Holy Thursday

A reflection on the readings for April 21, 2011

            What was in the mind of Jesus the night before he died?  What was in the mind of Jesus when he gathered with his apostles for that first Holy Thursday meal?  Those are questions that were asked some years ago by a Jesuit, sacramental theologian by the name of Tad Guzie.  Among Guzie’s classics are The Book of Sacramental Basics and Jesus and the Eucharist.  In Jesus and the Eucharist, Guzie said that if we want to understand the Eucharist, we have to get into the mind of Jesus as a Jewish rabbi on the night before he died.  Only then can we understand the gift he gave us in the Eucharist, at that Last Supper.

Guzie said that too many Catholics have grown up understanding the Eucharist as a holy object or understanding the Eucharist magically; that is, the priest has the power to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus, a power not shared by other people.  Guzie, in Jesus and the Eucharist, said, to understand the Eucharist, we need to remember who else hosted a meal in which bread and wine were central.  It was the high priest and king, Melchizedek, sharing a meal of bread and wine with Abram, in Genesis 14, after Abram had been victorious in warfare against a king threatening God’s people.  Abram obviously later became Abraham.  After this, God made a covenant with Abram calling him to lead God’s people.  Guzie suggested that in choosing bread and wine for a meal, Jesus was indicating to his Jewish apostles that somehow the covenant with Abraham was being fulfilled and made new in and through Jesus.  Jesus chose bread and wine very deliberately. 

Also, Melchizedek was the king of Salem, meaning the king of peace.  Jesus was also probably making a parallelism with Melchizedek that He, Jesus, was the new king of peace.

Why did Jesus chose to eat a meal with his apostles?  Meals were central in the ministry of Jesus.  Jesus fed 5000 people through his multiplication of 5 loaves and 2 fish, a miracle that is reported in all 4 of the gospels.  There is another multiplication account in both Matthew and Mark, in which Jesus feeds 4000 people by multiplying  7 loaves and a few fish.

In Dining in Kingdom of God, Eugene LaVerdiere said the gospel of Luke is essentially about meals and the Eucharist.  LaVerdiere said that Luke’s gospel is made up of 10 meals in which Jesus dines.  In 10 meals, Jesus ate with different kinds of people.  In the first seven meals, Jesus ate with loved ones, like Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.   He also ate with people whose morality was doubtful, like Zacchaeus.  He ate with sinners as well as with self- righteous Pharisaical people.  Sometimes the meals were formal, and sometimes they were informal.  The first 7 meals led up to the 8th meal, which was the Last Supper.  In the previous 7 meals, Jesus played the role of preacher and teacher.  At the Last Supper, he was host and servant.  The Last Supper, in turn, led to the final 2 meals:  the first on the journey to Emmaus and finally with the disciples in Jerusalem.

The last two meals are decidedly Eucharistic in nature.   Jesus has risen and has become transformed into a new dimension of being.  He is at once with God in heaven, and He is really present in the breaking open of the Word and the sharing of the food.  In the last 2 meals, Laverdiere says that Jesus, the risen, transformed Lord. is also still really present to us. 

            Back to the question, “Why did Jesus choose a meal for his final night?”  It was through meals that ancient peoples experienced oneness with God and oneness with each other.  In the animal sacrifices of the Jewish people, first the animal would be burned with smoke arising to God, as the people sought forgiveness from sin.  Then the animal would be eaten, symbolizing feasting with God.  Jesus gave us the Eucharist so that we might feast with God.

            Why did Jesus use the words body and blood?  Guzie said it is a Jewish expression that refers to the very self.  Jesus, in his ministry and in his death the next day, gave himself, his very self, to people of all ages everywhere. 

Why did Jesus choose a Passover meal for the gift that he gave to us?  It all goes back to the notion of memory in Jewish culture.  When the Jewish people ate the Passover meal, they remembered the past event of Moses leading the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt to liberation and freedom and on to the Promised Land.  In remembering those past events, the Jewish people believed those past events became present again; and they became one with Moses and the people liberated from slavery in Egypt.  They entered into a holy communion with the mystery of the Exodus. 

Jesus, in effect, was announcing a new Passover.  The next day, by his death, and through his resurrection on the first Easter Sunday, Jesus led the human family from the bondage of sin and death to new life and eternal life.  When Jesus told his disciples and tells them today “Do this in remembrance of me”, he is encouraging us to engage in the Jewish dynamics of remembering and making present again saving, past realities.  When we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember and become one in the mystery of Jesus living, dying, and rising.  We become one with him, and we become one with each other in the mystery of living, dying and rising.

            Back to the issue of eating and drinking the bread and wine.  Ancient people became one with mystery by sharing a meal and taking the food that represented the mystery into themselves.  We become one with Jesus, we become one with each other, by consuming the bread and wine which we believe are his body and blood.

Saying the words body and blood separately was Jesus’ way of indicating his death would be violent, his body would be separated from his blood.   

            Tad Guzie called us to an informed, adult understanding of the Eucharist.  He called us away from objectifying the Eucharist, or viewing it magically to try to understand what Jesus was attempting to do in giving us this gift.  Guzie gave us a dynamic, process view of celebrating the Eucharist.

            On this Holy Thursday night, let us keep in mind what the synoptic gospels and Paul tell us that Jesus did at the Last Supper.  He took bread and said, “This is my body.”  He took a cup of wine and said, “This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant that will be shed, so that the sins of many will be forgiven.”  Jesus, in effect, after his cleansing of the temple, was abolishing the need for animal/temple sacrifices.  His total giving of himself, his revelation of Resurrection on the other side of death, all to be remembered and celebrated at the Eucharist, replaced the repeated sacrifices of the Jewish culture of the time.

Let us keep in mind also that John’s gospel does not have Jesus saying, “This is my body, this is my blood.”  Rather, after a multiplication of 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed 5000 people (again indicating that God wants to feed his hungry people), Jesus engages, in John’s Gospel, in the Bread of Life discourse.  He says in 6:35, “I am the Bread of Life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.”  He says in 6:51, “I am the Bread of Life, whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  There is a very deliberate sacramental theology in those two verses from John 6.  In 6:35, we are told we are to come to Jesus in a personal, communal relationship.  This coming refers to conversion, conversion to Jesus and his way of life in the Reign of God.  6:51 indicates that we celebrate conversion, grow in conversion, nurture our conversion journey by eating the Bread of Life as individuals and as a community.  Unfortunately, Catholic culture historically has lost this connection between conversion and the celebration of sacraments.  As Guzie indicated, for so many people, sacraments have become holy things that we receive, rather than celebrations of and the nurturing of spiritual conversion and spiritual transformation.

John’s Eucharistic theology is continued in John 21 when Jesus mandates Peter to feed and tend his sheep three times.  In John’s gospel, disciples come to Jesus, eat the Eucharistic meal, and then go and tend to and feed a hungry world, in servant leadership. 

            As we get ready for the implementation of the new Roman Missal next Advent with a return to pre-Vatican II, Latin sounding language, let us keep in mind the vision of Vatican II and the Sacred Constitution on the Liturgy.  We were taught by Vatican II that Jesus is dynamically and really present: 1) in the consecrated bread and wine; 2) in the assembly of people gathered to celebrate and pray; 3) in the proclamation of God’s Word from scripture, broken open in the homily; and 4) in the presider who leads the assembly in prayer and worship. The real presence is a multi-layered experience in the vision of Vatican II. 

            In the late 1970s, Tad Guzie left the priesthood and the Jesuits to marry a woman with whom he had fallen in love, Noreen Monroe.  At their wedding celebration, they added an important symbolic gesture.  In front of the gathered community of family and friends, they washed each other’s feet, indicating certainly they were attracted to each other, had passion for each other, but more than anything else had a self-sacrificial love for each other.  They imitated what Jesus did at the Last Supper and what Jesus calls us to do with the people in our lives:  “….you call me teacher and Lord.  If I have washed your feet, so also you must wash each other’s feet… (John 13:12-15).” 

On June 24, 2001, Noreen Guzie washed Tad Guzie’s feet and anointed them with perfumed oil.  He died afterward of colon cancer.  He was 66.  In addition to all that Jesus did at the Last Supper, he called us to become servant leaders, to become leaders who serve.  Tad and Noreen Guzie lived that challenge from the beginning of their marriage until Tad’s death.  Let us, on this holy night, commit ourselves to the foot washing, servant leadership that Jesus calls his disciples to always engage in. 

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

Built on Rock?

             In 1992, my mother and I bought a townhouse in a southwest suburb of Chicago. There were about 50 homes in the development that we moved into. The homes were built next to a wetland that was transformed into a beautiful park. During our first year there something happened to a number of the homes. People reported that their walls were cracking; their ceilings were cracking. They could not open their windows. Their doors would not close properly. After investigation by engineers, it was discovered that some of the homes were built on sandy, marsh-like ground that could not support the houses. The houses were literally collapsing because of the soil they were built on. Teams of engineers had to be brought in to reconstruct and support the foundations of the homes. Despite the hard work put into the reconstruction, most of the homes are still not the way they should be. The value of the homes has diminished significantly.

            When I hear Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew this weekend teaching us to build our houses on rock, that they might stand and endure, and to avoid building them on sand, which could not support them, I have a graphic image in my memory of what happens to houses that are lacking a good foundation. I know of people whose houses began to collapse for lack of good foundations. The image of the house in the gospel today stands for our lives. Jesus is teaching us that we must build our lives on rock, on solid foundations. We are challenged and invited this weekend to reflect on the foundations of our lives.

