Reflecting on 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14

When I was a young Catholic growing up in the warm parish community of St. Vincent de Paul in Denver, our favorite recess activity was to take our Saints Books out on the playground and horrify each other with the stories of their martyrdoms.  I think of that today as we hear that terrifying account of the torture and execution of the seven pious brothers (and their mother) by Antiochus Epiphanes IV around 170 B.C.

I used to know a lot more about how the saints died than how they lived.  Their deaths were so dramatic that I forgot to notice the faith statements of their lives.

Lately I’ve been thinking about Canada’s first canonized saint, André Bessette.  What a disappointing story.  He wasn’t devoured by Roman lions or skinned alive by Syrian emperors.  For forty years he just held the door open for people coming into Notre Dame College in Quebec.   And after his totally unremarkable death over one million people filed by his casket, weeping for this simple Holy Cross brother who lived his ordinary life with extraordinary love.

I guess that’s who  all the saints are: door openers.  Something about their lives, and sometimes their deaths, opens a door for us so we can see Jesus more clearly.  And on the day of our own deaths Jesus himself will open the door for us, for as today’s Gospel tells us, “he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What saint, living or dead, opens the door for you to see Jesus?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 19:1-10

Oh, Zaccheus.  We really get you.  Short in stature and huge of heart, you couldn’t hear or see through the crowd.  The Jesus whom you longed to know was here!  Right here in Jericho!  So you climbed straight up that sycamore in order to see him whom your heart already loved.  Your story inspires us still, and so we have the courage to pray:

From The Life of Jesus in Nazareth, 1908

Find us, Jesus, as we rise and pray our Morning Offering, as we care for children and parents, as we strap on our sneakers and go to the gym, as we give everything we have to our jobs and our families, as we make our examen before falling asleep.  Find us, Jesus, as we hear the baby cry and leave our warm beds, as we stand firm against the strong wills of our unformed teenagers, as we look at the same photo album a thousand times with our parents who suffer from Alzheimer’s.

Find us, Jesus, as we navigate the path back to peace after an argument, insight after a humbling experience, faith after a time of doubt.  Find us, Jesus, as we process together to receive you in the Eucharist, then to see you at every table throughout the week.

Find us today, Jesus.  See us in that sycamore.  Call us by our name.  Invite yourself to our house for dinner tonight.  Please, Jesus.   AMEN.

We are gifted with a question at the ground of our being. And even in the worst of times, we climb trees to find out what the answer might be.  (John Kavanaugh, S.J.)

My dear friends Mary Frances and Bill Jaster inspired this column.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways do you seek Jesus?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 2 Tm 4:6-8, 16-18

It’s frustrating not to know more about the world of Jesus and St. Paul.  But there is a clue in the second reading today, an actual insider’s joke from St. Paul (or one of his disciples) to the church headed by Timothy in Ephesus.

Nero's Olympics

“I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  And from now on, the crown of righteousness awaits me.”  Hmm.  Why does he use the image of an athlete competing in a race, finishing it and wearing the crown?  Could it be that Paul, from his chains, is sending along a little joke about the crazy man on the throne, the dreaded Emperor Nero, the one who would be his executioner?  I think so.

By the time this letter was written the whole Roman Empire was laughing at Nero because, at the Olympics in the year 67, he actually bribed the judges to let him compete.  He entered himself in six races and, guess what, won every one of them (no competitors allowed). And when he fell off his chariot in the race against himself, he still won and got to wear the victor’s wreath and process around the stadium to thunderous applause-on-demand.

Thanks, St. Paul.  All these millennia later, we still get the message.  Unlike Nero, we’ll run the real race and we’ll finish it.  We’ll keep the faith.  And at the finish line, with our last breaths, we will reach for Him who has forgiven us.  And the heavens will rejoice that another set of sinners has been lifted onto the Winner’s Podium, to be crowned on high with eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Special thanks to my friend Thomas Smith for the background information given in this column.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How do you feel you are doing in “running the race” of faithfulness to your baptismal vows?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Exodus 17: 8-13

Last Sunday I was giving a talk about biblical history.   I had a big, heavy burlap chart that needed two people to hold it.  About ten minutes into this lesson Fred, dropping his arms (and thus the chart) said, “Will Aaron be coming soon?”  And the class, very biblically literate, erupted in laughter, recalling this story today from Exodus about Moses’ arms being held up by Aaron in the heat of the battle.

Victory, Oh Lord Painting by John Everett Millias 1829-1896

I looked at the couple I had recruited for the chart-holding task.  Their arms were aching, but they had dutifully stretched that chart across the room until they just couldn’t hold it anymore.  They, and hundreds of others, have been holding up the good works of the Church all their lives.

