, 2021

11/19/2021

Since 1969, by decree of St Paul VI, the end of the liturgical year is punctuated by the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe (previously known as “the Feast of Christ the King”). The raising of its status to a “Solemnity” and the expansion of the title points to a deepening of the understanding of the cosmic nature of the “Christ Event” and its impact in not only human history but of its impact on all created reality!

Perhaps “Sovereign of the Universe” would be a less patriarchal title and convey the same reality. Today throughout the church we focus not just on Christ’s sovereignty over all creation but on Christ’s love for each of us and indeed God’s love for all creation.

The second reading helps to hone the true image of “this Sovereign”...the glory is to be given to the one who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his very life. And if we listen closely, we can hear the echo of the Good Shepherd in Jesus’ final words in today’s Gospel...“everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to my voice.” And so we listen to Christ’s voice in our lives and make Christ the sovereign of our lives. Not as one who lords it over us but as the One who came that we might have eternal life....the One who remains in us and we in Christ...who was, who is, and who is yet to come!

This understanding of Christ as Sovereign of the Universe holds the power to draw us into the enormity of the mystery of the Divine act of creation itself, a holy and selfless act of Love...and we are the progeny of this ever expanding, creating Love.

In a world with far too many despots and tyrants who rule by force and fear, we are called to build up the Reign of God, that all creation might flourish and blossom. For this is a Reign built on love and mercy.

So in the midst of reflecting on the sovereignty of Christ in our lives let us pray for and work towards solutions that help to end war and violence and famine, to fight for an end to systemic racism and all bigotry, to stand up against systemic misogyny and open our hearts and homes to immigrants, migrants and refugees and fight for their human rights...thus building up the Reign of God. Let us not be ruled by fear or violence or self-interest but rather let us be ruled by the “Sovereign of the Universe”, ruled by Love, itself!

Blessings,
Fr Tim

November 14, 2021

11/12/2021

One day the world will end...Christ will return...but when? Some Christians routinely (and wrongly) announce the return of Christ...they seem to forget that Jesus clearly said that no one, not even “He” knew when the world would end, only His Father! And yet they continue to claim to know the date and time.

Remember the “Jesus is coming on May 21st” billboards that dotted the highways some years ago? Today’s Gospel is not about “knowing” when Christ will come... but rather about being ready when Christ does come! Am I ready?

At the center of the readings this weekend is a message of total reliance upon the mercy and love of God. It is about keeping our hearts and minds open to God’s presence in our daily lives and in the world around us! As I said last week...God’s love for us as individuals is both lavish and passionate, it knows no bounds and it is the very reason for the incarnation of our God in Jesus Christ.

Jesus was the manifestation of God’s magnanimous love for us and through Him, God’s love and forgiveness was, and continues to be, freely poured forth upon each of us and indeed upon the entire world.

The psalmist reminds us that God is our portion and cup, our inherence and therefore our hearts are glad and our souls rejoice...for we are God’s beloved!

By keeping God at the center of our daily lives we indeed will be ready if the world were to end in our times. Because of the love and mercy of our God we need not fear “the end” for we will be transformed into beings that shine like the stars in the heavens!

Through Christ we have inherited eternal life and each of us is a part of “the great cloud of witnesses” who gives glory to God.

When and where do I most feel the presence of God in my life? How do I actively engage in keeping God at the center of my life? How do I give glory to God in my life?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

November 7, 2021

11/5/2021

God’s love for us as individuals is both lavish and passionate, it knows no bounds and it is the very reason for the incarnation of our God in Jesus Christ. Jesus was the manifestation of God’s magnanimous love for us, through Him God’s love and forgiveness was freely poured forth upon the entire world.

We are the recipients of this love and forgiveness and today’s readings beg the question of us: how do we respond to this love and forgiveness which is so lavishly poured out upon us?

The old woman, a widow, who throws two, almost worthless, copper coins into the temple coffers, under the doubtless sneers of the temple guards and temple priests, causes Jesus to proclaim her actions as heroic because she gave not from her excess but from her “want”. She gave all she had to live on, to God. She surely gave from her love for God, all that she had to give. It was a great sacrifice that she was making out of her love for God.

The Temple in Jerusalem was the special place for all Jews of Jesus’ time to go and make ritual sacrifices to make amends for their transgressions of the laws and commandments, they also went there to offer sacrifice in thanks giving for prayers answered, and as a sign of their love and devotion of God. These sacrifices were important in their relationship with God.
When I was growing up and something was not going my way or I was having to do something I really did not want to do, I was often told by my parents and by the nuns at school to “offer it up”, in other words to make of it a sacrifice to
God. This concept of offering up a suffering or difficult experience for a loved one or for God seems not to be as
acceptable of a practice today as it once was. Certainly not as it was in the time of Jesus. For sacrifice was one of the main ways of showing your sorrow, your commitment and or your love to God.

