In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests the weight of history continues to bear down upon us and this week we observe memorials of the bombings and destruction of the cities of Hiroshima (Thursday) and Nagasaki (Sunday). We find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic with no real national leadership or plan, over 150 thousand Americans have died, hundreds of thousands have or have had the coronavirus. We are living in scary and uncharted times. And in the midst of these scary and uncharted times our God walks with us and promises that nothing, no thing can separate us from God’s deep and passionate love for each and everyone of us.

In the beautiful first reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear the call from God to come to the water, to receive grain and eat without paying — without cost we shall eat well; we are called to come and listen, that we may have life! All who hunger and thirst are invited, such generosity...an overflowing of abundance of God’s desire that our needs be met because we are God’s beloved!

We encounter this generosity again in the Gospel, known as “The Feeding of the Five Thousand”, but that is a misnomer, as it clearly states in the last line that only the men numbered five thousand. The women and the children were not included among the five thousand. The theologian Megan McKenna posits that the real number was much greater. If the majority of the five thousand men were there with their families, she says the number would quickly soar past fifteen thousand and maybe even twenty thousand! Now if we thought the feeding of the five thousand was astonishing, the feeding of the twenty thousand is “mind blowing”! Again, showing forth the lavishness of God’s care and love for us, for all of us, of every color, every race, every ethnicity, every gender, every orientation, every ability, every socioeconomic class, EVERYONE!

And it is our duty as “the beloved” to carry this message to the ends of the earth, not just with our words but with our actions. We must stand up against all forms of racism and bigotry. We must vocally call it out for what it is whenever and wherever we see it. Like the song says “change is gonna come” but only if, as John Lewis said, only if we get into some “good trouble”.

And so I close with John Lewis’ final words “So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today’s Gospel Jesus compares the Reign of God to an immense treasure…a pearl of great price. Who among us has not dreamt of finding such a treasure? Imagine the impact it would have upon your life. How would you use it…what would you do differently within your life? That is exactly what Jesus is challenging us to do…to think of how different our lives would be if we “lived” in the Reign of God…all the time!

Usually when we think of finding a treasure we immediately think of financial gain and how that would change our lives and the lives of our family. But in this case we are challenged to think about how our lives would change from the point of view of how we love one another, how we care for each other…how we live the Gospel in our day to day lives. Challenging systemic racism and calling it out where we see it in public policies and practices, in our institutions and in individual interactions is living the Gospel! Finding and falling in love with the Reign of God is the whole point of the parables we hear today.

Pedro Arrupe, SJ, the former Superior General of the Jesuits, once wrote: “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love and it will decide everything."

What is at the center of my life…what motivates what I read, what gets me out of bed in the morning? How might my life be different if I were totally and completely in love with the Reign of God; if building up the Reign of God, loving all my sisters and brothers as Jesus loves me, came first before everything else?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

Once again this week Jesus speaks to us in parables… multifaceted gems that once tumbled around in our hearts and ruminated, upon yield, unbelievable insights into the Reign of God. While the disciples certainly preferred straightforward answers, Jesus obviously preferred parables. Of the comparisons of the reign of God to a field, a mustard seed and the leaven in bread, I have always liked the comparison of the mustard seed and the Reign of God. This tiny, tiny little seed grows into a great bush…so large that the birds of the air make their nests in it. If you take the parable at its face value, it all seems quite lovely. However there is a dark side that farmers know well: the mustard bush is an invasive plant. It grows wildly and rapidly, quickly overtaking a garden, ruining the plants that had been planted with care and reducing their yield, if not completely choking them out. Mustard bushes are uncontrollable and rapidly spread across a farm if not quickly uprooted before going to seed. Surely this reality was not lost on Jesus…nor on those who heard him tell the parable. It seems that perhaps Jesus is presenting an image of the expansion of the Reign of God as something uncontrollable, invasive and fast growing! Looking through the lens of this image…the Reign of God is not something that can be domesticated or controlled…by its very nature it grows uncontrollably and bursts forth offering refuge. I believe that most of us, though, would prefer something that we could contain and control…domesticate!