            Sometimes I have a thought; and the thought seems important enough to write down, so that I remember it. A recent thought that I wrote down was this:  “Most of my ultimates have not been ultimate.” One of my favorite theologians is Paul Tillich. Tillich had a term that he used to describe faith. He said that faith was ultimate concern. Consider those two words with me: concern – intentionality, focus, direction; ultimate – the non-finite, the transcendent, the divine. For Tillich, faith was and is building our lives on the ultimate, who is God. Ultimate concern is a way of saying that we need a solid foundation for our lives. Tillich suggested that such a foundation could only be God. My insight that most of my ultimates have not been ultimate is related to Tillich’s notion of ultimate concern. He felt that many people make non-ultimates into ultimates, or at least they try to. Such activity is equivalent to idolatry, for only God can be God.

            Some of us make work our ultimate concern. Others turn money or resources into their ultimate concern. Still others make the approval of others ultimate. Some make position or power their ultimate concern, and on and on. Most of our ultimates are not really ultimate. When we make a non-ultimate the foundation of our lives, we risk, metaphorically, what happened to the homeowners in my townhouse development. Without a firm foundation, our houses, or our lives, risk collapse.

            I have many of my own demons, so I do not mean the following to be judgmental. We have witnessed the meltdown of Charlie Sheen on our television screens recently. Sheen reportedly suffers from multiple addictions. Substances seem to have become the ultimate, the foundation of his life. This is true of anyone who suffers from untreated or denied addiction. What people in addiction remind us of is that the non-ultimate cannot be treated as ultimate. When we make the non-ultimate, ultimate or foundational we are risking the very collapse of our lives. In Sheen’s case, he seems to be risking career, fortune, family, and health to stay with his faulty life foundation. It is painful to watch him fall apart, perhaps because all of us in lesser ways have had periods in our lives, when we have tried to build our lives on foundations that were and are faulty.

            Jesus reminds us of reality this week in the seventh chapter of Matthew. He tells us that in each of our lives rain is going to come; floods will come; strong winds will buffet our houses, or our lives. It is the nature of being human to deal with struggles, difficulties, and pain. How we handle the struggles of life, the pain of being human, is largely influenced by the kind of life foundation we have chosen for ourselves and on which we build our lives. Jesus offers Himself as the foundation, the rock on which we can build our lives.

            How do we make Jesus, and through Jesus, Abba, and the Holy Spirit foundational for our lives? Having God as our ultimate concern necessitates, first of all, a decision. We need to decide that we want God to be our rock. We then need to work on a relationship with God, through Jesus, in the Spirit. This relationship develops and deepens through regular prayer and worship. Prayer and worship are the language and activity of conversion. They change the dominant images of our consciousness and lives. To have Jesus as our foundation we need the support of others. We need community. Disciples are a community of learners, gradually appropriating the wisdom and vision of Jesus, which is the Reign of God. We need, on a regular basis, to listen to the Word of God in Scripture. We need to engage in exegesis, which is a movement backward, to understand the times, the culture, and the intentionality of the author of a given passage of Scripture. We need also to engage in hermeneutics which is a movement forward, asking what a particular passage of Scripture is saying to us today. We need to reflect on our own personal lives; we need also to reflect on what is going on in the world around us. It is this marriage of exegesis and hermeneutics that results in the experience of revelation: God speaking to us today through the words of Scripture.

            Jesus indicates in the gospel today that the real challenge of making Him the foundation of our lives lies in acting on His word. He says in today’s gospel, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on rock… Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand… It collapsed and was completely ruined.”

            Have we decided for Jesus as Lord, as foundation of our lives? Are we trying to deepen our experiences of prayer and worship? Are we connecting with other faithful disciples who help us to grow in faith and spirituality? Are we striving to listen more deeply to God’s Word in Scripture and as it is spoken in our daily lives? Are we trying to live the values and behaviors of the Reign of God? Let us remember the words of Jesus in today’s gospel: “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one does the will of my Father in heaven.”

For years, I studied psychology at the Adler School of Professional Psychology. Alfred Adler and his followers spoke of life tasks which we need to address as we grow. The life tasks are: the self (developing a good self-concept); work (engaging in meaningful activity that uses our gifts and benefits others); friendship (having a network of relationships that supports us); intimacy (having someone with whom we are very close). They referred to the final life task as the cosmological task, that is, deciding on whether there is a God, and whether we want God to be part of our lives. This task was seen as almost getting a picture frame for the portrait of our lives. This is simply another way of expressing the possibility of having God through Jesus as the rock of our lives.

            Moses warns us in the book of Deuteronomy this week to not “turn aside from the way I ordain for you today to follow other gods.” He is cautioning us to avoid the mistake of idolatry. He is inviting us to build our lives on the true ultimate concern.

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan
pbrennan@theclareatwatertower.com

This week marked the 30th anniversary of HORIZONS, a radio program that I co-host with Dawn Mayer.  Thanks to the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, we are on the air every Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m. on 560 AM and at 11:00 a.m. on 1160 AM.

Join me for a Lenten Parish Mission at St. Thomas the Apostle in Naperville on March 14-16.  Visit www.stapostle.org for more details.

Tough Decisions

         Anthony Ruff, O.S.B. is a Benedictine monk and a professor of liturgy.  He recently sent an open letter to the United States Catholic Bishops on some forthcoming liturgical changes to be implemented next Advent within the United States.  Ruff wrote:

 “Your Eminences, Your Excellencies: With a heavy heart, I have recently made a difficult decision concerning the new English missal.  I have decided to withdraw from all of my upcoming speaking engagements on the Roman Missal. …After much prayer I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal with integrity….I love the church; I love the sacred liturgy…but… my observation of the Holy See’s handling of scandal has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church…The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church.  When I think about how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done…how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops…how much deception and mischief have marked this process…I weep…I am sorry for the difficulties I am causing others by my withdrawing, but I know this is the right thing to do. Peace in Christ, Father Anthony Ruff, O.S.B.”

            When I read this open letter I was reminded of Martin Luther in his confrontation with the church for selling indulgences that promised freedom from punishment for sin by giving the church money.  Luther expressed his disagreement with this church practice, largely popularized by Dominican priest, John Tetzel.  For his stand, he was excommunicated by the Pope and declared an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  At a trial that he had to endure, Luther said this: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.  Help me, God. Amen.” Anthony Ruff and Martin Luther are examples of people who know that sometimes we must make important decisions, important choices. 

         I was touched recently by an admission made by ex-FOX News anchor Laurie Dhue at a prayer dinner last week.  Dhue, who has appeared on CNN as well as FOX News, admitted to the audience that she was a recovering alcoholic.  Though she frequently performed very well on the air, she admitted, “Yes, I would drag myself into work, deeply hung over.  I was cheating my employer and God. I thought I had to drink myself into oblivion several times a week…I really thought I had to live that way.  I suffered in silence.  I lived in constant fear.  On the inside I was dying…I lived with shame and guilt and a lot of terror.”  She admitted that one day she looked in the mirror, “I did not recognize the woman who was looking back at me.”  She knelt down and prayed, “It’s over God; but I need your help.”  Dhue told the audience, “God takes care of me because He loves me just as He loves all of you.  God brought me back to life.  Prayer, to me, is like breathing.”  She admitted in her address and her talk that times are rough, and that she has lost two jobs since getting sober.  Laurie Dhue is an example of a person who knows and has experienced how important choices and decisions are as our lives unfold.

            Monsignor Ken Velo has been a friend of mine since we were fourteen years old at Quigley Preparatory Seminary South at 77^th and Western on the southside.  Ken is a great priest, a great administrator, who now works for DePaul University and the Big Shoulders Campaign.  He also was executive assistant and secretary to Cardinal Bernardin.  He witnessed how Cardinal Bernardin, who did his best to be a balanced, reconciling leader, was ridiculed in his dying days by his fellow bishops and cardinals for being too progressive.  Before he died, the Cardinal asked Ken to preach the homily at his funeral.  As part of the homily, Ken looked at the gathered bishops and cardinals and encouraged them to learn from the life example of Jesus, John XXIII, and Cardinal Bernardin.  He added, “Stop trying to lead the church by always looking in the rear view mirror.”  Spontaneously there was an ovation interrupting his homily.  I felt so proud of Ken that day.  He had made a decision.  Ken could have been, should have been, a bishop; but in confronting the restorationist authoritarianism of the hierarchy present at Cardinal Bernardin’s funeral, he made a decision that his career in the institutional church ascendancy had come to an end.  We frequently talk.  Ken is a happy man of great integrity.

            I lead with these examples because what strikes me from the 1^st reading from the Book of Sirach, chapter 15, is the emphasis on choice, the emphasis on decision.  The writer says, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments.  They will save you. (God) has set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.  Before man are life and death, good and evil.  Whichever he chooses will be given him.” 

        Decision making has always been a very important part of my spirituality and journey of conversion.  It has been my experience that I have never grown psychologically, in psychotherapy, spiritually, in spiritual direction, unless I have made some very intentional decisions.  For us to grow, for us to experience conversion, sometimes the decisions we make necessitate what I have come to know as “a will to discomfort”. Sometimes we must decide to make ourselves uncomfortable so that we can grow, change, convert, expand, live truth, grow in integrity.  Sometimes we resist tough decisions.  Sometimes we suffer from blind spots in which we do not see who we are or how we are living.  Sometimes we fall into a pattern of work avoidance when it comes to psychological, spiritual, relational growth.  The breakthrough to all of those realities is the ability to decide. 