And yet last weekend’s Gospel openly and clearly went against this tradition and proclaimed that to love God “with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength and to love your neighbor as your self is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” “And when Jesus saw that (the scribe) answered with understanding, he said to him, you are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

What is so critically important for us to come to believe and accept deep within our hearts is that we are deeply and passionately loved by God, just as we are. I believe that if we can come to embrace this ancient truth, deep in our hearts then we can truly love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of where they come from, where they live, what they may have done to us, what color their skin is, who they love or what their politics are...through accepting God’s deep and passionate love of us, just as we are, we will be nothing less than completely transformed as to who we and how we live in this world we inhabit...it will even change how we care for the earth that God so deeply loves.

So loving God with my whole being and my neighbor as myself is in fact the key to the Kingdom of God!

How might I respond to this lavish love and forgiveness which is so freely poured out upon me?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

October 31, 2021

10/29/2021

So what is the greatest commandment?: ‘Loving God with your whole being and your neighbor as yourself.’...which Jesus says is worth more than all burnt offerings and all sacrifices and no commandment greater than these!

A very powerful statement to be sure, but it seems we still haven’t got it! We still put all kinds of rules and regulations and pious practices ahead of this “one”, clearly stated, commandment. Even though Jesus was so very clear about it, it seems that we still insist on putting all these other “things” ahead of this one straight forward commandment.

Imagine if we were to order our lives around this singular commandment -- imagine how the world might be. Imagine if we focused on truly loving God and our neighbor as if that was the singular organizing principle of our lives, of our church, of our public and social policies! Our whole world view would change...we would see migrants and immigrants and refugees not as strangers and threats but as sisters and brothers. We would see the poor, the needy and vulnerable not as taxing on our resources, but as family in need and respond to their needs out of love.

Our primary motivation would no longer focuses on just ‘what I can get or do for myself’ but would look to God and to my neighbor. Suddenly the wellbeing and safety of “the other” would take on a whole new significance in my life in the building up of “the Reign of God” here on earth!

So my stance on issues like just war theory, euthanasia, abortion, equal access to education, just wages, racial justice, affordable housing, equal access to healthcare, compassionate care of the elderly, informed and mentally ill, would all be shaped by my love of God and my love of neighbor, knowing them to be sisters and brothers.

If all these issues were viewed solely through the lens of this one commandment of loving God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves it would call me to learn to let go of all my biases.

Imagine the social and political impact it would have in our country and around the world if all Christians or even if just a majority of Christians began to work towards building up Jesus’ vision of the Reign of God!

And of course imagine the impact it would have on the church itself, if all the priests, deacons, nuns, brothers, bishops and cardinals used this commandment as their primary lens through which they exercised every aspect of their ministry -- it would be transformative! Clericalism and careerism would be replaced with servant leadership which would bring about an end to the ongoing leadership scandal in the church that Pope Francis so often de- cries.

Within our country all our political discourse would radically change -- poverty, racism, the marginalization of others would all be things of the past...imagine! Jesus did...No, he commanded that it be so! This is his vision of “the Reign of God”, and it is the challenge that Jesus places before us as his disciples...for us to put love of God and to love our neighbor first!

What would my life look like if I set aside any resentments or pettiness I might have and choose to accept and love people just the way they were regardless of how wrong I might believe them to be? How do I best show my love of God and my love of neighbor? What might I need to change in my life to make Jesus’ commandment more fully the standard by which I live?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

October 24, 2021

10/23/2021

In this Sunday’s Gospel the blind man, Bartimaeus, sitting on the edge of the road begging, recognizes and “sees” who Jesus is and cries out to him “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Because, through the eyes of faith Bartimaeus has seen who Jesus is, and he is able to ask to be healed ...“Lord I want to see”!

Those words could very well be our cry for clarity in the way we “see” the world around us...these words may well be the exclamation of our deep desire to live more fully in Christ and to see as Jesus saw.

We want to believe more, we want to see more...but we are hindered by our individual and collective blindness and it can hold us back from following Christ with complete and utter abandon. The Word we hear today is meant to stir us in our discipleship, to rouse our “Gospel sight” that we might see the world as God sees it.... that we might have our blindness removed and truly see the poor and marginalized as our sisters and brothers and reach out to them. That our Gospel sight roused, we might see clearly the systemic injustices in our society; the scourge of systemic racism and bigotry towards all those who are other than me. That we might see the injustice of our broken immigration system that separates families and denies asylum to those honestly seeking a safe home, a place to live without the constant threat of death. That we might see how misogyny holds back our mothers, our sisters and our daughters and cheats our country of the richness of the gifts they have to share with the world.

Let us pray for “Gospel eyes” that help us “to see” solutions to war and global and local poverty, solutions for the hunger and suffering of migrants and refugees sojourning around the globe searching for freedom and justice...searching for a home. Let us pray to work for and “to see” solutions to all that divides our nation that we might live in peace and harmony, seeing each “other” as equals, as sister and brother, as God see us! In the midst of all the suffering, hurt and pain in our country and our world today let us, like blind Bartimaeus cry out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us and let us see a way forward to build up your Reign here on earth!

