CALLED TO BE FULLY ALIVE

The "Captain Phillips" movie about a real life ordeal on the high seas in 2007 is riveting. Tom Hanks, playing the Captain, doesn't have to use guns and explosives to get the audience's attention; just guile and intelligence. As two armed pirate skiffs bear down on his container ship off the coast of Somalia, his bosun and engine room oiler panic and say they didn't sign up to fight pirates; it was not part of their union contract. The scene reminded me of a similar scene in the 2010 movie, "Of Gods and Men,"  another real life ordeal.

The latter tells the story of a small community of Trappist monks living in Algeria in the 1990s, which was trying to discern a choice between certain death at the hands of Islamicist terrorists and safety back home in France. A few wanted to go home and see their families at least once more, saying they signed up for the monastic life, not for martyrdom. Finally, their separate mental journeys converged in a common decision to stay and share the lot of their peaceful Muslim neighbors.

The Prior described the process as a journey towards each monk becoming the person he was created to be. We are all on this planet to discover our complete identity, to be the individual person we are. I've got to become me in such a way that I am the Christ that can only be the Christ in me. There's a "Pastor Emeritus" Christ that must be brought into existence and hasn't matured yet. It still has some way to go!

I am still discovering that to which Jesus Christ beckons me. I'm not fully born yet! The mystery of Jesus becoming a human being is to allow the reality of Christ to embody itself in my humanity. This mystery of the incarnation is that which we are all called to live.

This may be challenging news for a society in which many people have insecure identities, and for whom celebrities appear to be the only real people. We see them on TV, and so they must be real! If only we could wear what they wear, eat the same food and have the same hair, then we would be real too! Maybe. But these pseudo-identities off the market-place peg are illusory.

Christ alone is the real way, the real truth and life. Without him, there is no knowing, no going nor living. We celebrate this reality November 1st in the concrete persons of the saints, each their selves by being one in Christ.

Captain Phillips, after his sweat-soaking and emotionally draining ordeal, discovered his real self. He went back to sea again in 2009!

PASTOR EMERITUS

A FELLOW QUESTIONER

 Pope Francis is something of a media sensation! He may well be the most popular figure on the planet. His every statement appears to go viral. Everyone want to meet him. He has every reason to feel self-important. People who know him say he is humble. But his humility is not the  self-deprecation or gamesmanship that says, "I may be pope, but I'm really not much of a pope,"  when he must know he is more than an OK pontiff. Nor is his humility that form of low comedy which would make him proud of himself for admitting so humbly that he wasn't much of a pope. I almost choked on my cornflakes the other morning when I read in the paper that Ms. K. Kardashian had admitted "in all humility" to looking better than a rival.

The editor of a leading Italian Catholic newspaper recently asked Francis, "Who IS Jorge Bergolio?" The pope paused for a moment to reflect, and said: "I am a sinner who has been looked upon by the gaze of Christ." Those few words came out of a deep spirituality that's at the heart of Christianity. Our leader and servant named himself as a sinner - a sinner who has been overtaken and forgiven by Christ. This is existential reality and truth for Francis. I think it was the famous American Catholic writer of the last century, Thomas Merton, who said, "Pride makes us artificial; humility makes us real." No wonder the Book of Sirach reminds us that the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds. Real-ness is next to godliness.

This Sunday's Gospel depicts two Jews who went to the temple; one a Pharisee, the other a taxman. The purpose of the Jerusalem temple was to dispense justification to those who came. The parable lends itself to good comedy, especially if you apply a Freudian analysis to the two, especially to the Pharisee. But Jesus didn't have Mr. Sigmund Freud in mind when he told this tale.

The text offers no reason for us to assume the Pharisee was a bad person or a hypocrite. What he prayed for was very customary for observant Jews to pray for. There's no reason to think he was greedy, dishonest or adulterous. Nothing wrong with his thanking God for not being in that category. The problem with this man was his attitude. The word "religion" comes from a Latin verb (re-ligere) which means to re-unite, to re-connect. The Pharisee prayed to himself, and his prayer disconnected him from others - from the greedy, the dishonest and the adulterous, but especially from the taxman. His entire prayer was an act of self-love, self-isolation.