         Sometimes I believe we live as if life just happens to us.  Sometimes we live as if God is sending good and bad things our way.  The fact is we have much more ability to shape and form our lives than we sometimes admit; and it is largely through the power of decision making and following through on decision making.  Are resistance, blind spots, or work avoidance keeping us from decisions that are crying out for us to make that we might be reborn, that we might grow?

            Often what we are being called to decide for is spoken of by St. Paul in his 1^st letter to the Corinthians this week.  We are being called to live God’s wisdom.  He describes this wisdom as a wisdom for those who are mature, a wisdom that is not of this age; but a wisdom that has been revealed to us through the Spirit, a wisdom that has been embodied and enfleshed by Jesus Christ.

        We experience some of the wisdom of God in Jesus’ teaching today from Matthew 5.  This passage is a continuation of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is presented as the new Moses giving a new interpretation of God’s law.  Obviously Jesus was a man who made difficult decisions and choices, as evidenced in his offering such a countercultural vision and way of life which he did in his preaching and teaching, and continues to do with us.  In today’s passage, Jesus tells us that he has not come to abolish the law; he has come to fulfill it.  He has not come to call people to some sort of loose, lax way of moral living.  Rather he is deepening and radicalizing the teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures.

         He makes four statements.  He equivalently says, “You have heard this in the past; well this is what I say as I try to teach you what truly is God’s will.”

        His first statement has to do with murder: “You have heard that you should not kill.” In his spirituality of the heart, Jesus challenges us to go more deeply into our heart and attitudes.  What is the forerunner or the cousin of violence?  It is the attitude of anger.  While not denying our emotions, he challenges us to never use anger in a hurtful, destructive sort of way. 

        In teaching us that we ought to leave our gift at the altar, if there is someone from whom we are alienated and go and reconcile with that person before we do worship, Jesus is emphasizing the importance of ethics and morality over cult, ceremony, or worship. 

        He goes on to say that you have heard in the past that adultery is wrong.  In his spirituality of the heart, he challenges us to penetrate our attitudes again and avoid lust, the interior use of another person in our imaginations, in our desires, for our own purposes, our own pleasure. 

        He goes on to say that you have been told that you can give your wife a bill of divorce.  Jesus, again, in his spirituality of the heart, calls us to a high ideal.  Sometimes divorce can be too easy an answer.  Jesus emphasizes an attitudinal ideal – work on your relationships.  Try not to walk away from each other.  While the Jesus in Matthew seems to be addressing Jewish men in this particular passage, Jesus, in Mark, speaking to a non-Jewish audience, places the same challenge on women.  Women also are to strive for the ideal of living the covenant of marriage. 

        Finally Jesus challenges the practice of taking oaths and swearing by God or sacred symbols.  Again, in his spirituality of the heart, he seems to suggest that by using powerful language involving the divine, sometimes people can cloak or hide deception or untruth.  He calls for a fresh clarity in our communication with one another.  We are to say “yes” when we mean yes; we are to say “no” when we mean no.  We ought not to obscure things with oaths or swearing by things. 

        A discussion we have been having at The Clare concerns Jesus’ stand toward religion and whether Jesus intended to initiate the church as we know it.  The consensus in the discussion groups that I have been part of has been that Jesus pretty much stood against what religion had become in his own day: compulsive observance of laws, often empty ritual, the manipulation of people by religious leaders.  While Jesus certainly intended people to gather in his name, while Jesus dreamt, I believe, of a worldwide oneness among people in and through God, our discussions at The Clare, have expressed conviction that he probably did not intend the institutionalization as we know it today.  Rather, he called people to follow him, to make decisions that are often difficult and counter-cultural, and to live in a new way that is quite different from the values and behaviors of the political, militaristic, and religious domination systems that surround us.

In Jesus,

 Pat Brennan

Blizzard!

            Perhaps it is because I am turning a year older shortly, and perhaps it is because I have developed a few ailments over the years.  For whatever the reason, I felt apprehensive about this week’s blizzard, when I heard that it was on its way.  I live alone.  I was afraid of the feeling of disconnection that almost two feet of snow was threatening me with.  The ride home Tuesday afternoon was a white knuckle ride that took 2 hours and 45 minutes.  When I walked in the house, I practically kissed the floor.  As I was driving, I prayed with the radio off, “God help me to get home.  Don’t let me have an accident.  Don’t let me get stuck on this road.”  I did not get over 10 miles per hour on the Dan Ryan and I-57. Tuesday evening I could identify with some of the emotional words spoken of by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 today.  He speaks of his own “weakness, and fear, and much trembling,” a surprising admission of vulnerability on Paul’s part. 

Upon awakening on Wednesday to almost 20 inches of snow, I walked around the house to check out the damage.  I could not open the front door.  Almost a foot of snow was against the front door.  I could not open the garage door; and perhaps that was lucky for me; for there was a 3 – 4 foot drift waiting to collapse into the garage if the door were opened.  I had luck going down the steps of the back deck only to find myself knee deep in snow.   I walked to the front door with a broom, swept the foot of snow away, and opened the front door.  My first victory – I had two doors opened! 

            Then there was the crisis of walking the dog.  He did not like going out on the deck, so I had to create a path for him across the front lawn.  He did not find that very satisfying.  Eventually the street in front of my house was, and a man came to clean off the driveways.  For some reason, he skipped my driveway.  I ran after him as he rode his plow, and asked if he would please come back.  He was quite polite and said, “Where do you live, sir?”  I pointed the house out to him.  Not only did he clean the driveway, he allowed me to pull my car back so that the entire driveway up to the garage could be cleaned off.  Finally, I had a place to walk, a place to walk the dog.  Men came later in the afternoon to shovel the sidewalk.  They got rid of the drift against the garage door. I broke out of some of my disconnection.  I had access again to the world. 

I was able to get to work on Thursday.  I was so grateful during my disconnection that friends and family, through phone calls, checked on my well-being.  It made an aging guy with a few ailments feel a little more safe. 

My adventures on Tuesday and Wednesday were not as dramatic as many other peoples’ adventures.  Mary Ann Ahern from Channel 5 told about her ride home Tuesday afternoon.  Typically, she takes about 40 minutes to get to Evanston, her home.  It took her 2 hours and 40 minutes.  She talked about two episodes of fishtailing in which she lost control of the car.  Twice, people came to her rescue to straighten out her car and get her back on her way.

            I received a call from a single mom after the blizzard stopped.  She was tearful with joy as she explained, “I have such great neighbors.  Two men just came over and helped me and my daughter shovel our driveway.”  Like Mary Ann Ahern, like me, this single mom had a healthy experience of dependency on others for help in the middle of a crisis.  All three of us experienced generous people willing to go out of their way to offer assistance.

            There are so many other stories.  Literally hundreds of people trapped on Lake Shore Drive, sitting in their cars for twelve hours before being rescued.  These people were invited by generous people living in the high rises across the street to come into their homes to use their washrooms, to get something to drink.  Later those people were rescued and their cars towed so that Lake Shore Drive could be opened up again by Thursday.  Tens of thousands of people lost their power, lost phones, electricity, heat.  These people also became reliant on others for help, shelter, and rescue. 

            Perhaps God allows such natural disasters to occur to remind us of our deep need both for God and for the love and generosity of other people.  Blizzard 2011 brought out the best of what it means to be human in many of us.  We rediscovered our interconnection with each other, our need for each other, and our need for God’s help.  We rediscovered a healthy sense of dependency.  Many of us grew in the wisdom and spirit of Isaiah 58, the first reading this week.  God teaches us, “Share your bread with the hungry.  Shelter the oppressed and the homeless.  Clothe the naked…. Do not turn your back on your own.”  God says, through the prophet, if we relate to one another with such kindness, generosity, love and service, “…your light shall break forth like the dawn and your wound shall quickly be healed.  Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.  Then you shall call and the Lord will answer.  You shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am’….if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted, then light shall rise for you in the darkness and the gloom shall become for you like midday.” 

God, through the prophet, is saying that when we reach out to people who are oppressed or in pain, we share in the victory of salvation.  The original meaning of salvation is healing.  When we try to bring healing to others, God in turn brings healing to us. 

This section of Isaiah is known as Trito-Isaiah, chapters 56-66.  The Jewish people have returned to Jerusalem after decades of exile in Babylon.  God, through the prophet, is encouraging them to be gentle, kind, respectful, and helpful to one another in ministry and service.  If they do, they are promised great blessings as a people, as they move together into the future.

            This theme of connecting with our fellow person, being helpful to our fellow person, is continued in Jesus’ statements from Matthew 5.  Jesus calls us to become the salt of the earth.  He calls us to become light for the world.  He warns us about salt losing its taste or light being put under a bushel.  Jesus is calling us, especially by how we behave, to witness to what life in the Reign of God looks like.  You have heard that Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and others used to say, “Preach the gospel; use words if you must.”  I think a big part of Christian witnessing is enfleshing and embodying the gospel through deeds of love, mercy, and justice, not just talking about the Reign of God all the time.  We are to be salt and light for the world.