Blessings,
Fr Tim

October 15th, 2021

10/15/2021

I am amazed at the audacity of James and John in today’s Gospel...asking...no, telling Jesus that they want him to “do for us whatever we ask”! Who do they think they are? Better yet, who do they think Jesus is?

The audacity to demand that Jesus do whatever they ask of him is unbelievable. And of course, it ignites the ire of other disciples, most likely because the others thought that James and John might be getting something more than they would get.

Jesus calls them all together and explains, once again, that to be a leader in the Reign of God is to be a servant...it is to make oneself available to the other. He says that the one who wishes to be the greatest among them must be a servant to the rest and the one who wishes to be first must be slave to all.

This image turns our vision of the world on its head, that the most important among us is to act as the least and to serve the others -- especially the poor, the social outcast and the marginalized. In Jesus’ world, as in ours today, servants were considered to be at the bottom of the ladder of society. They are the invisible ones, the expendable ones.

Yet in the Reign of God, the servants are the truly special ones. By their service to others they follow Jesus Christ, and through their actions proclaim their citizenship in the Reign of God. So let us reflect this week on our own place in the world and in the Reign of God. To whom am I called to serve? Who serves me and how do I treat them? How do I make myself available to the poor and marginalized; to those in need?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

October 10, 2021

10/9/2021

In today’s Gospel, Jesus sets aside the law of Moses regarding Jewish divorce law. Jesus makes it clear that while “the law” allowed a man, in a rather simple manner, to divorce his wife and kick her out of his house, he found it unacceptable. In the first century Middle Eastern world women were basically the property of men.

They had little or no identity aside from that which they had through their connection to male members of their family. They were either, a man’s daughter, sister, mother, or wife. Women rarely had an identity of their own which was not rooted in some relationship to a male.

When a man divorced his wife, she lost her identity within the community. When she had married her husband her primary identity came through him, no longer through her birth family. By the action of her husband, the divorce would have cut her off from the community...she would have been seen as bringing shame on her family of origin and therefore likely not welcome in their home nor in the home of another man because she would have been shamed herself.

For all practical purposes the woman (and often her children) was turned out into the streets to fend for herself and for her children. It is this reality that Jesus found unacceptable. In this case the woman and her children became the “the very least of the society”, those for whom Jesus claimed the rest of the society was responsible.

Jesus’ concern is about the woman and the children. Mosaic law allowed for divorce but without concern for what happened to the woman. There was no court that divided up the property of the couple in an equitable manner, it all went to the man. The man was the owner of all the property and objects contained in the home. Moses didn’t take the shame that would befall the woman into consideration when he wrote the law concerning divorce. Jesus said that it was because of “the hardness of their hearts.”

How do I respond to the needs of the “rejected ones” and those “turned out” by society? And for us men...how do I view women’s place in society, in the church and in my personal relationships...is it in line with Jesus’ teachings?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

October 3, 2021

10/2/2021

September 26, 2021

9/24/2021

In last week’s Gospel the disciples quarreled amongst themselves over who was the greatest, this week they are incensed at the audacity of an “outsider” who acts as though he is part of the “insiders”; the twelve. But Jesus cautions John not to be so quick in his judgment of the man casting out daemons in Jesus’ name. Well-meaning and upstanding disciples are routinely aghast at the thought of including “less than upstanding members of our society” in “the family of God”. “But Lord,” they say, then as today, “what about standards? What about criteria? How can you admit anyone, no matter what’s contained in their past, no matter how unsuitable their present?”

Maybe “the best people” will decide not to be associated with the Kingdom as Jesus presents it...after all they have attained righteousness all by themselves, through their own efforts and how can Jesus ask them to share the Kingdom with sinners, tax collectors and the like? These people, even on their best day, with their best effort, could never attain the Kingdom...except for God’s grace! Thank God for “grace”!

I don’t know about them but I’m relying on that non- exclusive, saving, grace...yesterday, today and tomorrow! When behavior excludes people of goodwill who are doing the best they can, like Eldad and Medad, like the man in the Gospel, such exclusion becomes the very antithesis of what is demanded of us as followers of Jesus Christ!

When we do what we do in God’s name for the good of others, we become equal in each other’s sight, as we always have been in God’s sight.

Discipleship is difficult, it challenges the way we live, the way we think and the way we view the world around us. Discipleship calls us to be our best selves, as God has created us to be, as God has dreamt us to be in the world and to live with each other and to care for the world, our common home.

God gives us the grace we need to live up to that dream that God has for us and for the world as a whole. And the Eucharist helps strengthens us for the task of living out our discipleship to the best of our abilities.

Through God’s grace we can help build up the Reign of God in the here and now through our “good works” for the sake of “the other”!

Do I exclude anyone from my life? Do I look down on anyone? Can I believe that God deeply and passionately loves us all, just as we are, even those whom I might think unworthy?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

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