The tax collectors at that time were not morally good individuals. They bilked their own people. They were pariahs in society and despised by the people. This one stood just inside the door, prayed with head bowed and beat his breast - the proper stance for sinners. Instead of trumpeting his own ego like the Pharisee, he prayed to God, not to himself. He connected back to God, re-established his relationship with God - and therefore with the community. He worked religion the right way and found justification. The Pharisee failed to do so.

Pope Francis is all about connecting with as many people as he can. He makes no secret of his sinfulness. "My sinfulness is real. It's not a figure of speech, a literary genre," he confesses. "I am a sinner."  He has himself experienced the mercy of God, and seems hell-bent on reaching out and preaching God's mercy right and left. He claims not to have all the answers, but casts himself as a guide to "fellow questioners."  May this breath of fresh air go far to cleanse the atmosphere in a world of relentless self-promotion and the cult of self-esteem, that have been deemed the very oxygen of success!

PASTOR EMERITUS 

TRUSTING GOD

A few blocks north of Rome's Colisseum lies the ancient church of St. Peter in Chains, where Michelangelo's mighty statue of Moses stands. The marble is flawed and people ask what happened. Art experts surmise that the sculptor purposely began with a flawed piece of marble as a reminder that the great Moses was, like us, a creature of God, capable of all the flaws that we are capable of. I rather like this interpretation of Moses's flaw. It also happens to fit in with our first reading at Mass this Sunday.

Moses implores God for victory over the Amalekites by holding the staff of God above his head. After some time, however, weariness overtakes him and his arms need relief and rest. As the battle cannot be won as long as his arms are resting, Aaron and Hur help Moses hold up until victory is achieved. The image of Moses being helped to hold up the staff of God is pregnant with significance for us.

God had promised Moses that he would bring the people safely to a land flowing with milk and honey - Exod 3:7 ff. Moses led them out of Egypt knowing and trusting that God would see them safely through the thick and thin of the desert. He trusted that God would help him defeat the Amalakites, but at the cost of holding up his hands. He trusted his God in all the ups and downs of the journey. The nuisance widow in this Sunday's Gospel Nknew the judge would rule in her favor, but at the cost of her threatening him! The enigmatic question Jesus asks in the Gospel, "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth," is addressed to our trust in God. Do we realize what it means to be favored by God?  

The parable of the widow and the judge is a good example of the old Jewish belief that their actions caused God to offer them his favor, his mercy and his forgiveness. God's favor came as a result of their keeping the Law, offering sacrifice etc.. Jesus  offers a different interpretation of the parable: "Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones....?"  God will secure the rights of his chosen ones simply because they ARE his chosen ones, and not because of their good works. Our good works are not the cause of God loving us; they are the result. "In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us first...." - 1 John 4:10.

Due to us having been born with a spiritual and moral handicap, which we call "original sin," we find it very difficult to keep the reality of God's love for us in mind. We find it hard to believe sometimes. We forget about it and often distrust the reality of it. Like Michelangelo's Moses, we are fashioned out of flawed marble, stand and walk with feet of clay. We weep over our losses, yet the thirteenth-fourteenth century Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart, once said true Christians weep "not because they have lost something, but because they have been given so much." 

When the Son of Man comes, will he find his people struggling to trust in his love. That's us; people who struggle to trust. Would the judge have ruled in favor of that widow if she hadn't pestered him? God has already ruled in our favor. It is good for us to have the mentality of the widow when we pray, as long as we know that God will answer our prayer - but in God's way and in in God's time. 

PASTOR EMERITUS

GOD'S FREE GIFT

 Does the picture of powerful people on high horses refusing to come down look familiar? Maybe our big people in Washington DC and our smaller BART people in the Bay Area could take a look at this Sunday's Old Testament story about Naaman, the Syrian General. What we get is only the end of the story, Naaman's gratitude to the prophet Elisha. Go and read the fifth chapter of the Second Book of Kings and you'll get the whole story. It's a good one. Naaman was a powerful but stubborn man who climbed down from his high horse and allowed his vulnerability achieve that which his power could not. Isn't it revealing how power and stubbornness so often go together, and how often vulnerability and powerlessness can be more effective?