            Paul VI in his classic encyclical on evangelization Evangelii Nuntiandi, said that one of the most powerful forces of evangelization is witnessing.  He went on to say the only catechists of religion and spirituality that will be listened to in the future are people, who not only speak words, but rather people who also give witness to gospel values in behavior, people who walk the talk.

            Blizzard  2011.  Was it inconvenient?  Yes.  Was it scary at times?  Yes.  Will we be inconvenienced for a while with the amount of snow?  Yes.  But in other ways, it was a needed booster shot of what life in the Reign of God can look like.

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

Congratulations!

         The January 3 – 17, 2011 issue of America magazine contained an article, entitled “On Their Way Out”, by William J. Byron. The article is about what exit interviews could teach about Catholics leaving the active practice of their faith. Byron speaks of the dramatic decline in Sunday Mass attendance and the drift of many Catholics to Pentecostal and evangelical churches. Without a tool like exit interviews Byron, feels that church leaders are sleepwalking into the future or walking with eyes and ears closed to those they want to serve.

     The article focuses on many reasons why Catholics have left the Church, as reported personally to Byron: the pedophile issue; the exclusion of women and married men from the priesthood; dealing with a top-down organizational structure; mistrust of management; no influence in the selection of priests and bishops; continuing lawsuits against the Church; the absence of available priests for conversation and guidance and direction. The article says that the number of Catholics who say they have attended Church in the past seven days has dropped from 75% in 1955 to 45% in 2005. I imagine those numbers have declined even more in the past six years.

     The America article reminded me of some research that I have done in the phenomenon of mega-churches, like Willow Creek in South Barrington., Illinois.  It is no secret that churches like Willow Creek attract many former Catholics. What many people do not realize is that evangelical mega-churches, like Willow Creek, have a culture of discipline that they share with their active membership. The discipline involves the following steps: 1) connect with someone whom you know to be unchurched;  2) give witness to how Jesus and church have changed and improved your life; 3) invite the unchurched  person to go to church with you; weekend services are popularly known as “seeker services”; 4) as the unchurched person becomes familiar with seeker services, invite that person to a middle of the week event that involves additional worship and deepening religious education;  5) next, the new church member is invited to become part of a small Christian community;  6) in that small group, the emerging member is invited to discern his or her gifts, and use those gifts for ministry in the larger church;7) finally, the new member is asked to responsibly support the faith community on a financial basis, ideally through tithing.

     I would like to emphasize the importance that evangelical churches place on spiritual seeking. This approach to church life sees even the non-practicing person as a spiritual seeker. Even those not attending church have spiritual needs, that perhaps they are not even aware of. Reaching out to seekers and inviting them to seeker services are important first steps on the road to spiritual conversion and active church membership. In addition to valuing exit interviews in understanding better people who are leaving the church, the Catholic Church can learn a lot from evangelical strategies in reaching out to potential seekers. It has been my experience that most people are meaning seekers. In addition, most people are hungry and thirsty for community. I believe if more Catholics were empowered to reach out to and invite people to meaning and community, we could begin to turn around the number of people alienated from the Catholic Church. This presumes that our parishes improve; and that worship, preaching, music, and ministries are qualitative, effective, and helpful.

      Today in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus presents a vision of what life looks like in the Reign of God, what discipleship looks like. Matthew’s gospel was written for Jewish people converting to Christianity. The gospel is divided into five books, a reflection of the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus is presented as the new Moses, who goes up a mountain, sits down, and teaches the crowds. As Moses gave his listeners God’s commandments and called them into a covenant relationship with God, Jesus proclaims a kind of new law that His followers are to abide by.

     Jesus uses the word “blessed” in describing people who live the Reign of God lifestyle described in the Beatitudes. Being blessed seems to be synonymous with “congratulations!” or “happy are you!”  Putting these two notions together, Jesus seems to be suggesting to his listeners, “Congratulations on discovering true happiness, attitudes and behaviors that lead to true happiness.”

     The vision and lifestyle that Jesus calls people to in the Beatitudes are radical, revolutionary, and paradoxical in nature. Living the Beatitudes is something much more challenging and complex than many people who have left the Church have imagined or understood. The challenge of the Beatitudes might even scare off people who consider themselves spiritual seekers. Last week I mentioned Gary Wills’ book, What Jesus Meant. In one of the chapters of the book Wills speaks of how Jesus was opposed to religion as it was understood at the time. Wills wrote that Jesus opposed “… Any religion that is proud of its virtue… Any that is self-righteous, quick to judge and condemn, ready to impose burdens… Any that exalts its own officers… Building expensive monuments to itself… any that neglects the poor and cultivates the rich; any that scorns outcasts… If that sounds like just about every form of religion we know, then we can see how far off from religion Jesus stood.”

     What is Jesus saying in the Beatitudes? Allow me to attempt a contemporary translation. I think Jesus is saying: “Congratulations on discovering what true happiness is. Congratulations for discovering that happiness is not found in stockpiling money, wealth, and resources. Congratulations on discovering the importance of sharing gifts and resources, especially with the poor and needy. Congratulations on discovering the importance of distributive justice. Blessed are you; happy are you!”

     I think Jesus is saying to us: “Congratulations for discovering that happiness is found in mourning with, grieving with, being empathic with people around the world suffering and in pain. When we live such lives of mourning, ultimately we will be comforted.” Jesus teaches us that happiness is found in meekness, in managing any tendencies that we have toward anger, aggression, or violence. Jesus goes on to say: “Congratulations for discovering that happiness is not found in satisfying your own physical hungers and thirsts, your own quest for pleasure. Rather, happiness is found in living lives of righteousness and justice. Congratulations for discovering that happiness is found in being merciful, in pardoning one’s neighbor, in extending love and service even to one’s enemies.”

     Jesus teaches us: “Congratulations on discovering that happiness is found in being clean of heart, not using other people for self-gratification or self-aggrandizement. Congratulations for discovering that happiness that is found in making peace, in facilitating forgiveness and reconciliation wherever and however you can. Congratulations on discovering that happiness that is found in discerning and living the truth and God’s will. Congratulations if people disagree with you, talk about you, even try to hurt you for your attempt to live the truth and God’s will.”

     Jesus teaches us in the Beatitudes that if we live the values and the behaviors He teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, we discover the true meaning of happiness here on earth; and we will be blessed on the other side of death with eternal life. Our reward will be great in heaven. I think Jesus is also saying: “Happy are you when you have experiences that awaken you to your need for God and your fellow person. You have begun to discover the meaning of life.”

     To return to the notion of spiritual seeking, listen to the words of the prophet Zephaniah this week: “Seek the Lord… Seek justice; seek humility.”  Real spiritual seeking involves trying to understand Jesus’ challenging, radical teaching about Reign of God living. As Zephaniah teaches, only a remnant of people will choose to live such a counter-cultural lifestyle. The vision and lifestyle of the Beatitudes and other teachings by Jesus about the Reign of God seem absurd to the world. As Paul indicates in 1 Corinthians today, the Reign of God, especially the mystery of the Cross in the life of Jesus, and in our own lives, is truly paradoxical. God chooses and uses the weak, the lowly, those who count for nothing, to help with the emergence of God’s Reign. Through the Cross, he blesses us with new life here on earth and promises us eternal life in heaven.

            From Jesus’ perspective, are you, are we, truly happy?

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

Born Again and Again

“The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.  Upon those who dwell in the land of gloom, a light has shone.  You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing.”

 Isaiah wrote those words to reassure the people of Israel (the northern kingdom), and Judah (the southern kingdom), that God would not abandon them.  Last Sunday we heard Isaiah’s Emmanuel oracle in which he prophesized that a young woman would bear a child and his name would be Emmanuel, meaning God is with us.  Isaiah was referring to a child to be born to King Ahaz, who would replace Ahaz and be a king more faithful to Yahweh.  In these words from Isaiah 9 in the first reading, the promise of this new king is re-echoed.  Isaiah goes on to say: “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful.”  The early Christians took this passage from Isaiah, presumably speaking about a son of King Ahaz, perhaps King Hezekiah, and applied it to Jesus, and his birth. 

            For a while after I left Holy Family, I was one of the people truly walking in darkness.  William Bridges, the author of Transitions, Making Sense of Life’s Changes, and The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments, says that changes in our lives bring us into three crucial stages.  There are endings, in which we experience multiple kinds of losses.  I experienced many endings in leaving the parish.  They were very painful, but curiously the endings were not, are not, as painful as the next of Bridges’ stages which he calls the neutral zone.  In the neutral zone, our past is behind us.  There often has been significant disconnection.  We walk into a future in which we have no sense of where we are going, no sense of what God’s will or God’s plan might be, no satisfaction like the satisfaction we once knew zone, Bridges says that there is the next stage he calls new beginnings.  Often new beginnings have already begun in the neutral zone, but we/ I cannot see them; we do not recognize them. This Christmas 2010, I can honestly say, as I come out of the neutral zone, I know new beginnings. I feel that I have been born again. 

            My fulltime ministry is in a continuing care retirement community called The Clare.  When I first started working there, there were so few residents in the building, I felt like I was watching paint dry every day, but something has occurred in the two years that I have worked there, the year and a half that I have been full time there. 

