WHERE THERE'S DEATH, THERE'S MORE

John's Gospel offers us another profoundly human story this Sunday. Where was Jesus when Lazarus suddenly died? Where is comfort when tragedy strikes, when a big hole is left in a small loving family? How to deal with a tragedy like Alzheimer's, or when a spouse walks away, or when terminal cancer strikes a young mother, or when a son or daughter takes their own life? At such times, the armor of self-reliance and self-sufficiency seems to crumble and fall away.

Distress, separation, loss, grief, loneliness, disappointment...and eventually new life and freedom, are some of the very human elements on display in this Sunday's story of Jesus and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. They are familiar to all of us. We identify easily with this Gospel. Read it this week in John 11.

The family of Martha, Mary and Lazarus was close-knit, and Jesus was part and parcel of it. The sisters waited almost a week before Jesus showed up. Their heartbreak was heightened by the fact that they had sent him a message to come quickly, even while Lazarus was still alive. Jesus disappointed them royally.  He knew their tragedy and their heartbreak. There are many ways to break a heart, and one of them is not being there when someone you know is in deep crisis.

"Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died," sounds almost like an angry accusation. And when Lazarus died, they were left without their main man to lean on. It's not easy to walk into a tragic situation, knowing you're the one person they expect to hold it all together. Jesus didn't become defensive and offer an excuse. In times of huge personal loss, people ache for someone to lean on, someone to hold them and comfort them.

In the aftermath of a loved one's death, the music within us stops. "One day I shall dig my fingers into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want more than all the world, your return," wrote Irish poet, Mary Jean Irions, as she captured how much she wanted her loved one back again. Deep down, we know it's never the right time for her or him to go.

We, like Martha and Mary - and the poet - throw our hands up to the sky in times of loss and sorest grief. All our longings and yearnings and restlessness - all our big life questions - are ultimately God-directed. I've seen too many tragedies in people's lives not to know that loss and disappointment are part of something larger that eventually cracks open and offers new life and hope.

Death leads to more....

PASTOR EMERITUS

IT TAKES TIME TO SEE

John's Gospel shows Jesus calling his first disciples to "Come, and you will see." They had just asked him where he lived and he was inviting them into his personal life - John 1: 38-39.  Basic to any kind of human life is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting.... When Jesus invited them to come and see, he was inviting all of us to come and see, including the blind man in the beautiful story we have this Sunday.

It takes time to be able to see, to make sense of what's going on within and around us. One of the main points of the Gospel story is that although this man who had been blind since birth has received physical sight, he still could not "see." Although he now for the first time can recognize color and movement and people's faces, he still cannot recognize who it is that healed him or how this healing makes salvation sense. After much questioning by his neighbors, the Pharisees and the crowd, the man who had been blind begins to understand. When Jesus finally stands before him, his eyes are fully opened. And he SEES. A resurrection story?

I once knew a priest who struggled with the demons of alcoholism for about forty years. Spending much time in and out of AA, detox centers and half-way houses, he was blind to a deep-toned character defect that triggered his drinking. I used to wonder why he couldn't sense what others were able to see. Eventually his eyes were opened, sobriety took hold and he became a changed man. He recognized as for the first time God's loving mercy and care of him, rejoicing in the splendor of the lilies of the field and in the beauty of those around him. He was healed, happy, whole and at peace when death finally came to him out of the blue. It takes time to be able to see.

"Come, and you will see." Jesus saw what was really there - beauty in the helpless, the sick and disfigured. He saw goodness in the adulteress, innocence in those who scourged and crucified him, forgiveness in the thief on the cross. Pope Francis, Jesus' very public follower, sees wholeness where others see only brokenness. Where others judge and condemn, Francis takes the road less traveled, the more difficult path; he shows mercy. Those immortal words of the Lord to Samuel in Sunday's first reading are as true today as they were then: "Man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart." The man in the Gospel looked at what was temporal - his neighbors, the Pharisees, the Jews - and then, after all that, saw what nobody else saw: the eternal face of God.