The Scripture scholars tell us that the Gospels have a special word for Jesus' power and authority. It's a word that has nothing to do with dynamism, or energy, or huffing and puffing. It's one that's close to our idea of vulnerability.  When the ten lepers asked Jesus to have pity on them he appeared powerless to resist their cry. In fact, like Francis in Rome, you would get the impression that he found life and energy in being vulnerable to the cry of the poor. One hopes that Francis will move our Church away from being a fear-based organization to being more open and vulnerable to people and opinions that are different from the party line of the Vatican. Isn't it ironic how people, who during the past forty years, accused those who differed, of being dissenters, heretics, un-Catholic, disloyal etc., are now swinging on their own petard as they criticize Pope Francis!

That is not the kingdom of God I read about in the Gospels. I am under the impression that Jesus was an extrovert, a mixer with the poor and sinful, not one who kept his distance from people and lived a different kind of lifestyle. Jesus told his followers not to be fearful or afraid. He told them, on the contrary, to spread confidence and love. A moral theology professor in Rome shared with me ten years ago how he feared to teach certain moral opinions in class.  The Church I've ministered in as a priest for just about fifty years has been, by and large, one in which priests and religious women and men have been too nervous about speaking their minds. Hopefully, we are moving from that kind of power and authoritarianism to a condition and place of openness and vulnerability.

The story of the ten lepers in this Sunday's Gospel, is about Jesus healing all ten but only one returned to give thanks. The incident has little to do with Victorian manners or being well bred; writing thank-you notes, greasing the wheels of gratitude, especially as we approach Thanksgiving. In fact, the one who returned to give thanks in the story was not well bred. He was half-bred, a Samaritan, the member of an ostracized group who were not pure-bred believers. Samaritans were looked upon as "cafeteria" believers - sinners, religious cherry-pickers, people to be accused and shunned by Jews.

I think the point of the Gospel healing is that the ten were cleansed not just of their leprosy, but their eyes were opened to the gratuitous nature of God's gift. Both Jews and Samaritans understood that they had to earn God's favor by paying for and offering animals of one kind or another in sacrifice - Jews in Jerusalem, Samaritans on Mt. Gerizim - or by keeping the Law of Moses. Along comes Jesus to tell them it doesn't work like that. God's favor is free. This central message of Jesus has, in everyday life, been misunderstood by most Christians down the ages. All that's required of us is openness and vulnerability to God and to one another's needs. Therein lies our our strength.

PASTOR EMERITUS

MUSTARD SEED FAITH

Just before this Sunday's Gospel, Jesus had been laying it on the disciples about temptation and sin, warning them and threatening "woe" to those who give scandal, and demanding that they exercise forgiveness. Having heard that kind of lecture from him, they must have felt inadequate because they asked Jesus to increase their faith.

What is needed, he tells them (and us) is not so much an increase but the exercise of the tiniest grain of faith that may be there. Faith amounts to a certain way of looking at life. Tiny faith invites us to have a large vision and not mistake the trees for the magnificent forest. It challenges us to read the book and not stop at the cover. It engenders in us a way of seeing the divine in everything and in everybody. It compels us reach out joyfully to all in the new spirit of mercy and generosity that  Francis has brought to the world. His faith is one that's dissolving mountains of prejudice.

A little faith, like a sliver of encouragement, can make us go the extra mile and accomplish the proverbial wonders. Francis keeps moving forward with his new vision and warmth and joy, and doesn't appear to worry about what his critics have to say. That's the work of faith. It's how the followers of Christ are called to behave themselves. I think we could all take a page from our Holy Father's playbook. He is calling all of us to his kind of action!

Let's not end up like the people in that piece by the memorable Author Unknown. It's a story about Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry at that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. At the end of the day, Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done!

"If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."

PASTOR EMERITUS

JOB, JESUS AND SUFFERING

We have started our Fall bible study on the Book of Job. He must be one of the most enduring figures in the Bible. There's a Job hidden in all of us. People who have experienced any kind of serious suffering or trauma are drawn to him. The book invites us to enter into Job's long struggle, and witness his pain from many angles. We are offered an inside sense of what a person goes through who suffers extreme calamity.

Catholic theologian, Jon Sobrino, has insisted that all suffering is sacred. Who among us has not suffered loss, heartbreak, physical pain, debilitating or life-threatening illness, or emotional wounds? Job's suffering is

over-the-top and hyperbolic, taking in nearly every loss imaginable. Commentators think the story may have had symbolic value for Israel after the collapse of the nation to Babylon.