I have always wanted to start a new parish and that is what I have done at The Clare.  The people are all older than I am.  Most of them are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.  Part of me resisted being with them because I had spent so much of my life taking care of my mother and father in their senior years.  The Community of St. Clare is a unique parish, a unique congregation.  I minister to Protestants. I make sure that their pastoral care and worship needs are met.  I do the same with Jewish residents.  I obviously care for Catholic residents. I minister also to atheists who came to The Clare simply because they believed that Franciscans would give them good care in their senior years.

Many of the people whom I minister to in independent living are vital, intellectual; and some of them are still working.  I do adult education with them around needs they have articulated:  anxiety, stress, depression, grief, morality, world religions.  One of the issues they are brave and courageous in facing is their own personal deaths.  We have had several sessions on last wishes they want their loved ones to know about concerning their final days and years.   

In the skilled nursing and memory sections of The Clare, I also spend time with people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, and others who are seriously ill.  Though it is not as populated as a parish, we have had significant deaths in the last year. 

The Clare has become a safe harbor for me.  I am needed there.  Not only do I care for the residents, but I have a ministry to every employee there. I am responsible for mission integration.  This involves keeping before all employees our mission, which is “to the respect the dignity of life through the creation of a caring community.” We have homes masses and small Christian communities, and faith sharing groups at The Clare. 

I used to feel good when children and teens would say “Hi, Fr. Pat” to me at Holy Family, but now when the maintenance people, and the cooks, and the administrative staff, and the other employees, and non-Catholics residents bump into me and say, “Hi, Fr. Pat”, I get that same feeling I once received from your children and your teens.  An elderly gentleman dropped off a Christmas card at my office this week which read, “Thank you for being our pastor.”  I have started a new parish and luckily in two years, I have not had to raise a nickel or do any administration.  I have been born again. 

            I have been born again in my work at St. Thomas the Apostle in Naperville.  St. Thomas is a wonderful parish.  In many ways, it is very similar to Holy Family.  It has the same kind of intellectual curiosity and sharpness that Holy Family has had.  I work with the RCIA there. I generate materials for small Christian communities. I am a consultant to various ministries.  I consult without having to do administration.  I have been born again.

            One of my greatest fears going to The Clare and St. Thomas was that I was computer illiterate when I left Holy Family, and at neither place would I have any administrative help.  Through the patience, generosity, and time of several people, I am now computer literate.  I can do email.  I am starting to do some of my own typing, and I can “google” with the best of them.

            I am back at Loyola University teaching on the graduate level.  I am teaching in the area of pastoral leadership and principle centered leadership.  I base a lot of my teaching on the work of Ronald Heifetz of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University who teaches that good leaders grow from a study of and discussion of their failures, learning from colleagues how to improve in leadership.  Before I came to Holy Family I was fired at the Institute of Pastoral Studies.  That Institute, now under new leadership, has invited me back.  I am born again.

            A health exam that The Clare demanded revealed to me some problems that I need to take care of relative to my health.  I need to exercise more, as I used to for years.  I am using this opportunity to better monitor my diet, what I take into myself.  I am very conscious that I have a sixty-four year old body that I want to take care of and not take for granted. I have been born again.

            For the first time in maybe seven years, I now have many evenings free without meetings, and I have been freed up to pursue intellectually challenging endeavors like watching reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” on TV Land. 

            Relative to relationships, I have developed new friendships, and long-lasting, enduring relationships have continued to be life giving.  This Christmas 2010, I am conscious of being born again.

            This being born again is not all the result of my own effort.  Being born again is an experience of the creative Spirit of God, and the powerful Spirit of Jesus Christ, his Son, at work in me.  I know if you look back at your own life, whatever chunk of months and years you want to look at, all of you have been born again, and again, also.  Where have you experienced losses?  Where have you grieved?  What transitions have you gone through?  What new roles have you assumed and found perhaps difficult or challenging.  What relationships have you both wrestled with and enjoyed?  Have any of you fallen in love?  Some here tonight are engaged to be married.  You know both the joy and challenges of beginning such a relationship.  You have been born again.  You are being born again.  Everyone in this church has known endings, painful endings, even more painful neutral zones, and then the confusion and excitement of new beginnings.  This Christmas 2010, let us all celebrate being born again, and let us keep in mind that the born again experience is not just the result of our own efforts, but rather it is the power of God, the power of Jesus, the power of the Spirit, at work in us. 

            I was alarmed by a study I read in the National Catholic Reporter recently on the state of the church in the United States.  The article was about an ongoing study by Tom Roberts, the editor of the National Catholic Reporter, entitled “In Search of the Emerging Church”.  The article studied, also, a conference in Florida in 2009 that culminated four years of study.  The conference was entitled “Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership” sponsored by the Lilly Foundation.  These two research efforts paint a picture of a church in America that is declining in numbers, with a priesthood that is declining in numbers, as well as aging.  The studies reveal powerful lay leadership emerging and wanting to lead the church in new directions only to be met by bishops in the United States who ignore their research and want to maintain the status quo of a dying, declining church.  From my office on the 19^th floor of The Clare, I look down on the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center, the old Quigley seminary with its dark and dirty medieval look; and I shake my head in sorrow.  The church is struggling to be born again.  The church has experienced painful endings.  The church seems lost in the neutral zone because certain leaders of the church do not want a new beginning.  The church is stunted in its process of being born again. 

            Obviously what this celebration is most about is the birth of Jesus Christ, His re-birth in us spiritually, and our being born again in Him. This season of Advent, and now the weeks of Christmas, challenge us, invite us, to a more deliberate relationship with Jesus Christ.  I have been born again over these months of endings, neutral zone, and new beginnings in awareness of my need for Jesus, my need for a personal and communal relationship with Him, my need for ongoing spiritual transformation and conversion, my need to better understand and to live what He meant when He preached and taught about the Reign of God.  Many times, I have had to invite Jesus into my life more deliberately over these past months for healing, for help, for survival, for rebirth.  I am reminded of the old spiritual that I have sung or spoken to you before:  “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.  Because He lives, all fear is gone, and I know He holds the future and life is worth the living just because He lives.”

He is and He is here.  That is what we celebrate Christmas 2010.

Christmas always points to another feast, and that is Easter.  The bottom line of the gospel of Jesus Christ is about the paschal mystery, about life, death, and resurrection.  God is constantly challenging us to pass through crosses to new life here on earth, and God will invite us to pass through the cross of physical death, inviting us to eternal life.  I have been sharing a book with the folks down at The Clare: Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms by David Kessler, an associate of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.  Kessler, who has worked with the dying all of his life, says that he has experienced so many people dying, who have experienced visions of people on the other side of death, or they have experienced themselves getting ready for a trip, or they have had the experience of being in a crowded room of deceased loved ones whom they recognize.  Two short stories particularly touched me in the book.  A woman told a story of her father contracting Alzheimer’s and having to be put in a nursing home, and then her mother developed pancreatic cancer. The woman made arrangements for her father with Alzheimer’s Disease to be brought from the nursing home to say goodbye to his dying wife, her dying mother. The mother, turned to her daughter and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that your father died?”  The woman felt that her mother was hallucinating and said, “Mom, Dad is not dead.  In fact, we are going to get him to bring him here, so that he can be with you for a while.”  The mother replied, “He has already been here.  He was here just a few minutes ago.  He told me that he had just died, that he had just passed over, and that I would be with him soon.”  The woman was called by a nurse to the door of the hospital room. The nurse said, “I don’t want to have to tell you this, but the nursing home called.  Your father died fifteen minutes ago.”  The woman’s mother died shortly after her vision of her dead husband. The purpose of the story was to lend believability to the truth that there is life on the other side of death. 

The final story is about a man named Bill.  Bill, a man in his middle years, was lying in bed dying, with his wife at his side. As the wife was rubbing his cheek and his shoulders, Bill stared ahead and said, “Mom, what are you doing here?  What a surprise.  I want to introduce you to the wonderful woman I met.  I adopted her two children and raised them with her.”  He turned to his wife and said, “I want to kiss you.”  She reported, “He kissed me like he did when we were dating.  It was a passionate kiss, not like the kiss of a dying man.”  He turned to his mother, whom he was seeing in a vision and talking with, and he said, “You know, Mom, I have loved this woman, and I have known she is the right woman since the first time I kissed her.”  Bill died a couple of hours later. 

We all will be born again in an ultimate and full way when God invites us to eternal life.  A significant part of the mission of Jesus Christ was and is to reveal this truth to us. 

Two studies recently found some interesting things about peoples’ attitudes and practices about Christmas.   In these two surveys, 89% of those surveyed give gifts at Christmas; 86% dine with family or friends; 80% put up a Christmas tree; 79% play holiday music. Only 58% say they encourage belief in Jesus Christ as Savior.  Only 47% attend church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  37% reported that Christmas is time for Jesus, a time for God. 

God has powerfully worked in your life and my life, helping us to be born again.  Emotionally, intellectually, and behaviorally, let us give ourselves to Jesus Christ anew, and invite Jesus anew into the manger of our hearts. 

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

The Joy of the Stillpoint

Elizabeth Edwards has died.  Cancer spread into her lungs and liver.  Her doctors told her recently that there was no reason to continue any treatment. She was told that she had only weeks or days to live.  Elizabeth knew great suffering in her life. With John Edwards, her estranged husband, she gave birth to four  children. First there were Wade and Catherine. Wade was killed in April, 1996, when he lost control of his jeep as he was driving to the family’s beach house. After this devastating loss, Elizabeth and John decided to have more children. Emma Claire was born in 1998, when Elizabeth was 48. Jack was born in 2000, when she was 50.

