The Way Home

      During my 44-year career in Information Technology I would occasionally have to travel and be away from home for several days, sometimes even a week at a time. When our four children were little, I would sit down on the floor, hold each of them and tell them that I had to be away for a little while, but would be coming back to them very, very soon. That’s kind of what’s happening in the gospel for this coming weekend, the Fifth Sunday of Easter.

      The setting of that gospel is the Last Supper, the Passover meal that Jesus is sharing with his closest friends. He knows that he will have to leave them for a while. And he knows how devastated they will be by the terrible things that will happen.

      He sits down on the floor, embraces each of them, and promises to come back and take them with him to the Father. He uses the imagery of a house, his Father’s House to, describe eternal life with God. And he bewilders them by saying that not only do they already know how to get there, but they are, in fact already there.

      And bewildered they are. Everything they witnessed Jesus do for three years is simply not enough. It all goes over their heads. Thomas wants directions to the Father: a navigation system, or at the very least a roadmap. Philip wants sensory proof: he wants to personally meet and shake hands with the Father.

      They just don’t get it. What the disciples seek, they already have. The place they want to be is where they already are. Jesus himself is the map.

      The Way to the Father, the road to eternal life, is to live each day like Jesus lived his: with unconditional love and forgiveness; with compassion and inclusion for all – without exception. That, Thomas, is the Way to the Father; that, Philip, is the Father. Each of us is called to be an imitation, a carbon copy of Christ within all the circles of our life.

      Jesus gave us that roadmap. He made it clear in the parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew chapter 25, where Our Lord separates the sheep from the goats: “I tell you: Whatever you did or failed to do for the least, the most unwanted, reviled and discriminated against of your sisters and brothers, you did or failed to do for me.”

      Sunday’s 1^st reading from the Acts of the Apostles is also part of that roadmap. In it the early Christian community is called to love and serve all without distinction. There is no Hebrew and no Greek. There are only beloved children of God. Our 21^st century Christian community is still being called to love and serve all without distinction. There is no male or female, no white, black, brown, yellow or red; no gay or straight; no liberal or conservative. There are only beloved children of God.

      We are all the living stones Saint Peter speaks about in Sunday’s 2^nd reading. We have been called to build the Kingdom of God. We are the stones that God is using to build his eternal dwelling place in the here and now.

      Jesus shows us the way to eternal life. Christ himself is the Way. We are each called to be imitations of Christ, to be other-Christs. We are called to be Christ for our world.

http://www.deaconlex.blogspot.com

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

Lent: A Chance To Remember Who We Really Are And Where It Is That We Are Going

                 

      On Wednesday we will begin the season of Lent. These 40 days are a gift that the Church gives us each year: a chance to remember who we really are, and where it is that we are going.

      Franciscan Father Richard Rohr shares a story about a young couple putting their newborn infant to bed for the night in the nursery. Their four-year-old son comes in and says to them, “I want to talk to the baby!” They answer him, “Yes, you can talk to him from now on.” But the boy is persistent, “Please, Mommy and Daddy, I want to talk to him now, and by myself.”

      Surprised and curious, they let the young boy into the nursery and cup their ears to the door, wondering what he might be saying. This is what they heard their four-year old son say to his baby brother, “Quick, tell me where you came from. Quick, tell me who made you. I’m starting to forget!”

      And so is it with each of us.

      When God made you and me he embraced each of us like a mother would bundle up a beloved child to go out into the cold for the very first time. And like a parent might slip a little identification note into a child’s pocket, just in case he or she should get lost, God put a little tiny piece of himself inside of us. That little piece of God inside of you and me and every person who has ever lived is our immortal soul. And life, life, is the journey of our soul back home to its loving Creator.

      But something happens on that journey, usually around the age of seven, the age of reason. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and we become self-conscious. We get distracted by many kinds of fruit: the approval of others, the attraction of things, the desire for possessions, and the need for control.  And we start to forget. We lose touch with our soul and with God.

      Father Rohr calls this condition ‘Universal Amnesia’. We have forgotten who we really are and where it is that we are going. Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are meant to remind us that we are children of God on our journey home.

      As followers of Jesus we have the benefit of a map for that journey. That map is the Gospel. Jesus lays it out in detail in the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. And when the Pharisees asked him what they must do to gain eternal life, he summed it up for them and for us: “Love God with your whole heart and your whole mind and your whole soul, and love others — love others — as you love yourself.”

      This Lent, as we sacrifice some little pleasures, some things we really enjoy, let us remember who we really are and where it is that we are going. Let us sit before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and ponder how well we are following his map in the Gospel. And let us do this quickly before we, like that little four-year old boy, start to forget.

http://www.deaconlex.blogspot.com

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

It's About Much More Than the Letter of the Law . . .

        In the Gospel for February 16^th, Jesus says to his disciples: “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This was powerful and radical stuff back in Jesus’ day. It challenged the religious authorities and the local power structure. And it ignited a firestorm that would eventually lead to his arrest and crucifixion.