The famous spiritual writer of the 20th century, Thomas Merton, standing one day on a street corner in Louisville, opened his eyes and saw the god-like beauty of the downtown multitudes. "I suddenly saw the sacred beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes....If only we could see each other that way all the time" - Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.  Matthew has Jesus say in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the clean of heart for they will see God" - meaning hearts that are undivided, agenda-less, will have the sixth sense of spiritual insight. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye," wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery in The Little Prince, as if the eye sees only the surface level of reality.

The journey to spiritual insight takes time, sometimes a long time, as it did for Jesus' first disciples.

PASTOR EMERITUS

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

I spotted this little girl on the beach, about four years old and with a large green bow in her hair. She was making a small simple sand castle, throwing sand at it with gurgles of delight. Totally oblivious of the warm Sunday afternoon crowds around her, this child was totally engrossed and already living in her fantasy castle. Her absorption seemed to swallow up all the noises of the seaside around her.

The image of this little kid kept coming and going in my imagination as I read over the story in this Sunday's Gospel. It's about a village woman who came to draw water from Jacob's Well to quench her noonday thirst. While there, she began to experience an altogether deeper thirst and the need to have it assuaged. Our need for water is obvious, but not so easily recognized is our need for meaning, for vision and purpose in life. Where is the elixir of life, the water that brings unalloyed happiness and fulfillment? The happy babbling and gurgling of that little girl keeps playing in my mind's ear.

 The ancient Greeks had a telling word for the noonday hour. It signified resting, placidity, peace and contentment - a wrap that absorbs all that pounds at our senses and burns us to the ground. To hear what life is trying to tell us, we need to neutralize for a while the din and clamor around us. Jesus and the woman were in the right spot. As he talked, she began to see a light greater than that of the midday sun, and feel a thirst that the cool waters of the well would never slake. It was like as if Jesus were rotating a diamond before her gaze, allowing her to recognize the many levels of her thirst. 

The child on the beach that day was, unknown to herself, exercising a centering power we all have but seldom develop. Josef Pieper is a name unknown to many today. He wrote one of the most important books of the 20th century, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture." It was required reading in our philosophy course. In it, he said that faith/religion can be born only in leisure, a leisure that allows time for imagination and God. For the sand castle child on the beach, time was standing still. She was immersed in the leisurely elixir of life. Did something similar happen between Jesus and the woman at the well? Do we need to recover some of that leisure?

Cloistered Religious live a life of silence. While most are not called to that, all of us can try and tune into what has been called the "silence of life." What's that silence about? I think it generates a real strength behind human strength. It helps overcome fear and weakness of spirit, and the power of stillness can help restore nerves and physical strength. The 13th century Dominican friar, Meister Eckhard, once suggested that nothing so much resembles the language of God as does the silence of life. That observation calls for some silence...and maybe another visit to the beach. Was that little four-year-old somehow, unknown to herself, in touch with the living water of life?

PASTOR EMERITUS

FATHER POPULARITY

"Father so and so is very popular with everybody," is something I frequently hear from people about their priests. It may refer to a priest's charm and charisma, his preaching and counseling abilities, his gifts as a father to the community, his preaching, someone to whom people instinctively turn in good times and in bad..... People have all sorts of expectations of their pastors. Some want him to be devoted to the school and the youth, others expect him to be a gifted liturgical leader, or one who spends his time visiting the sick and homebound, or someone who is the life and soul of every parish gathering, or simply someone who is a replica of Bing Crosby in "The Bells of St. Mary's."

Pope Francis describes the church as a "field hospital after battle," full of people who have been injured and wounded by life, by the institution itself, and even by its clerics. In that context, the priest is a physician or a nurse practitioner, someone "with the ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful." In practice, when the rubber hits the road, that's the context out of which the church's ministry of leading people to Jesus Christ is accomplished. As your physician is supposed to help you make much-needed lifestyle transitions, your priest is supposed to lead you to a closer personal relationship with God. Good priests, like good doctors, treat the whole person, communicating information clearly and patiently accompanying the wounded on their healing journey.

