Browsed by
Category: from our pastor

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 20, 2013

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 20, 2013

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

This fall I was able to attend the International Catholic Stewardship Conference in Dallas. There were many presentations about how to inspire parish communities to come to life spiritually and socially, to develop a healthy spirit of volunteerism, to start a fire for the spirit of peace and justice in our cities, to invite people to really get invested in the present and future of their church that sits at the heart of their lives.

It is a beautiful vision, the one where the Church is the heart of the community. But what about those who don’t hold the Church at the heart of their lives?

Or what do we do with the all-too-common experience of “I’ll go where they will give me what I want”? This is the modern-day megachurch model for many Christian communities, one that turns the faith / religion / church biz into a kind of consumerism where I will support and give as long as I feel my investment is providing sufficient returns to me. What we are seeing is the advent of churches whose sole purpose is to help me feel good about myself, to help me justify subjective opinion, to turn the gift of faith into whatever I want it to be, as long as it seems to work for me. We want a homily that challenges us just enough and makes us think some, but not too much. And it has to be politically correct. Do you see how the self is the center of this whole description? The so-called Gospel of Prosperity (which is so popular today) actually teaches that Jesus wants you to be rich, and powerful, and happy, and people are flocking to it.

Studies show that a lot of Catholics are turning to these churches, but they don’t last long there. The biggest problem is, when they decide to move on again, they generally don’t land in another church home. They become unchurched. On one level, I think this is so because they realize how difficult it is to replace the ancient truth with a new opinion. The truth is a hard act to follow.

So, back to this idea of consumerism. One of the speakers at the conference spoke about how unhealthy it is to always be validating parish ministry with progress reports. It doesn’t make sense to create ministry for ministry’s sake if there isn’t the heart behind it in the community to will it into being. Nor can a pastor just decide that a parish is going to be kind, compassionate, gentle, generous and pious. He can guide, and mentor, but not make it up, or force it to happen.

In the same way, he said, do away with all fundraising. Don’t conceal the integrity of peoples’ giving spirit by handing them a candy bar or a lottery ticket, or even an engraved plaque. I had never really thought about this before, because I’ve always known fundraisers and just regarded them as a “necessary evil.” No, he said, just let people give. If they don’t, then you just won’t have. This is honest.

When you invite people to dinner, invite those who could never return the favor, taught Jesus. Give, and don’t count the cost, and don’t expect any return. In these teachings he was describing himself, and then calls us to follow him.

But he isn’t talking about money here. In a way, it would be a whole lot easier if he were just talking about money. But when it comes to the life of faith, and we approach his altar, it isn’t with a wallet that he calls us up, but with our hearts and hands open, and our life’s accomplishments and failures, with our daily gladness and difficulties. He asks us to bring all that up and make our offering. He asks us to give ourselves back to him, since he gave it all to us in the first place. Generosity will over flow into the collection basket, too, but only as an effect of the relationship that sits at the heart of our lives, which we call “church.” Otherwise we are simulating an effect without realizing what caused it to be; what caused us to be, and to be here in this place and time, fully, actively and consciously his.

God bless you.

Fr. Don

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 13, 2013

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 13, 2013

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

It seems like God has been trying to hit me over the head lately with a message. After considering the themes of peace and justice at our annual diocesan interreligious gathering on the 29th “In the Spirit of Assisi,” and celebrating the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on the 4th, reflecting on the theme of the Culture of Encounter that our Holy Father Francis continues to speak about—then at conferences last week with Evangelicals as well as Buddhists, the question of Christian mission and values kept surfacing.

We have a clear mandate from God that, in order to be faithful to living in his image, we identify ourselves with the poor and the most lowly and forgotten in the world in order to follow him. Two weeks ago we heard, “He became poor that we might become rich.” When all are assembled before the throne of God on that last day what is the final test determining our entry/nonentry into the Kingdom? It is all determined by how we responded to the needs of “the least” of our brothers and sisters (Mt. 25), whom Jesus claims also as his brothers and sisters, and with whom he completely identifies himself: “what you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.” Jesus is saying: I am the poor. I am the lost.