On November 3, 2004, the day John Kerry conceded defeat in the presidential race, Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. In November, 2006, she announced that there was no cancer in her at that time. She released a book in September 2006. The book is entitled “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength   from Friends and Strangers.” In this book, she focused on the death of her son and her battle with breast cancer. In May 2009, she released another book “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities,” further reflecting on cancer, her son’s death, and her husband’s infidelity.

In March, 2007, Elizabeth announced that her cancer had returned, that it was not curable, but it was treatable. On January 21, 2010 John Edwards admitted that he fathered a child with his mistress. Elizabeth separated from him and was intending to divorce him.

Elizabeth spent considerable time preparing her children for her death. She developed an amicable relationship with John Edwards to prepare him to be the primary nurturing figure in their children’s lives.  She told an interviewer that she did not fear death, because she already had the worst experience of her life: her son’s death. She said that death would be a passage way to seeing him again. She also expressed enthusiasm at experiencing God as God actually is—not just in the ways she personally imagined God. The theologian Paul Tillich spoke of this reality as experiencing “the God above god.”

Elizabeth posted this message upon hearing most recently from her doctors:  “You all know that I have been sustained throughout my lifetime by three saving graces—my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. The days of our lives…are numbered. We know that… But I have found that   in the simple act of living with hope….the days I do have are…all the more meaningful and precious.  And for that I am grateful.”

Elizabeth Edwards was a woman who knew great suffering; but she also was someone who displayed great hope, courage, and a quiet joy in the midst of her struggles.

Some of the chaos and pain of Elizabeth Edwards’ life is reflected in the Jewish people whom Isaiah addresses in today’s first reading from Isaiah 35. The book of the prophet Isaiah is divided into three sections. Chapters 1-39 were written by the original Isaiah. Deutero-Isaiah was written by an anonymous author to offer consolation to the Jewish people at the end of their exile in Babylon.  This work is found in chapters 40-55. Trito-Isaiah was written by a group of people influenced by Isaiah and his spirituality.  It is found in chapters 56-66, and was addressed to the post-exilic community.  Let us clarify the people and circumstances Isaiah 35 addressed.  The people had divided into two nations, the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah.  The Assyrians had conquered Israel. The Babylonians destroyed the temple and Jerusalem in Judah ; and led the people to exile in Babylon. .

Amidst all this pain and heart-ache, Isaiah nonetheless encourages the people to rejoice, to exult, and to have hope. He re-assures them that God will heal and restore them. God will likewise restore the ravaged land. Isaiah counsels: “Be strong…fear not … here is your God.”  Isaiah predicts:  the people  “…will meet with joy and gladness; sorrow and mourning will flee.” Isaiah’s words capture some of the hope and calm Elizabeth Edwards communicated in the midst of her struggles.

We hear these words of joy and encouragement on this third weekend of Advent, traditionally known as Gaudete Sunday. All of us share to some degree in the pain of being human as demonstrated by Elizabeth Edwards and the Jewish people of Isaiah’s time. We are being called to hope and joy, despite the circumstances of our lives, because of the ever new coming of Jesus into our lives. James 5 encourages us: “Be patient…until the coming of the Lord…the coming of the Lord is at hand.”  Indeed, the coming of the Lord is a present reality, not just a phenomenon of the past.

What is the nature of this elusive joy that these Scripture passages invite us to? As Christmas nears, are we experiencing joy and hope?  Do we  know what is involved in spiritual joy?

Two psychologists, Edward Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, have published a classic study on happiness, entitled, “Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.”  In their research and interviews,  they found that much of what people think will bring happiness, in fact does not.  Money and other material resources do not bring happiness. While such things can bring some degrees of contentment, there is a kind of money/wealth set-point. If people acquire much beyond their set point, it does not greatly add to their happiness. The Dieners found that happiness is had by people who acquire psychological rather than material wealth.

The realities that bring people psychological wealth and consequent happiness are: material sufficiency, health, meaningful work, satisfying and close relationships, and a livable spirituality. The season of Advent and specifically  Gaudete Sunday remind us of this last truth, that happiness is found in a renewed relationship with God, in and through Jesus Christ.

We are all in need of a foundational relationship with God through Jesus that becomes a kind of stillpoint in our lives. From that stillpoint we live, move, and have our being.   Jesus, His presence, his wisdom and values, our stillpoint becomes our source of joy, no matter what is going on in our lives. As Christmas nears, we are encouraged to invite Jesus and His joy more deliberately and intentionally into the center of our lives, into our hearts.

A new study, reported in the December issue of the American Sociological Review, adds to our understanding of happiness and spirituality.  The study found that attending religious services regularly and having close friends in one’s congregation are keys to having a happier, more satisfying life.  Chaeyoon Lim, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the lead author of the study, said that the social aspect of church attendance and the shared religious convictions of those who attend church contribute to a higher level of well-being compared with the non-religious. This is true if people even attend irregularly.

There is some opinion that happiness and joy are different. Some would say happiness is a more fleeting experience, while joy is a more abiding, convictional inner disposition.  Joy is a habit of the heart, the experience of habitual happiness.  Joy is quiet, inner peace and calm that comes from knowing God is with us and for us, and having a sense also of what matters in life. In Franciscan communities, like the Clare where I work, we have values that we are committed to and which we live. They are: respect for all people, dedication to people and mission, service in all that we do, responsible stewardship, and joy. The Franciscan understanding of joy is that it is an inner state of being that comes from giving to others, self-sacrificially from our hearts.

Different theories of spirituality have, over the centuries, given Christian discipleship a heavy, overly serious tone.  The fact is Jesus came to bring us joy.  In John 15: 11-13, Jesus says, “All this I have told you, so that my own joy may be in you…and that your joy may be complete… This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.”  Joy is found in selfless love, in imitation of Jesus.

John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus, in today’s gospel from Matthew, with this question, “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” Jesus answers indirectly. He almost seems to say: “It all depends on what you are looking for in life.” He goes on to say what He can do for people: He is the source of new vision for people who need to see things in a new way; He is new direction and movement for those who have become paralyzed in some way; He is healing for those broken in many different ways; He is enrichment for peoples’ poverty;  He can become a new way of interpreting, and perceiving life; and He is a source of new life for those  struggling or suffering here  on earth, and the source of eternal life as all of us, with Elizabeth Edwards , move toward the horizon of death.

Is He the One we are looking for this Advent 2010?  He does not promise us lives that are struggle free. Rather He offers us hope, meaning, and joy in the midst of all human moments and experiences.  Let us continue to seek His re-birth in our lives.