The pastor of a parish community is called to be both father and mother. "At times we have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it" - Joy of the Gospel 46. Francis even compares the priest's manner of preaching to that of a mother speaking to her child - Joy of theGospel, 139. The priest listens to the concerns of his people and learns from them, much like parents listen to and learn from their children. From this experience, he learns to speak and to bring the mercy of God to their very human joys and sorrows. That's why Francis wants senior church leaders to have been well experienced as pastors before going up the ranks.

Parents today sometimes have to contend with the detonating hormones of their teen and even pre-teen children, when these kids decide it's time to replace the authority of their parents with their own authority. Priests sometimes have parishioners who come to tell them they're joining a nearby evangelical church because it's smaller and more intimate than their parish church. With this kind of experience, pastors can understand the pain of parents who are contending with their children who want out of going to church, and even out of living at home. 

I've never been entirely happy with the laity being designated as sheep. But that's implied in referring to pastors as shepherds. I've no problem at all with the scriptural image of shepherd and sheep. Unfortunately, though, when it's applied to the church, it conveys a subtle message that believers are "little people whose faith needs to be protected against the powers of intellectuals!" - Pope Benedict in a sermon justifying the penalties imposed upon Fr. Hans Kung in 1979.

Parents give life; they nurture and protect it. And this principle of bringing people to life is at the basis of ordained ministry. Priests and deacons has little to do with doling out discipline, or deciding who or who should not be receiving Holy Communion. The heart and soul of a their ministry is about bringing people to new life, inspiring and energizing their relationship with Christ and with others. It's important that people see this as the core lest they fall in love with their own idea as to what kind of person their pastor should be.

PASTOR EMERITUS

A CUP OF TEA

"I am not a church-going man, myself, but I know what's what," said the person next to me on the plane recently when he heard I was a priest. "Soooo," I asked, "what's what?" This middle aged businessman launched into his reasons for dropping belief in the God and religion of his youth, referencing Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and the late Christopher Hitchens, authors of the "science-explains-it-all" bible. When the flight attendant offered tea I asked if the water had boiled first. "Let me check, Sir," she said with a look of mild incomprehension. We Irish-born won't drink "hot tea" unless the water has boiled. She didn't return!

Many people assume that science and religion are mutually exclusive; that if science can explain the universe then there's really no Creator. I'm no scientist but I remember the advice of a philosophy teacher more than half a century ago. He was saying the next big thing would be huge advances in every branch of science, and that we should keep an eye on it because it would bring religious doubt in its wake. And it did. He didn't mean that science was agnostic, which it isn't, but that it would lead people to ask searching questions about religious belief, the Bible, and many Christian practices. Such inquiry is good, but many were unprepared, side-swiped and dropped their faith. 

A recent visit to Ireland reminded me of how agnostic the culture has become there in recent times. It was not so when I was growing up. People I've known for a very long time told me they no longer believe. Big writers and poets, like Maeve Binchy and Seamus Heaney, had abandoned their Christian beliefs long before death caught up with them. Irish

newspaper columnists and broadcasters make no secret of their agnosticism - and cynicism - regarding anything religious. A similar attitude is spreading fast here in America. "Once I've got a scientific explanation of something, that's all I need," opined my airplane companion.

Hmmm. There's a simple scientific answer to the question, "Why is the kettle boiling?" It has to do with heat energy, water molecules, bubbles and steam. At the same time there's another answer - one that goes, "Because I want a cup of tea." One answer is about the science, the other is about the purpose. If I'm going to understand why that kettle is boiling, I need to know both. Keeping an eye on what scientists have been saying, I have the impression that younger scientists today are becoming interested in questions about God, of purpose and why we are here. That's a bit of healthy news.

I don't believe the Bible is interested in how the universe began. Scripture not any kind of proto-science, pseudo science or myth masquerading as science. It's interest lies elsewhere: Who are we? Why are we here? How shall we live? These are questions science can never fully answer but which are the business of religion. To ignore them would be to reduce humankind to the status of a robot. Jonathan Sachs, former Chief Rabbi of Britain, once made a useful distinction: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean."  Now that tastes like a well-made cup of tea!

