WELCOME HOME -- ISAIAH 40

Welcome Home!  Today the  faithful of  St. Christopher parish in Moreno Valley heard Father Macabio, MS reflecting on his deeply personal reaction to chapter forty of the Prophet Isaiah.  His introductory remarks explained the historical setting of the Scripture reading that Catholics all over the world heard today. (December 4, 2011)
Isaiah was promising the exiled and enslaved Israelites that before long they would be freed and allowed to return to their beloved Jerusalem.  There, they would be at home with their beloved Lord, on their revered land.  The chapter is very poetic.  Those who have taken the time to read the words of Isaiah know this already.  Those of you who have still to bring yourselves to open your Bible, could resolve to do so during this season of Advent.  Start with this chapter.  You will not be disappointed.  I have Father Macabio's permission to use his ideas here.  They are a great table-setting for the reading of this chapter.  They are also a good lesson for us all.  They will help us to respect the connection between the Hebrew part of the Bible [Old Testament] and our Catholic part, which we call most often, the New Testament.
Isaiah tells the People of God that a time is coming when they will be free again.  They will be together in the Promised Land and there, because they will be Home, they will be happy.  Just like we all are when we go back home.
Mark the Evangelist tells us the same thing when he shows us John the Baptist promising the coming of the One who will Baptize us in The Spirit, as well as in water.  Thanks to the coming of the Messiah, we too know what Home feels like when we are faithful to Him.  It is here that Father Macabio got personal.
"The other day someone asked me what I wanted most for Christmas.  I had to say, with some sadness, that what I want I can not be given.  That is because, more than anything, I want to be home."  This sentiment is a true one, even though perhaps a little embarrassing for a missionary to say.  But, Peter was not shy to tell Jesus,  "Behold we have left all things, and have followed thee: what therefore shall we have?"  If Peter could talk like that to Jesus, I am quite sure that Jesus was not offended by Father Macabio's expression of his Christmas wish.  Even we, simple mortals were not offended, and still are not. Especially since we are mostly mortals who are in an "adopted" home anyway.  Don't we "all" come from someplace else?  It doesn't matter whether it is Caribou, Maine or Snowflake Mountain in the Yukon Territory or St. Louis, Missouri or even, like Father Macabio, San Mateo, Isabela, Philippines.  It doesn't matter whether it is warm or freezing cold; whether it is the super gorgeous Canadian Rockies or the mosquito infected forest of the Amazon.  If it is home, we all want to be there at Christmas.  Look at the picture at  the head of this piece.  I put it there because it features people of many different personal situations seeking the path back home.  Just like us.  
There was no Christmas yet when Peter turned on Jesus, but he knew that he was not home.  He and his companions  had left everything.  Don't laugh at that.  No matter how little or how much it was, it was still everything.  You're reading this in the comfort of your home, or on one of those new fangled portable electronic inventions.  That means that by looking around won't see much.  Next time you're in church, especially at this time of the year, look around you and let yourself identify the number of possible people in attendance who would like to be home for Christmas.  Chances are that you will start with yourself.  That's good.  It will help to give you an appreciation for the emotions of your brothers and sisters.
It is true that we make home where our heart is.  We also make home where necessity keeps us.  In Father Macabio's position, he makes home where the One that he loves most asks him to be.  That is no different than what many of us do.  We leave cities, towns and villages to follow our loved one.  We make our home together with him/her.  The where is secondary in many instances.  The who is more valuable.  The missionary is with the Who, and that makes the where less important.  If you read the Bible, even just a little bit.  If you know the stories of the Bible by heart without being an habitual reader, you will still know that Jesus Himself was far, far from Home when He was with us.  The Prophets went where the Lord sent them.  The Apostles left home to follow Jesus.  They left home to obey His command to spread the News.  Finally, they made Heaven their Home...the Home that they yearned for because it came to be more important than Bethsaida, Nazareth, Capharnaum, Tiberias, Bethlehem or even Jerusalem.
We all know that Jesus' home town is Bethlehem.  Every year it becomes our home town too.  We follow Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem where Joseph had to go for the census.  That's where we go every year too.  Deep down we know that Bethlehem is our home town.  It is the place where we are all born into the life that Jesus came to share with us.  We can't deny it.  No matter where we have been through the years, we always seem to come back to Bethlehem.  We all live in the spiritual Bethlehem.  We all come to a moment in our lives when we wonder when the back alleys of the town are going to get cleaned up.  [If you've ever been there, you know what I mean.]  We live through that period.  We go from "town"to "town" and we realize that there is nothing quite like good ol' Bethlehem.  The manger turns out to be the most comfortable bed that we've ever slept in.  We sneak back into town during the Christmas season just to see how things are shaping up.  We can't help but be shaken with the emotions that the sights, smells, sounds and ideas that float all around us are really the spirit of Home vibrating within us.  It is the moment to take our courage into our hands and do something about making our bed here where we really belong.
Yes, I am saying 'WE."  I include myself.  I try to come Home every year.  Every year is different.  Every year Home is just a little bit cleaner, and for me, anyway, mathematically, just a little bit closer.  The direction of the homily this morning pointed us all to Home in a special way.  Advent is the time of "housecleaning" of knowing that we are going to continue accepting the invitation to keep heading Home.  First, to Bethlehem, then to where ever Jesus wants us.  Even if we aren't missionaries like Father Macabio, we can still accompany someone else with us.  This is the time of prophecy.  This is the time of high appreciation of where Home is.  This the time of  Homecoming.  This the time when we all feel excited about the Event.  This is the time when we are all pregnant with Jesus.  We are all on the way to Bethlehem.  We know what to prepare for.  The last thing we want to do is to not deliver... literally.
With this background, you can either go to your Bible or click here to read the marvelously well written chapter 4o of the Prophet Isaiah.