       The scribes were legal experts on the Law, the Commandments given to Moses by God; and the Pharisees scrupulously followed and held others to the letter of that Law. They were very big on rules and regulations.

      But Jesus tells them, and us, that it’s about much more than the letter of the law. It’s about mercy and forgiveness and inclusion and the choices we are faced with in everyday life. It’s about loving and honoring our neighbor just because he or she exists, just because he or she is a fellow child of God.

      Jesus affirms the Law, the commandments handed down to Moses: we shouldn’t kill each other, we shouldn’t cheat on our spouse, and we shouldn’t perjure ourselves.

      But he goes beyond that. He tells us that God’s law is not only a matter of external actions like killing, or committing adultery, or lying under oath. God’s law is also about what goes on deep within our hearts and minds. It’s about anger and hurtful words; it’s about gossip, bullying, hate and exclusion; it’s about lustful thoughts, and dishonesty in our transactions and our relationships.

      In the end, it’s all about the choices we make. The choices between good and evil that we hear about in next Sunday’s first reading from the Book of Sirach; and the hidden wisdom that St Paul tells us about in the second reading: the wisdom that God has implanted within our hearts calling us to know the difference between right and wrong.

      How radical was Jesus: “If you bring your gift to the altar, and when you get there you remember that another person has something against you, leave your gift at the altar, go first and make peace with that person, and then, and only then, come back and offer your gift.”

      Each night before we go to sleep, before we say our prayers, and each Sunday before we come to the Lord’s Table, let us look deeply within our hearts and ask ourselves if there is any unfinished business in our life, any anger, any dishonesty, any lust, any meanness.

      And if the answer is ‘yes’, let us go and make peace with the persons we may have hurt, peace within ourselves, and peace with our loving God.

      Jesus wasn’t kidding around or just making a suggestion. He really meant what he said.

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

We Are Called to be Godparents for Our World

      In the middle of our church, right next to the baptismal font, there is a very special candle. It is called the Pascal Candle, better known as the Easter Candle. It is blessed by our pastor at the Easter Vigil Mass and it represents Christ as the light of the world.

      When we baptize a child the priest or the deacon will take the child’s baptismal candle, light it from the Easter Candle, and hand it to the godparents. They in turn will take the baptismal candle and stand next to the child. This is very symbolic. It represents the responsibility of the godparents to carry the light of Christ to the newly baptized child, and to help keep that light burning brightly throughout the child’s life.

      In a broader sense the Easter Candle is also symbolic of our own job, the job of every disciple of Jesus, every Christian across the globe and down through history. We are called to be godparents for our world, to carry the light of Christ and dispel the darkness wherever we go.

      The readings for January 26^th, the third Sunday in Ordinary Time, speak to us about Christ as the light of the world and our own individual call to dispel the darkness.

      In the first reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us how the people of Northern Israel were enveloped by great darkness in the 8^th century B.C. Their land and their homes were destroyed by the Assyrian Empire, and they were taken away as slaves. But Isaiah promised that a great light would come to dispel the darkness. That light came in the person of Jesus. He began his ministry almost 800 years later in the very same region of Northern Israel where the darkness had struck. Jesus was the great light foretold by Isaiah. Christ is the light of the world.

      In the gospel that light calls the first disciples, the first Christians, Peter, Andrew, James and John to help dispel the darkness for the whole world and for all time.  It later called St. Paul and the people of Corinth that he wrote to in the second reading. That light is still calling. It calls every one of us.

      God has planted each of us somewhere in the garden of time and space. Wherever we are in that garden, we are meant to be instruments of God’s healing and love.

      Each time we go into our church, let us look at the Easter Candle and remember: we have been called to be godparents for our world; we have been called to carry the light of Christ; we have been called to dispel the darkness wherever we go.

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

We Are All Called to be Holy Families

            One of the really great things about being a deacon is that we can be married and have a family. Wanda and I have been a family for 46 years. Over the years our family grew into sons and daughters and grandchildren and in-laws.  It also grew to include several cats and a wonderful little beagle named Kate.

            When I was ordained a deacon my family grew again to include the members of our parish, and all those with whom I minister in psychiatric hospitals, in spiritual direction, and in support groups. I have been blessed to know and live the meaning of family.

            On December 29^th we will be celebrating the Holy Family. We look at the family of Jesus and Mary and Joseph and see the ideal of what every family should strive to be: a relationship based on mutual love, respect and trust. And today, in the third millennium, we recognize that there are many types of families. There is the nuclear family, and the extended family; the work family, and the parish family; and many variations of each. Wherever there is a human relationship built on love, there is a family. And whenever that love is unconditional, there is a holy family.