 PASTOR EMERITUS

WAVES, WORDS AND WONDER

 I love my daily hike of four or five miles. It's not so much a hike as a "power walk" along the seashore at daybreak. The wind and the roar of the ocean, giant rollers thundering all the way from Japan and exploding on the beach below, shorebirds crying for breakfast, and health-minded little dogs taking their owners for some exercise - these are my walking buddies of the morning. Further out, ships come and go, taking advantage of the morning tide. And there's the chug-chug sound of fishing boats making their way into San Francisco Bay after a night's dredging their treasure from the deeps, and taking it for unloading at Tarantino's, Scoma's and the other storied seafood havens along the waterfront of Fisherman's Wharf. Meantime my elderly limbs and joints loosen up and waken and warm the heart as new thoughts for the day take shape.

We're headed into the season of Lent again, the season that took shape during the early Christian centuries. St. Benedict remarked fifteen hundred years ago that the culture and feel of Christianity is akin to that of Lent. These past few Sundays, Matthew's Gospel focused on the "righteousness" preached by Jesus, as distinct from the righteousness of Old Testament Israel. "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" - Matt 5, 17. Christian righteousness is about living with an undivided heart out of a personal relationship with Jesus, interpreting life in the light of Christ and living in the light. If that's the heart of the Gospel, it's also what's at the heart of Lent.

Living in personal relationship with Jesus Christ allows the believer to recognize His face in people, especially the poor and hungry. Nobody can recognize and appreciate a clever move in football without first knowing football. For the same reason, the face of Christ will not be recognized in our neighbor unless we know personally who Jesus Christ is.

In Ash Wednesday's Gospel, we find Jesus offering the three elements of Israel's Old Testament religion: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Jesus calls his followers to do these things but from a new perspective. It's a spirituality that's driven by almsgiving, the need to reach out and respond to Christ suffering in the needy. The vision is sustained by prayer, and almsgiving comes from fasting - the believer sharing his/her own surplus out of a sense of sobriety.

Jesus called his disciples to "follow" him. New Testament scholar and philologist, Gerhardt Lohfink, sees "following" Christ as first and foremost being in personal relationship with him. Jewish rabbinical students attached themselves to a Rabbi in order to study the Torah, not to have a personal relationship with the Rabbi. Likewise, Muslim and Buddhist gurus taught their respective philosophies and theologies to their disciples. For them, discipleship was not about having a relationship with the guru. Christianity is distinguished not so much by a teaching as by a relationship.

Gazing at the ocean, with the remnants of last night's news still fresh, my mind wanders towards the words and language of the liturgy I will use at Mass. I wonder about their metaphorical, poetic and scriptural dimensions, and muse on how their meaning has been missed by so many. Sometimes, when fog drifts across the morning waters of the Bay and there's freshness in the air, I pray that in this new breaking day more of my fellow Christians might come to understand better about God and love, life and humanity.

PASTOR EMERITUS

TIME FOR DEBATE

 An Vatican official once told me that bishops don't disagree publicly with one another. It wasn't just that dog doesn't eat dog. And it wasn't that bishops didn't disagree with each other. It was that people would feel scandalized if there was any suggestion of a disagreement, much less a full blown row between them. Are the people really that weak minded?

Recently, two Vatican hot-shots went at it head to head in Rome. One, the head of the congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the other, the chair of the group of eight cardinals chosen by the pope to advise him. The issue was the reception of Holy Communion by Catholics who are divorced but remarried outside the Church. Pope Francis, looking at the issue from a pastoral point of view, had called for a re-examination of it, feeling there was room in the debate for the mercy of God. Archbishop Muller of the CDF, looking at it from the point of view of Rome's doctrinal watchdog, respectfully disagreed.