But the truth is that the Reign of God is just that: ”God’s Reign”; not ours. We are part of it by our baptism and we are called to help water it so that it continues to grow and “invade” every crevice and furrow of this planet…we don’t get to tame it. Two thousand years ago Jesus’ vision of the bursting forth of the Reign of God was nothing less than radical ….and it still is today. We are called to be part of that radical vision…to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and imprisoned…to love one another as Christ loves us and to reach out and to care for “the other.” To proclaim the deep and passionate love of God for all peoples, of all races and all ethnicities…a world of racial justice and an end to white privilege, an end to a world where a person of one color is valued over a person of another color or ethnicity! And wasn’t it just this radical vision of the reign of God -- where every person was valued equally -- that Jesus preached that got him crucified?

As his disciple just how radical of a life am I willing live? In a world that proclaims a “gospel of personal prosperity” with tax cuts for the rich at the cost of healthcare cuts for the poor, to what lengths am I willing to go in building up this radical vision of the Reign of God that Jesus preached? What concrete action can I take today to “water” the Reign of God? Where and how do I see the Reign of God bursting forth in imaginative and radical ways…such as the “Black Lives Matter Movement”. How can I support it and join in? How can I work to bring about racial justice and end white privilege, that is so antithetical to the most basic message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

In today’s Gospel Jesus once again instructs the crowds with a parable, about a sower and the seed. But this parable raises as many questions as it seems to have answers. Ones such as, who sows costly seeds among the weeds and the thorns, and why? The good farmer, the successful farmer, sows seeds on good rich soil that has been prepared, fertilized and tilled and yields a rich and abundant harvest! So why does Jesus tell the parable of the farmer who scatters seeds on bad soil, indiscriminately, throwing it among the weeds and the thorns…why sow it there? What is his point?

Parables are meant to get us thinking…just as we think we understand the point of the story, upon further reflection another layer is revealed. Like a fine gemstone, as we mull it over and turn it around in our minds, we discover more and more facets of the story that at first glance may not have been so obvious. That is the amazing quality of the parable. In this parable, some interpret the sower as God and the indiscriminate sowing of the seeds as an example of God’s all-inclusive love for all peoples. The seed sown is “the Word” offered to everyone, regardless of the potential that they will accept it and allow it to grow within them…or not. Perhaps God sees possibilities of growth and abundant harvest and transformation amongst the thorns and rocky soil that we cannot even yet imagine! It seems to me that “the Word” being sown today is “the Word of Justice”, sown in the thorns and rocky ground of racism and bigotry. And “the Word” is crying out for racial justice in the midst of unjust structures that systematically favor one race over another: white privilege. And God’s “Word” will take root and grow, as we have seen it do in the hundreds of thousands of the Black Lives Matter protesters across this country and around the globe.

For Isaiah told us that God said “so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; my word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” That “end” is justice and equality for all God’s children! What are the “thorny or rocky” parts of my life where the seeds of the Gospel have yet to yield an abundant harvest? Where in the world is the rocky soil on which God has sown seed from which is springing new growth at this moment that both surprises and delights? Where am I being called to tend to “the Word” that needs to be cultivated and nurtured in the rocky and thorny world around me?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

Today’s Gospel invites us to “rest in Jesus”…to turn our burdens over to Jesus and allow the power of the Spirit, dwelling within us, to empower us to push on…ever forward…knowing that we do so not alone but with the presence of the very one who created us and loved us into being. Jesus does not dismiss the burdens of life. On the contrary, Jesus recognizes just how heavy they are and in the midst of the struggles of our lives he offers to be with us and help us. We are not asked to set our burdens down at the door of the church as we enter…but rather we are invited to bring them to the altar and place them side by side with the bread and wine which we offer to be blessed and broken, transformed and shared. This Jesus, the Christ, knows first hand of our human burdens and understands our suffering….we need not fear that our God does not understand, or does not care…the message of all of Jesus’ preaching and teaching was just the opposite: Our God knows us and deeply and passionately loves us and walks with us in the midst of our sufferings…Our God weeps with us when we weep and suffers with us when we suffer. Our God is out there with all the protesters demanding racial justice, crying out “my children’s Black Lives Matter”! And as the Body of Christ, we are invited to reach out to others whose burdens and pain overwhelm them…to be the compassion of Christ to them…to help carry their burdens and to walk with them in the midst of their suffering demanding racial justice for them and for all who suffer discrimination, racism and bigotry! All God’s children, all are made in the image and likeness of God, female and male, in God’s image!