Afterwards, the doors of the hall burst open and a group of beautiful young adults came rushing in, hastily setting up the cots for a number of homeless families who will be staying at the parish this week.  They are part of a whole army of parishioners who will hold up the arms of these struggling families, providing friendship, food and shelter for them as the adults go to their jobs or look for work this week.

My cousin Maureen has a long list of people for whom she prays, every single day.  The years come and go, but she is always there, like the widow in Luke’s story today, holding up in prayer those who are sick, or jobless, or divorcing, or grieving.

Will Aaron be coming soon?  As I look at the faithful work of the Church around the world I can confidently say that he is already here.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

How are you helping to hold up the arms of the weary?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 17:11-19

Do you have a certain time in your life that is so indelibly marked in your heart that you return to it almost daily?  For me that time is the fall of 2007, when a staph infection took me to the very limits of my strength.  Those horrible months are all stamped in my memory: the screaming pain, the overwhelming nausea, and the second-by-second waits for the medication to start working.  Those flashbacks return to me now, in this gorgeous fall of 2010, through the distinct sensory messengers of cooling days, leaves changing, and darkness descending earlier.  And this is what that suffering has seared in me:

One returned and thanked him

Utter delight, every single time I drive myself anywhere in the car.  Almost unbearable pleasure at the smell of apples falling from the trees. Laughing out loud as I walk by myself down the block in less than a minute, remembering the agony of trying to take even five steps at a time.  The ecstasy of walking into the grocery story.  The heavenly touch of those who love me.

But I think the most delicious experience of all is remembering, the endless remembering, of being brought back from the depths by the living Body of Christ―the hundreds of friends and family who took care of me through it all.   There can never be enough words of gratitude.  But it’s kind of a “cellular gratitude”.  It’s not anything conscious.  Pain dug a well that is now filled to overflowing with astonished gratitude.  Like the cured Samaritan leper, I will give thanks while I live.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Have you reached a place of “cellular gratitude”?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14

There’s an incendiary sentence in this week’s second reading from 2Timothy: “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God bestowed when my hands were laid on you.”  Those of us in Colorado and California have had more than enough “flames” this season.  One hundred and sixty nine Boulder families were recently displaced when flames, whipped up by winds, darted from house to house, destroying homes and hundreds of acres of land.   It is the most costly fire in Colorado history.

Beautiful Zeenat. She’ll be President someday.

But it does give one pause.  How quickly, how ravenously a fire can consume anything in its wake.  A fire starts out quietly (in this case in a fire pit) and then builds volume as it spreads.  And it’s just that kind of fire that the author of the letter to Timothy is encouraging!

I’ve seen lots of those kinds of fires.  Twelve years ago my brother Marty pointed out a little girl in his inner-city Math class and said, “This kid will be President someday if somebody will just give her a little help.”  Last year, at age 18 and a first-year college student, she wowed the benefactors at the Seeds of Hope gala with her poised and thoughtful reflection on the many mentors who supported her as she navigated her way through elementary school and high school.  She’ll probably be President of her own non-profit someday.  She will undoubtedly spend her life stoking the same fires of compassion and justice that were darting around her during those difficult years.

Send forth the fires of your justice, God.  And let each one of us fan the flames of radical kindness and goodness into a fire that can never be extinguished.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

Can you remember a kindness that one person extended that grew into a larger “firestorm” of good?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 16:19-31

As I read this story today about starving Lazarus and well-fed Dives, I stop and look out our window.  Rows and rows of luscious greens, bursting with cucumbers and tomatoes and green beans, fill our backyard.  How, I wonder for the millionth time, could Lazarus have ever been hungry?

We lost our clothesline to the cucumbers.

Two years ago we gave our prickly, neglected backyard into the care of an urban gardening co-op called Farmyard. Then we sat back and watched these talented, hard-working young people turn our little yard into the Garden of Eden.  This is the season when God must love to say, “See what I can do?  The earth is mine, and all the fullness thereof” (Ps. 24:1).

I confess that until two years ago I never noticed where food came from.  And now, one hundred people are eating from the riches of the long-neglected soil just outside our window!  But, since God is so unbelievably generous, why are there still hungry people all over the globe?  For that matter, why was Lazarus hungry in the very same city where Dives was over-fed?  Maybe one answer is found inside the Gospel, where Dives, the former rich man who is now in torment, still thinks of Lazarus as his inferior, one whom God should command down to his netherland to cool his burning tongue with water.  Ha!  We can imagine Lazarus’ response: “Not ‘til hell freezes over.”