Cardinal Maradiaga of the Group of Eight, when asked what he thought of Muller's apparent dismissal of the Pope (and God's mercy), said: " He's a German...so in his mentality there's only truth and falsehood. But I say, my brother, the world isn't like this and you should be a bit more flexible when you hear other voices. That means not just listening but then saying no." Maradiaga then went on to say that he was sure Archbishop Muller "will arrive at understanding other positions too" even if at the moment he is listening "only to his own group of advisors."

What we're seeing here is not just a spat between clerics in high places, but a battle being fought out in the ongoing struggle for a new kind of Church, one that has been irrevocably impacted by the "Francis effect." It's a battle between a black and white view of Catholic reality and an acceptance of the complexity of the human experience of weakness and failure. Francis has said more than once that the Church is not for a Catholic elite, but a field hospital where the wounded find healing and care. We can expect an ongoing series of spats like that of Muller versus Maradiaga.

More than half a century ago, the Second Vatican Council called for the principle of subsidiarity to be a hallmark of how the Church would do business. It meant broadening decision-making processes at world, national, diocesan and parish level, so that issues pertaining to parish would be resolved at parish level; issues pertaining to diocesan level would be resolved at diocesan level; and issues pertaining to the national scene would be sorted out at national level. It never got off the ground due to its being labeled by the Vatican as "Protestant Congregationalism." 

Francis has put us back into the mode of the Second Vatican Council, of implementing its reforms, but fifty years on. It's really Vatican II for slow learners.

PASTOR EMERITUS

CURING AND HEALING

 I had a remarkable visit with a man in a nursing home last week. He is eighty four years old, with cancers in his lungs, colon, prostate, and blood. And his teeth are rotting from a lifetime of smoking. I've know this person for thirty years and always found him lively, generous and good humored. He came to the front lobby with a huge smile and escorted me to his apartment, half walking and half trotting - his signature gait - along the hallways and stairways. He still exudes a real boyish enthusiasm for life.

Having insisted I take the most comfortable chair in the room, he offered me tea and proceeded to ask me how I was. But I countered with a similar question about himself. His smile broadened as he began a litany of blessings from God. To see the enthusiasm with which he spoke about how he has been blessed in his latter years was special for me. It's not something I experience from every sick person I visit. Far from dwelling on his multiple cancers (any one of which would scare the wits out of me), he kept telling me with real conviction that his life was in God's hands. And then he would flash a beatific smile. Is it that our lives are in God's hands, too, but we don't realize it?

As I drove away after an hour's visit, I was thinking of the Gospel stories of Jesus healing the multitudes of sick and handicapped. I wondered about bodily affliction and the deep sense of well-being I had just encountered. I wondered, too, about curing and healing. Two different things? There are many incidents in the Gospels of people being healed and jumping for joy. My colleague back in the nursing home was jumping for joy. He certainly had not been cured. But had he somehow been healed? The cancers were there and advancing, but he was not unduly worried about them. His main focus was gratitude to God for "something." Was it real inner healing, I thought?  Is this what the stories of Jesus healing people in the Gospels are all about?

After I bade my farewell in the lobby and he disappeared into the elevator, I turned back to the receptionist and commented on how happy my friend was. She dropped what she was doing, looked me in the eye and said with conviction: "He is the most loved resident we have. His sense of faith, gratitude and kindness to people here is infectious. He gives us all hope. Everyone feels better when they meet him."

I myself felt the better for the visit. There's a story in the Gospel where the sick who were lying in the market place touched the tassel of Jesus' cloak and were healed - Mark 6, 53-56. Was my friend in the nursing home like the tassel of Jesus' cloak who seems to have touched so many of his fellow residents (and visitors alike). Is he an extension of God's loving care to heal his people, a channel of his peace and joy, and a minister of his presence? Maybe Pope Francis wants to draw our attention to the power of the poor and needy through people like my friend who is so ill, and yet exuding with a well-being and happiness that's not of this world.