Karen , Amy, John, Tim, White privilege (freedom, honored, favored) until that day when we who are white are willing to come to terms with our white privilege, our freedom, our honored status, our favored status, to sit in the discomfort of it and to own it and accept the social devastation and genocide that it has caused there will be NO RACIAL JUSTICE! News Flash, white people, take off our “white privilege blinders” that blind us to the TRUTH that being white in America, South America and Europe gives us a special status that non-white people do NOT get to enjoy as freely as we do! There are people who are shot for sleeping while black, driving while black, jogging while black, protesting while black, and I want to remind you all of our First Amendment rights! And so, I would like to point out that the “framers of the Constitution” put first the right to protest the government before the right to bear arms!

It’s all just too much…I cannot sit back, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and remain silent, we have a president who is bent on dividing us as a nation on issues of racial equality, income inequality, lack of access to basic healthcare and quality education for our children, food programs that provide the most basic human needs as outlined in the Catholic Catechism! These are basic human needs that governments are required to provide according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and repeated over and over again by our present Pope, Pope Francis. It is plain and simply the Gospel of Jesus Christ put into action! It is all there -- use your “Gospel lenses” to look at the situation and then make a decision…but really and truly, honestly, use your “”Gospel lenses” and apply them to what is happening today in our country, and ask yourself, that horrible, life-changing, re-centering question that no one really wants to HONESTLY ask themselves…”what would Jesus do” in the midst of the “Black Lives Matter” movement?

Welcoming the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee, the one who is “other” from me, is an authentic living out of our discipleship. It incarnates -- fancy word for “makes flesh” -- the Gospel in the midst of our community. Ironically in our reaching out to others, often our burdens are lightened, our wounds begin to heal and we become more and more the living Body of Christ in all of its diversity, in all of its colors, sizes and shapes.

Do I have burdens or old wounds that I am holding on to and not giving over to Jesus, that getting rid of might allow me to be more available to my sisters and brothers of color? Whose burden or pain am I being called to help carry right NOW?...How might I do that?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

​Jesus asks for total loyalty from his disciples! Allegiance to what ends? Jesus was clear that he expected his followers to “be all in”, to choose him over their mothers and fathers, over their sisters and brothers and even over their daughters and sons. This must have sounded absurd! Who could do that, they must have asked? To choose Jesus over your family was to make a choice that would mean that you would lose the ones who would care for you in old age, or in the event of illness, choosing Jesus would mean your future would immediately become much more precarious! Your family is where your personal identity came from. What was Jesus asking of his followers? It seems that Jesus was asking his disciples to put him at the center of their lives and from this center to move outward to others. He was asking them to become “his family”! These words of Jesus’ taken in the context of the fullness of his message to love God with our whole selves and our neighbor as ourselves gives us insight into what he is suggesting. If indeed we are able to place Christ at the center of our lives we will be less self-absorbed, less harsh towards others and more kind, generous and lov-ing. By consciously and reflectively living Christ centered lives we become more and more rooted in our relationship with Christ and ultimately, our relationships with our sisters and brothers can blossom and become fuller and deeper, more authentic human encounters with our sisters and brothers. When we do this, racism and bigotry cannot ex-ist in our lives and will be rooted out of our institutions, both secular and sacred. By placing Christ at the center of my life I prioritize my life in such a way that the priorities of the Gospel become the priorities of my life, that Gospel values of justice, peace and the integrity of creation are no longer simply “nice ideals to work for” but rather “fundamental imperatives” around which I build my life, create family and live out my relationship with God and others. Am I putting anything or anyone ahead of Christ and my relationship with God that I need to reconsider so as to live a more Christ centered life….so as to re-center my life! How does my relationship with God impact my rela-tionship with my family and with others? How might strengthening or deepening my relationship with God im-pact my relationship with my family and others?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