Our Sisters and all those who have embraced the vocation of the religious life aren’t living a radical extreme response to the example of Jesus: they are normal. We are the ones who aren’t paying attention. We must pray for many vocations for our Sisters because our blindness is so great where the world and our attachments to it are concerned.

St. Francis embraced the poor, and willingly embraced poverty itself as his “sister.” Pope Francis has taken some amazing steps to realign the office of the Vicar of Christ to be more Christ-like. When we encounter another, he says, we must first see the person, not the situation, the sin, the confusion, the illness. The person. Not what a person has or doesn’t have.

Jesus told us we already know the commandment of loving God above all things. But I give you a new one, he says. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I always thought this was a strange thing, because we were always taught that self-love wasn’t the best passtime. In Christ we have a new understanding: we must love our neighbor as we love ourself—not because we are so loveable, or even deserve to be loved—but because our neighbor and our self is the same thing. Loving kindness and compassion is a sharing, not a service we give to somebody. It is a sharing in the experience of life, a celebrating of joy, a suffering-with to help carry mutual burdens and difficulties.

We call them corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and we teach them to our kids. But not because they are good things to do in our spare time. They are who we are. And this identity needs to flow out of our hearts into the world.

Change our hearts, Lord. Make us like you.

I wanted to briefly mention, too, that we had some fruitful meetings last week with parents at Holy Cross about the continued attention we are giving to security and safety in our school, in response to this crazy world we are living in. Emergency plans, security measures and personnel training are well in place, as well as video technology and heightened awareness of what is going on around us. We don’t want to create an environment of fear, but rather a place where confidence and a sense of trust is established in knowing that needed measures are taken to keep everyone safe. Our parents were very pleased with our presentations.

You may notice in the next few weeks some additional cameras in our buildings. They are not because we sense any threat; they are just common sense. We have begun working on plans and procedures for the safety of the church, as well, and will get back to you soon. Thank God we have so many professionals in health care and security in the parish, and they are so willing to help us do it.

God bless you.

Fr. Don

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 6, 2013

From the Pastor ~ Oct. 6, 2013

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

Do you desire to reconnect and participate fully in the life of faith that is your birthright by virtue of Baptism? I believe this is a deep desire that all people have, as we are “wired” for relationship with God as spiritual creations. But so many people are misled and lose the way. If this has happened to you, please read this with the tenderness with which it is intended; if you have a son or daughter who no longer believes that faith needs to be a lived expression, please copy this page and mail it to them. If I knew their names and addresses, I would write this to them myself.

Recently a woman came into the office — I am not including any details here in order to respect her confidence, but it could be any number of people I have met in the past ten years. She had suffered for years at the hands of an abusive spouse, had just tried to “keep it together” for her kids’ sake, had lost any sort of hope in the future, had become basically a shell of a person who dreaded the next impossible hurdle. She recently had gathered up enough nerve to get out of the impossible relationship in which she found herself, realizing that what she had, whatever it was, was not a marriage. Not in the sense of the Church as a sacrament, something forged in fidelity, permanence and openness to life. She came to the office without hope, dreading what I would say about what she had done. But she said that she was ready to do whatever was necessary to come back to God, if that meant working through the often-difficult soul searching of the annulment process.

We spoke about her situation at length. It came to light that she, a Catholic, had never been married in the Church, something she had regretted all these 25-plus years. She said she knew the entire time that what she had done wasn’t right. She had found herself drifting, outside the Church without an anchor. “What do I have to do,” she asked while crying,”to make this right?”

It was an amazing moment. She had not realized that she wasn’t married at all in the eyes of the Church, as Catholics must be married in the Church to be validly married. “All that is required,” I replied, “is confession.”