PASTOR EMERITUS

DOCTRINE AND LIFE

 "Anyone who knows the reality of Catholic life is well aware that at the retail level, there's always a sort of negotiation that goes on between what the rules say and what actually happens. It is not about hypocrisy or disobedience, but adapting universal norms to the infinite complexity of real life situations." - John Allen

This observation from the popular NCR columnist is not only true but it makes a lot of sense. The tension between what the rules say (e.g. Sunday Mass attendance) and how people observe them is out there for all to see.

It's not hard to find clergy who think only in terms of black and white: the rules must be obeyed no matter what. They assume that human needs should be made to fit their own understanding of every doctrine and rule in the book. Others, recognizing the greyness of life, are more comfortable acknowledging that the "Sabbath was made for man," and not vice versa. Jesus didn't appear to have a problem subordinating laws to human need. As my mother used say, "Necessity respects no law."

When the Church in the form of its clergy seeks to impose the letter of the law upon an unwilling individual, that person will likely go his or her own way. In other words, good and decent people follow their own consciences when confronted with something they are not ready to embrace. They will feel misunderstood and rejected, and go seek out someone whom they feel understands their situation better.

This is sometimes the case when an engaged couple is refused a Church wedding because of cohabitation. I have heard of families being refused the baptism of a newborn infant because they haven't been married in the Catholic Church. Many divorced Catholics who have remarried outside the Church want to receive the Eucharist, but cannot get their situation resolved by Church officials.

Sacraments, like the Sabbath, are for the spiritual benefit of the person. They are not offered by the Church as a reward for being good, but as healing, nourishment and strength for the weak. They are meant to be celebrated with a level of faith that fosters a spiritual and moral change for the better. They are not offered indiscriminately, like the blessing of a statue or a crucifix.

One of the Church's roles is to bring people "to that full, active and conscious participation" which the nature of the sacraments calls for - (cf. Vatican II on the Liturgy #14). This ensures both the spiritual nourishment of the people celebrating and the integrity of the sacrament itself. There are times when people's readiness for the Eucharist should be given priority over a technicality that might exclude them.

PASTOR EMERITUS

DISCOVER, CELEBRATE, SHARE

 "At once they left their nets and followed him." 

It didn't work that way with me! When people ask me when I decided to become a priest the most honest answer I can give is, "About a dozen years after I was ordained." During those early years I spent my time preaching the agenda of the Second Vatican Council  - offering workshops on liturgy: doing what I didn't need to be priest to do. They were interesting years but, looking back, I didn't seem to focus much on evangelization. I think that was the result of confusing monastic life (I had been a Cistercian) with priesthood during formation.

I've heard married people say the same kind of thing, that the real decision to be married came some years after they stood at the altar. Half ways through the 1970s I began to rethink my priesthood and many things about the church. But one thing I haven't really needed to rethink was my call to be a priest.

"Call" is a strong word. I had no visions, heard no voices, experienced nothing mystical. What I experienced was a a nudge, a prompting, an intuition - a suggestion that becoming a priest might be what I was meant to do with my life. It was a kind of hunch.

I followed the hunch, hoping that God was behind it and, to the best of my ability, I believed I was doing with my life what God wanted me to do. What God originally nudged me into has turned out to be very different than what I expected. I am reminded of a book I saw a few years ago with the intriguing title: "This Isn't The Life I Ordered."

Well, whose is it? Even though I believe I am still on the same page as God, I found that a priest's work is often frustrating, painful, lonely, confining, confusing, depressing, unsupported and even suspect. But at the same time, I found my work has been exciting, challenging, fulfilling, uplifting, liberating, validating, appreciated, needed, joyful, blessed and deeply rewarding.

If you think a priest's work is mostly doing "holy things" or saying "holy words" - or even being "holy" himself - you've got it inside out. We live in a culture of junk. My work is to sort through all the junk in our lives, and to dig deep enough to discover the HOLY in our hearts, our lives and in the world around us. The discovery of the HOLY makes me want celebrate and share it with others.

This Sunday, we will be reminded for the umpteenth time that Christ continues to nudge his people to believe that leaving their nets to follow him - in whatever way - might, indeed, be a very good hunch.

PASTOR EMERITUS

WHO ARE WE?