A few things emerge from a slow reading of Job regarding traumatic suffering. Trauma is overwhelming and creates a sense of ruination, enough to render the victim suicidal. Job is driven to seriously wish he had never been born. The sense of trauma stays inside, unable to be absorbed by any psychological or spiritual sponge. Job's emotions shut down, froze, turning him into a kind of automaton. His confidence in God was shattered. The familiar supports he had taken for granted in life were swept away almost overnight - family, possessions, health....

Job's story is about a life gone tragically wrong. But it's not just about Job. It is about all of us. And it's about God. Sooner or later you and I will walk in Job's footsteps. When that day comes, our questions about suffering will inevitably lead to God. "Why me?" "How does God work?" "What kind of God are you?" "Is this some kind of divine punishment?"

When Jesus prayed in the garden before his death, he prayed "Father, if you are willing, take this chalice away from me." That was, in essence, Job's prayer. It is the prayer of everyone who suffers deeply. It's a prayer or condition that a person may struggle with for a long time. Eventually it will lead to the next part of Jesus' prayer: "Not my will but yours be done." Every Christian, at some stage or other, will pray this prayer - the first part, and eventually the last part. There will be much questioning, struggle and suffering between the two parts of it. Jesus, we are told, prayed so desperately and intensely that his sweat turned into drops of blood.

Gethsemane awaits us all. Few will enter willingly, as Jesus did. Most of us will enter it by conscription, when something happens out of the blue that will change our lives forever. But at the end, peace will come. Welcome to Job!

PASTOR EMERITUS

HONESTLY, WHERE'S THE HONESTY?

Where to find an honest person? Do dishonest people act honestly? Or vice versa? Our Gospel story this Sunday kicks all this around for our reflection. I have always found this Gospel very tricky to preach on. The message is hidden and needs to be dug up and communicated clearly.

It's about an employee who worked for a moneylender whom he defrauded by overcharging borrowers, and keeping some back for himself. And then when he was found out, bribed his master's debtors in hopes of their help and friendship....and maybe even a job! For this Jesus applauds him, commending his example to his followers!! That's what Jesus did. But what was Jesus saying? We've got to do a bit of clear thinking here or we'll get all muddled. Even Luke, the Gospel's writer, takes a few runs at it with all those bits of advice at the end of the story.

The devil being in the details, we may easily miss out on that Jesus commends the dishonest servant, but he does not commend him for his dishonesty. He commends him for his foresight, his shrewdness, his astuteness, his practical wisdom in taking care of "number one!" And then Jesus tells his followers to go and do likewise. But what's "number one" - for them and  for us?

Did the servant think that by reducing the debtors' interest on their loans, the debtors would think more highly of his master? If he did, then his action put his master in a better light; and his master would have been happy. His reputation as a moneylender would have been enhanced. Business stood to boom! If honor was its own currency in that society, he would surely value his honor over money. And the servant would have known that. On this supposition, we might pause and as if the Gospel is inviting us to look to the true source of our worth and self-esteem? The golden calf or the Lord?

Another reason why the master didn't have the servant arrested and thrown in jail might have been that he was a compassionate and merciful master. Maybe the servant, not unlike the younger son of last Sunday's Prodigal Son story, having taken the money, realized his master was a kind and forgiving man. The servant knew his master. Now look at what he does with his ill-gotten gains. He could have, like the Prodigal, blown it on wine, women and song. But he didn't. He helped others. He used it for the benefit of others. Is this yet another value the Gospel invites to look at today?

In this whole section of Luke's Gospel, Jesus addresses himself to the scribes and Pharisees. For them, the Law came before people, and they were constantly annoyed with Jesus for preaching the primacy of people over their legal traditions. Jesus had a different understanding of people's value in God's eyes. They would not have missed the message here.  

I am writing this on the feast of the Jesuit, St. Robert Bellarmine, who was like Pope Francis is today, a big friend of the poor. When he became a bishop and moved into the bishop's residence he removed the rich tapestries that lined the walls of the rooms and gave them to the poor to wrap themselves in. "Why should the walls be warm and the poor cold?" he asked. He was notable for the pressure he put on local government to stop reducing taxes on the rich while cutting back on social services for the poor, asking why the authorities think the "greedy are needy, and the needy are greedy?"

Thinking about this Gospel, we can ask who or what is "number one" in our lives? Who or what is the source of our personal worth and dignity?  

PASTOR EMERITUS