Humility - The preservative to refresh when relationships go stale

    Father Vince asked about what happens when the bread wrapper or cereal box is left open. The answer was the cereal or bread goes stale.  It looses its freshness and becomes to hard or soft and is not pleasant to our liking.  If proper care is not taken these things can go stale.  Relationships can also go stale as well if we don’t give them due attention or don’t nurture them.  A relationship can go down hill when we don’t regularly communicate or do so in negative ways such as always complaining, criticizing, or being discouraging.   This can hurt relationships with spouse, children, family, friends, and most importantly God.   When we are being negative or complaining we are thinking of ourselves and not about others.    Father Vince recommended humility as being the way to preserve a relationship from going stale.  

    The Pharisee in today’s readings was not being humble.  He was only praying about himself and how good he was in being in right relationship with God.  His prayers turned negative about others who he thought of as sinners.   If he was humble he would have realized he was a sinner as well and needed God to help him.  The tax collector was a model of humility praying, “God have mercy on me, for I am a sinner”.    This was some good advice to keep in mind in our prayers to God to help preserve our relationship and keep it fresh.  We need God and His mercy as we all have our faults, especially myself.   It’s also some good advice to keep our relationships fresh with those close to ourselves.   We all have things that that our loved ones may challenge us with.  We could complain about it and strain the relationship, but in most cases it may be better to accept it in humility and preserve the relationship. 

Have a blessed week and may God bless you!

Deacon Steve's Homily for the 27th Sunday Ordinary Time - cycle C - Respect Life

Good morning! On this first Sunday in October, we are celebrating Respect Life

Sunday. In fact, the month of October is Respect Life month.  The 40 days for Life Campaign is underway across our county and around the world.  Our parish is active in this campaign; your help and your prayers are appreciated.

I thought today would be a good day to talk about the Church’s understanding of ‘life’ issues and how we can live it out in our modern world. The Gift of Life (Donum Vitae) 1987 (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith)

‘From the moment of conception, the life of every human being is to be respected in an absolute way because man is the only creature on earth that God has "wished for himself"[16] and the spiritual soul of each man is "immediately created" by God;[17] his whole being bears the image of the Creator. Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves "the creative action of God"[18] and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.[19] God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can, in any circumstance, claim for himself the right to destroy directly an innocent human being.[20]’

As I reflected on this statement, I thought about our current culture and abortion and euthanasia.  Both of these are at the forefront of the ‘Right to Life’ campaign, and rightfully so. We have an obligation to protect the most defenseless in our society – the unborn and the elderly.  Blessed John Paul II called our current culture a ‘culture of death’.  But we know that our God is not a ‘God of death’ but a ‘God of life’.

The glory of God is the human person fully alive.’― Irenaeus of Lyons

And God wants each and every human being to live and to have a ‘full life’ in right relationship with Him.  

We believe that all of us are children of God, made in God’s image and likeness, and therefore all people deserve the utmost dignity and respect.  Who are all people?  

People who live in our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, our country, and around the world.  

People who have different color skin, who speak different languages, who profess different beliefs.  

People who believe in God and people who do not.  

People who are heterosexual and people who are homosexual.   

All people means every person on the face of the earth.  <pause>

So if abortion and euthanasia are the bookends that are contrary to life, what about those ‘in between’ issues?   In 1983, the late Cardinal Bernardin, a champion for pro-life issues had this to say: 

“The case for a consistent ethic of life – one that stands for the protection of the right to life and the promotion of the rights, which enhances life from womb to tomb…is both a complex and demanding tradition.”

 

He goes on to say:

“Therefore, not just the unborn, not just the poor, not just the hungry, not just the homeless, not just the war-torn, not just the undocumented, not just the medically uninsured, not just condemned prisoners, not just the environment, and not just future generations, but all of the above deserve our care. Everyone’s life and dignity needs to be fully protected and respected.”

Let’s think about those issues and remind ourselves that all human life is sacred.

So I invite all of us to ponder these questions: 

Do I respect all people including the unborn and the elderly?  