The seeds of entitlement, class distinction, geographic advantage are buried right there in the story, waiting for us to notice them and be converted once again to the new heaven and earth that the God of the harvest demands.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

In what ways are you partnering with God to feed the world?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 16:1-13

Hi everybody.  It’s me, Jesus.  Sorry about that parable today.  I know, all of you who own your own businesses want to know why it’s okay for that steward to cheat his boss like that.  Here’s the thing: if you had lived in the Middle East in the First Century you would have laughed and applauded my brilliance when I spoke that parable.

The Shrewd Stewart Art - work of Kazakhstan Artist, Nelly Bube

My prophet Amos had it so right.   I love that part where he called out those vendors and merchants for the religious hypocrites they were.  Sure!  Hurry up and get these religious observances over so we can start cheating the poor and trampling on the needy.  See, that’s what I was getting at in my story all those years later.  It takes a lot of energy and cunning to steal and exploit people.  (These days I’m especially thinking about the murderous drug cartels in my beautiful, Catholic Mexico.  And all the drug abusers north of the border who keep them in business.)

See, the steward was stealing from his master, and when he knew he was getting fired he used the same cunning to start making friends with the very people he’d been cheating for years.  Think how much hard work it took for them to pay the master in all that olive oil and wheat, and he was taking a huge chunk off the top!  So he canceled out his huge commission, which made their debts so much less.  It was like he knew he was on a sinking ship and he decided to give all his stuff away to the guys manning the lifeboats.  Now that’s smart!

So, the moral is: make friends with the poor, the beloved of my Father.  Look at me.  I was so poor I was buried in a tomb that belonged to somebody else.  No problem.  I knew I wouldn’t be staying long.  And you’re not long for the grave either, every one of you who loves me and recognizes me, as Mother Teresa said, in my distressing disguise of the poor.

Of course she’s here.  Where else would she be?  You should have seen all her friends up here opening those gates when they heard she was coming. Happy 100^th birthday, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Sharing God’s Word at Home:

What energies are you harnessing to do good?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 15:1-32

Even though we live in a religious country with a strong religious heritage, the very core of religious faith―that a loving God actually exists and actually longs for communion with us―seems to elude us.

Return of the Prodigal Son (Rembrandt) c.1669

And so we’ve come around again to the great Lukan parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son.  (This only happens in Year C, where we heard the story on the Fourth Sunday of Lent and again today.)  What will it take for us to really hear that the Hound of Heaven will chase us through the alleyways of our lives in order to catch us and look us in the eye and say, for the millionth time, but didn’t you know that everything I have is yours?

So let’s let Francis Thompson, tortured opium addict and believer in God’s mercy, remind us once again:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him….

I wonder.  Do you suppose that Lost Sheep was watching in the canyons to see if the shepherd would really leave everything to find her?  How delicious that must have felt, to hear him calling for her, and hear the relief in his voice when she stepped from her hiding place and he wrapped her up in his arms and carried her home.

Hey, do you know someone who’s ready to be found?  It’s not easy to step out of the dark canyon.  It takes a lot of humility to admit that we are loved that much.

Sharing God’s Word at Home

Do you recall a time of being “found”?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Reflecting on Luke 14:25-33

Okay, did Jesus really say we have to hate everybody we love in order to be his disciple?  Isn’t that completely out of character with everything we know about him?

Paul writing to Philemon about his slave Onesimus

First, the better translation for “hate” is “to love less than”.  Am I willing to love my own life less than I love being wrapped in the mystery and grace and healing love of Jesus?  Oh yeah.  Because it’s a win-win.  When I yield to the stronger-than-death love of Christ I find my life all over again, hidden and made richer through my day-by-day encounter with his Spirit.  How could I ever love my life if it were apart from him?

But look out.  A life in Christ means the status quo is out the window.  For example, the tribal codes of honor and shame that kept sons and daughters in perpetual debt to their parents were dismantled by Jesus’ invitation to follow him instead.  In that fascinating second reading today Paul reminded the Christian slaveholder Philemon that his slave Onesimus had been baptized, and was now his brother in Christ.  Wow!

So, loving Jesus more than we love slavery, family ties that welcome no stranger, religious restrictions that keep us forever bound up in guilt and unworthiness?  You bet.   That’s the liberating message of this difficult Gospel today. The disciple of Jesus hates everything that keeps a grudge going, a door closed, and a social status in place that, when the ship is going down, keeps some down in steerage while the rest of us get the lifeboats.

So I get it now.  That message is completely in character with everything we know about Jesus.

Sharing God’s Word at Home

Is there something you need to “love less than” in order to have a deeper faith life?

What would YOU like to say about this question, or today’s readings, or any of the columns from the past year? The sacred conversations are setting a Pentecost fire! Register here today and join the conversation.

I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).