“All Saint’s Day” is a generally thought of as a celebration of all the great women and men of faith and action who have gone before us and continue to live on in eternity with the One who made them and called them into being. According to St. Paul we are all caught up in this great cloud of witnesses, “the friends of God and prophets” who we call “the saints”. In a very real way we too are part of “the Communion of Saints”. St. Augustine says; “from generation to generation She (Holy Wisdom) passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets”, thus connecting us one to the other and engendering in us the desire, strength and courage to actively live out our discipleship in our daily lives. The saints are not people who were perfect; on the contrary some of them were quite irascible and difficult to live with while others are remembered for their kindness and charity. It’s their relationship with God and their openness to God’s Spirit that shaped their lives and emboldened them to live faith-filled lives that stand out for which they are remembered to this day. But we too, by the same Spirit, are part of this great cloud of witnesses and are, right now, in the midst of the terrible chaos around us, we are being called forth to be vehicles of God’s love and mercy to a wounded world around us. How can I deepen my relationship with God? How do I share God’s love and mercy with others in the midst of this chaos? How is God shaping my life today that I might know how to respond to the chaos in the world today?

Remember Holy Wisdom has passed into your hearts and made of you “friends of God and prophets” and given you the strength and courage to live out your discipleship of Jesus Christ in your daily lives, precisely in the midst of all that is going on in the world around us!

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

In the readings this weekend we hear from the book of Exodos, God reminding us that we were once aliens…..lest we forget and treat the immigrant, migrant or refugee poorly. If we do, we risk the very wrath of God! If we treat our poor neighbors badly their cries to God will not go unheard….God makes sure we have been warned. And in the Gospel, Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as our very selves! All of the Law and the Prophets depend on these two realities. Or are they three realities, love of God, love of neighbor and love of self.

For some loving God is doable and loving neighbor is doable, but loving self is tough. While for others it’s loving neighbor that is tough and for still others it’s loving anyone that is tough. But this is what Jesus is calling us to do if we assume that we are all working on our love of God then we need to be working on our love of neighbor and our love of self too!

Many times things from our past make it difficult for us to reach out, to allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable before God, before others or even to be open and vulnerable with ourselves! And yet this is what Jesus is calling us to do: to let go of the past, to forget who is a Samaritan or a Canaanite or a leper, and to love the person as they are, as we encounter them, regardless of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social economic status, immigration status, political party affiliation...all of us sisters and brothers, the children of God!

Perhaps in doing that we may come to be better able to love ourselves in the midst of our own brokenness, just as we are, just a God loves us! By being willing to try and love the one who has hurt us, or let us down or who scares us because they are different or because they don’t act the way we think they should or the way we want them to…by loving them as they are, we are being changed, becoming more and more Christ like!

When we step out of our comfort zone and risk to welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the refugee, “the other”, in truth we are welcoming Jesus. So in the coming months as we find new ways to “share the journey” with our sisters and brothers of color marching for racial justice and an end to white supremacy, and as we journey with our sister and brother immigrants, migrants and refugees, let us remember that we are sharing the journey with Jesus! Let us ask ourselves who do I need to work on loving better? How does this commandment of Jesus to love my neighbor as myself impact how I view and what I will do about systemic racism, DACA, ACA, limits on refugees, the struggle of the poor and unemployed and underemployed and so much of our pending legislation?

Jesus challenges us to live a different way of life, and Pope Francis has challenged us to love and care for all life…from the unborn, the elderly and the sick to the homeless, the imprisoned, the marginalized and the refugee, to caring for our common home, the earth. It is a tall order and truly a way of living on this planet, a way of being in relationship with all of creation. Falling in love with God and with “the other” and with the earth it-self! It is nothing less than inhabiting life afire with the love of the Holy Spirit and allowing the Holy Spirit to possess you and guide your every thought and action.

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

I believe that today’s Gospel seems to be a cautionary tale meant to warn us not to turn down the sacred invitation to the “Great Banquet” and at the same time it also challenges us in our ideas of just who is “good enough” to be invited. Clearly Jesus is giving the religious leaders a harsh warning, following on the last few week’s parables doing the same. The warning is twofold: they need to mend their ways and turn their minds and hearts to God, and that God’s invitation is broader than they think -- that the sinner, the tax collector and the prostitute are part of God’s reign as well! Jesus uses these parables to try and get across to the religious leaders that while they may be keeping the letter of the law they were missing keeping the spirit of the law. They were missing the point that all of the law and the prophets rests on loving God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves!

We as disciples of Jesus are called to reach out in love to all peoples without exception! We have to ask ourselves, as a nation to whom are we denying racial justice, good healthcare, quality education, a just wage, citizenship, a safe community, safe and adequate housing? Is there any person or group of people I tend to exclude or look down upon as having less value than myself? Based on this Gospel message, if I threw a dinner party who might I invite?

Blessings,
Fr. Tim

God has entrusted the vineyard to us to care for and cultivate, and to produce fine wine! And in the sense of the parable, the fine wine is not just for ourselves but for the owner of the vineyard too. Yet how do we care for the vineyard, and with whom do we share the fruit of the earth? Do we recognize who “owns” the earth and all it contains? Do we see ourselves as entrusted with a sacred trust or do we see the earth as something to be exploited for our own good, for our use without care of future generations without care of how the Creator/Owner feels for the land we abuse? Many questions! But at the core of them all I believe seems to be one of identity and relationship. Understanding our identity as the beloved of God, God’s daughters and sons, ALL of US and understanding from that identity flows our relationship! And it is this reality that then is to inform all of the actions in our lives….to live as the beloved of God!

But we find ourselves living in a vineyard filled with hatred and division, a place where everyone is out for themselves and what they can get out of life without any concern for how it hurts the other. Many businesses around the world overwork and underpay their employees forcing them to work in subhuman conditions for less money than it is humanly possible to live on. As a nation we proliferate the arms race and threaten war rather than sit down to talk of peace and mutual cooperation. We reel once again from gun violence, the largest mass shooting in our country, and already begin to fight against stricter gun laws to prevent such senseless acts of mass gun violence.

We claim that we value the dignity of all life and yet we imprison more people than any other developed nation, we own more guns per capita than any other nation and procure more abortions. We put more people to death and continue to deny basic healthcare to the most needy in our society while we round up productive, tax paying, undocumented women and men to send them back to countries where their chances of leading successful lives are far less than here.

The vineyard is not ours. It belongs to the Creator and we need to recognize that how we live on the earth and how we treat one another matters deeply to the One who made us and who made the vineyard!

On this opening Sunday of Respect Life Month let us pray for an end to all forms of violence and disrespect of human life from conception to natural death. Let us pray an end to systemic racism and bigotry, an end to misogyny and xenophobia and all actions that disrespect the dignity and sacredness of human life.

Blessings,
Fr. Tim