Do I respect the poor and those living on the margins of society?

Do I respect all people of different nationalities and religions?

Do I respect all people who are living on death row?

Which begs the question – ‘how do I feel about capital punishment?’

Do I respect and love my enemies?

And, do I respect myself?

These are tough questions to ponder especially in today’s world.  Today’s world where war and violence are every day occurrences.  Where hatred seems to dominate.  At times it seems so hopeless.   It certainly did seem that way as we heard in our first reading from the Old Testament prophet Habbukuk:

‘How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen!’ 

Sounded hopeless, didn’t it?   But our reading continues this way:

‘Then the LORD answered me and said:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.
The rash one has no integrity;
but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.’
 

To us this message is timeless and is all about faith and hope! Respecting life and loving all people is a way of life that has been written on our hearts by God our Creator.  Jesus came to show us that way of life.

         Let’s ask for the grace to show us those areas in our lives where we fall short of living the Christian way. For those times where we fail to love our neighbor and we disrespect life, let’s approach our merciful God and ask his forgiveness.

May we like the apostles in today’s Gospel ask our Lord ‘to increase our faith’ so that we can respect all.  May the grace that we are about to receive in this Eucharist help us to be more Christ-like and may we love and respect all people. God bless you all!

Lord, please help us increase our faith so we can create a culture of life

Homily for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle C

Good morning!   The theme of the readings for this Sunday is faith. This is also Respect Life Sunday.   I’ll focus on faith and then turn to how our faith is the foundation that supports our Respect for Life.

In today’s Gospel why did apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith? It’s because Jesus had given them a warning in the passage just before the one we read.   He said those who lead others to sin should be cast into the sea with a millstone tied around them.   So the apostles didn’t want to be subject to the punishment Jesus spoke about!  They needed a boost in faith.

Jesus knew the apostles were lacking in faith and wanted to make a point.  Jesus uses an example of a plant they were familiar with.  He tells them that if they had faith the size of a mustard seed they could command a mulberry tree to be uprooted moved into the sea and it would obey them.   The mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds barely the size of a pinhead.   Jesus was trying to tell the apostles they barely had any faith at all. 

Now, another word used for faith at the time was loyalty.   If we think of faith in terms being loyal to the one you love, Jesus was also telling the apostles that their loyalty to him was severely lacking. Jesus said if they had even little bit of loyalty they could do great things.   A few weeks ago Jesus told his followers they needed to be dedicated to him rather than one’s family by blood relation.  This sounds hard, but Jesus was saying that his family was those loyal to him and his mission of bringing the kingdom of God to the world. 

Now I’ve been talking about faith, but what is faith?   As mentioned earlier it’s being loyal to one you believe in, which is God.   It’s also belief in the truth revealed by God.   Faith isn’t something we can achieve on our own; it’s a gift from God, made possible through the Holy Spirit.   Faith is also a personal act of the human person, which is the free response to the gift of God revealing himself.   Even though faith is a personal act, we can’t come to it all on our own.   When God freely gives us the gift of faith, usually it comes to us through other believers in a community of faith.   As believers we have received the faith from God through others. Once we’ve received the gift of faith, our love of Jesus should motivate us to share our faith with others. We should pass on the gift.

However, sometimes we may be reluctant to share our faith.  We live in a culture that is increasingly “faithless”.  We feel pressured not to share our faith, as it’s not politically correct.  But, St. Paul reminded Timothy in our second reading today not to be ashamed his faith, reminding him he was not given a spirit of cowardice, but one of power, love, and self control.   We need to keep this in mind and have confidence that we too have been strengthened through the sacrament of Baptism and Confirmation to live and share our faith.  

As I mentioned earlier this is Respect Life Sunday.   Our Catholic faith teaches us that each person is created in the image and likeness of God.  This is why every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect from conception to natural death.  Many times we find this teaching on life at odds with the culture we live in. The culture proclaims a message of doing what’s best for number one: It’s all about me.  I should be free to do what I want to do and not worry about how my choices affect others.  This attitude leads to death and destruction of lives of others because of being selfish.  