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

At first glance, this week’s readings seem contradictory and confusing, at least the first reading and the gospel. Amos is known as the prophet of social justice. In the passage today from Amos 8, God, speaking through Amos, documents some of the sins of people who fail to practice mercy and justice in their dealings with their fellow person. He talks about cheating people out of the value of their money, buying people in slavery, and selling products that are inferior. God says through Amos that He will never forget these acts of injustice.
Then Jesus goes on in Luke 16 to tell a parable about a steward who squanders the property of the rich man who hired him. The steward is confronted by the rich man, and it looks as if the steward is going to lose his job. He tries to create a scenario in response to the rich employer’s anger and vengeance. He calls in his master’s debtors one by one. He tells them to lower the amount of goods and resources that they owe to the rich employer. In the parable it seems like the conniving steward is doing one of two things: He is relinquishing his own commission that was coming to him for his stewardship; or he is actually cheating his employer out of money that is owed him, deferring to the people who are in debt to the rich man.
What is surprising in this parable is that Jesus seems to commend the work of the dishonest steward. In the storyline of the parable the master commends the dishonest steward for acting prudently. Jesus goes on to teach, “… the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” What is Jesus saying here? This is what I think is at the essence of Jesus’s teaching in this parable. I do not think he is encouraging us to embrace immorality and injustice. I think, rather, he is saying that the children of light, the disciples of Jesus, sometimes are lacking in passion for what Jesus was about: spirituality and the Reign of God. I think that what Jesus is advocating is that his followers develop some of the shrewdness, some of the innovation, some of the entrepreneurial spirit, and some of the passion that we see in people, for things of this world. We are to become shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about spirituality and the Reign of God.
Let me share a personal example that connects this notion of taking on some of the energy that we see in people engaging in worldly matters, and applying it to spirituality and the Reign of God. Some years ago a very big name in transforming businesses and organizations was Tom Peters. He still writes, but I do not think he is as prolific and productive as he once was. Three of his major works were The Search for Excellence, A Passion for Excellence, and Thriving on Chaos. Taking a chance, I once wrote Tom Peters, who made tens of thousands of dollars for his talks, to come to Chicago and speak at an evangelization convention that Dawn Mayer and I organized yearly. It was called the Jesus Day. I asked him to apply some of his principles from his excellence movement to the work of the church. Not only did Peters agree to come, he did not charge a fee. For hours Catholics and non-Catholics alike listened to the wisdom of Tom Peters trying to apply his wisdom to the work of the church. It struck me at that time that no one from the administration from the archdiocese attended that conference. The conference was largely attended by laity. There was no interest in what Peters might have to say about being shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about continuing the work of Jesus Christ.
As a result of my connection with Peters around that Jesus Day, I received a scholarship, along with another priest, to attend one of his training programs in California. He called these training programs Skunk Camps, the image referring to the need to, at times, raise one’s tail and skunk, or spray, organizations that are no longer effective or life giving so that they might be replaced by more effective, life giving ones. At one gathering, I tried to explain to a group of executives at the seminar, what I did at the Archdiocese of Chicago. At the time I was the Director of Evangelization. I told them how I tried to implement Paul VI’s plan contained in Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975, to renew active Catholics, reach out to inactive Catholics, invite the un-churched into the church, do better reach out to youth, connect evangelical reach out to works of mercy and justice, and to better use media and technology to evangelize. The executives began to respond to me, “We know what you do”, one said, “you are the director of marketing.” I displayed my ignorance, “Can you please tell me what marketing is?” They laughed. Another executive said, “Marketing is helping people get in touch with needs they do not even know they have yet”. Another said that marketing is nudging people from boredom or disinterest to curiosity, interest, want, and need; so that eventually they might “buy the product”.
I went on at that Skunk Camp to learn some principles that have stayed with me from Peters’ wisdom:
1. Love your customers. Without obsessive love of your customers, your customers will become someone else’s customers.
2. Always be innovative with your product.
3. Leaders ought to get rid of all symbols of power and act rather like coaches of a team. Acting like a coach, the leader needs to make the people involved in the work of the organization feel valued and appreciated. They need to feel that their gifts matter.
4. Effective organizations, Peter’s taught, must constantly be open to adaptation in the rapidly changing world that we live in.
My relationship with Tom Peters and my studying of his materials, I think, gave me a glimpse of what Jesus means in the gospel today. He wants us to be shrewd and innovative, entrepreneurial and passionate, about the work of the Reign of God and about the work of spirituality.
I think we need to practice such shrewdness and other values in terms of our own personal spirituality. We cannot give to others what we do not have ourselves. Jesus wants us to invest some of this worldly energy into our own spiritual development. Tribune reporter Jenniffer Weigel has a new book out entitled, I’m Spiritual, Dammit. I have only read a review of the book. It sounds interesting. She speaks of her own journey toward midlife, and in that journey becoming much more involved in becoming a spiritual person. She summarized five elements she has found important in the spiritual journey. Number one: Treat yourself. She says that you can be a better mother, daughter, employee, or spouse, if you do a little something for yourself. It is almost like putting your oxygen mask on before helping a child on the plane. Number two: She encourages us to talk to the deceased, to enlist the help of deceased loved ones with specific tasks. “Those on the other side”, she says, “want to help us, but they need to be asked”. Third: Look for signs. She said from a favorite song that a deceased loved coming on the radio to someone mentioning the person’s name out of nowhere – signs of the more than human are abundant, if you keep an open mind. Fourth: Trust that you are where you are supposed to be at every moment. Sometimes we have been put in places so that we can have needed experiences. Let go of control, she teaches, and doors will open for you. Fifth: Develop your intuition. Practice gut checks. Don’t doubt your first impressions. Trust what you feel. It is most likely your intuitive instincts.
A similar admonition to the development of even basic spirituality was written by Chris Mooney in the September 13, 2010 issue of USA Today. He said, in its most expansive sense, spirituality refers to an individual’s quest to discover that which is sacred. The sacred can involve experiences, places, people, and feelings of awe and wonder that come with a sense of deep unity with the cosmos. Mooney feels that all people, even people who have no adherence to religious creeds or institutions, have the capacity for such basic spirituality. Jesus wants us to be shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about the spiritual.
The spiritual does not just reside in individual experiences. The spiritual also refers to experiencing the sacred, the holy, God, in relationship with other people. I think Jesus wants us to be shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about our parishes, about our faith communities. Many years ago, theologian Avery Dulles summarized centuries of theology about the church in his five models of church. He said the church is a herald, a force that proclaims the good news of the Reign of God to the world. In many different ways the church is servant, healer to the world. The church is a sacrament, a sign to the world of the presence of a power greater than ourselves. We have named that power Father, Son, and Spirit. The church is an institution. Every organization has to have some structure, some organization, if it is going to exist and it is going to be effective. The church is mystical communion. The church is the experience of being connected to God, in and through connection with one another. Later on Dulles went on to add a sixth model in his book A Church to Believe In. He said that this was the truest model of church. John Paul II concurred with this view in his encyclical Redemptor Hominis. Both said, at the core, the church is a community of disciples. The church ought to be a community of learners, learning Jesus, living Jesus, learning the Reign of God, helping with the emergence of the Reign of God in the world.
Using Dulles’ models as tools today, I would like to suggest that one of things that is contributing to decline in the church is the prevalence of the institutional model. As I said earlier, the institution is needed for continuation and delivery in our mission of the Reign of God, but in recent decades the church has more or less ignored the other five models and has pushed, to a fault, the institutional model of church. This has resulted in the church leading with the trappings of power and control, which an increasingly democratic world does not buy into. I was stopped in a lobby of a building by a man about my age who knows that I am a priest. He said that he still goes to church, but he has been terribly troubled recently by official church pronouncements. He said not only is the church shooting itself in the feet, it is shooting itself in the back, and the church is going to continue to decline.
Let us work toward a church that holds the various models of church in a healthy balance. Let us especially emphasize that model that Dulles and John Paul II called the church of the community of disciples. We need to be shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about our churches, and about marketing the Reign of God and our faith communities. Part of the success of evangelical mega churches is they are not locked in institutional models, and they have invested in learning how to do what Jesus calls us to in the gospel today.
Before I close, let us get back to Amos, which is a clear call to social justice. I knew that many of the people I worked with in Inverness had trouble getting their arms around the call to justice. I invited a man whom I respect, Michael Cowen, who co-wrote Dangerous Memories, with Bernard Lee, to come to the parish to talk, especially to our small Christian communities, about learning how to do social justice work. Cowen told networks of small faith communities what he thought would be a good methodology. To begin, he taught, get your small group to talk about all the issues of mercy and justice that concern them. In a spirit of discernment, choose one that the group can agree to work on. Be specific in naming the mission that the group wants to do. Talk about how much time individuals and the group have to give to this mission. Talk about what the first steps of investment and involvement might be. Name a mentoring person or persons who could help the group get started in this justice mission. Some of those small groups began to work toward justice conversation and work. Some did not. Whenever a small faith sharing group just focuses on self-nurture, there is the danger that that group is going to implode. Often it is a sense of mission that keeps the group alive and growing.
This week’s scripture challenges us to be shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate about the works of mercy and justice.
As we move toward this midterm election coming soon, the second reading from 1 Timothy offers us another challenge. We ought not to just engage in Tea Party vs. Obama rhetoric. The first letter to Timothy says, “I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life…” The passage closes disclosing a style in which the early church prayed, “It is my wish, then, that in every place people should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.”
Following the lead of our fore fathers and fore mothers in the faith, let us pray for all in authority, that God’s Reign might emerge in our world. When it comes to the Reign and God and spirituality we are called to be shrewd, innovative, entrepreneurial, and passionate.