 A new year has dawned and with it, hopefully, a measure of new hope. The first thing you notice about Jesus when you open any of the Gospels is that he is out and about his business. What's he doing? Calling simple fisher folk to follow him. No theories to go with it, no philosophies, no ideologies or theologies. Just two simple words: "Follow me!" How simple it looks. How difficult to do!

According to theologian philologist, Gerhard Lohfink ("Jesus of Nazareth" p. 73), "follow me" means walk after me. The ancient rabbis had their disciples (a word which means "learners") focus not on walking after them but on studying the Torah, the Law of Moses. Rabbinic disciples were first and foremost students. Jesus was a rabbi with a difference. He interpreted the Torah in a new way, sang the old words to a new tune. He didn't call his disciples to be students of the Torah or anything else. He called them to follow him, to sing his new song along with him.

The Gospels tell us that they dropped whatever it was they were engaged in, and simply followed him. It was hardly a sheepish, willy-nilly "follow the leader" thing. People need something to hope for in order to drop everything and start moving in another direction. Those first disciples saw some hope and felt some excitement in Jesus' invitation.

For many people today God is irrelevant, non-existent, a meaningless concept. Putting one's hope and trust in God sounds to them like a pious cop-out. To believers, such people - and they are legion - appear to live without much long-term hope. Their hopes often center on living healthier and longer, making a better life for their families, maybe even a better future for society. These are worthy ideals, excellent and decent, but to people of faith such hopes seem to be missing something important that's hard to put words on.

Allowing Jesus into our personal space, accepting his vision of life, engenders an ongoing excitement and hope that has to be experienced to be believed. Pope Francis got to the heart of things when he said that he was "A sinner who had been touched by the mercy of God." From that moment onwards, Francis saw life differently. The great issues of war and peace, wealth and poverty, justice and injustice clarified and became part and parcel of who he is today. That, I suspect, is why he speaks so simply yet so compellingly on these issues on an almost daily basis.

I forget who it was who said, 'We don't know who we are until we discover our call from God." It makes sense. We are called by a power way above and beyond ourselves to be the person God had in mind when we started to exist - maybe sinners waiting to be touched by God's mercy. We are called to worship, to fellowship and community, to be all things to all, especially to those who bear the label "poor." Maybe 2014 will be the year when we slow down, stop and listen for the personal call - and respond.

PASTOR EMERITUS 

A WILD RIDE AHEAD?

The designation of Pope Francis as TIME magazine’s Man of the Year was, for some, the ultimate accolade. For all, it’s a breath-taking example of how one individual can single-handedly change perceptions, even of vast institutions like the Roman Catholic Church.

A year ago, it seemed almost as if the Church, like a vast brocade, was gradually unravelling at the seams as the problems piled high on the desk of the hapless Benedict XVI. With his health deteriorating, the Church divided and the Vatican in uproar, he chose a course of action that would give new life to the Church he loved: he retired. History may well regard it as his greatest hour.

What’s beginning to look progressively like a revolution came from an unlikely source – the assembled cardinals at the ensuing conclave in Rome. A change of direction, they agreed, was necessary, and that became the unspoken, semi-official position. The person chosen to deliver it was an unlikely 76-year-old Argentinian who delighted in telling everybody he was a sinner.

Little did we think nine months ago when Jorge Mario Bergoglio emerged, blinking into the Roman night on the balcony of St. Peter’s, that we were at the beginning of an unlikely revolution in attitude in the Catholic church. After a long winter of discontent, spanning two papacies and almost four decades, suddenly the prospect of a new dawn was upon us.

After all the efforts to block the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, after all the efforts to stifle debate on key pastoral issues, after all the efforts to return the Church to the nineteenth century, after all the trampling over all our dreams, we couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Suddenly, unpredictably, unexpectedly there emerged from the pampas of South America this tall man all in white who would rescue the Church from the dark cul-de-sac of history and point it towards the light of promise and possibility.