The prophet Habakkuk in the first reading spoke of this same situation, crying out for help to a God who seemed absent.  He cried out “Violence” but you did not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?  These are the same things we cry out for the issues of our day: The violence of abortion which takes live of innocent children, misery of our elderly population who are left alone and abandoned, and the ruin of families who have been effected by loss of jobs and homes due to focus only on profit rather than people. 

It’s tough to live your faith in a world where you are always swimming upstream and never making any progress.  But the prophet Habakkuk tells us that the Lord answered him in his crying out for help saying: the just one, because of his faith, shall live.   Now, How can we combat the challenges of our culture?  By living our faith showing love for God and our neighbors one person at a time.  We can build a culture of life.   If each of us can live our lives showing respect and dignity toward each person it can add up to do great things.          We have many opportunities to do this in our own parish.

-       Signing up for a time to pray and witness at the 40 days for life campaign.

-       Joining our youth & hundreds of others who will be at the Life chain on Sunday from 2:30 to 3:30 pm in downtown Indianapolis.

-       Volunteering to help young women in crisis pregnancy through the Gabriel project. 

-       Visiting a sick or shut in parish member at their home or a nursing home facility. 

Please consider dedicating some time each moth to build up the culture of life.

If you feel like the apostles and need to increase your faith you can get a boost by participating in a Christ Renews His parish retreat.  There’s one coming up for the Men October 18-19 or the Woman’s in the Spring.

Remember, we can make a difference in our lives and the lives of others through living and sharing our faith. I pray that each and every one of us ask Jesus the same that the apostles did to increase our faith, and respond by doing great things to show your loyalty to God.

Are you a bridge or a fence?

Are you a bridge or a fence?  Father Vince’s homily from this past weekend, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary time, gave us some images that we encounter every day in our drives to and from work.  He pointed out different bridges, the wooden covered bridges of Parke County to the long steel bridge going over the Ohio River and that they connected a span that was hard to pass without them.   Bridges were meant to connect and bring people together.  Fences can be seen everywhere as well, from picket fences around yards to the high barriers around I-465.  Fences are meant to keep people out and separate.   In the Gospel the rich man put up a “fence” by ignoring poor Lazarus by not even acknowledging him, even though Lazarus was right at door of his house.   After the rich man died he could see Lazarus who was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham, but the rich man suffered in torment.  The rich man requested relief but is told by Abraham, “Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.”  The rich man built fences rather than bridges in his earthly life so there would be no bridge to cross the chasm of torment in the netherworld.  Jesus' story about the rich man to Lazarus calls us to be bridges rather than fences.

Father Vince told us that one of the terms for Pope, Pontiff, means bridge and is symbolic for him as leader of Church that bridges heaven and earth.    Pope Francis has really been a bridge by reaching out to many early in his pontificate, and is leading by his example to go out to others on the margins to share the faith.  

Fr. Vince’s image of bridges and fences was really a good one and helps me to think of how can I be a bridge to bring people to Christ.  Sometimes it may be sharing the Gospel with them.   Other times it may be to know when not to say something so I won’t be perceived as a fence to shut people out.   Both images are very helpful when encountering others and sharing the Gospel through words and actions.

Please sign up to pray for men at a Kairos Prison Ministry retreat on October 10-13

Your prayers are needed for a Kairos Prison Retreat.  I will be on the presenting team of the Kairos 4 day retreat which is being held on October 10-13 at the Plainfield Correctional Facility. Kairos

is a retreat similar to Christ Renews His Parish and is held in local prisons to bring the love of Christ to the inmates.   If you would like to know more about Kairos prison ministry the click on the "about us" to read more.  For details on the four day retreat click on "ministry programs" and read about Kairos inside.  You will also find out about other Kairos ministries there as well.  Please consider signing up online for a half hour block of time in prayer. Your prayers are appreciated!