She looked at me blankly. “What do you mean? Everything is so hard, everything in my life is impossibly hard. How is it possible?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said, “how mercy and forgiveness is so hard for us but is so easy for God. The difficulty of our tears and our desire to return to him brings us his love where, for us, it would be impossible.”

Communion is restored. She got her life back that day and is back on the path God started her on so many years ago. Maybe her suffering can be a healing for you.

Today is pro-life Sunday. You can save someone’s life: life is so very precious to God. We often think of the unborn who are so terribly undesired and killed out of fear and a lack of hope. This is so against the witness of God himself toward us when we are undesirable. We think of the elderly whose lives are shortened for convenience and in the name of “quality of life” which ultimately is neither. We think of the poor, those whose lives depend upon us for the bread they need to survive today. And we think of those who have come to despise their own life because, in their aloneness, they have forgotten how the relationship of another can make possible the miracle of forgiveness and love where once, alone, it was not possible.

Today we reach out to all those who find their life confusing and difficult, a challenge too heavy to confront. No sin is too great, no separation deep enough to overcome the love of God who continues to touch and change his creation. And you have the job to deliver this Good News to them. Go, do it.

God bless you.

Fr. Don

From the Pastor ~ Sept. 22, 2013

From the Pastor ~ Sept. 22, 2013

Dear Good People of Saint Mary,

I’ve always had an issue with today’s Gospel. It seems to me that Jesus could very easily be thought to be saying something I would be uncomfortable saying. Here a guy who is cheating his master, and the master commends him (the “dishonest steward”) for acting prudently.

A kind of “honor among thieves,” it would seem.

Maybe that is the key, a story in the context of a world that is not perfect. A master who, in this case, maybe doesn’t represent perfectly the same Father that sometimes is represented in Jesus’ stories as the Master, Groom, King, or Landowner. Maybe in this case Jesus is stretching us a little to find glimpses of truth even in that part of our world where truth is sometimes hard to find. Maybe even in ourselves.

God brings good out of evil despite our world everyday. Perhaps you have known this in your own life. Where God seems farthest away you suddenly catch a glimpse of him. Of course, he doesn’t move, we do, so the distance must somehow be due to us.

This idea of perfection can be the most difficult one, at times, when we hold ourselves to a rule that demands perfection. But, as always at some point, we realize that only God is perfect, that he has given us a Church as the place where we, as a community, can help one another as instruments of God’s grace to be perfected. That we can exercise the Cardinal Virtue of prudence — that which orders the other Cardinal Virtues of justice, fortitude and temperance — work with our limited gifts and use them to return to God a greater yield of gifts, of grace, of glory.

You see, all these stories of gifts and expected returns, the whole Gospel concept of talents being given out doesn’t hinge on how many you start with. It has everything to do with what you do with what you have been given, and in prudence, use our equal potential to make equally pleasing returns to God, even though they may not be quantitatively the same.

How many times have we learned that the judgment of comparison is an unworthy exercise? Since we were children. Yet how often do we not try because it seems “unfair” that someone got a better deal than we did? It isn’t a matter of fairness; it is a matter of what you did with what you were given. When we speak of our gifts and how we use them, we often use the word “stewardship”; for people of faith, I prefer the word “discipleship” as a more fitting synonym, because as students of faith (the word “disciple” means “student” in its Greek origin), it is as followers of Christ that our lives and the fruitfulness of our lives take on a new meaning. A great purpose that goes beyond ourselves and connects us to a responsibility to the care of all of God’s people, the goodness of his creation that surrounds us, the task of helping one another to get to heaven.

Then the phrase from the Gospel today, “The one who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones” begins to make more sense. We all realize, in our small way, the same great process which, in Christ, allowed for our forgiveness and salvation.

We live the life God gave us, and we live it as best we can, and in this small way we realize our potential.

Make connections this Parish Life Weekend with God’s call to you, and stop before and after Masses and make a connection with people in the parish who invite you to get involved in the work of Christ in our parish and community. There are so many small ways to answer this call of God to much greater things.

God bless you.

Fr. Don