In this weekend’s Gospel Jesus warns against fear. Fear has been the cause of the destruction of entire peoples and cultures; the cause of one war after an-other and still we do not learn just how disastrous for humanity fear-mongering can be. Poets, philosophers and mystics alike all have warned that it ultimately leads to the deadening of the soul and disconnection from the human family. Several years ago Pope Francis warned that wherever there is fear, there will always be someone who will manipulate it to their own good. "Because fear, besides being good business for merchants of weapons and death, weakens and destabilizes us, destroying our psychological and spiritual defenses, anesthetizing us to the suffering of others and, in the end, making us cruel." We find ourselves in the midst of a fear-ridden country, with some people shouting of calamity (racial justice and equality) that is about to beset us all, and yet Jesus who found himself in a not too dissimilar geopolitical situation (think the Roman occupation of his native country) called his followers not to fear but to have faith….to not to give into fear!

We too are called to not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear and allow it to turn us into cruel people who think of our-selves first and only, and leave the less fortunate to fend for themselves. Pope Francis has said that mercy is the “best antidote” to fear! And in the same speech, he called for us to partner that mercy with courage. We need courage to do the right thing in the face of fear which causes communities to want to build walls instead of bridges and makes peoples choose open conflict rather than embrace the differences of others. In a very real way we are called to “walk towards our fears” and not run from them. Walking towards our fears takes courage. But, we must not forget that we do not walk that journey alone -- we walk with Christ! We are called to walk with our black and brown sisters and brothers and demand an end to the systemic racism that is woven through the very fabric of our country! We all must speak up and act to bring about an end to the systemic racism in our institutions both secular and sacred! For those of us who are white, we must sit in the discomfort of confronting our white privilege and how it is the very root of the systemic racism that pervades our institutions and our society and call it out for what it is and for what it has done to our sisters and brothers of color. Not until we have done this can we live the great command of Jesus, to love our neighbor as ourselves. What personal biases am I being called to walk towards or to sit with and name? Might I pray to draw courage in facing my own biases, with the Holy Spirit guiding me?

Blessings,
Fr Tim

The Body and Blood of Christ are not only something we “get” when we go to Mass…it is what we become! We believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist and while we will never fully understand how this is, we gather each Sunday, around the “table of the Lord” to be nourished…and to be changed…changed, ever more fully, into the Body of Christ. Through our receiving the Body and Blood of Christ…Christ lives in us and we in Christ and thus we become the Body of Christ.

This “indwelling” of Christ in us both as individuals and as community has enormous implications for our lives….individually and communally. We become “the Body of Christ” present in the world and called to be the visible compassion and love of Christ reaching out to the immigrant, the refugee, to those discriminated against and treated unjustly because of the color of their skin or where that came from, “to be for” all those who suffer and who are in need. As Christ was “for the world” so too we are to be “for the world”. Our daily actions, our work, our relationships all of them must reflect Christ. Our lives should be a living witness to the words, actions, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are called to live our lives in such a way that we become visible, tangible signs of God’s amazing and passionate love for all people, to stand up to the systemic racism that pervades our society, that has been woven through the fabric of our country over the last 400 years.

I believe that to refuse to sit in the discomfort of confronting the reality of racism in our country and our own white privilege is to deny the primary message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s deep and passionate love for ALL people, just as they are, the beloved of God! When we embrace that all who are “other” from us are the “BELOVED” of God then there is no place in our hearts for racism and bigotry. How does my life reflect my being part of the Body of Christ? When I leave Mass what do I take with me into the world? What am I being called to “pick up” or “lay down” in my life that I might, more fully, live as a member of the Body of Christ and work to bring an end to racism and bigotry?

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

As we celebrate the feast of The Most Holy Trinity my mind returns to an 8th grade classroom and a tall red haired nun, in full habit, named Sister Mary Janelle. I recall her patiently helping my classmates and myself as we wrestled with the concept of the Trinity, three Persons who were at the same time separate but one. As she went through theological gymnastics trying to help us understand, ultimately she conceded that it was a mystery…mystery with a capital “M”. At the time my classmates and I felt it was a bit of a “cop-out” on her part…but now almost 50 years later I have come to see her wisdom, and have come to be comfortable with, and truly enjoy the concept of mystery. We live in a society that demands to know all things, to have concrete explanations for everything. But the reality is that ultimately God is beyond our under-standing.