Suddenly, again, the core of the Gospel – the love and mercy and joy of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ – became more important the political campaigns, waged not wisely but too well, against abortion, contraception and homosexuality. Suddenly, after decades in a dense forest, it was as if we found ourselves in a great clearance bathed in the light of a warm sun. A new day was dawning. A new beginning was beckoning us with a smile into a new and better future.

A Happy New Year to all of you!

PASTOR EMERITUS

POPE FRANCIS’S MANIFESTO

Have you managed to dip into that new message from Pope Francis, “The Joy of the Gospel?” It’s long but I find it a satisfying read. I’ve waited half a century, since Vatican Two, for such a message from Rome. It’s surprising, thought-provoking and invigorating. It is maddening to people with little understanding of the Church’s teaching on social justice, some having confused its teaching with Marxism.

Looking at it within the context of the pope’s other published speeches, letters, homilies, general audience messages and interviews, Francis appears to ask three questions: Why not look at things from a new perspective? Why not be open to doing things in a new way? Why not have a new vision of the church?

These are missionary type questions, and Francis is urging us all to go back and become a missionary church again. Such questions come from a deep sense of security and joy. You will have noticed that the title of this long letter, his “State of the Church” manifesto, is “The JOY of the Gospel,” not the burden or the fear of the Gospel. Joy is written all over this pope. He is not a man who is afraid to use the Gospel as a tool to fashion a better and more effective church.

We are to be a joyful community of believers unafraid of the modern world, unafraid to change, unafraid of challenges. This will be frightening to some of his flock for it poses a major challenge to the status-quo. “Pastoral ministry in a missionary key seeks to abandon the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way,’” he writes in a section entitled, ”Ecclesial Renewal.”

The overarching message of this manifesto is that Catholics should not be unafraid of new ways of proclaiming the Gospel and new ways of thinking about the church. Francis sees such new ways are essential if we are to spread the Gospel at all. He identifies areas of stagnation and petrification in the church, areas where he wants to see change.

Over and over again, Francis takes aim at such long-standing roadblocks to growth as “complacency,” “excessive clericalism,” and even Catholics who act like “sourpusses” – (that, folks, is the official English translation!). He describes this latter group as Catholics who live like “Lent without Easter.” He contrasts this dourness and pessimism with the joy of living a life centered on Christ and focused on the Resurrection.

Pope Francis uses a famous quote from good Pope John 23^rd, who noted at the opening of the Second Vatican Council that many doubted things could change for the better. Too many people at the time – 1962 – were predicting doom and disaster for the church and for the world. But Pope John disagreed. “We feel we must disagree with these prophets of doom who are always foreboding disaster.”

“The Joy of the Gospel” is Francis’s own ringing response to latter-day prophets of doom.

PASTOR EMERITUS 

FRANCIS OR LIMBAUGH

Rush Limbaugh’s recent attack on Pope Francis is laughable. The reaction to it is not so humorous, because not only is Mr. Limbaugh ignorant of Catholic social teaching, but so too are many Catholics. Our social justice teaching has been described as “the church’s best kept secret.” I suspect the ordinary man or woman in the pew on Sunday has heard very few homilies on the social teachings of the church.

I offer the following list of topics which characterize Catholic social teaching today, a teaching that has developed over more than a century.

A connection between the religious and social dimensions of life exists.

The dignity of the human person. Humans are at the top of the social order.

All people enjoy inalienable rights, which are political-legal & socio-economical.

A preferential option for the “poor” – i.e. the economically disadvantaged.

Love and justice are connected; you can’t love your neighbor & ignore his rights.

Promotion of the common good – of everything that makes it possible for all people to become fully human.

Subsidiarity. Decisions should be made at the local level, closest to the action.

Participation of all in political decision-making.

Economic justice. Resources, economic and natural, are for the benefit of all.

Solidarity – we belong to one human family, called to care for one another.

Peace is the fruit of justice – there’s no peace without justice between people.

Work. All have a right to work, to receive a just wage, and to form unions.

Liberation from oppressive social, political, and economic situations & structures.

Stewardship. We are managers of God’s creation for the good of all.

PASTOR EMERITUS