In Jesus,
Pat Brennan

I have developed a tendency that worries me somewhat. Sometimes I will put something that I really do not want to lose in a special place so that I will know where it is at, to be able to go to it with ease; but then I forget the special place, and I have to spend significant time looking for the special place and the object that I placed there. It might be mail; it might be keys; it might be money; it usually is my glasses. Sometimes I place things in places of safety and security and then I forgot what those safe, secure places were and are. Maybe there is nothing more to this than I should be checking out the Memory Floor at The Clare, the continuing care retirement community that I work at downtown.
As we age, all of us have some memory problems. The gospel today tells us something about God – that God never forgets. He especially never forgets us, not just when we lose things, but when we ourselves are lost. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 today all represent us. We have a tendency to get lost. I know I do. We get lost in our patterns of sin. We get lost in our compulsions and habits. We get lost in the noise and the busyness of our lives. Sometimes we don’t even know that we are lost, but God does. When God notices us getting lost, the gospel today teaches us that God does not just wait for us to wake up to find ourselves . Our God is a God who seeks us out. In terms of conversion, before we ever turn to God, we have been grasped by God. The Good Shepherd seeks out the lost sheep. The widow makes efforts to find her lost coin. The father is waiting for his son’s return and runs down the road to meet him when he catches a glimpse of him.
The stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin lead up to the story of the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son is clearly a teaching on repentance. The Prodigal Son repents for his wasteful life and the hurt he has brought to his father. His contrition, his repentance is not even pure. It is motivated by selfishness – his own hunger and poverty. I believe that these three parables need to be taken as a unit. The first two parables clearly teach us that in the process of repentance, God takes the initiative. God seeks us out. Even in the Prodigal Son story, the father figure is waiting for his son and when he catches a glimpse of him, he runs toward him and throws his arms around him. Repentance involves not just divine initiative, but also some very human steps. To repent, we must break out of denial, or being lost, and admit, confess our sinful ways. We need to express sorrow for our sin. The Greek word for repentance is metanoia. We must change our minds. We must change our hearts and decide on a new direction. And as the Prodigal Son did, we need to engage in behavior change – behavior change that replaces the sinful or dysfunctional ways in which we have been lost in. To acknowledge sin, we must scrutinize our attitudes, we must scrutinize our values, we must scrutinize our patterns of behavior, and decide to change, and then make changes.
It should be noted that these three parables are told in the context of Jesus spending time with sinners and receiving criticism from the scribes and Pharisees because He spends time with sinners. The scribes and the Pharisees are guilty of denial because of their emphasis on keeping religious laws. They are not even aware of their own sinful ways and their need for repentance and conversion. They are classical examples of religious people who live without a spirit of repentance.
Paul states clearly in his letter to Timothy, the second reading, that he was once a great sinner, but he recognizes that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He believes that God’s initiative in his life began a process of repentance and conversion that resulted in his salvation.
We are all guilty of what the Israelites experienced in the Exodus passage in the first reading. We are all guilty of subtle and obvious forms of idolatry. There are golden calves in each of our lives. God is seeking us out, calling us home, and inviting us to repent.
To this point, I have been talking about individual repentance. I think there is need also for collective repentance, especially on the part of clergy and hierarchy. Justice Anne Burke spoke of this, this past summer, in a conversation she had with Michael Sneed, a Sun Times columnist. Burke was talking about the lack of credibility that many church leaders have, especially in the eyes of younger people, women, and Vatican II Catholics. It seems as time goes on we hear more and more about cover-ups regarding pedophilia, and other abuses by priests, and the attempt to cover up sin by bishops and cardinals. Some have suggested that the highest leaders in the church, at times, have been complicit in this denial of sin. Anne Burke told Sneed she felt that one of the things that would contribute to clergy and hierarchy becoming credible somewhere down the line is if the leaders of the church would become repentant and contrite. She suggested that this repentance take on some behavioral characteristics. She said that if she had an opportunity to have a conversation with the Pope, she would tell him:
1) Change clothes: He should retreat for the remainder of his papacy into a plain simple black cassock wearing only a simple cross.
2) Dump the pomp: Clergy and hierarchy should act less as monarchical figures at worship.
3) Ditch the shoes: The Pope’s red shoes should go to a museum replaced by flat black shoes. Symbolism is important for Catholics.
4) Toss the fur: Fur in all its uses should be set aside, demonstrating a change of heart on the Pope’s part .
5) Jettison the splendor: The Pope should urge members of the hierarchy to demonstrate similar simplicity by giving up the vestiges of privilege. They should show externally how seriously they are taking the scandal of abuse.
6) Fast from food: The Pope should invite clerics and hierarchy to spend one day each week in fasting and prayer as an expression of public sorrow for failing to safeguard the safety of generations of minors.
In July, Anne Burke sent a letter to the Pope offering her assistance, as storm clouds gathered over the Vatican again. The Pope did not respond directly to her. The Vatican Secretary of State communicated through the Vatican ambassador to the United States. The ambassador advised Anne Burke to get in touch with the California attorney who is defending the Vatican against sex abuse law suits. I think some clergy and some hierarchy are examples of people who are lost and do not even know it.
This weekend we mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11. I encourage all of us to retrieve memories and feelings of that terrible day when those attacks on the United States took place. How should we respond on this 9th anniversary? There is an evangelical pastor in Florida who has been threatening that his congregation is going to publicly burn a Quran to show rejection of the Islamic religion and people. The fact is that some extreme radicals of Islam engaged in those awful acts; and yes, there are a group of people in Islam who are radical and bent on the destruction of America, but I think God’s word today calls us to repent from any corporate anger, hatred, or animosity we might have toward Islamic people. Let our repentance, in many different ways, contribute to transforming our world into the Reign of God.
I think we all can learn from Jewish people. Last Wednesday, they began the Feast of Rosh Hashanah, which extended into Thursday. This marks the Jewish New Year. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which will begin next Friday, Jewish people engage in ten days of penitence. They name their sin. Some engage in a ritual of throwing bread into water, indicating a willingness to cast away sin. Yom Kippur celebrates that real life, existential at-onement or atonement has taken place between and among individuals and God. This week’s readings and the faith of good Jewish people challenge all of us to repentance. May all of us who are lost become found.

In Jesus,
Pat Brennan

September 5, 2010

Hate…….Really?

                For a few moments, try to see in your mind’s eye the people that you love the most: your spouse; your children; your grandchildren; your siblings; your parents, whether they are living or deceased; extended family; friends.  As you visualize all of these wonderful people now, hear the message that Jesus delivers at the beginning of the gospel from Luke this week.  We are to hate these people.  Can He really mean that?  Jesus, who in other parts of the gospels calls us to radical love of, service toward, and justice for, other people? We are to hate the people that we love?

At the end of the gospel, we are told that we cannot be His disciples or followers if we are not willing to renounce all of our possessions. That is unsettling.  Jesus never had to worry about a recession.  He never had to worry about unemployment.  He did not concern himself with getting kids through college.  He did not worry whether his resources would last into his senior years.  He did not face the difficult economic times that many of us are experiencing.  We are to renounce possessions even as the economy stagnates and resources are dwindling?

I believe Jesus is using hyperbole in this particular teaching.  He is exaggerating to get our attention and to make a point.  I think he is teaching us that no one or no thing should have the force or the role of God in our lives except God.  Only God can be God.  I think Jesus is teaching us that we must make our relationship with God, in and through Jesus and the Spirit, foundational in our lives.  If we have this foundational relationship or first relationship, we are more empowered to share love and mercy and justice with other people.  If we are not controlled by our possessions, we will be in a better position to share our resources with those in need.  I am sure that Jesus understands that we need to have enough to live relatively peaceful, happy lives, but he is teaching us to not be possessed by or controlled by the resources in our lives.  Each of us will die and we will not be able to take any of our things with us. Things need to be contextualized.  The world’s resources need to be shared more equitably.

In Adlerian psychology, we speak of the life tasks: realities of life that people must confront, deal with, get through, to be healthy adults.  There is the task of healthy self-esteem, the task of forming friendships, the task of being intimate with someone or someones, and the task of finding meaningful work.  As Adlerian thought developed, another task was added to these first four, and that was called the cosmological task.  In the cosmological task, people must come to terms with the role of God in their lives.  People need to grow in a sense of meaning and purpose.  I think that Jesus’s challenge to us today is to work on the cosmological task now and throughout our lifetime. 

Jesus offers himself to us as the foundation for our lives, the meaning for our lives.  It is from this foundation, this center point, this still point, that we are to live, love, and have our being.  Experiencing Jesus as our foundation necessitates that we make a deliberate, intentional decision for him.  It is also necessary to have a lifelong, ever growing, ever deepening relationship with him.  It is necessary to become a student of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, always striving to grow in understanding and living what he meant by the Reign of God.  Making Jesus our foundation is not something that we do alone.  While there obviously are individual aspects, the experience of Jesus becoming our foundation happens in and through relationships, in and through community. 

What I am describing here is the born again experience, at least as I understand it.  In being born again, the experience does not just happen once.  Rather, decisions, relationships, learning, and communal dimensions of faith are realities that we need to be constantly growing in. 

In the gospel, Jesus makes reference to someone building a tower and another person engaging in warfare.  He talks about the importance of intentionality, or doing things with reflection and on purpose, if people are to succeed.  So it is with the experience of making God, with Jesus, in the Spirit, the foundation of our lives.  It requires moments each day, time each week, for us to be deliberate and intentional about faith and spirituality.  We need to plan our spiritual lives.  We need to develop a spiritual program in which we do or abstain from doing certain things that place us in daily conscious contact with God. What the scriptures invite us to this week is to make a fundamental option for Jesus to be the Lord of our lives.  The fundamental option needs to express itself in our living the attitudes and behaviors of the Reign of God.  This fundamental option must be deliberately and intentionally renewed on a regular basis. This decision for Christ also opens for us a share in what is talked about in the Book of Wisdom this week, a share in God’s wisdom, a share in God’s Holy Spirit.

In the second reading from Paul’s short letter to Philemon, Paul writes from prison, and he writes about a slave, Onesimus, whom he met while he (Paul) was in prison.  Through their shared time together, Paul used the opportunity to make a convert of Onesimus, helping him to make that decision for Jesus Christ.  Onesimus was a runaway slave.  He had run away from Philemon, who apparently was a convert of Paul’s and the leader of a house church.  Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon and he asks Philemon, “Do not see Onesimus any longer as a slave.”  He says to Philemon, “I am sending you my heart, and I want you to accept him as a brother.”  Paul beautifully demonstrates the change in attitude, the change in thinking, the change in feeling, and the change in behavior that results from making this fundamental decision for Jesus Christ.  The slave was a commodity in Paul’s day, a person who was treated like a thing.  Paul calls Philemon to recognize Onesimus as a human being and a brother.  He calls all of us to see each other as equals, brothers and sisters in the Reign of God.  It is thought that this short letter was included in Paul’s body of work because of its long-term challenge to the institution of slavery. Let us respond to Jesus’s challenge this week to make Him the foundation of our lives, our first, live-giving, spiritually empowering relationship.

I received a story this week about a little girl, a mom, and apparently an anonymous person working in the dead letter department of the U.S. Postal Service, all of whom are striving to make Jesus the foundation of their lives. 

In Jesus,

Pat Brennan

STORY OF MEREDITH AND ABBEY
  
Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey.  She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her.  I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words: 

Dear God, 
       Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. 
      I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her You will know that she is my dog. I really miss her. 

Love, Meredith 

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. 
  
A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet.  I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies.’ 
  
Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note: 

Dear Meredith, 

Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away. 

Abbey isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. 
  
Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by. 

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. 

I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. By the way, I’m easy to find, I am wherever there is love. 

Love, 
God