Today I realize that I am part of a religious tradition that has passed on a faith…a faith filled with mystery and awe in our God. There is a “consensus of our ancestors” that harbors “revealed truths” that are essentials of our faith that will always lie just beyond our capacity to fully understand. The Holy Spirit has been sent into our hearts to lead us headlong into the Mystery…to live out in concrete terms what we say we believe even though we do not fully understand. Our lack of understanding has no impact on the Mystery itself… the Mystery desires us and loves us just as we are…conflicted and wrestling with our faith. One of the most important realities is that we remain engaged…wrestling with our faith…engaged with God!

But when all is said and done what is most important is that we remain engaged in the struggle for understanding…and we open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit, the bringer of wisdom. And what wisdom and understanding is the Holy Spirit trying to bring us today in the midst of the light that is being shined on the darkness, of the SIN of the systemic racism and bigotry that is woven into the very fabric of our nation?

Fr. Bryan N. Massingale, PhD, is the James and Nancy Buckman Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University in New York. He is also the Senior Ethics Fellow in Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education. Massingale is a past convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. He is the author of Racial Justice and the Catholic Church.

He recently wrote an article for National Catholic Reporter entitled “Amy Cooper knew exactly what she was doing. We all do. And that's the problem.” :

“In short, she decided to call the police on a black man for nothing more than politely asking her to obey the park's rules. And made up a lie to put him in danger.
He knew what she was doing. And so do we. The situation is completely "legible" as my academic colleagues would say. What did she and rest of us know? Why did she act as she did?
She assumed that her lies would be more credible than his truth.
She assumed that she would have the presumption of innocence.
She assumed that he, the black man, would have a presumption of guilt.
She assumed that the police would back her up.
She assumed that her race would be an advantage, that she would be believed because she is white. (By the way, this is what we mean by white privilege).
She assumed that his race would be a burden, even an insurmountable one.
She assumed that the world should work for her and against him.
She assumed that she had the upper hand in this situation.
She assumed that she could exploit deeply ingrained white fears of black men.
She assumed that she could use these deeply ingrained white fears to keep a black man in his place.
She assumed that if he protested his innocence against her, he would be seen as "playing the race card."
She assumed that no one would accuse her of "playing the race card," because no one accuses white people of playing the race card when using race to their advantage.
She assumed that he knew that any confrontation with the police would not go well for him.
She assumed that the frame of "black rapist" versus "white damsel in distress" would be clearly understood by everyone: the police, the press and the public.
She assumed that the racial formation of white people would work in her favor.
She assumed that her knowledge of how white people view the world, and especially black men, would help her.
She assumed that a black man had no right to tell her what to do.
She assumed that the police officers would agree.
She assumed that even if the police made no arrest, that a lot of white people would take her side and believe her anyway.
She assumed that Christian Cooper could and would understand all of the above.
(And she was right. He clearly knew what was at stake, which is why he had the presence of mind to record what happened).
I am not a mind reader. I have no access to Amy Cooper's inner thoughts. But I know, and we all know, that without these assumptions, her words and actions — her lies — make no sense. We also have to admit that her assumptions are not unreasonable. In fact, we have to admit that they are well-founded. They match what we know to be true about how the country works and about how too many white people think.
All of this was the almost instantaneous reasoning behind her actions. By her own admission, she acted out of reflex. No one taught Amy Cooper all of this. Likely, no one gave her an explicit class on how whiteness works in America. But she knew what she was doing.
And so do we. We understand her behavior. We know how our culture frames whiteness and folks of color. We know how race works in America.
The fundamental assumption behind all the others is that white people matter, or should matter, more than people of color. Certainly more than black people. That black lives don't matter, or at least not as much as white lives. That's the basic assumption behind Amy Cooper's decisions, actions and words. That's the basic assumption that links Christian Cooper with COVID-19, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Omar Jimenez.
Amy Cooper knew that. We all know that. So who taught her? Who taught us?” Now what are you and I going to do about it? That is my question!”

Blessings,
Fr. Tim