            Throughout his preaching Jesus calls us to love and forgive each other as God loves and forgives is – unconditionally without any strings. He calls us to never close the door of our heart to another person, even when another’s heart has been closed to us. Jesus calls us to be a holy family to one another. We are all called to be holy families, despite the drama and dysfunction we sometimes find ourselves mired in; despite the mistakes we inevitably make; despite the hurts and scars we bear and sometimes inflict. We don’t have to be perfect. We just can never give up, never stop loving, never stop reaching out.

            On this upcoming feast of the Holy Family, in this season of Christmas, let us examine the relationships, the families that we are, or once were, part of. Let us reopen any locked doors in our hearts and take the first step to reach out across the house, across the miles, across the years, even beyond the grave to heal any relationships that have been broken.

            With the grace of our loving God in our hearts, we can be that holy family we are called to be.

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Readers of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on Amazon.com:

Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Follow-My-Friend-Experiencing/dp/1456360728/

Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry

http://www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Work-Holy-Spirit-Spiritual/dp/1463518781/

Advent: A Reminder That It Is We Who Are On Our Way Back Home To God . . .

December 1^st is the first day of Advent. Traditionally we have seen Advent as a time of waiting for God to come to us. But Advent is really a reminder that it is we who are on our way back home to God; and that when our time on earth comes to an end, we will have to account for what we did and what we failed to do along the way.

The readings and gospels during Advent call us to wake up, to snap out of it and pay attention to our own readiness to stand before God. In the first reading on December 1^st, the Prophet Isaiah tells us to put away the weapons of anger and bitterness and to walk in the light of the Lord. In the second reading Saint Paul tells us to awake from sleep, to stop kidding ourselves, lying to ourselves about what’s important in life, and to throw off the works of darkness. In Saint Matthew’s gospel, Jesus calls us to remember and not repeat the mistakes of the people in Noah’s time. They were so preoccupied with their own wants and needs; they didn’t believe anything bad would ever happen, that they would ever be called to account. And then one day out of nowhere the flood came and wiped out their work, their preoccupations and their lives.

The Church uses the readings and gospels during Advent to help us recognize the transitory nature of much of what preoccupies and consumes us. None of it will last. This doesn’t mean that we become piously detached from everyday life and its responsibilities. We can still plow the fields and commute to work; we can still grind the flour and raise our families. But we can do all this in a mindful way that carries God’s love and mercy into all the circles of our life.

While most of what preoccupies and consumes us will not last, the one thing that will last is love. Throughout the gospel Jesus tells us that we must love and forgive others unconditionally: this includes those who are most in need, and those whom we may not like very much, and even those whom we have a hard time forgiving or embracing. This is the measure against which we will be held accountable.

Advent is our reminder that one day when we least expect it, we will stand before God to account for how much we really did love and forgive other people. Let’s not be like those people in the time of Noah. Let’s stay awake and be ready for that day. There can be no unfinished business.

http://deaconlex.blogspot.com/

Time

Jesus said, "All that you see here — the day will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone.”Will you and I be ready to face that day when it comes?

Next weekend we will celebrate the feast of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday in the Liturgical calendar and it marks the end of the Church year. The Church has been preparing us for this over the last few weeks with readings and gospels that speak about the last days, the end of time as we know it. 

We can look at today’s gospel as a prophecy about the end of the world. We can see it as foretelling a cataclysmic moment in human history when the righteous will be swept up to heaven in rapture, and the not-so-righteous will be swallowed up into hell. Or, we can see it as a wake up call, a reminder that, through our Baptism, each one of us has been hired by Jesus to be a construction worker, a builder, of the Kingdom of God — and time is running out.

No one knows how and when the world will end. What we do know is that time, our own unique individual time, will end some day. The end of the world will come for each of us at the moment we cross the threshold of life into death. And when our end time does come, we will be asked to account for what we did with the precious time we were given.

I believe that when we die each one of us will sit alone in a little room with God and watch the movie of our life. And in that movie we will see where we loved and where we failed to love. And sitting there next to God, the source of all goodness and love, we will judge ourselves on how much we loved, really loved; how much we forgave, really forgave; how much we helped others to find goodness and wholeness and healing in their own lives, their own unique circumstances.

The Church, in preparing us for the end of the year with these readings, is helping us call to mind our own mortality, our own inevitable end time. None of us knows how much time we have left. Each new morning, as we open our eyes, God gives us 1,440 brand new minutes to use. We can use them with love to heal our world and cherish our relationships with others; or we can waste them in bitterness and anger.

The great thing about the end of the Church year and the reminder about the end times, is that we still do have time — time to love, time to forgive, time to come outside of ourselves and be present to others. We have this gift of time to fix whatever is still broken in our lives; to heal any damaged relationships; to make ourselves whole.

Like Jesus says in today's gospel, "All that you see here — the day will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone." We don't know when the end of the world will come; but we do know that it will come for each of us. And when that day does come, all that will remain for eternity is the love we gave while we still had time.

http://deaconlex.blogspot.com/