ALMOST THREE WEEKS LATER -- A CRY FROM THE GRAVE

This day begins the  era of endless silence for a voice that has been supporting me for thirty-four years.  The entire experience of this beginning is marked by the end of an era.  
It all began to come home to me when I decided  that to solve a small language question, I would email a Japanese friend of mine who follows this blog.  When I thought of doing this, I immediately realized that I had not heard from a long time supporter of mine for many days.  This fellow would send me at least 3, many times 5 or 6 emails per day.  They were the usual kinds of emails that people flood the ethersphere with these days.  Some I would open, some I wouldn't.  This pattern of his went on for over two years, so I could recognize the repeaters from the new ones.  So life went on.  When I thought of my Japanese friend, who also happens to be close to the emailing friend, I sent an email to the Emailer and said, "if you need help, tell me."  Then I emailed the fellow in Japan.  After that, since my curiosity was getting the better of me, I researched my email to see exactly how long it had been since the last email I had received from the once forgotten, now remembered emailing friend.  It turned up to be November 8.  Nearly three weeks.  I went about my business and kept checking my email to see what would happen.  Early this morning, it happened.  The mutual friend from Japan told me that George had died two days before.  
Now this is really the negative side of life in the fast lane.  A person who is present in my life every single day of the week, through more than one or two "pings" a day, disappears for 17 days and I don't notice the absence.  It is but through a coincidental mental connection that I even had the faint inkling of an irregularity.  It reminded me of when I shaved off the beard that I had carried for over one year.  It took a week before the first person made a remark about the fact that I was now clean shaven.  One week!  It is like information overload.  Or is it like an environmental habit, such as a "favorite" shrub that gets cut down from next to the main entry to your home and it takes a week or more to realize that there is a "hole" where the shrub used to be.  But this is a human friend.  Not just any, ordinary friend.  Read on...
I finally got some contact information.  His telephone number reached me.  I immediately called and the wife answered the telephone.  She had been seeking me for the entire three days.  She even went the fifteen miles to where she knew that I once lived full time.  She knows that my son lives there.  She got there, saw his vehicle in the driveway.  Knocked on the door a lot and got no response.  She finally went back home and found someone who could manage her husband's computer and was able to send me the telephone number by email.  We spoke for about an hour.  
Email is what you make of it.  It can be mechanical and it can be personal.  A continuous flow of it from the same source can become "white noise."  Like the stream behind your country home.  Or like the car radio that is on but not communicating because there are too many other claims on the driver's attention.  That's what happened to me.  It is too bad that the "Endless Silence" started early because my senses were someplace else.  

SALVATION BY FAITH [ALONE] ? NOPE

Here we are.  The sheep and the goats.  The  believers and the doers .  The Ark builders; the Circumcizers; The Altar builders; The Seder organizers; The Exodus leaders; the Conquerors; The Prophets, The Kings; The Temple builders; The Widow  and Orphan protectors; The Martyrs, [think Maccabees] and the Apostles.  All of these and more on the right.

Then there are the Rich who know that they are blessed by God;  There are the Powerful who know that God supports them because they can afford to buy a horse from the Arabs; The Comfortable who are sure that God loves them because they can afford to buy myrrh from the Egyptians; The Poor who know that their downtrodden state is only the introduction to the gift of plenty that was given to Job; The Criers who assure God that they have accepted Him as their Lord and Savior just as He asked everyone to be.  Finally there are those who have been asked to sell all that they have and who walk away because that is too much to ask of them.

This is the challenge that we are all going to hear on this the feast of Christ the King.  The challenge in simple monosyllabic terms is "Do what I want you to do.  I want you to sell all that you have, leave your fishing nets in your boat and follow me."  The secret to Salvation is Believing and Doing.
Following the Will of God leads us to the sheep fold and keeps us there.  Anything else gets us into the goat camp.  You wouldn't want to be the Leon Culberson of all eternity, now would you?

21st CENTURY MARTYR # 5

Father Jim Brown

We continue our tribute to martyrs of our times.
This is a dynamic Ceylonese (Sri Lankan Tamil) parish priest who was murdered with impunity while on his way to his humanitarian mission.  At the time of his ultimate and non-negotiable witness for Christ, this brave Jesuit was all of  forty years old.   He was killed by the special forces of the Sri Lankan, anti Tamil forces.   Father Jim was not ignorant of the dangers of his mission to the minority Tamil people.  He nevertheless continued to care for them in the face of the ever present threat of death.  The life he gave was certainly the seed for other Catholic lives to grow from.  Catholic tradition assures us that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."  The tradition sustains us to this day.  We love our martyrs because they assure us of the true value of discipleship.  Click on the link shown above just beneath the photo for a more complete picture of the situation in Sri Lanka.

TALENTS -- MINE IS THAT I TALK BACK

This passage of Matthew has a tradition all its own.  It is traditionally used as source of inspiration for work, for development of strong personal growth, of the overcoming of fear of retribution and the strengthening of personal courage in the face of risk.  It is traditionally used as a teaching to make the point that the talents that we have received from God require us to make every effort to bring them to greater and greater fruition toward the ultimate goal of eternal salvation.

The traditional position taken by the teachers is that the first two servants are the stars of the story and the third one is weak and afraid.  This is generally underlined by the description of the final state of the third person, he is left destitute and suffering out in the cold.  In the following paragraphs, I intend to break with tradition and present a way of reading and understanding the parable based on a long period of time of reflection and conversation concerning the story.  I am not a professional exegete, just a simple believer with a view about a very well known Gospel story.

I listen to the description of the master that comes out of the man with one talent.  Notice that the description resembles another one that we have read before in the Sacred Scripture.  Such as:  “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”  [Joshua 24;13]

We also can read similar words in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 10 and 11. 

Furthermore, the very next verse in Matthew’s Gospel begins the story of the last judgment.  This is the story that exhorts us all to share what we have with those who are “in the dark, where there is weeping and the grinding of teeth” because of the daunting penury that exists there.  The story of the Last Judgment does not belittle the poor, the hungry, the naked and not even those in jail.  In the meditation on the Last Judgment, even those in jail are not being judged as unworthy of receiving graces from God and help from God’s people for the sake of the Kingdom.  It is therefore in view of these elements that I now transition to my thoughts about the parable of the man who entrusted part of his treasure to his servants while he went on travel.

We move on to a story about a rich man who gives a different amount to three of his “employees” or acquaintances, who knows.  He leaves them with the expectation that they will make the investment that he has made in them grow.  When he comes back he takes from them what they made, but it does not say what he gave them back.  What we do get to know about this man is what the third fellow tells us.  He is a hard man.  He takes what he wants from whomever, whether it was due to him or not.  “You harvest where you have not sown…”  The man agrees and repeats the exact same words and then tells the man that because he knew that he should have put the money in the bank so that the hard nose, avaricious exploiter could have earned the interest.  He is now real angry and has the poor guy thrown out into the darkness.

Isn’t that what happens when the “little guy” speaks truth to power.  The one talented man had one very precious talent, in my book.  He did not co-operate with what he considered to be immoral behavior.  Not only did he not co-operate, he resisted and he said why despite knowing what the consequences would be.  I admire that.  I’ve been there.  It is a very interesting situation. 

I notice that Jesus does not elaborate on the lesson that he wants to make here.  Like I said earlier, tradition has the lesson going the way of putting the rebel down.  Lately, I’ve been allowing my mind and my heart to wonder about just what it really is all about.  Maybe you should ask yourselves too.  The answer may just convince you that I don’t deserve to have you crying at my funeral.